Candid thoughts on pixels, polyhedrons, and paper.
Once a week we invite everyone over into our home to play D&D. Everyone just walks right on in, takes their shoes off and we sit down together for a good friendly game – hell my players don’t even knock. My gaming group has remained the same for some time now; my wife, my best friend, his fiance, his dad and his fiance’s dad whom both have been playing since their teenage years. More often than not on game night we provide food and beverages for everyone, and most of the time someone brings beer or something else to drink or eat, it’s communal and no one keeps tabs or anything and there’s never been a problem.
Everyone really gets along swimmingly and the party plays well together – they always manage to find a less than obvious way around things and I’m never prepared however good times always ensue. I prepare our campaign with heart and soul each week, I have no co-dm and I painstakingly set up our game to be as fun as efficient as possible, and I’m always looking for ways to bring the experience to a new level. I attempt to cater to my players needs and wants to achieve maximum fun for all.
I wish all of the above said was true, which actually it is mostly with the exception of one of those players. They are downright rude there’s no other way to put it, at first their demeanor was a minor snag in the flow of our game sessions. I can put up with a few comments here and there or shrug off the inappropriate mentions of my wifes breasts.
Hello, my name is Jerry and I’m a carebear Dungeonmaster. I’m here to inform you all briefly of an encounter I ran this weekend that actually managed to incap two of my players (nearly killing one). Some of you may have read my previous article about being a little too easygoing on my players, and what I should do to combat it. Well I designed a rough encounter and ran it this weekend and let me just tell you that the pit of my stomach fell a bit as I heard “wow I’m dying, my character is gonna die”. I knew I’d finally managed to make them sweat in an encounter to the point of incapacitation and possible death, but I felt horrible about it!
Now I must admit, for a party of 5 level 4 characters (and a level 3 NPC who’s an amateur at best) an XP budget of 1300 is kinda high, but hey that was the point
Hammerfast isn’t your everyday adventure module, in fact it’s not really an adventure at all if you wanna’ get technical. Think of Hammerfast not as a blank canvas for your campaign world, but one that’s been penciled in lightly for you to alter as much as you want. It’s a great backdrop for setting up an entire campaign or at least a major city. The contents state it is optimized for taking players ideally through levels 1-10, however I think a little ingenuity could push it a bit further than that.
Without giving away the back story from the book verbatim I’ll just say that the city itself has a lot of history, to say the least. Ghosts walk the streets alongside the living and no one thinks anything of it, some of them even hold places in society – acting as teachers instructing those in a craft they excelled in during life like blacksmithing perhaps. There are some tensions between those devoted to Moradin and Gruumsh who basically hold dominion over the cities and it’s ghostly inhabitants. There is a lot of room for tension and treachery in a city like this, which is great for your campaign world and creating player intrigue.
