The Great Anglaland Campaign - Session 2 and 3

 Sessions 2 and 3 have come and gone. Here is what the group got up to;

 

United by their debt to the local barkeep, the party set out to investigate the local haunted house on the cliff, hoping to find some long lost silver. 

 

They dove into wells for a few coins, followed some footprints down into a wine cellar and fought some rot grubs. After discovering a false door in the wine cellar they found themselves in a halfway civilized and taken care of room with someone cooking a fine meal.

This man turned out to be a Frankish chef turned slave named Bernard. After a difficult conversation trying to bridge the language barrier, they were introduced to Sanbalet, a frankish "entrepreneur" who was "repurposing" "acquired" weapons from the coast of Francia. Turns out he was selling raided goods to the swamp people of the nearby Dread Moor. 

 Sanbalet made an attempt at getting the party to kill the beast that was haunting the house, the ancient skeletal alchemist. The party didn't fall for it and after some successful sleep spells and a little oil and fire, they took care of the threats of the Haunted House. 

With Bernard following along they made their way back to town and paid back their debt in full as well as got Bernard a job at the local inn and tavern. 

Curious about some of the treasure they found in the house, the party made their way over to Keledek's tower. Keledek being the local reclusive wizard. Eventually they were awarded entry, but the halfling was not quite the warm and welcoming type. The party's wizard, Gyliad, is looking for a teacher and asked about tutelage. Keledek's response was "there is a pile of laundry, start there." But, he did pay handsomely for the items they found and they were on their way to investigate the swamp people of the Dread Moor and why they were buying shipments of weapons. 

 

The party hopped in a boat and traveled over to the Dread Moor. After wading into the swamp at high tide, they secured their boat and started north, looking for these mysterious swamp people. After a few days of swamp-ass filled traveled they came across a few dead lizard-people being eaten by ghoulish undead. After a quick a brutal fight where the thief actually had his arm succumb to the ghoul's paralysis venom, the party stumbled across a small hut where an ogre-like naked man was stomping through the marsh, picking up any leeches that stick to his feet and putting them in glass jars. 

They made acquaintance with this odd man, who did not speak directly but had a raven follow him around who could speak, and almost telepathically spoke to it, who then spoke to the party. This man turned out to be Uncle Grigor, the swamp warlock. He also offered his teaching to Gyliad, who first had to prove himself by showing that he loved his picked leeches. 

After a restful night in Uncle Grigor's hut, he showed his true more normal form and told them that yes, the lizard people are indeed called "swamp people" and have recently moved homes for some reason. He showed them where their new home is on a map, and told them about the lost treasures in the Barrows just to the south of his hut. 

 

The promise of endless silver drew the wide-eyed party right in and they decided to head there next.

That is where Session 4 will begin! 

Into the Wild and Dangerous - the Great Anglaland Campaign

 Our new campaign using my new Into the Wild and Dangerous rules takes place before King Alfred's dream of a united English speaking nation.

 

This is heavily inspired by the Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell, which I just finished. 

Our four characters include;

Grumgil, the halfling thief town drunk

Ulgrin, the middle aged dwarf cleric

Haldan, the young "brave" human fighter  

Gyliad, the elf magic-user fan-boy of the town's wizard. 

 

The adventure begins in Calhyrst (which is a reflavored Saltmarsh). We kicked off the campaign with an investigation into the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh! 

 

Session 1 began with character creation, which took about an hour and a half for each player to make 2 characters, then an exploration of the outside of the Haunted House as well as a few rooms inside. They decided to enter in through the back of the house and then descend into the cellar below. (I'm writing this one 2 weeks after we had our game so I'm a little rusty on all of the details. The following session recaps should be much more detailed).

 

This is a bucket-list campaign for me, so I am beyond excited. We are playing my game, which makes it a little hard not to second guess myself and just default to playing something "better" like OSE or S&W. But its just a home group and let this serve as a reminder that the best game is the game that works best for your table! 

Into the Wild and Dangerous is on itch.io

Woot woot we made it to itch! 

I am beyond pumped to have something out for the world to see.

Go check it out!

 

https://mxplusb.itch.io/into-the-wild-and-dangerous

 

 

I made a game!

 Recently I took screenshots of the Fighter, Thief, Cleric and Magic-User/Wizard from Shadowdark, Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry, and Hundred Dungeons. I sent them to my players to see which classes excited them. Then I was drawn to Knave's spell list. Then I got to thinking about not just what I liked about my favorite rule systems but why. 

Then I had an idea, instead of printing different classes/spells/monsters/rules from various rule-systems and frankenstein-ing a rule book to use, why not just write my own!

Thus, Into the Wild and Dangerous was born.

Anyone who is familiar with d20 Fantasy RPGs will see plenty of familiar elements. 

- 4 Ancestries: Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human

- 20 Backgrounds: 1 sentence descriptions for what your character did before picking up adventuring

- 4 Classes: Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User

- Feats: 8 for each class, over the course of your career you gain 3 from your class list and 2 from any list, building your own "subclass"

- Spells: Roll to cast spells similar to Shadowdark.

(If you want a random character, every aspect of character creation is able to be rolled with a dice!)

What makes this different?

- Omens: Instead of just handing out inspiration, the Game Master can portent the future of the characters by narrating an ominous natural phenomena happening around them. 

    "As you are packing your horse’s saddlebags with all your gear for your journey you see a raven perched on a nearby signpost, picking at the bones of some poor critter.”

    The player notes this on their character sheet and when they feel their omen coming to fruition in game, they can cash in on it and reroll any d20. This is a more fiction-forward approach to 5e's Inspiration.

- Oaths: Players can make swear long term promises that are continuously tested over the course of their life. When these oaths are tested and the players prove themselves stalwart, they are granted XP.

 - On a Scale of... This mechanic is similar to the Oracle die used in many games. This is a simple way to resolve details that GMs might not have a quick answer for like "how loud was the skeleton falling down the well?" or "How hard is it raining outside?" 

    The GM rolls a d10, and the 1-10 scale determines the severity (1 being least and 10 being most severe outcome). I think Gandalf rolled a 10 when Pippin goofed in Moria.

- Practical Game Master advice: The GM section is inspired Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master but taken with an OSR game in mind.

 - Easy to Run Monsters: Everything you need to run a monsters fits in 1 sentence.  

 

 - 100% Human-Made: I made use of wonderful art that is accessible in the Public Domain instead of anything AI-Generated.  

Link to the itch.io page, link to the drivethrurpg page.

 

Session 7 Recap

    The session kicked off with the party war-tabling with the leaders of Coalfell. Having scouted the Tower of Onyx, the party knew what they were up against. The plan was this: the main forces were going to sneak around to the back entrance of the tower while the party, along with some assistance was going to get dropped off at the top of the tower to face off against the mage by our flying friends, the Silent People. Sounds familiar... 

They landed on the rooftop of the tower where the Thool mage was performing the demon calling ritual. After a tense battle, and a few fireballs, the party realized they were outmatched. They jumped off the side, feather-falled and caught their breath. Here I allowed them to take a short rest in 1 minute, however as soon they leave initiative, they will suffer one level of exhaustion. With a burst of energy, and an enemy at half power they went back up to finish the job.

After a brutal Cone of Cold and a few rough rounds of rolling low, Sajin died frozen in a block of ice.

However, the assault on the Tower of Onyx was successful! The Gnoll army was defeated, the Mage was killed and the ritual stopped. When the ritual was stopped, the giant obsidian orb fell from the sky, and the demon spirits were ripped from the gnolls bodies. 

Cody quickly rolled up a new character, Jhoras the elven Ranger. With the new party and 300 members of Coalfell in tow, they set out East to go take down Rolnar. Along the way they stopped by the site of the Toxic Alchemical Sump, where Rolnar has now created an entire factory powered by demon labor. 

When the party arrived to Tradetown, they were expecting to see a war torn shell of what was, but they found a newly fortified, clean, peaceful place where they were welcomed. They made their way over to the Residential Distribution Center to talk to their friend Arbellon. He was shocked to see them alive and walked them through what all has happened. Yes the place has been revamped, but they are under the upmost of authoritarian rule that is being propped up on the back of slave labor. No bueno. 

They left town to reconnect with their Fellowship friends who had left town voluntarily and they devised a plan. Jhoras is to volunteer and join up with Rolnar's forces, rise up high enough to get on the Keep's guard and open the gates when the time comes. Dredd is going to go back to the City of MAN and try and gather any resources that might help. With a few great rolls and a time skip of 3 months, the plan is in motion and the time for assassination is nigh. 

That is where we will begin next session.

My Thoughts on 2024 5e So Far

 So my group has been playing 2024 5e for a few months now, and I have run a variety of monsters from the new Monster Manual, and I've got to say, its okay.

After the OGL Crisis my group jumped the WotC ship and began playing a variety of other games. We played everything from AD&D 1e to Pathfinder 2e. We played many games and many campaigns. Most of the memorable moments for me came from clever play tactics from my even more clever players. We've had many awesome boss fights and cool stories. But you know what I don't remember? Looking at a stat block. I also don't remember any class features. I don't remember builds, even when they are my characters.

I remember players being on their last torch finding their way out of the dungeon. I remember clever tactics in combat and shield walls. I remember players befriending the hobgoblins in the Chaotic Caves because they knew they couldn't fight them. 

As I reflect over past games and even take a pulse check on my current game (which has been an absolute blast), I really have tried to nail down why they were fun. I think my biggest two strengths as a DM are exploration and set piece battles. I really enjoy hexcrawls and dungeons using old school games because not only is there a procedure to it, but there were resources attached. I made a hexmap for my current game and we've done a few dungeons so far, and they have pretty quickly devolved back to what I found in 2014 5e, just me narrating room to room or hex to hex, then when players come across an enemy they mop the floor with them and repeat.

I could definitely add systems like tracking rounds and resources, but I think it elegantly works in old-school games because the other systems that are there are so fast and easy to resolve. Combat is basically the only thing heavily supported in 5e and it is anything but fast and easy to resolve. So tacking on another system to an already pretty complicated system just sounds like book keeping overload.

Another solution of the lack of tension in exploration would be to add random encounter checks. However, as previously mentioned, combat takes a while, so coming across one or two random encounters and there goes 50% of the session. It works in old-school games because combat is just as easily resolved as searching a room. 

When it comes to combat, I really do like set piece battles. I am a sucker for a boss room, specific boss battle music, a big mini and MMO style mechanics on a raid boss. 5e does this pretty well. They fought a manticore-like beast recently in a toxic alchemical wasteland and it was a really fun. He was flying around, doing manticore things. They also fought some bandits a few times, and it was kind of just a slog. No fault of any of the players. They were being clever, commanding the Ogre to run away, positioning well, doing all the things. But as the DM it was just roll, 3 damage, move a little, hide in cover, repeat.

The advice here is give alternative goals or environmental things. For every combat? That just honestly feels like more to track, which ultimately doesn't change much. I distinctly remember a boss battle in Shadowdark that took place as the party and their allies were storming a hill that was controlled by an Orc chieftain and a necromancer. Both statblocks combined probably fit on an index card. But the party was in a shield wall, slowly advancing on the enemy. Then when the wall broke they swung around and took the "bosses" on in a more 1v1 battle. It was awesome. It was also insanely easy to run. The game got out of the way, I barely referenced the stats because the actual in fiction actions of the enemies were much more important, because of their lack of "mechanics". Hell, we spend a chunk of combat just looking up and referencing the rules.

 I am definitely not dissatisfied with the campaign. I love the characters, the story, the world, the bad guys, everything. I don't know if I'll come back to 5e however. For now, I'll stick to cool story beats, focusing on the character's individual stories, and boss battles to the Doom soundtrack.

Session 6 Recap

 The party awoke suspended in rainbow colored water with a huge cavernous roof above them. On the shore stood Feathertip, perched on a rock, sitting next to a hulking King Kong sized furry beast. The party swam over to the shore and met their friend and his scary companion. 

However, this was no scary beast at all, but the gentle hearted overseer of these Waters of Life, the Beast Lord Draffut. This dog-like hulking beast presides over these waters keeping them safe from intruders and evil doers. Feathertip told them all about what happened in the three months that had passed while they were being nursed back to life. Rolnar took what happened as an act of war and lay siege to Tradetown, starving them out until they gave up. He sacked the city and claimed it for his own. 

Draffut, understanding their peril, gave them some gifts that he had been given over the thousands of years he has been alive, yay magic items! He also told them of some Beast-men to the south that might be of assistance. The party now found themselves some 50 miles west of Tradetown in the Black Mountains.

They learned that these beast-men were suffering from a demonic incursion. Demon spirits coming out of the Dunes of Zapernoth, the Demon Lord to the west were being summoned to the Tower of Onyx, a spire that sits on top of one of the mountains, which was lit with a purple flame. 

With newfound purpose, the paladin took up a new oath, an Oath of the Ancients. The party headed south looking for these new friends. They came across two of them fighting off some demons, they helped them and these beast-men showed them the rest of the way to their town of Coalfell. 

Coalfell sits between two closely positioned mountain faces, a town suspended in mid-air by rope. Think an Ewok town, but in the mountains instead of trees. They met Burlock, the bear-man leader of these people. He filled them in and enlisted their help. With a guide, they made their way to the Tower of Onyx where found where dead beast-men were being possessed by demonic spirits and being turned into Gnolls. They came across Golden Idols depicting Zapernoth - the left hand of Orcus, the Eternal Sovereign - the right hand of Orcus, and Orcus himself. At the top of the spire they also found another blue skinned mage who had IV's all over him that were hooked up to the same canisters of purified magical essence that the party found back at the Toxic Alchemical Sump!

Rightfully scared, they high tailed it back to Coalfell and next time will devise a plan to put a stop to this mage.

Sessions 5 Recap

 We began the session 5 as the party is meeting with the Fellowship leaders, devising a plan to take down Rolnar Ironjaw once and for all. Here is what they know; the Ironjaw raiders are magically juicing and creating super soldiers, they have a way point on the main road south out of trade town and taxing everyone who comes by for "protection", and they have a keep on the side of a mountain. So the party decided to attack the way point and cut off their main source of funds.

This part of the mission went off without a hitch. They Trojan Horsed some guys in the back of a cart, blasted the way point leader away and broke the morale of many soldiers. One surrendered and told them that Rolnar has an evil mage, Taznak the Vile, who speaks the tongue of demon-binding and has been doing all of the super soldier experiments. 

Back in Tradetown,Yosper the druid, told the party of the Silent People (anyone who has read Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East should be familiar with these guys!). They are huge friendly feathered people who are friends of the Fellowship and mortal enemies of the Leather Wings. The Silent People only come out at night, when the Leather Wings are sleeping. He also gave them a little flute and taught them the summoning tune. 

Given the general direction they headed out to meet the Silent People in the hopes of getting some aerial support or at least recon. After a short trek into the mountains nearby they came across two 6-ft tall owls, Strijeef and Feathertip. They said any friend of Yosper is a friend of theirs. The party asked if they would do a fly over and gather some intel for them, so each with a party member in their claws, they flew them over the castle in the mountains to see what was going on with the Ironjaw raiders. 

As they got closer they saw a three level keep jutting out from the side of the mountain with some 2000 ft drop below. (It would take about 11 seconds to splat. We had to do the math, it'll come in handy later). They flew around the upper levels, looking in windows to see what they could find. In the 3rd level of the main part of the keep they saw a hulking blue skinned bald headed man with an iron jaw sharpening his bone axe. Rolnar. Rightfully spooked, they kept flying around and went to the 3rd level of the castle's spire and found a similarly blue skinned man but this was dressed in Mage's attire and experimenting on a poor stranger. 

They landed on the roof of the 2nd level and peering in the window cast mage hand and knocked on the window to get his attention. The mage summoned a demon to go open the window and with the opportunity afoot the party's wizard cast sleep. He failed his save! (Turns out these Thool are immune, but we didn't realize that until a few rounds later.), the party jumped in and grabbed him, hoping to throw him off the side of the keep. However, he succeeded his second save (2025 5e sleep is weird). He immediately Misty Stepped out of the room and onto the second floor roof, then cast Fireball. (The party is 2 3rd level characters. This is a CR 6 Mage. Oops!). They wiped. But thank the gods for Relentless Endurance and the Orc having Lay on Hands. They are back!!

The wizard cast Gust of Wind hoping to knock the mage off the side. He succeeded his save. The paladin jumped out the window and tackled the mage off the side! They are both in free fall. The wizard jumped after them, Feather Fall ready to go. The mage then Misty Stepped out of his grip and cast Fly. Our wizard immediately cast Feather Fall so the party wouldn't splat. Then cast a 2nd level Magic Missile, knocking the concentration away causing the Mage's fly to fail! He also was plummeting! They did it!!! Plummeting, just as the party was in range, mid air, the mage cast his last Fireball. They in fact, did not do it. TPK.

 

Session 4 Recap

 As the session begins, the technomancer Lagren Tung and the party devise a plan to save his friend who had been captured by the Ironjaw raiders. They wait until nightfall and notice that the raiders aren't really on high alert. While waiting, the party hears gusts of wind but doesn't feel anything, spooky. Eventually they deduce that there are a group of elementals playing pranks on them. The elementals are harmless and attempt to communicate that they are bound here and need help. The party tells them they will help, or at least mimes it. 

They sneak up to the camp, lure one of them out with a minor illusion and knock him out in one fell swoop. When they sneak into the camp they see their dwarven friend Tolbrek was actually Stone Shaped to a rock instead of chained with cuffs. Big uh oh. The guards become alert and a fight breaks out! Mid fight, the druid raider realizes what the party is after and seeing that his friends are on their last leg, he goes over to the prisoner and stone shapes again, completely encasing him in stone. Even bigger uh oh. 

The raiders were taken care of and with a crowbar, a natural 20 and a dream the paladin breaks the prison's head free of stone, no longer in danger of suffocation. Upon further investigation it seems that the raiders were filtering the toxic sludge and getting a refined magical essence that can be used to power magic items (oh yeah the paladin picked up a magic cannon).

Throughout the night the party continued to investigate the area and found a tunnel that brought them underground and ended up at a shrine deep under the wreckage. Lagren recognized this shrine as a shrine to Barbarsus, his ancestor and member of the MAN, and also founder of the Arcanotech Cabal. After some rummaging around the party stirred the guardian of this shrine, and Iron Golem! Even bigger uh oh. After a few rounds of futile combat the party uses their heads and has Lagren call out to the Iron Golem "By the power of my bloodline, halt!" and to the surprise of everyone, it does so! They even get the Iron Golem to release it's core, freeing the air elementals that were bound to the ship. They learned that the ship actually enslaved elementals and used them as a source of power. They also learned that the Arcanotech Cabal still does this, but they use Demons instead. 

They got what they came for, but they still wanted to take down that Magicore. They set a trap by piling up the Ironjaw raider's bodies as a feast when the Magicore comes out for its next sacrifice. They got the jump on it and after a tense battle (only tense because we forgot about Relentless Endurance for our Orc), they took down the Magicore, got some cool magic items and head back to town with all this new information.

Next they plan on gathering allies and taking the fight to Rolnar Ironjaw himself. 

Faction Tracking

 Factions play a big part in my current campaign and no supplement I have come across has handled factions in an entirely satisfying way, so naturally, I attempted to make a system to fit my needs. Here is what I have come up with. It is important to note that my campaign only has 2-4 players, depending on the night, so they frequently have an NPC tag along to fill out whatever the party is missing.

Favor - Each NPC has a Favor score that increases as the characters do things that they like, or decreases as the characters do things they dislike. The party's actions must directly affect/interact with the NPC to alter their Favor. If the party does something that the entire faction that the NPC belongs to would like, it doesn't change every NPC that belongs to that faction's Favor score, this would be inflationary. Also, if the NPC isn't around or isn't aware of their actions, the NPC's Favor score doesn't change. Every NPC's Favor score starts at 0.

 Renown - Each faction has a Renown score equal to the sum of the Favor scores of each NPC that belongs to that faction. If the party does things that do not directly involve a member of a faction, this could still alter the faction's Renown score, if any only if members of that faction catch word of the party's actions. Remember that these factions consist of real people who exist in these fantasy worlds and are not all-knowing.

 Both Favor and Renown could be used to adjust Morale or Reaction rolls, if your system uses them. 

 Example: If the party is questing with Joe, a member of the King's Guard, and they help a lowly citizen handle some goblins that are harassing their farm, then Bob's Favor would increase by 1, thus increasing the Renown score of the King's Guard by 1. However, just about every member of the King's Guard would appreciate this. Even though that is the case, don't increase every NPC the party knows's Favor by 1. 

However, let's say later in the party's adventures they need to smuggle in some goods under the noses of the King's Guard. If the party doesn't get caught, their Renown does not decrease. If they do, then you would keep track of a modifier for the Renown score separate from the sum of the individual NPC's Favor scores, unless you think that it would adjust the Favor of one of the NPCs. Maybe in this case it decreases the Favor of the captain of the guard because word got back to them. 

 

You can tie rewards to levels of Favor/Renown as well. Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica does this. This is entirely up to the discretion of the Game Master. Here is a suggestion.

Renown 1: Faction members are generally amenable to you. They are also more likely to tell you secrets/rumors.

Renown 3: You get a faction insignia that comes with benefits and drawbacks depending on who you are dealing with. People outside the faction begin to recognize you as allying with them.

Renown 5: You gain access to information channels/quests/rumors/NPCs that you would otherwise not. Maybe this is weapon stores, spell scrolls, and important favors you can cash in. 

 

 I have made a spreadsheet to help track all of the factions for a campaign and included an example faction. Make sure to copy the spreadsheet into your own Drive so you can edit it and make it your own! The Faction names at the top of each of the six charts will auto-populate with whatever you type in each cell in the Faction List column. Also, the Renown scores are auto-calculating. Make sure to include a negative if a general party action decreases a faction's Renown.

 

  Link to Google Sheets