Amazing Maps

Kobold Press' Midgard setting map

I've always loved maps, even before getting into this hobby. I remember looking at a globe my parents had and trying to remember the names of the countries. I remember a big broken solid globe we got from someone who used to be a teacher. We would sit on it because it was so solid, kind of like a yoga ball. It still had the USSR on it, which I guess dates me if I consider that to be a long time ago… I also remember flipping back and forth in history books, comparing the text to maps of military campaigns or political boundaries.

So I want to highlight an amazing map resource for Kobold Press’ Midgard Setting that is available to the community for free! The Midgard World map even has layers to add a hexgrid overlay so you can do exploration hexcrawls. It's easy to just take a screengrap or snip of the area you are adventuring in and you have a region map ready. There's a layer for political boundaries (imagine a free map product like this for the Forgotten Realms? This map is amazing). There's also a search function that allows you to find every location labeled on the map. There's also a pathfinder tool so you can map out the path a party will take and it will give you the distance for the trip. You can lay as many waypoints as you want on this path. Makes tracking travel time easy! (The same designer who made the Midgard map also has made a similar Eberron map)

Finally, perhaps the most amazing part to me is the index of many major town and city maps included with it, making it easy to pull up a relevant town map to reference in game. 

Kobold Press has some amazing 5e content and will be releasing content compatible with its own take on the ruleset, Tales of the Valiant, probably for many years to come. My first game set in Midgard starts tomorrow and I'm super excited to make use of their awesome content.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen - The Battle of High Hill

 

Table of Contents

Spoilers for the adventure...

On 22 February I had my latest session in my ongoing Dragonlance campaign. The adventurers just completed Dragons of Stormwreck Isle as an intro adventure and in the last session traveled to Vogler using the rules from Uncharted Journeys from Cubicle7. The characters are Fallon Youngblossom, a College of Glamour bard, Asterius, the first and only minotaur to become an Oath of the Crown paladin member of the Solamnic knights, Gringle Graggle, a goblin thief rogue who styles himself a Duke but can't ever pass a deception check, and Davgin Appledew, a kender wizard.

In Vogler the party enjoyed some fish pies and banter with the proprietor of the Fishbowl tavern. Then they went to the funeral for their friend Ispin Greenshield (if I ran this adventure again I would definitely have run a prologue set years prior featuring Ispin as an NPC to give the party some form of emotional investment). They told a few stories about Ispin at the reception in the Brass Crab afterwards, and met Cudgel Ironsmile, the leader of the Ironclad Regiment. They also met the mysterious elf Leedara, and the obnoxious Bakaris the Younger (I told them to imagine him as Draco Malfoy--the parallels are too strong to ignore). 

Then they retired for the evening. Asterius requested to sleep at the keep with Darrett and Becklin. The others bunked at the Brass Crab. Then all met at Thornhill keep with Asterius to have breakfast with the NPCs. Becklin gave them the famed green shield (+1 shield) of Ispin Greenshield. Asterius takes it because he's the only character who can survive in melee.

Next they jumped into the festivities of the Kingfisher festival. I've decided to make Darrett a follower of the characters for the campaign instead of making an awkward transition from young squire to their patron, so I had him hanging out with them in a comically large paper-mache hat in the shape of a kingfisher. Give the players their agency back and break the linear adventure man!

They fished in the competition, competing against Mayor Raven. Gringle managed to win! Asterius didn't catch anything. Bakaris the Elder was also drinking and harassing the other participants, so Gringle and Asterius played a classic high school prank, with Gringle tying his boot and Asterius shoving the inebriated Bakaris over him. They sent him tripping off the wharf into the water. Hugely satisfying!

Next suddenly off to the recreation of the Battle of High Hill. I didn't buy the accompanying board game (and the reviews I've read about it didn't impress me) but I still wanted to give my players the chance to impact the mass combat scenarios throughout the adventure. So I took this opportunity to break out the warfare rules from Kingdoms & Warfare. The going was a bit rocky as I remembered the rules and taught the players, but this battle is the perfect tutorial scenario to do this. I used just the regular tier I human units that are actually available in the free Kingdoms & Warfare Resources product. We played without martial advantages, but I showed them those rules in passing so we can add them in later. I also briefly introduced the heroic organization rules to them and let them know that because of the campaign themes they would be forming a martial regiment organization later. 

The battle was fun, and ran faster as we figured it out. 

My biggest critique of this chapter having now run half of it is that there is an almost overwhelming amount of content occuring at breakneck pace and the information is presented linearly without any real effort to provide summary descriptions of each scene. For instance, the reception provides an overview of that scene, but doesn't mention the three NPCs that are fairly important to the narrative until further subsections below that are easy to skip over or treat as separate sections. Additionally in that case, it's nice to have the NPC motivation write-up, but a call out box on the side would have been better than including all the description in the main body of the text.

Next session the characters will play through the encounter of the Battle of High Hill and then participate in the defense of Vogler. I'm looking forward to seeing how the adventure unfolds.

The Battle of High Hill (Part II)

VTT Map Hack for Impromptu Combat

I'm not the first person to come up with this idea (I checked via a thirty second google search) but I wanted to throw it out as a helpful way to run combat in a VTT on a grid.

Keep it simple by having a scene with a white background and a grid. You can do this in both Roll20 and Foundry, which I have used and I imagine you can in any other VTT. Then just draw the room or throw some squares or dots or circles if you have weird objects or difficult or elevated terrain bits. As in just do it rough like you would playing on a grid in person or back in the old days drawing on a piece of paper. 

Plenty of other people do unplanned encounters through theater of the mind, but I have players who get lost without the visual representation or enjoy the tactical positioning piece so I always play with a map. 

I think because of the VTT display and my own experiences I've always felt like I needed to have an illustrated battlemap. But you don't need to!

Reaction: Shadowdark RPG

The first thing that struck me about Shadowdark is how readable it is. Clear, concise, to the point text. Larger font, easy to see. This spare style defines not only how it is written but also its rules. Shadowdark manages thread the needle of maintaining a gritty, dark feel with modern rules. 

The black and white art underlines a definite old school aesthetic, although the mechanics eschew that influence, focusing instead on how to capture the feeling of deadly and difficult play while remaining a rules-lite RPG with modern elements that will be very familiar to players and GMs with 5e play experience. (Also a bold move to make the cover your own beholder equivalent but not copyright infringing monster...much like Flee Mortals last year! I love it!)

The changes and emphasis are very much focused on the structure of dungeon crawling and hex crawling, with encounters generally resulting in combat or a social interaction with a monster. Changes to emphasis this gameplay structure include things like moving in initiative order in the dungeon (something which the GM in the first game I ever played did, but which I've never seen since). Truly making light matter by removing darkvision for all characters certainly helps ratchet up tension, particularly with the possibility that the light can go out, triggering a potential encounter.

The game is also easy to explain, built largely on the chassis of D&D, but also easy to pick up. As someone who has introduced eight players to 5e this year, I can see with one read-through that Shadowdark would be far easier on a GM to introduce to new players. The official character generator website enables you to create new characters for new players with just a few button presses, and export it as a .json if your VTT of choice supports imported character sheets. No need to take a half hour "building" a new character if one dies. Even doing it by hand according to the directions in the book should take less than five minutes to roll up. Additionally, the free quick start guide is all the rules your players need to get started, making it easy to freely share the materials even with digital players.

I'm looking forward to trying out Shadowdark, hopefully even just for a one-shot in the relatively near future. I'm not sure about the viability of the game for a long-term campaign mostly due to the fragility of the characters (a heroic fantasy game this is not). This issue is something Mike Shea of Slyflourish has noted repeatedly in his now six month long campaign. However, I do wonder if Shadowdark would be a good system to use for one of the mega-dungeon adventures, like Dungeon of the Mad Mage or the infamous Rappan Athuk. While deadly, they both seem like locations that would certainly draw new "crawlers" into the dungeon in search of riches. And they frankly suffer less from an inability to have long character arcs or much metaplot. After all, life seems to be short and cheap in the shadowdark. 

In order to have a long form, metaplot driven campaign it would probably be best to bind the group together via a patron or organization, enabling new characters to be interjected into the existing group when old ones die, but maintaining a largely consistent set of motivations (This system actually seems like the type of grittiness you would want to run a Black Company-inspired campaign. Although MCDM's Chain of Acheron campaign took much inspiration from that series, it was more heroic fantasy than the gritty, dark fantasy source). A healthy sense of self-preservation and creative problem-solving that avoids head-on approaches even into higher levels would probably be necessary to keep characters progressing through higher levels too.

The book and system are a tour de force as a creative and artistic work, with a bold and distinctive vision of play that I hope players and GMs will continue to support for many years. We need creative but accessible games like Shadowdark to strengthen and grow the RPG hobby and spur inventive design over the coming years.

Review: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle box cover art

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is the introductory box set that replaced Lost Mines of Phandelver. Tough act to follow, as Lost Mines has received almost universal aclaim and affection for both its adventure design and being a touch point for a new generation of 5e players first adventure experience. So how does Stormwreck Isle compare? I've recently completed a playthrough of this adventure and so I do consider this to be a true review based in my play and prep experience as a GM (Spoilers follow for the adventure)

Bottom line, Stormwreck Isle is a very easy adventure to run--perhaps even easier than Lost Mines. I say this for a few reasons. First, the structure of the adventure is simple and straightforward without being linear. Second, the smaller geographic bounds set by and island make facilitating travel easier. Finally, the encounters are balanced to a less deadly level that makes sense for players totally new to the game (rather than throwing four goblins that potentially TPK a new group at first level, this adventure starts with a much more manageable three zombies).

These positives are strong, especially for a new GM with new players. However, I also feel that the adventure lacks much of the charm of the previous starter set. Dragons Rest isn't as strong or memorable an adventure hub as Phandalin. It doesn't have as many interesting adventure hooks, and its NPCs are largely unmemorable. I say unmemorable because there are around a dozen NPCs in the adventure hub location. Nor is there character art for most of them, making a visual association even more difficult.

The campaign is built around three dungeon-crawls, making the structure simple for a new GM. They are also easily interchangeable with advice for modifying encounters based on the party being level one or two included. In my opinion the hook to the shipwreck is the stronger of the two, particularly because of the opening encounter with zombies. My experience running that portion highlighted a gap in adventure design with the party not exploring the deepest portion of the ship to retrieve the item bearing the curse of Orcus and creating new undead. The situation was salvaged in a more satisfying way than simply sending them back because they hadn't solved the quest in the way the designers intended because they killed or drove off two harpies, cutting off the supply of ships crashed on the rocks and thus halting the undead at least temporarily. 

The Seagrow mushroom cave was a more difficult sell for me though, with a hook as written of "hey, I'm worried about these sentient mushrooms that normally give me stuff. Can you go check on them?" from an NPC. The overall dungeon is pretty simple and straightforward once you get past the entrance fight with the octopus summoned by the myconids and the violet fungi fight in the fungus grove. I do worry that trigger-happy groups can see these encounters as license to take out the peaceful myconids. The tension really isn't there for me either I this dungeon, with a few steamdrakes and a glowing crystal firesnake egg blocking the outpipe for the gas under the island. The need to break the crystal isn't clearly telegraphed in the text either, so you kind of need to lead the players to that conclusion through your descriptions of the smoke and smell. It's not necessarily something a first time player of an RPG will think of. And then as a reward the myconids give the adventurers the ruby morsel that has been keeping their leader alive to be used to brew an elixer of health? Seems a bit odd to me that they'd give that item up and that it basically equates to a one-use rare magic item.

The Clifftop Observatory works better as an adventure in my opinion, offering guidance if the characters leave and then come back that maintains the pacing and easy to implement by directing you to have the blue dragon be conducting a ritual and immediately trigger a boss fight upon return. This also makes the dungeon more dynamic than both the previous ones and ensures that the characters will get to fight and slay the blue dragon wyrmling, definitely meeting the promise offered in the name of the game, Dungeons & Dragons. The dungeon design also generally works, although it's not obvious that the characters can approach some of the towers from the water. There aren't any real choke points other than unlocking the area where Aidron, the bronze dragon wyrmling, is being held prisoner. The characters may not necessarily find this, or solve the puzzle if they haven't explored the other towers.

Overall, again the adventure is simple and generally easy to run, with a few rough edges. It is quick and has much smaller travel scope, meaning that it really can be completed in three or four sessions for most groups. It ties into further adventures set on the Sword Coast, but can be easily transferred as an isolated island to your setting of choice without much modification (it's a bit like the bounded island tutorial area from Runescape, or any videogame tutorial area, if you're familiar, dropping you into the "real world" once you finish the introduction). The locations and maps can also be easily repurposed or reskinned, giving you some interesting locations even if you don't employ the story of the adventure as written. The pregen character sheets don't tie as tightly to the story as those in Lost Mines, and they're basically the same pregen characters, so don't get excited about any new there.

Would recommend if you are introducing a new set of players to the game, but be warned that it needs a light bit of work to knock the rough edges off for story consistency and pacing. I would use it again as an intro adventure for a group that has already played Lost Mines, but ultimate prefer that adventure as a starter campaign.

Offering New Character Options

Often although I’ve basically accepted the role of forever GM, I find cool character concepts or subclass options or what have you that I like and wish I could play. I recently discovered I’m not the only person who feels this way. In the KibblesTasty Discord server in the drafting room channel, there was an interesting discussion between several GMs about the character options they allow in there games and their lists of allowed content. One commented something to the effect of “I’m glad I’m not the only one with a list of things I’d like to see you play.” 

Most of my games so far have been either introducing new players or my first time GMing in the case of my game with veteran players. In both cases it made sense to stick with 5e options (our system of choice) that were relatively simple. In a few weeks though I hope to start up a new campaign with experienced players set in Midgard from Kobold Press. We plan to play through Empire of the Ghouls also by Kobold Press. In this game I want to restrict the players to subclasses from the 2014 Player’s Handbook and Kobold Press books Midgard Heroes Handbook and Tome of Heroes. I plan to also allow the Warlord and Occultist classes from KibblesTasty and the Pugilist by Benjamin Huffman on the DMsGuild. 

Why these particular resources? The Midgard character-focused book are written geared to the setting and provide some unique options, so they make sense. The Occultist actually provides some unique connections to the themes of the adventure, so I think it would be interesting if someone chose it. The Warlord and Pugilist though? Frankly, they’re only included because I really like them and want to see someone play them. 

I definitely have character concepts that I would love to play using these options. The solid and seasoned mercenary commander for the warlord or the chieftain of a remote tribe. The grizzled boxer or bruiser from the rough streets of a big city, searching for the underground pit fight or ring in every town they stop in to meet the local champ. Or the gambler who is a brawler out of necessity and “know[s] when to walk away and when to run.” 

Guess I’ll have to make them into NPCs that the characters may meet in passing—but make sure the spotlight stays on the players and how they interact with these creations of mine.

Don’t know if there’s really a point to this ramble, but the characters we create and that our characters create make our fantasy worlds vibrant. We get to experience a new world through their eyes and inhabit it to escape some of the problems of ours—or maybe learn how to face our own problems with more strength and empathy.

Arcadia 2 Reactions

Arcadia 2 arrives. This cover is by Ejiwa “Edge” Ebenebe. There are certainly elements of psychedelic style here that make my mind go to the beauty and distortion of the Feywild.

Arcadia 2 cover.

While the inaugural issue featured four articles, this issue settles down into the more normal three article composition for Arcadia. Due to this, it comes in about six pages shorter. James Introcaso writes the introduction and notes the effort placed upon the art in this issue that serves to enhance an article providing season-themed subclasses, new elemental monsters, and an adventure.

Subclasses of the Seasons, by Joshua Mendenhall serves up four subclasses (one for each season). These are the Order of Hibernation mage, College of Springtide Bard, Child of the Sun Bloodline Sorcerer, and the Horned One Warlock. The art by Marlowe Lune is reminiscent of very nice playing or collectable cards to me. My personal favorite of the four pieces is the image of the Horned One Warlock. I'll admit I was a bit confused initially that with the theming these were all subclasses for different base classes. Perhaps that's some unconscious bias caused by the season changing abilities of the eladrin ancestry option. I haven't had the opportunity to playtest them myself, but they seem to lean quite heavily on supplying additional spells as part of subclass features. Part of the reason I particularly enjoy the Horned One Warlock is that it dovetails nicely with a deity of the same name in Kobold Press’ Midgard setting. 

The Periodic Table of the Elementals, is by MaKenzie De Armas, another well-known 5e designer currently working for Wizards of the Coast. While I've noticed De Armas author and design credits several times now, I hadn't looked into her bio until finding the link to her website. Her work is impressive, and the first time she played D&D was in 2018. It's encouraging to see such success from someone who's essentially a contemporary of mine in both age and adoption of TTRPGs. There is room for the new generation. But enough soapboxing, how are the new elemental monsters in this section?

The Conducere by Grace Cheung.

The Comburo is a volatile burning elemental, with some interesting traits that can allow it to do damage to enemies that hit it within a certain range, among other things. It has both a slam attack typical of elementals, but also a unique recharging ranged attack. If I were to do my best Keith Amman impression, I’d note that this thing has the profile of a brute, and as a force of nature isn’t very smart. If we follow the fantasy, it’s a ferociously reacting elemental, likely to use its first volatile burst attack once it recognizes a threat, then probably uses slam attacks. As its reaction continues to burn, it doesn’t retreat or withdraw, instead fighting until it is extinguished. Next are Conducere, which are basically composed of conductive metals. The art for this one is by the talented Grace Cheung, MCDM’s on-staff artist (and I feel bad saying this, but the Conducere is probably my least favorite piece from her. The other elementals are alright, but something about the contrasts in the Conducere art just doesn’t do it for me). The ability scores reflect a strong, resilient brute, but there’s less interesting here than the Comburo. The most interesting thing is the Conducere’s reaction that will allow it to redirect a spell or magical effect at another creature once a round as a reaction (they “conduct” it through themselves, get it?) 

The next elemental is the Elektron, essentially electricity themed. Once again, essentially a brute with high DEX to model a highly maneuverable creature composed of pure energy. The real unique thing for this CR 4 monster is its lightning charge trait, which allows it to increase its size by one category each time it is hit with a metal weapon. There is some clever design here, as it gains multi attacks and a passive effect to demonstrate the increasing energy as it grows in size. This is balanced essentially by its lower hit points. This isn’t a smart or very wise creature, so it’s likely to focus on those adversaries attacking it, perhaps with its average WIS, it is capable of recognizing that being attacked with metal weapons increases its size and power.

The Noxa by Grace Cheung.

Finally the Noxa, made of the “toxic, odorless gases,” according to the flavor text. Because of this, the elemental is invisible. Once again, this creature is not very intelligent, meaning that based on it nature it may not even intend to engage with the party and simply wanders into the same space, beginning to suffocate them. In any case, I’d probably have the Noxa get a surprise round to use it Asphyxiation feature against one party member in its space, then calling for initiative. This elemental is particularly difficult because of the invisibility, and I wouldn’t use it unless your party has access to fire or lightning damage that causes it to glow, otherwise I see this very easily being a TPK. The Noxa also has my favorite art of the four.

Finally the article provides some unique additional rules on reactivities, basically giving Legendary Action-type powers to elementals working in combination. This is a really unique design and I quite like it as a way to turn an encounter with creatures relying upon their slam attacks into something more special. These don’t just use the new elementals, instead also enhancing the SRD versions of the four normal elementals too. Great theming for an Elemental Evil campaign, or dipping into the Inner Planes, or even exploring the reactions when bound elementals in a setting like Eberron get loose.

The final article is an adventure for eighth level characters, Well of the Lost Gods, by Rich Lescouflair, the lead creator and designer behind Esper Genesis. Art is from three different creators, Nick De Spain, Faizal Fakri, and Jason Hasenauer, with cartography by Diana Muñoz. Anomalies like green smoke and crystal is appearing and strange objects are falling out of the sky. Some other adventurers found a strange portal they’re calling a well in the mountains. The characters are contracted by leadership of the town to investigate. One thing I dislike about this adventure is the first puzzle included in it. My issue with the puzzle is that it amounts to "push all the buttons on this handout." Is there a specific order or pattern? Nope. The adventure just says "When the buttons are pushed along the linear pattern [it opens]." Did the author intend for something more robust? If so then it's unclear to me. Helpfully, the adventure also provides directions of your players decide to simply smash it open, triggering a battle with what is essentially a CR 10 robot. 

I don't know that the adventure overview outlines the adventure structure very well either. The beginning feels a bit disjointed to me. Although I do appreciate that two nodes were included in the initial investigation of the strange anomalies occuring in the town, allowing for a bit of player choice, even if it's ultimately circular in structure, looping the players between only two situations to ultimately direct them to a dungeoncrawl. However, the two dungeon maps are linked by a portal, taking the party to the second dungeon portion that in the tradition of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks seems to be a genre-bending lab from an ancient civilization or from an ancient spacefaring people of high technology or magic. 

Once again, we also have a puzzle--this one is better, involving exploring the dungeon and activating various panels (more like a Legend of Zelda dungeon design). However, it still has some clunky prose description on the feedback mechanism to tell that you're unlocking a door: "A 10-foot-diameter metal plate is set into the north wall.Three crystal orbs are embedded into its surface in a diamond-shaped pattern." Don't three points make a triangle, Dave? There are four rooms to explore, activating panels to light up these orbs, but the adventure notes that "only three need to be activated in order to open the door..." But perhaps this confusion is just personal. Once again too, if your characters fail their intelligence checks to activate the panels then the room seals and they get to fight more robots and what are essentially small lightning (electrical) Elementals, which then causes the light to come on instead of completely halting progress. Opening the door brings on a final boss fight with another robot and then a skill challenge or slugfest to break the labs generator and make all the weird anomalies that were the adventure hook to stop.

The enemies included with the adventure are interesting, but nothing crazy to write home about. They're use abilities similar to many monsters and are primarily brute-types. The maps are again a bit monochromatic and don’t have any dead space or looping in anyway, but understandable with space constraints.

That sums up Arcadia 2. Some interesting topics and monsters here, but overall not quite as heavy hitting for me as the first issue. Onwards to Arcadia 3!

Arcadia Reactions Homepage 

Arcadia 3 Reactions