Review of The Temple of the Blood Moth

The Temple of the Blood Moth

By Jacob Butcher

Edited by Skerples

If you want a bit more science in your fantasy The Temple of the Blood Moth by Jacob Butcher is a great place to start at the price point. This 24-page, black and white module is a perfect short adventure for an extended session at a convention or a 2-4 nights delve for your weekly game. The book is designed to work with your standard OSR games, like Old School Essentials, but could easily be converted to 5e with little problem. It is considered a “hard” adventure for levels 1-3 and “moderate” difficulty for levels 4-5. The layout of the book conforms to the 2-page spread motif that is popular right now. This makes for easy use at the table whether in physical form or on a PDF reader. The art and maps of the books matches the tone, which is an eerie and grotesque mutation of a common D&D type temple adventure. 

According to the zine you will find, “Inside you’ll find Monsters, original Spells, new Magic Items, and three Random Tables for Mutations, Revelations, and Madness” and it is true. The adventure has plenty of cosmic-style horror with a healthy side of body-horror. The basic premise of the plot, without spoiling the adventure is that zealots are kidnapping people for sacrifice to their abomination of a god, The Blood Moth. If you put this into your existing campaign world just know it could forever change it with the ramifications of the story. Also, the PCs can go through some intense, will say “changes”, over the course of play. This adventure is not for the faint of heart.

        The adventure is provided with several hooks to get the PCs started, in general they mostly revolve around the players finding an abandoned town with tracks leading to the temple. This leaves a lot of room for interpretation or hacking. One option given is to have the players wake up in the temple, taken as prisoners and working their way out. This would be a good option for convention play in my assessment.

One of the features that I like a lot was an escalating random encounter chart. The chart goes from one to twelve with the challenges being greater the higher the number rolled. Surface level encounters roll a d6 and the deeper you go the die grows to a d8, d10, and then 2d6. I am sure this has been used before, but this is the first time that I have seen it, so I was impressed. It comes with several handy random charts and a few new spells that fit the theme of the zine overall. 

I think this is a great zine for the $5 pdf price point. Is it perfect, no. It has some issues with the many of the combatants having the Sleep spell, some of the damage by the new creatures is a bit intense, and without modification the BBG is going to be rarely seen in any adventure. All these issues are significantly outweighed by the other quality bits you receive inside with a cool setting and theme. You can smooth out the rough edges with just a minor amount of work. It is a strong recommendation from this blogger, check it out.

Click here to buy The Temple of the Blood Moth

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Why Rolling to Cast is a Bad Idea

               This article is really in response to Professor Dungeon Master and his video(s) where he professes to like random results for casting spells. Let me be clear here first, I love the Dungeon Craft YouTube videos and I love the FB group. I have stolen many of the Professor’s ideas and agree with him about 90% of the time, but I must break from him on this subject. This video also runs in complete opposition to the magic system that is used in Dungeon Crawl Classics. I love DCC’s style and I think their approach is wild. I like many of their adventures, but I will not be running any straight DCC anytime soon. The game, for me, is a bit too random. Though if that is your thing, more power to you.

DCCs art is rad.

                I brief synopsis of what I call “random” casting (or rolling to cast) is when a wizard/cleric casts a spell the player rolls a d20 to see if it is successful or not. Spells in this type of setting are not automatic (though I would argue that they are not automatic in classic D&D either). Depending on the d20 roll you can have about four outcomes. The spell goes off normally, the spell fails, the spell critically succeeds, the spell critically fails. The other bonus to this system is that spells can be cast an unlimited amount of times, but there is always a chance that the spell will backfire. I am sure that I am underselling the system a bit, but I think this is an accurate rough outline of how this system works.

Here is the video with his house rules. I agree with many, but not "Roll to Cast".

                Here are some of the reasons that I think this is not the best system to use. These opinions are coming from a classic D&D OSE/OSR perspective, so please keep that in mind.

1 – It is already tough being a low-level caster

                I have been running OSE/OSR now hardcore for about the last years and the biggest pile of dead heroes that I have is wizards. In my opinion they have the highest bar to cross as far as gaining levels, with the least going for them. They have bad ACs, they cannot use weapons, they have low hit points, and the list keeps going. The one thing they do have is a spell that possibly can turn the tide of battle once a day. Clerics are similar in that they have earn an entire level before even getting a spell and (odds are) that spell will be crucial in keeping another character alive. I just do not see the reason for having the one thing that makes both the classes unique fail or go catastrophically horrible. Why would people then really want to play these classes? The wizard sits back biding his moment and does little in the combats of the night. The Ogre rounds the corner, the party looks at towards the wizard and the wizard grins. He chants his magic as his eyes glow and casts Sleep. He then rolls a 1 and puts his entire party to Sleep and gets his head caved in by the Ogre. Fun times. They get one thing, let that thing be reliable.

2 – Unlimited casting is not a good option either

                I can hear the comments now, just allow the casters to cast unlimited spells with a risk and that solves everything. I am currently playing in a Microlite20 game where my character can cast not unlimited, but quite a few spells compared to his OSE counterpart. I can drop Sleep like it is nobody’s business. This makes fights boring for the other party members. Since I can cast it roughly 10 times, we can navigate most of a dungeon without many combats. I go out of my way to not cast it because I want other party members have a chance to shine. When you can cast that many spells at low level, even with the chance of failure, it can reduce the dramatic tension of a session a lot. Combat, Sleep, Bash, Next, Combat, Sleep, Bash, Next, Etc. Spells as a limited resource is a good thing and even plays into the fiction well. The wizard is tiring and cannot produce more magic, the cleric is desperate, and their faith is wavering. While I believe low-level casters, especially wizards, need a few more spells, unlimited spell casting just does not seem to fix this problem.

 

This supplement does have a critical system for magic if people are interested.

Conclusion

                As I said in the beginning, I do not want this to come off as an attack on Dungeon Craft. I love the channel and respect the Professor. This is just one professor sharing his opinion on the subject as well. I would highly encourage you to check out Dungeon Craft as a YouTube station and a FB book group, you will not regret it. I also want to state that I like DCC and Goodman games. I own several products. I encourage people to buy DCC, because even though I do not run it, I have farmed it for many ideas and their adventure modules are some of the best in print now.

This is one of my favorite of his videos and rings so true.

I have previous blog posts on my thoughts on Wizards and possible ways to improve them at low levels. Check them out HERE and HERE.

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A Review For The Adventurer’s Guide to The Yol’Najj Forest

 

          Zine Quest 2 was a few months ago and many of the products are starting to reach the public. This week I received The Adventure’s Guide to the Yol’Najj Forest by Zeshio. I was not familiar with Zeshio before this project, but I was pulled in by the evocative art that many have mentioned has a Mike Mignola feel. I also knew going in that it would be a micro-setting that would be system agnostic. Other than that, I was just taking a $10 chance on a product. I am happy that I took that chance, because dollar for dollar, this was one of the best products I have purchased in a while.   

What You Get In The Book

-          37 pages including the interior of the back cover

-          3 maps (1 valley, 1 city, 1 fortress)

-          10 new pieces of gear/magic items

-          9 factions

-          15 NPC character descriptions

-          Lots of new creatures and plants

-          Plenty of lovely art

-          A ton of random charts

-          More stuff I did not mention

As you can see quite a bit is crammed into 37 pages of content. The one thing you cannot blame Zeshio for is not giving you plenty for the price of admission.

 

The Concept

                The setting for the book is about a magical forest and the surrounding areas. Besides the forrest itself there is the Cutting Fields, the Mycon Swamp, the Yol’Najj Jungle, the Votari Vertical Caverns, the Oldwood, Volax – The Crystal City, and the Crystal Crevice. Each location has a section in the book and gets a few pages of description, factions, monsters, and interesting inhabitants. The magic forest also sits on an ancient ley line that gives it power. The ley line is corrupted and causes an explosion in the mountain nearby raining magical crystals all over the area. These crystals are influencing the local flora and fauna in various ways. There are several factions in the area, and each are reacting to the magical crystals and the disease it creates, in different ways. As time goes on you can form relationships with different factions and completing missions for the factions will help in shaping the world around them.

 

Stuff I Like

                I have other articles that I talk about my love of “plug and play” mini-settings and this is just that. I could easily plug in all or part of this book into a larger campaign like Barrowmaze. If you are a reader of mine, you might have seen me compliment Thunder Rift as a product, and this is a smaller version of that. I also like that the art truly gives you a feel for the setting. Zeshio seems to have on their website different art projects and seems to be quite proficient in their craft. It would be easy to snip pictures from the PDF to create an art book for the players to look at during game or make tokens for Roll20 and the like.

                The game is completely system agnostic and I do mean completely. There is not a stat in the entire book, just suggestions on powers or effects that should happen. I find myself automatically figuring out how I would make this magic item in Old School Essentials, 5e, or even Savage Worlds. This can literally be used with any system and is like Rocketship Empires in that respect if you are familiar with that game. Here is an example of a magic effect from an item in the book.

“Those hit with the bow are stunned briefly and take decay damage. Shadowy, ethereal tendrils cover the bow.”

                In OSE, because OSR rules are a bit brutal, I would have it be a +1-bow doing d6 damage, plus a save vs paralysis or suffer an additional d6 damage from dark energies.  If I were running it in 5e, I would have the have the bow be a +2 and do D8+2 damage plus a Constitution saving throw. On a fail, the victim is slowed the next turn and takes an additional 2d8 necrotic damage. As you can see it is completely flexible with whatever system you are planning to use and since I run a host of different games it is useful in my entire collection. 

What You Might Not Like About It

                I can see that some people might not like the fact that the game is completely game agnostic. There are suggestions on how monsters and items should be, but if you really want stats, this is not the supplement for you. I have been playing RPGs and especially D&D for 30 years and coming up with things on the fly are not difficult for me, but I know some people do not want to put work into a product for which they are paying money. I understand that feeling.

                The game has a subsystem in it that needs to be tracked if the setting is to be used fully. There is a mechanic that tracks Order, Health, Chaos, and Death. The actions that players take need to be tracked and they effect how the forest and the area react. Over time the meters will build, and the forest changes and different factions will take different actions. It is a bit of a clock mechanic that allows actions to happen in the background and make the world feel more alive. To be completely fair and honest, the mechanic is not that difficult to track, but I know some people do not want to have anything extra to do when running a game.

 

Where Can You Get It

                I do not think that it is currently available in print format, outside of the people who backed the Kickstarter. It is available in PDF format for $7.99 from here. For the price I do not think you can beat it. Possibly if there is enough demand another run of the physical product can be done.

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Why I Finally Decided to Purchase Barrowmaze

         I get a few people asking me questions about my old Keep on the Borderlands game and what became of it. It went on for quite some time, but I had some medical issues then ran some Star Wars D6 for a while. I brought the characters from the Keep on the Borderlands adventure back, and started them in a modern classic Barrowmaze. I will admit that in the past I was hesitant on Barrowmaze due to the significant monetary investment that is involved. I can generally buy five to ten other OSR products for the cost of the hardback POD. I am here to recant my criticism though, the product does live up to the hype. I have now been running it since December on a weekly basis with my group of students at school and we all love it. The students really do like it more than Keep on the Borderlands, which to me states volumes. This article is going to cover what exactly Barrowmaze is, for those that are not familiar, and what I like about it.

What is Barrowmaze?

I think when you ask most people, “What is Barrowmaze,” the most common response would be a Megadungeon. If it was just that, it would have succeeded quite nicely, but it is actually a lot more. To me, Barrowmaze is something better than a singular Megadungeon, Barrowmaze is a skeleton. What do I mean by that? Barrowmaze outlines and entire mini-RPG ecosystem. The campaign takes place in the Duchy of Aerik which has an amazing framework for not only the Megadungeon, but the ability to build and expand into other adventures. The book comes with the areas other locations, gods, backgrounds, and threats. You are not buying a Megadungeon, you are buying a mini-setting that is easily expandable. The village and Barrowmaze itself are the focus of the book and have a lot of meat invested in them, but the surrounding area is fleshed out just enough that you can add to it quite readily. Your PCs can easily become influential with the local government, build up status and reputation, and eventually even settle and build permanent structures. You can also slip other modules into the areas around Aerik, if the PCs want a change of pace.  

The Megadungeon itself is structure a bit differently than the norm. Most dungeons get more dangerous and rewarding the lower you travel. Barrowmaze is a series of burial mounds that act as mini-dungeons. These are great for short, punchy play. You can run sessions in only a few hours and still feel accomplished by knocking out a few mounds. As the PCs travel from left to right on the map, the mounds get more difficult and more rewarding. Below the mounds is a single level that qualifies as a Megadungeon. With close to 400 rooms it is the titular Barrowmaze. The maze will challenge the players and is divided up into different sections with factions in each section to deal with and negotiate. Combine this with the 70 burial mound min-dungeons, for the price, you are getting a product that will provide a huge amount of content. In a dollar to content ratio, this is one of the cheapest products on the market. 

There is an overall plot, but it is as relevant as the DM wishes to make it. If they want to lean into the plot, they easily can. If they would rather use this as a boot-it and loot-it game, you can easily do this as well. I personally am running with the plot as I find it interesting and I like to tie other adventures into that plot.  

A Great Questing Beast Review of Barrowmaze.

Using the Book

These days I am running an open table for anywhere between 4-6 players on average, though it has been as high as 9. The group’s foundation is that they are a mercenary company, like many of the others in town and they are seeking their riches while the "getting is good." I wanted to add to the overall feel of the area and I used other supplements to spice up the duchy. As an example without too many spoilers, the duchy map mentions a “Secret Shrine”. In the setting background the plot is tied up with a serpent god as well. I replaced the “Secret Shrine” with Skerples module Tomb of the Serpent Kings, and dropped just a few ties to the main Megadungeon. Also, there are rumors of tribes, froglings in the base book, running around the swamps in the game. I kept the froglings, but I have an Old School supplement with amazonian warrior clans and I added them to the swamps. They fight each other, and everyone else who is not them. The players can attempt to negotiate with them, or go to war. Maybe put one against the other? The tribes are related to a witch located in swamps of Bogtown and their local Thieves Guild.

I am trying to get my PCs as tied to the town as possible in order to get them to want to spend money on the town and watch it grow. They seem to like investing in things and have that investment pay off. This setting seems to lend itself to that style of play. Some players are trying to form businesses, some are trying to make fortifications for the town, and others are making a reputation as party animals and carousing experts. Making the environment a living thing is important. Players are spying on rival companies and finding out information on the locations of possible good treasure, then swiping it out from underneath them. Sometimes they go into the mounds expecting to open a mound with a treasure haul, only to find out that a different group was already there. I added a touch to the main bar in town where each of the adventuring parties have their names with numbers by it on a board. These are the number of trips to the Barrowmaze the parties have made and come back with significant treasure. I imagine this kind of like Top Gun with the different pilots competing for who is best. 

        Beyond expansion, it is a great resource to steal from. The village of Helix is wonderfully detailed with enough information to hang your hat on, but is not too detailed to not allow for customization. You could just use a few pages from the Helix section and drop this as a home base in any of your campaigns with little difficulty. The town is big enough that it has some meat to it, but it is not a major metropolis with all the needs of the characters catered to by the NPCs. Barrowmaze also comes with loads of new monsters, rival NPC parties, spells, and magic items. All of these are great for any DM looking to throw something new and different at the party that is not in the core books.

Lastly, it is incredibly useful to a diverse audience. It was originally released for Advanced Labyrinth Lord, which makes it compatible with just about any Old-School System. I personally use Old-School Essentials with the Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules added into the mix. It was also converted and is available to for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons and all of the systems that radiate off its core mechanics. This selection covers a huge swath of the fantasy RPG industry with players from all sorts of editions able to access this awesome product. 

Conclusion

This is a great product, and with all my hesitations before about it, I was proven thoroughly wrong. It is worth the price, and it is a great piece of modern game design. It deserves all the accolades it has acquired, and if you have not checked it out you should. Right now is GM’s Day(s) at DriveThruRPG and you can get Barrowmaze quite a bit cheaper than usual. If you want to check it out, click the link that I provide below.

Barrowmaze for Old School Games can be found HERE.

Barrowmaze for 5th Edition D&D can be found HERE.






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Dear WotC, Where Are My Smaller Scale Settings?

               With the announcement of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, the soon-to-be released of Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, the previous releases of Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and Eberron: Rising from the Last War, we are seen a pattern in releases of what appear to be ever expanding magical worlds from WotC. My question is where are my smaller scale settings? According to Mythic Odyssey’s promo “The Gathering world of Theros where players can wield god-weapons and select new races to indulge in a challenge fit for the gods.” So we are battling gods now on the regular at this point? I am not saying there is not a place in D&D for all of these magic-rich, god-slaying settings, but could we maybe get a change of pace and have something a little lower down the powerscale? A setting that reigns in the power a bit and allows for smaller more personal adventures? I am also not opining for the “good ole days” and "please give me every setting from my youth". It just seems like the writers are always trying to top one another with the next release. To be clear though, I am not taking about low level adventures, this is more about lower scale. Settings grounded in reality than in epic fantasy.

                I would love to see something like Thunder Rift from D&D Basic. This was a valley that had tons of interesting encounters, none of which were in the god-tier of encounter rankings. It had a great detailed background with fun little hooks that the players could get involved with and some factions that they could deal with in different manners. It was designed to be a beginner’s area that could be expanded by the GM or plunked into any setting you would like. It was sort of genius at the time, and is still kind of a great design. I think this style was done somewhat well with the Curse of Strahd. The setting was limited in scope and focus. This made for what many consider the best supplement to date for 5e. You could easily expand the valley in CoS, and one of my friends did just that with an adventure that we went on beyond the borders of Barovia. For the most part, CoS was grounded and not heavily steeped in magic and over-the-top fantasy.

                When Forgotten Realms was created it was really considered by myself and my friends to be the highest of High Fantasy with all the gods, magic, and items scattered throughout it. Nowadays it seems like it is the base-level fantasy adventures, possibly even on the low end of the fantasy spectrum. This seems to show how the paradigm has shifted. I am not upset by the paradigm shift, but I would like for some products that are on a more grounded level. Are the days of smaller fantasy gone? I would like to think they are not, but I could be wrong.

Will it be Epic Fantasy all day every day from this point on?

If you are interesting in Thunder Rift click HERE.





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Should D&D be Competitive?

(The article below discusses Tournament D&D, if you are unfamiliar with that concept, please click here for an explanation.)

              Something happened last week in my local area there was a 5e D&D tournament. I know this was a popular event in the D&D in the 70s and especially the 80s, but as far as I know seemed to start to die out with the introduction of 2nd edition. I joined the hobby right as 2nd Edition came out and was quite young so I was never able to attend any of these events in their heyday, but in reading and listing to interviews with some of D&D founding members, it was not only popular, but highly profitable. It seems weird that something that was this profitable (according to interviews) would not have continued with D&D in a bigger fashion or at least be picked up by someone else, unless the culture had changed dramatically. I know that there are still many versions of “organized play” i.e. Adventurers League, Pathfinder Society, etc, but I believe people would not classify those as competitive. I also know that tournaments still happen at major events, but from what I can gather, they are not nearly as popular. 

                I use to go to DragonCon every year before my son was born. I was there 1999 thru 2012, and there was an event that I played in a few times called “Cheese Grinder”. It appears that they are still running these up to today, but the goal was to live the longest in a series of death trap style rooms. You make the “cheesiest” character within the guidelines and try to not die. If you die you are immediately replaced by another person. I think it was $1-3 per character, and you waited in a bull pen for your turn. It was competitive D&D in a sense, because you were only out for yourself. These events were a lot of fun, I wouldn’t exactly call it a tournament, but it had some of the same elements that a tournament might have.

Responsible for tournaments in the past.

With the Old-School Revival being gaining a lot of traction, and 5e being super popular in the past few years it seems that these type of events might start gaining traction too. If it is though, I am unaware of it. It also seems that with the advent of computers and the technological revolution it would be easier to organize and get something like this running. Would people play in it though? Here is the kicker from the story above about the D&D tournament that was local here in town, it was a ghost town. There are several possible reasons, the store hosting is very new and this was an attempt to get people in the door. The city I am in has about 5 solid gaming stores with D&D Adventurers League running 5-10 tables per event, so players in the area is not an issue. I also run a D&D club at my local college with about 30 members, I offered to run a tournament at a games day we were having, and I received no interest in the idea at all. Competitive D&D was not accepted by newer generations in my group.

From Designers & Dragons, shows that AD&D was being developed for the tournament scene.

Could one of the Old School Publishers like Goodman, Necrotic Gnome, Goblinoid Press, or Frog God Games step up and organize these tournaments on a semi-regular basis? I know that they are often extremely small companies, but I believe they could get a lot of help from volunteers in the community. Or has the culture of D&D shifted over the years and the tournament scene could never get to the place it was before? The people that play D&D now are not into the idea of being competitive, and only want to play a co-operative experience. Could WotC create a new competitive scene with 5e D&D and promote it within the community? With Twitch and YouTube taking off it seems like you could find a possible wider audience for tournaments with D&D. ESports and D&D are popular on those mediums so maybe the tournament scene could flourish?

Sweep the character sheet, do you have a problem with that?

This brings us to the overall question, should D&D ever be played competitively? D&D has its roots in wargaming, and wargamers have tournaments all the time. Have role-playing games separated themselves so far from the roots that tournaments are no longer a viable option? I find it to be an interesting question. Have any thoughts on the matter? Post below with your opinions.





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D10 Random Caravans You Meet in a Desert

Roll a D10 and see what type of caravan meets your party.

1 – Poor Caravan: A meager caravan with little to trade. The caravan master, Ali, explains that they were attacked mid-route by a set of bandits with a sorcerer. This caravan has little to trade and is desperately low on vital supplies like water.

2 – Foreign Caravan: A caravan of foreigners arrives with goods that cannot normally be acquired in this area. Communications tends to be a problem due to different native languages and customs. If a trade is conducted, roll a d10. On a 1, there is a misunderstanding that is grave and dangerous. A duel or contest of strength might be required to resolve the conflict. On a 10, there is a misunderstanding that is beneficial, if not comical for the PCs. Maybe one accidently marries someone in the caravan with a really cool hat, or does not understand that the trade comes with a herd of livestock. On a 2-9, the trade proceeds as normal.

3 – Seer Caravan: A caravan with a powerful Hakima (Wise Woman) arrives and is willing to help the PCs in their endeavor. They will host the PCs up to three days with food and lodging and any wounded will be treated. The final night the PCs are in camp the Hakima will coax Fate and try and provide insight to each of the PCs. These predictions can be pleasant, or possibly painful, the DM is encouraged to come up with appropriate messages for the players. If you want to randomize the message, roll D6, 1-3 a pleasant prediction, 4-5 and mixed result, and 6 a painful message.

4 – Rich Caravan: A royal tax caravan approaches under heavy guard. It is laden with taxes and officials for the local government. The caravan contains 1D100 x 10 + 500 GP worth of coins in various denominations, plus 1D1000 x 10 GP worth of goods. The caravan is guarded by 2d20 + 20 0-level guards, plus a 1st level fighter per 10 guards. The entire caravan is led by a 5th level sorcerer with a 3rd level Fighter who acts as a body guard. Half the guards have access to missile weapons, and the other half are mounted at all travel times.

5 – Nomadic Caravan: A desert tribal caravan appears in the distance. They will act with extreme caution sending out a scout party to investigate the PCs. The caravan will start as mildly hostile, but with clever role-play the PCs could be welcomed in for the night. The tribal caravan knows the terrain extremely well and can answer any questions the PCs might have about the nature of the area they are traveling. They know places to avoid, the best oasis, the types of dangers that might be posed, etc.

6 – Thieves Caravan: A false caravan approaches full of bandits and thieves. The bandit gang will pretend to be an honest caravan looking to trade. Careful PCs will notice certain things out of place, like the bandits not knowing how to read their accounting books, blood on some of the goods, often the caravan animals will react as if they do not know the bandits, etc. If the PCs do not discover the ruse, at night the bandits will attempt to rob them of their goods and make off.

7 – Undead Caravan: A caravan of the dead approaches. From a distance this caravan looks like any other, but as it grows nearer PCs might notice that something is not right. The caravan might be run by a powerful Ghul-Sorcerer, or possibly a Ghul Overlord themselves. The undead use the caravan as a disguise to lure travelers to trade then add them to their horde, or feast upon them. The caravan consists of 2d10 skeletons, 1d8 Ghuls, and a Ghul-Sorcerer or Ghul Overlord.

8 – Illusory Caravan: A caravan mirages is in the distance, if the characters choose to approach it they will discover it does not exist in 1d6 hours. The time to discovery can be halved if traveling with an expert in desert terrain that succeeds at a WIS check.

9 – Multiple Caravans: A large group of caravans are off in the distance is in camp. The camp has at least 2d100 + 50 people in attendance.  As the PCs approach it seems that the caravans are celebrating a high holiday/wedding/local festival etc. As long as the PCs show no ill intentions, they are invited to join the revelry. If the PCs decide to provide a gift/donation to the event, the caravans will be so honored they will return the gift/donation in some other form with twice the value. The celebration will last 1d10 days.

10 – Extradimensional Caravan: A caravan of genies approaches rapidly upon the dunes. Roll a d8. On a 1-3 it is a caravans of Jann, on a 4 Djinn, on a 5 Efreeti, on a 6 Marid, on a 7 Dao. If you roll an 8, roll again twice and combine the results. If the PCs choose to engage with this caravan the results will vary greatly depending on which type of genie they encounter. Jann and Djinn are generally helpful, if not playful. Marid believe themselves above all mortal affairs, and might just ignore the PCs. Efreeti and Dao have a tendency to enslave mortals, but might want to have fun with cruel pranks. If the PCs can trick them, they might earn their respect though.

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Storm King’s Thunder #3 – Captives, Caverns, & Cloud Giants

               It has been some time since I have been able to write about my Storm King’s Thunder campaign. My group is all about 40 years old with careers, families, and responsibilities, it has just been crazy for all of us for different reasons. We finally got to meet up this past Friday and continue our game into the murky world of SKT. When we last left our group had just fended off the Orc attack on Nightstone and was considering options in attempting a rescue on the civilians in the caverns to the North. They had Felgolos go to the caves to scout, he returned and told them that the villagers must have been captured, and they decided to have him go to Waterdeep to send help. The village seemed to be on everyone’s radar as open for the taking, and they needed help in keeping it free. Like the good “Bro” that Felgolos is, he decided to help again.

Hekaton looking great

                The first order of business was the party wanted to deal with Kella. She was chained to Shandy, but helping against the Orcs with solid advice, if anything to keep herself alive. Towards the end of the Orc fight, things looked like they were not going the party’s way, Shandy decided to cut her free and told her to run. Taking full advantage of this, she did and took off into Nightstone. Now that the incident was over there was a big debate as to what to do with her. They noticed that the drawbridge was not down, so she could not have left yet. She must be in the town. The party, being three people, split into three different chains of thought on what to do with her. Shandy wanted to let her go, and even wanted to try and see if she would help them with the rescue of the villagers. Izumi took the exact opposite track and wanted to bring her to justice for her crimes, possibly killing her. Ionas took a middle path, he wanted to lock her up until they got back from the rescue, then release her. He did not want her loose while they were away. They never fully came to an accord once they found her and it got rather heated.

                Kella had made it back to the Inn and she was gathering her belongings. This is how in the standard adventure path you find her and I felt this was an appropriate time to reveal that she had been in the town before these events. They approached and asked her to come down peaceably, but Izumi had a much harsher tone stating, “If you do not come down now, I will kill you.” This did not go over well with Kella. Izumi kept calling her out for stabbing them in the back and how she has no honor. Shandy was trying to smooth over the wrinkles, but to no avail. Eventually after being berated for a while Kella shot back at Izumi, “I have no honor? You attacked my friends unprovoked and killed them. You are the honor-less killer.” Then she challenged Izumi to single combat to resolve the situation. I really wanted this to happen, because I honestly did not know how it would shake out. She is the spy template from the Monster Manual, at this point Izumi is a 4th level Bard from the College of Swords. It would have been close I believe. Shandy and Ionas stepped in, and Ionas reminded everyone that he was the one that actually was stabbed in the back and tells her that she was going to go into a cell for a time, until the group came back. Then she was going to leave and that was that. Ionas is usually pretty soft spoken, so this was unusual, and everyone agreed. They locked her up, and ordered the stooge guards not to let her out until they got back.

Kella still causing problems

                The group set off for the caves hoping to be able to rescue the townsfolk from the clutches of an enemy they believed correctly was goblins. They still have not done a long rest since the Orc fight, but got a short rest while on the way to the cave. While headed there they decided to look for any signs of activity and see if the tracks looked like anything they recognized. They did well on the roll and I described obvious goblin prints, but some other humanoid prints were there as well, something big. At this point they have giants on the brain and thought that this was part of the giant narrative. I did mention if it was giants, it would be giants on the smaller end of the spectrum, possibly giant-kin. They approached the cave and Izumi went to scout and discovered the main room. It had some goblin guards on ledges, and an Ogre bathing in a mud bath. They decide to try and lure the guards out by making an illusion in front of the cave, and hiding above the entrance. When setting up for this, Ionas noticed a bit of smoke coming out of the top of the hill. When they investigated the smoke, they realized there was a chimney up top and decided to descend into the caves that way.

                Immediately they run into Snigbat and attack him, luckily for him he lives long enough to be pathetic. They take pity on him and he agrees to betray Hark and show him where he is located. He encourages them to kill him, and then Snigbat will take over as boss, and free the prisoners. The party seemed to agree, and Snigbat upheld his part. He led them over to Hark’s area and they see Hark and 2 other goblins betting on giant rat fights, while other giant rats are feasting on the corpse of a villager. Now is a good time to discuss how module think things will play out, and how they actually play out. The module spends a good two paragraphs discussing “if the party tries to negotiate with Hark”. This, I believe, is wasted ink. Most gamers I know will show little mercy to a goblin that is eating people and feeding them to giant rats. There might be some out there, but I don’t know many. Hark sees the party enter with Snigbat, and begins to speak, before that can happen Shady sees the bodies and says, “I rage and throw my spear at him.”

Both my games this week featured Ogres

                The Goblin Boss in the Monster Manual is downright amazing, l love the little guy. He is mean, and has a handful of great abilities. He gets two attacks, can disengage as a bonus action, and can use his reaction to shift an attack onto a nearby goblin. He was very fun to play. The spear came at him in a surprise action (I know they are not in 5e officially, but I still use them), he pulled his mate in front of him and that goblin nearly died. Then the combat ensued. Hark managed to move around, and get all the other goblins in the room killed by dragging them in front of him, including Snigbat (it does not say the goblin has to be willing). He had his rats attack the party and in the end, everything was dead, except him, he had 1 HP and the party was severely hurt. Giant rats tore the party up, and I forgot their pack tactic rule.  At this point Hark tried to negotiate, and was going to let the people go, the party was having none of it. He did warn them, “I can make sure the Ogres don’t…..” he never finished the sentence as Shandy cut him in half. Speaking of the Ogres, I had them making listen checks every round and they were on their way.

                The party disagreed as to what to do, Shandy wanted to stay and fight, Ionas and Izumi wanted to flee and come back. Shandy decided to move to a choke point where he could only face one Ogre at a time, Izumi fled up the chimney, and Ionas said he was leaving, but ended up backing Shandy with the few spells he had left. Remember the party still hasn’t had a long rest since before the Orc fight, supplies were at their breaking point. Shandy and Ionas managed to kill Throg the Ogre, but their mate was a different story. Ionas decided to pull the Iron Bands of Billaro and wrap up the second Ogre. At that point Shandy and Ionas made short work of the Ogre who failed to break out of the Bands. Izumi came back down, with a combined effort of illusion, thaumaturgy, and a screaming warforge carrying an Ogre head, they scared the rest of the goblins from the cave.

                They rescued the villagers, but I did give them the body count of those that were eaten. The group was a little hard on themselves for not acting sooner, but all things considered they did well. I tried to ingratiate them to Morak Ur’Gray the dwarven proprietor of the Nightstone Inn, because of the upcoming events and sending them on a quest to Bryn Shander. Morak did not want the mantle of leadership that the party was thrusting upon him, making him make decisions for the group. He did step up though because he cared about the townsfolk and respected the party. I decided to play Morak, like many of my dwarves, as Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec. I plan to write a larger article on how Ron Swanson is the perfect dwarf stereotype, but that is for another day.

                The party brought the villagers home, and spent the next few days helping to fix the town as they received word from Waterdeep that supplies were on their way, and a small contingent of Griffin Riders would be patrolling the area to keep the riff raff away. They also received orders from the Harpers to continue deeper into the North and try to recover any information about the situation with the giants. Kella did stick around a few days, helping with the clean-up, she knew many of the villagers from her spying days, and is not completely heart-less. That is, until Izumi and Ionas pushed the issue. Izumi wanting her locked up, and Ionas wanting her gone. They left it to Morak, who was told about her friends trying to take over the city, and he decided it “might be for the best if you leave”. So she packed her things and moved on.

Zephyros

                Morak then asked the party for a favor, his friend Semile was killed in the attack and wanted to know if the party would pass the news and some of the personal items onto her brother. Her brother, Markham, is in Bryn Shander and this would allow them to go deeper into the North and see what they can find out. This is a contrivance of the story, because if the party says “no” it is hard to get this puppy back on track. Especially because Bryn Shander is extremely far away. My group are old veterans of D&D and smell a plot hook and bite full force. They set off for Bryn Shander. They don’t get but a day away from Nightstone when they hear a horrible and loud crash off in the distance. When they move to see what has happened they see a floating tower, surrounded by clouds, that has crashed into the ground. There is energy surging all over the tower and it looks dangerous in general. The party knows that something similar to this attacked Nightstone and move to investigate. They manage to scale the side as the tower begins to slowly rise. They then meet the owner of the tower Zephyros the Cloud Giant.  

                Zephyros lets the party in on the main plot of the entire SKT module and he has been looking for the party to help them fix what is broken. Here are his main points:

• The All Father of the giants was mad at the giants for the events in Rise of Tiamat. He decides to abandon his children, and shattered The Ordning.
• The Ordning is the giant’s hierarchy, and determines their place in society.
• King Hekaton, Lord of the Storm Giants, was keeping the giants in place through force.
• Queen Neri was killed by “small folk” and this sent Hekaton into a rage.
• Princess Serissa, next in line for the throne, convinced her father to investigate the problem.
• Before that was resolved, Hekaton disappeared, leaving the three Princesses vying for power.
• All the other giants are trying to please the All-Father in their own respective ways, so that when the Ordning is restored, they will ascend. This is what is causing the madness in the North with all the giants.

               Zephyros has been contacting other planes of existence in order to try and find a way to fix the problem, this surge of energy is interfering with the control orb in the tower causing it to crash on occasion, and destroying his own mind. He did receive information that he was to help the party on their quest, because it leads towards the restoration of peace in the giant kingdoms. He agrees to escort them to Bryn Shander, but it will be almost a month of travel.

Next stop!

               This is where we ended the session, the party has met with their traveling companion and is on their way to Bryn Shander. I just had one of my party members message our group chat saying that he is really enjoying the game. I am happy about that, I am having a good time too. What adventures aboard the tower await? Who knows? Tune in next time.

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