tirsdag den 29. marts 2016

First review received

In february I published the "Valentine Love Adventure" on the DMsguild. Now, 7 weeks later, I've sold 13 copies, but more importantly, I've gotten my first review on one of my adventures.


"This was a fun mod to put into my on going game. Might be good to have suggestions on how to make this for different levels as my PCs were at lvl 6 when I ran this."

I got 4/5 stars and I'm happy that it was a fun mod to put into a game. The review points towards a party of 6th level while the adventure was created for 1-3rd level since it was meant for new characters.

In the adventure itself I pointed out how to change the difficulty of the adventure to fit 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level characters. The same concept could have been used to change the adventure to 6th, 10th, even 20th level, so I'm a little confused about the last comment. I've decided not to put too much weight in it, and simply continue writing adventures in the same way I have thus far.

The next adventure will be Blackbrook Lockdown, which is already nearly 2 weeks late, and in April I'll also try to release a Forgotten Realms adventure using Ravenloft rules, if I can get my hands on the new book, and it contains what I'm hoping for (rules on playing an undead).

torsdag den 24. marts 2016

Sunder's Destiny

I'm already planning the next adventure I'll write and publish in the DMsguild and I've decided to create an adventure that tells the story of what happened after the end of one of my 4th edition campaigns.

3rd Age
My homebrew setting is divided up into 5 separate Ages that mark great changes, especially in the physical and magical laws that govern the game itself.

In the 3rd Age a group of humans with an affinity for magic sailed the Great Sea and settled on a group of islands that they called Alrualland. Over a thousand years later, a group of elite soldiers from the Elven Isles were sent by the Elven Emperor to retrieve a powerful artefact. Throughout the millennium, a magical disease had spread throughout Alrualland. Those affected banded together and it was this group of Werecrocodiles (Lycans) that defeated the elves.

The people of Alrualland allied themselves with a dwarven kingdom that lived in the world of shadows called the Kingdom of Beldwhig. These dwarves worshipped Lithor, the God of Earth and Undeath. Lithor raised the elves to death knights, vampires, liches, etc and sent them to Alrualland to defeat the Lycans before they took over Alrualland, Beldwhig's allies.

After the Underworld War, the undead took over Alrualland and ruled as lords and ladies. At the end of the Age, most of them set out into the world to find a means to defeat Ithilba and his elemental army that was threatening Daedaloth, the new name given to Alrualland, which also meant "The Land of the Dead". Unfortunately, these lords never made it back to Daedaloth, and Lady Ahnu Suhni, a powerful lich, was forced to move Daedaloth into the world of shadows where Beldwhig was standing by to aid them. Thus ended the 3rd Age. 


4th Age
A group of Shadar'Kai made it to the Theocracy of Daedaloth, a land of genasi in the Shadowfell. The Shadar'Kai were led by the assassin known as Sunder, who set in motion a plan to take over and rebuild the ancient capital of Al'Rual and eventually overthrow the Speaker, the leader of the theocracy.

During the invasion of Al'Rual, Sunder came across a very special and unique type of lich. Liches in the 4th Age worked very differently from liches in the 3rd Age, and thus Ahnu Suhni didn't keep on being a lich across the Ages. Instead, she evolved into a Suel Lich, a mix between a lich and a ghost, mainly because her spirit was trapped after she had moved Daedaloth into the Shadowfell. Having been trapped for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, Ahnu's soul finally grabbed on to the first partially living thing that came close to her, the revenant Sunder.

5th Age 
This entire plot is now the basis for my next adventure, which will tell the story of what happened after Sunder was taken over by Ahnü's soul, and how such a lich, revenant, and the shadar'kai work. I'll place it in the source of my inspiration, Hallalia, which has suffered greatly since the Sundering, which I'm also going to use to create the locations and events in the game.

mandag den 14. marts 2016

Game Crafts - with Nina

Hello everyone,
I have never really seen this as a player myself, but I have always been fascinated with the idea of crafted items for roleplaying games.
It doesn’t need to be big fancy time consuming things that the GM spend hours and hours on. Even smaller things like a note, a wanted poster or things like that.




Now that I am preparing a game for our multiple Dungeon masters project (see more about that here) I decided to make a scroll.
It took like 15-20 minutes in total to make it and it just adds so much to the whole gaming experience. Or so I hope. And most of that time was spend on making the “magic seal” which is totally optional.

What you need:
A blank piece of paper
2-3 spoonsful of coffee
Simply just pour the coffee onto the paper and spread it all over with your fingers. Repeat on the other side of the paper and let it dry. And done.
If you want to have some printed text on your paper, I would suggest that you do that BEFORE you add the coffee. Not sure how well printers and coffee mix.
I then decided to add a “magic seal” to mine because it fits perfectly into my story (which I can’t reveal until after the game has been played, sorry)
I have ideas for many more quick and easy crafts so I hope my players find stuff like that fun.
And if not, then I will still have fun making them J
I hope you are all doing well.
Hugs
Nina

søndag den 13. marts 2016

Keeping Notes

When you play tabletop roleplaying games, whether you're the player or the gamemaster, keeping notes helps remembering, especially if you've forgotten something completely, in which case written notes can tell you black on white what happened, unless your notes are crap like some of mine.

Past note keeping
In the past I didn't really keep notes. I kept adventures, written in note form, characters, and props. Years later I tried to get an overview of my home-brew world only to discover that my lack of keeping notes meant that I had a very limited idea of what actually happened so many years ago. My favorite note is "scary doctors" . There was no more or less on my piece of paper and to this day I have no idea what it means.

Current note keeping
Over the years I learned to write adventures in a more professional manner, which helps a lot in keeping track of what has happened during sessions. Furthermore I've also learned to write notes during adventures. I've tried to sometimes let other players take notes, but that sometimes poses an issue when that player forgets to take notes, takes the wrong notes, or simply isn't present.

One way I keep track of everything, and one way I've suggested in keeping notes when playing games with multiple gamemasters, is to use a 3rd party program such as Obsidian Portal. This is an easy to use website that works a bit like a wiki with all the information you want to keep.

fredag den 11. marts 2016

Nina's DM'ing Anxiety

Hello everyone,

I (Nina) will soon be running my first gaming session as DM. I have actually been Dm before, but only in one on one games. So this time will be my first with multiple players.
My game will be part of our project where we switch DM every 2-4 sessions.

Im feeling rather nervous about having to DM for several people even though I know its silly. I have been playing D&D for about 8 years now but only ever had 1 person be the DM. Until we started playing this new game a few months ago.
So I dont have a whole lot of experience with different types of games since I've only ever really seen how 1 person does it.

And the game I am working on is very different. It is not so much because the story is super special or anything like that, but more that my dungoen, which is a big old castle, is filled with different encounters and traps. And these encounters are just so different than what im used to seeing as a player.
I think im mostly nervous because Im scared that the players wont find it fun or that it will be too easy for them. I find it super difficult to calculate how long it will take them to finish the adventure. I dont want them to be done after a few hours, but i also dont want it to drag out over more than 3 sessions.

I do plan on writing more about my adventure, and maybe even publish it on http://www.dmsguild.com/ , after we are done playing it.

Have any of you ever had DM-anxiety before and how did you cope with it?

I hope that you are all doing well,
hugs
Nina

torsdag den 10. marts 2016

Multiple Gamemasters - First Transition

Last weekend we had a gamemasters session, which is a D&D 5e tabletop RPG where we take turns being the dungeon master in the same world. We've run this project for a few months now and last weekend we switched from the first dungeon master to our second.

Background
When we set up the group we all created 1st level characters and an adventuring guild to give us a reason to stick together. We decided that each gamemaster was free to run his own game and adventure. After a 2-4 session adventure we would switch dungeon master.

When we switched last week we actually first spent a few hours finishing the last adventure. Once that adventure was done we immediately started the new adventure with the new dungeonmaster. We decided that 250 days passed ingame between the previous adventure and the new one. The new dungeonmaster introduced the new adventure by inviting our characters to a wedding in another country. On our journey, we met another member of our order and decided to help him on his quest, which introduced the character of the gamemaster who was the dungeonmaster in our previous adventure. The transition was quick and flawless.

What was different
The first difference I noticed was the environment. We went from a temperate medieval kingdom to an arabian style desert environment.

A second difference was that the new quest was more personal while the previous adventure was tied to our adventuring guild.

A third difference was that the second dungeonmaster had a lot of puzzles and mind games, while the previous dungeonmaster was more focused on mystery and investigation.

A fourth difference was something I had dreaded, which was differences in rules. We had agreed to use the rules as described in the core rulebooks, but our first dungeonmaster often didn't have a proper grasp of the rules and thus made a few mistakes. Our second dungeonmaster didn't know the rules all that well either, so some of the rules were different from our first dungeonmaster and some rules were completely overseen. This may not usually be an issue, but I noticed that our bloodhound character is very broken already since he had created a character using one set of rules, levelled it up using another set, and is now running an adventure with a third set of rules. Hopefully this will get sorted as we play more.


What was the same 
I was afraid that each gamemaster would run the adventuring guild differently, but so far both gamemasters have run it the same way.

We're playing with the same characters, and they haven't changed. I may look into our bloodhound character when I'm the gamemaster to see if he needs to be fixed, but so far he's just as broken as he was in the previous adventure, which is a pity.

I missed the combat scenes in the last session, but I believe these were also very identical to our previous adventure.