Saturday, March 16, 2024

People, Plots and Places of the Wild West: Riverboat

I've been working on this supplement for a bit, and then it came together rather quickly. I am hoping that it is the first in a series. 

-Nate

"This six-page PDF includes deckplans and descriptions for a sternwheel riverboat, stats for the crew and the vessel itself, more than a dozen plot hooks, three new Hazards, and suggestions for using Dramatic Tasks and the Chase rules for races and when abandoning ship."

People, Plots and Places of the Wild West: Riverboat




Saturday, February 24, 2024

Curses!

This short PDF presents rules for using curses in the Savage Worlds RPG; a cursed relic for Treasure Hunter Adventures, the 30 Pieces of Silver; and an example of a divine curse, the city of Port Royal, Jamaica. It is intended to help celebrate Fast! Furious! Fun! February!

-Nate

Curses!

#FFFebruary


Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Highlights from Con of the North 2024

This year's convention was a lot of fun. There was one weird hiccup, about which I am still waiting to hear, but I also participated in four fun rounds. Here are the highlights, in reverse chronological order.


Sunday's Treasure Hunter Adventures Session

This was the hiccup. On Saturday night, while I was playing in a D&D Epic, I saw an email that my round for Sunday had been cancelled. That seemed odd, since I as the GM had not asked to cancel it. I went to HQ and inquired, and they created a new event for me. The players had also been emailed, however, so they did not know to look for it. Uncertain, I headed over for it on Sunday, and one of the original players—who had not checked his email—did show up for it. We chatted for a bit and then he headed off to find a game with more players.


The D&D Epic

I played in one of these last year and did not love it. That scenario was a combat meat-grinder, and not a lot of fun for me playing a new 1st-level character. This year's scenario included more options that featured roleplaying and exploration, however, which was nice. Although the DM seemed nervous, thinking that he didn't have much experience, he did a good job keeping the action moving. All in all, it was a good session!




Junk Racers

I had a chance to be the fanboy at this session. It was DMed by Matthew Hanson, who organized the Kickstarter for Graveyard of the Gods, which I backed. This was part of a scenario from that book, which can easily function as a mini-game in its own right. We played kobolds who were scavenging junk on the corpse of the dead god Annihalia in order to build our own junk racer and enter the big race. We had some solid combat encounters, and then joined the race.

That was a blast! Matthew used notecards to represent the track, and it worked well. There was plenty of maneuvering, some crashes, and a few boarding actions, and in the end the kobolds won the race!


Saturday's
Treasure Hunter Adventures Session

I am always a little nervous before I run a convention scenario for the first time. This was the case on Saturday, when I would be premiering The Dead Man's Tale, a direct sequel to last year's Infernal Devices.


I needn't have worried.


It was a pleasant surprise that all five players at the table had played in one of the two sessions from last year. All had enjoyed it enough to come back again this year, which was a good sign. Some of them even had the handouts from last year, including the one that provided a cliffhanger clue for this scenario. They deciphered the markings on the cross, realizing that X did indeed mark the spot. That led to a trek through the mountains in southeastern Germany, with the villains from last year in pursuit. Linh shot down an enemy drone, drawing a Joker and blasting it before anyone else could even react. Vaughn then modified it so that they could use it to spy on their foes, covering their backs as they ventured into a lost World War II treasure cache.


That proved fortuitous. The heroes figured out another clue, revealing the hidden vault, before recognizing that the enemy was making their move. They caught the neo-Nazi mercenaries in a wickedly bad choke point and made quick work of them. Sometimes I'll try to stretch out a combat if it seems to be going too easily, but in this case the players seemed to appreciate that their solid tactics were winning the day.



Sunday, January 14, 2024

Rock of Bral Revisited



The Astral Adventurer's Guide includes a chapter about the Rock of Bral, which consists of 7 pages detailing that asteroid city. This book, which is available in PDF format from the DM's Guild, uses 96 pages for the same purpose. Obviously, that is a lot more detail. But how has this book aged? Here are my thoughts.

  • Early on we're introduced to a Bral proverb: “Check your vendettas at the docks.” I like that this philosophy makes the asteroid city into a neutral hub for activity.

  • This book does a good job of introducing numerous factions, including more detail about the four Underbarons; information about the royal court; numerous trading companies and merchant houses; and Guilds, Societies and Orders. The DM is free to add more, but there's already a lot of detail with which to work.

  • Details about the government provide the PCs with an opportunity to become involved, if that interests the players. Those who command five or more ships are invited to join the Council of Captains, proving an in.

  • There are numbers on the map that are intentionally left without description, so that the DM can add one's own locations. In fact, there are 155 numbered locations on this map, as compared to the 30 that are mentioned in the Astral Adventurer's Guide.

All in all, this book seems like a worthy addition to a DM's resources for Spelljammer campaigns. There is game mechanics information that is out of date, but it provides a starting point from which to devise new character stats (character race, class and level, for example). The asteroid city is not affected by changes to the Spelljammer setting, meaning that most of the details in the book remain accurate.

Rock of Bral for D&D 2e


Saturday, December 30, 2023

Reflecting on 2023 and Looking Ahead to 2024

Here are a few highlights of what happened this year, along with what I'm anticipating for next year.

  • As I'd hoped, in 2023 I finished writing the Apotheosis Campaign for Treasure Hunter Adventures. This was an enjoyable experience. When I started writing scenarios back in 2020, I started with material that I'd been planning back when I worked using D20 Modern. After finishing some of them, a larger storyline began taking shape, and I hope that it's a series of adventures that GMs and players can enjoy. 

  • https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/461347/Treasure-Hunter-Adventures-The-Apotheosis-Campaign-BUNDLE 

  • I have written another adventure to run at Con of the North the north this year. This one, in fact, consists of material that I cut from last year's scenario due to time constraints. It leads the heroes to investigate a lost Nazi treasure cache, and has what I hope is a big set-piece climax with plenty of action for the finale.

  • For a few years now, when my players and I discuss options for that school year's campaign, I've offered to run the Star Wars RPG. They have decided otherwise—until now. This was a surprise for me, but a good one. I've written a series of scenarios on one of my other blogs, the Tierfon Campaign, for use with the RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games. A second surprise was that they wanted to play with the old D6 System from West End Games. For that reason I've been adapting them on the fly—and happily, it's an easy system to which to convert.

  • Taking that a step further, I'm planning to participate in this year's January Character Creation event. I'll be posting conversion of the characters on my other Star Wars RPG website.

  • After waiting a solid year for it, I have the print copy of Graveyard of the Gods and am excited about it. I'd thought that I might be running a campaign with it this year, but my players decided otherwise, as mentioned above. This book is gorgeous, and I'll print a review when I've finished reading it. I am excited to run that campaign some time in the future. 

  • https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/431892/graveyard-of-the-gods-5e 


Thursday, November 23, 2023

Bundles!

As I have wrapped up a major project earlier this year--and because the holiday shopping season starts after Thanksgiving--I thought it would be appropriate to bundle some of my offerings on DrivethruRPG.com. This proved to be a little more difficult than I imagined, making sure that aspect rations for covers are correct and that PDFs are properly attached to everything. After a few fits and starts, however, I have three of them ready to go!

-Nate

The Apotheosis Campaign


The Complete Treasure Hunter Adventures Toolkit


Captain Quin's Logbook: Encounters in Wildspace



Sunday, November 19, 2023

Ready-Made Crews for Spelljammer Encounters

I am late to the party when it comes to 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The advent of 4th Edition pushed me into playing Pathfinder, which I quite enjoyed. Although I helped playtest D&D 5E,  I did not feel any need to stop playing Pathfinder. Then there came a 2nd Edition of that game, and I did not want to buy a bunch of new books. The birth of my son also meant that I did not have a lot of time for playing these games anyway. Also, there was a pandemic. 

That was when three different events coincided to change the situation. First, my buddy-in-law Brent sent me a 5E Player's Handbook so that we could play some games in Google Meet or Zoom. Second, the guys for whom I'd run my last campaign decided to start a new one, playing 5E online. Finally, Wizards of the Coast announced that they would publish new Spelljammer material, and I was all in. I ran Light of Xaryxis as my campaign for the 2022-23 school year, and have been thinking about the subject since then. 

All the while I was reading the 5E books, and quickly realized that the Monster Manual provided great stat blocks for monsters, with many of them having variations for different challenge ratings. What is more, many of them feature a leader-type and a magic-user, characters who nicely fill the roles of captain and spelljammer on ships. With that in mind, here's a table with which the DM can randomly generate Spelljammer encounters. 

-Nate