Tragon's Behests

Image by liuzishan on Freepik In a campaign there are a few ways at looking at dungeons, fortresses, towers, temples, etc.  First, they may have been abandoned.  The longer they've been abandoned, the more disrepair they've fallen into, the more likely that a lot of monsters and other unsavory types have moved into them and are living there.  Second, they may be inhabited for a purpose.  For example, the evil deity's temple.  Or the hobgoblin fortress.  Something like that. Third, they could be a mixture.  For example, the castle is inhabited by the anti-paladin and her followers but in the crypts below where no one goes... This is going to have an impact on random encounters.  Consider, is it a patrol, a random encounter, or is there a mixture of both?  I let my settings dictate the random encounters.  A true random dungeon will have random encounters (provided they make sense, see below).  On the other hand, the dero lair will ha...

 Image by www.freepik.com We've all been here as DM's: the party has so many magic items that nothing can touch them and they easily dispatch any foe they find.  When you load parties up with magic armor, magic weapons, staves/wands/rods, rings, cloaks, and potions it can make them almost immortal!  Or, the one I see on Facebook all the time: My party is abusing the "wish" spell, what do I do about it?  I have two solutions for this, both are pretty radical.  First, don't be afraid to hit the reset button during a campaign.  Second, as the DM you control what kind of magic is available in the campaign. Hit the Reset Button If the party's magical items are unbalancing the campaign and making it so it is not challenging then hit the reset button on them!  What I mean is, take the magic items away!  Put the party in a situation where they are robbed or somehow rendered unconscious or otherwise powerless and all their magic items are taken away. ...

Image by www.freepik.com  Our November 18 session was an old fashion dungeon crawl which took our players a little over four hours to complete.  Our party had been sent to investigate a tower in the Tenebris Silva (the dark forest).  A group of followers of Rectus Deus, including its priest leadership, had disappeared there investigating followers of the dark god The Betrayer a few years ago.  The party had gone through the parts of the tower that were above the ground in our November 11 session and found several types of undead. In this session the party cleared out the underground temple.  Under the tower they encountered several types of undead; skeletons, zombies, Betrayer soldiers, and the boss.  There were also a number of carrion crawlers, described as nine foot long centipedes with tentacles.  A fight had happened between the followers of Rectus Deus and the followers of the Betrayer and now both sides were undead. I clued the party in to the d...

Image by www.freepik.com I feel that one of the advantages that the old school games have over 5E is the fact that players would have to problem solve.  My current campaign is 1E AD&D.  Players don't have any skills in 1E beyond those that belong to their character classes. This actually opens the game up to being rich in role play and problem solving.  In 1E characters are not rolling against their skills and ability modifiers to determine if they are able to figure something out, the real players of the game have to do it. Why is this a big deal?  It makes for a much more interesting game and a better experience for the players.  Let me give you an example (I did this in our current campaign): "Your party has to help repair a section of the city's wall.  The wall is 30 feet high.  Sections of the wall are showing signs of needing to be patched up.  You have scaffolding, a pulley system, lots of rope, pick axes, chisels, mallets and 2x2x2 blo...

 This session saw an ambush in the forest, our first dungeon crawl, undead from the AD&D Monster Manual I and II, and a home brew monster.  Our characters are ten weeks into the campaign (game time) and we have a mixture of second and third level characters at this point. The forest: Our party took advantage of healing from the mystic that they journeyed to at the last adventure.  They got intelligence about their foe back in the city (a priestess of Mors Aeternus - i.e. Death).  They then began their journey through the forest to find the tower in the forest. A day into their journey they met a band of pilgrims in white robes with flowers in their hair.  The band was escorted by a soldier, but there was a lot of terrible flute and tambourine playing and the soldier rolling his eyes.  Turns out this was the wrong type of pilgrim and that they actually served one of the evil gods and a pretty intense combat resulted.  The party had to go back to the...

Image By stockgiu   As a DM you can drive yourself crazy, spend a lot of money, or both when it comes to castles and fortified cities. I decided that unless it is magical, built by magical/divine beings (for example, Sauron's fortress), or built by nonhumans (Moria) that I'm not going that route. What I like to do is to use historical cities and fortresses for my campaigns. Below one of them; the 8th century Byzantinian city of Ankara. This is an image from my notes: Some people cure cancer, I read about esoteric history.  Ankara consisted of three parts; the inner part, the outer part, and the keep.  The inner part: roughly 350 meters by 150 meters. The wall was 5 meters thick, towers 8-12 meters apart except the east side where they were 4-5 meters apart. The inner towers were the height of the wall, 6-8 meters wide, had two floors (first floor with archery slits, second with rectangular openings for ballista), with catapults on the roof. All were pentagon s...

After breaking up the fight ring last week that was run by the crime boss known as Death's Queen, our adventurers woke in their rooms at the Broken Gourd when their doors were opened and poisonous snakes were thrown into the rooms. After dealing with the snakes they found calling cards on the floor indicating that Death's Queen is not going to let things go. Despite this, our heroes had agreed to travel to the Mage's Guild to take on a quest to save Ferris. As they traveled through the Unders (the slums of the city), someone fired a crossbow at them from a rooftop, barely missing one of the party.  At the Mage's Guild the Guild Mistress introduced them to Ferris, a pleasant 19 year old young man. Ferris isn't too bright and during his studies got a book on demonology and managed to summon something very evil, which has possessed him. The Guild Mistress warned the party that the Entity manifests itself randomly and its goal is to get Ferris killed so that it c...