Maiden’s Head Games Games, Powered by the Imagination

24Dec/090

Dawn of a new Adventure

Having just had my players achieve 5th level, I am re-examining their current series of adventures and where I am taking them with the plot that I've originally developed.  On the one hand, I've realized that I am stringing out this plot more than I should have; and then considering some of the plot hooks I've realized I'm not doing enough to move the plot forward.

Having recently picked up the "Dungeon Master's Guide 2" and reading through some of the artifacts presented, I realized that I need to take a new approach with the artifact they are searching for, the Cauldron of Ongurr.  In the DMG2, WotC presents the 4th Edition version of the "Rod of Seven Parts".  My original plot for the current campaign deals with an ancient artifact that was split into seven parts in times past and ancient...  For those that follow Eberron, this was during the Age of Monsters and the Daelkyr Wars, some 10,000 years before the current age.

As a DM, I always wanted my artifact to have special powers.  Looking at the "Rod of Seven Parts", I see something that falls along the lines of what I was looking for in my original design notes for the Cauldron.  I only need to change a couple of design elements, and of course the background story of the artifact.

I'm working on the next several series of encounters and am seriously considering to continue challenge the group with ranged combat. I've run several encounters using a simple group of gnoll minions (using a 20hp "house rule" for these minions), and several higher powered brutes and solos to make a very engaging encounter for the party.  The next couple of encounters will probably focus around a similar set of base creatures, only because it fits in with my storyline.

Next up in my encounters is uncovering the artifact, a new "side quest" for the portion of the party that split off and a new set of adventurers.  As the party split up to accomodate a couple of new PCs (see my post on the D&D Avengers earlier this year for more) I will begin them at 4th level versus the current party's 5th level.  I clearly stated to the players this is more so that I can run them through "Seekers of the Ashen Crown" as the current party will more than likely attain 6th level before the end of their current story arc.

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24Oct/091

The Chaos Scar in Eberron

Chaos Scar in Eberron
Backstory to My Home Game
I recently was reviewing the D&D Insider site and flipping through the available content in Dungeon magazine.  I am fishing around for some new and interesting pieces to add to my current Eberron campaign.  To offer some background on my current game, the party is searching for a mythic artifact known as the "Cauldron of Ongurr".  This artifact was used during the Age of Monsters to fortify a bridge between Eberron and Xoriat, the Plane of Madness.  The Cauldron was held by the last great Goblin Emperor, Ongurr.  The Cauldron and it's misuse lead to several of the rifts in the Goblin Empire and helped bring about the Goblin Civil War.
At the end of the Civil War, the Cauldron was captured by the Gatekeepers and allies within the imperial court;   chief ally amongst the imperial court was Ongurr's vizier and chief wizard.  He captured the Cauldron and provided it to Taichar, head of the Gatekeepers at the time.  Tiachar, through some great magic was able to shatter the artifact in to seven pieces.  He then sent these pieces out across the face of Khorvaire in order to protect them from being brought together again and bring Xoriat back into alignment with Eberron.
The machinations of the daelkyr are such that, only recently, a lead Provost at Morgraive University was approached about mounting an expidition to search for several pre-Galifarian artifacts.  An anonymous benefactor contacted Provost Phineaus Nolan of the pre-Galifarian Studies department and through a proxy was able to convince the Provost to organize and mount the expidition.  The party was the second group that was sent in search of the first piece of the Cauldron of Ongurr.  They successfully located and retrieved the piece, but were also alerted to the fact that the Provost's mysterious benefactor was not the most upright of sponsors.
How the Chaos Scar Fits Eberron
With this in mind, the Chaos Scar material fits right in line with some of the story ideas that I have been incorporating in to my existing campaign.  With the party currently located along the border between the Eldeen Reaches and the Shadow Marches, the possibilities of a dark meteor falling from space offered some great potential.  Looking through the first adventure, I already know I am going to need to adjust several things.
Firstly, my current party is made up of 5th level characters.  I will need to tweak all encounters up to their level.  Second, I need to change the adventure hook.  The party is currently traveling with the Provost, so I can add that there could be additional information or items of importance to be gathered at the site.  The Provost traveling with the party really offers me the ability to generate plot hooks on the fly as needed.  And finally, I will need to change around some of the treasure parcels.  Thankfully the adventure provides some great information right up front on where and what parcels are currently in the base adventure, so I can easily pluck these out and incorporate some new parcels.
I will be updating the blog shortly with some of the updates and enhancements.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Backstory to My Home Game

chaos_scarI recently was reviewing the D&D Insider site and flipping through the available content in Dungeon magazine.  I am fishing around for some new and interesting pieces to add to my current Eberron campaign.  To offer some background on my current game, the party is searching for a mythic artifact known as the "Cauldron of Ongurr".  This artifact was used during the Age of Monsters to fortify a bridge between Eberron and Xoriat, the Plane of Madness.  The Cauldron was held by the last great Goblin Emperor, Ongurr.  The Cauldron and it's misuse lead to several of the rifts in the Goblin Empire and helped bring about the Goblin Civil War.

At the end of the Civil War, the Cauldron was captured by the Gatekeepers and allies within the imperial court;   chief ally amongst the imperial court was Ongurr's vizier and chief wizard.  He captured the Cauldron and provided it to Taichar, head of the Gatekeepers at the time.  Tiachar, through some great magic was able to shatter the artifact in to seven pieces.  He then sent these pieces out across the face of Khorvaire in order to protect them from being brought together again and bring Xoriat back into alignment with Eberron.

The machinations of the daelkyr are such that, only recently, a lead Provost at Morgraive University was approached about mounting an expidition to search for several pre-Galifarian artifacts.  An anonymous benefactor contacted Provost Phineaus Nolan of the pre-Galifarian Studies department and through a proxy was able to convince the Provost to organize and mount the expidition.  The party was the second group that was sent in search of the first piece of the Cauldron of Ongurr.  They successfully located and retrieved the piece, but were also alerted to the fact that the Provost's mysterious benefactor was not the most upright of sponsors.

How the Chaos Scar Fits Eberron

With this in mind, the Chaos Scar material fits right in line with some of the story ideas that I have been incorporating in to my existing campaign.  With the party currently located along the border between the Eldeen Reaches and the Shadow Marches, the possibilities of a dark meteor falling from space offered some great potential.  Looking through the first adventure, I already know I am going to need to adjust several things.

Firstly, my current party is made up of 5th level characters.  I will need to tweak all encounters up to their level.  Second, I need to change the adventure hook.  The party is currently traveling with the Provost, so I can add that there could be additional information or items of importance to be gathered at the site.  The Provost traveling with the party really offers me the ability to generate plot hooks on the fly as needed.  And finally, I will need to change around some of the treasure parcels.  Thankfully the adventure provides some great information right up front on where and what parcels are currently in the base adventure, so I can easily pluck these out and incorporate some new parcels.

I will be updating the blog shortly with some of the updates and enhancements.  Keep your fingers crossed.  I should have some monsters posted in the next week or two, just moving house so it all depends on how much moving gets accomplished.

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22Oct/091

Dungeon Delve

dungeon_delveJust ran my most current installment of the "Shadows Over Khorvaire", and being hard pressed for time, I grabbed a complete "encounter" from the recently published "Dungeon Delve" as a filler for my usually planned out game encounters.  I have to say, I was a bit hesitant at first, but the players genuinely enjoyed the encounters and the feel of the encounters.

The format for each chapter in the book consists of a series of encounters for a given level.  In my case, I used the "Orken Stronghold" from the book.  Prep time for the session was easy, with stats and tactics provided for each encounter.  I had already worked on a treasure allotment for the party, so I simply replaced the included treasure with my "parcels".  One of the great things that dawned on me over the course of play is how badly I had been pacing combat and encounters.  This book was a real eye-opener for how to properly scale out a series of adventures.  I'm going back to the drawing board with my adventures and encounters and plotting them out using this book as a guideline.

There are some seriously wicked encounters in the book, and even the offer for how to expand them out in to full-blown "adventures" rather than just a packaged, yet random encounter.  I'm genuinely pleased with this and would recommend it greatly to the time-pressed GM out there.

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3Oct/094

Game Aids

Recently installed a copy of Adobe's Acrobat 9.  This product has some pretty nifty functions for creating and combining PDF files.  Attached, you can find the game aid that I'm distributing to my players.  It includes the Character Sheets, Treasure Inventory and an overview of where they currently are on the continent of Khorvaire.  You can download and view the file from the link below.

Shadows Over Khorvaire

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28May/092

Preperations for Game Day

Just a quick note regarding my preparations for my upcoming Game Day.  I've been using OneNote more and more to organize my games and it's really working out.  Going to also be incorporating some "brainstorming" for jotting notes using MPTW (a quick and easy wiki tool) and Dropbox to keep it in sync between my home and work machines.  This helps LOADS as I can keep both my OneNote binder and my ideas all in one place without having to rely on "SneakerNet v2.0" a.k.a. my thumb drive.

Also for those interested, a couple of new additions will be posted to the Maps section on Sunday (after the game).

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3May/090

Arcane Power

Just received a copy of the book. Reading through bits and pieces now and really looking forward to incorporating things in to the 4th Edition Game. The book has so far been very interesting, and I look forward to incorporating the Familiar rules into play with the group.  My players have a wizard and a warlock in the party, and I'm certain that I can find use for the material presented for both of them.

The most interesting rule set presented in the book may be those for the warlock.  I say this as I want to incorporate a more "mystical" tone to the setting and providing both the divine and arcane players with a grander sense of the setting and history available for them to draw upon.  So far the players have really grasped the campaign setting's history, but I've had a much harder time getting them to grab hold of the "fantastic" undertones of the setting.  I've been looking to incorporate a more "Cthulhu-esque" tone to the setting and bring in elements of dark fantasy and horror in for them.  I will be formulating a couple of things over the next week or so to present to the players and incorporate in to the next game sessions.

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28Apr/090

Game Material

So, I've been running my 4th Edition Eberron game since the release of 4th Edition in June, 2008.  The game has hit a couple of snags but the players have been real troopers in the entire process.  The biggest snag has been trying to re-create the rules from 3rd Edition into 4th Edition.  Thankfully the players have been patient in their use of "Eberron Exclusive".  This June marks one year of running, as well as the new release of the Eberron material for 4th Edition.

I am really looking forward to the treatment of Eberron in 4th Edition.  I must admit I've not read through the "re-boot" of the Forgotten Realms and haven't read any material since the setting saw the introduction of Elminster and Drizzt was but a twinkle in the eyes of R.A. Salvatore.  What I have read has been limited to the write-ups on Backgrounds in the the Campaign Guide and the Location Write-up.  Decent material, but nothing that screams to me "you must play this setting".

With the publishing of the Eberron Guide, I'm looking to bring the Outsiders front and center into the campaign world.  The party of players has rounded out and the increase in numbers has created some welcome complexity to the characters and to the setting.  I've been tempted on the next steps for the campaign and am really torn as to which faction from the 3rd Edition will move to be my BBG (Big Bad Guy) in 4th Edition.  All in all, the players are really trying to figure out who the good guys are and where the next attack is coming from.

The next couple of sessions should really help me work out the whole meta-plot that I am running behind the scenes and maybe see the introduction of elements from past "favorite" settings of mine, such as Spelljammer, Call of Cthulhu, 7th Seas and Fading Suns elements.  The game and 4th Edition are turning out to be a real interesting boon to me and gaming.  I do however wish I had a recurring opportunity to play on occassion.  The group seems good and eager to deal with my whims as a GM.  Likewise, I'm keen on keeping them interested in the setting and playing.

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15Mar/092

The D&D Avengers

As part of my on-going home game, I've been working with the players to give them the option for more variety in the game sessions.  As a group we are all new to 4th Edition.  I wanted to offer my players a method where they could play around with trying out all the possible combinations that they would like to enjoy without them feeling penalized as far as Experience and Treasure being gained by the group and that their respective characters would have as far as equipment.

In order to remedy this we've been working on a couple of "house rules".  First, for characters that come in new, they are generated per the rules in the DMG for starting above 1st level.  Second, for PCs that are "sent off on side missions", they lose all equipment and gold and can not come back into active play until the group advances a level.  Those characters that go on these "side quests" come back with magic items and gold equivalent to a character starting at the same level per the DMG.

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4Jan/092

Magic Set Editor

scale_mail_of_razorsSo with the invention and publishing of the new 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the local gaming group was doing well in adventures.  As my players gained experience and treasure, I wanted something a little different to spark interest with the players on the new edition.  Having recently read an article on how to incorporate props into your tabletop game.  I wanted to try a little something new and having seen the beauty of a recently posted series of "4e Power Cards", decided to use the same tool that was used to create those cards.

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