Creating adventures is such an important part of D&D, but it can be daunting for new DMs. This Guild Adept product lets you make your own level 1-20 adventures for the #oracleofwar campaign! Let me tell you more... 1/8 dmsguild.com/product/306028…
With this product, we wanted to give DMs the tools to quickly “roll up” a cool adventure, with unique villains, twists, and locations. If you want to tailor your creation further, you have the power. @JamesIntrocaso and his team knocked this chapter out of the park! 2/8
Your salvage missions can (optionally) be sold on the DMs Guild, without prior approval from the admins. You just need to stick to the rules laid out in the product. Anybody with a legal Oracle of War character can then play it! 3/8
On top of that, the product comes with four, ready-made two-hour duration salvage missions written by @JamesIntrocaso, @MTBlack2567, @GinnyLoveday, and @skydawn1! A killer team of writers right there, and one adventure ready to go for each tier... 4/8
Of course, organised play requires balance between tables. Salvage missions let your crew gather resources, but you can’t trawl them for treasure or rare magic items – only the core campaign modules offer those. Instead, you earn “salvage”. 5/8
Salvage is invested into your own, customisable HQ. You can upgrade your base between missions to kit it out with all sorts of fun gear to aid you in your quests. At higher levels your base can even become mobile! 6/8
In some ways, this is the most important product we've released so far for #oracleofwar. I’m grateful for the wisdom and advice of @shawnmerwin while making it, and I’m frankly blown away that @onnatryx gave me the green light to create it in the first place. 7/8
But most of all, thanks to the team who actually wrote the thing – the Guild Adepts! They breathed life into the concept and crafted it into something amazing. I hope you find a place for this book in your games and I can’t wait to see your creations on the DMs Guild. 8/8
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For my section of Rime of the Frostmaiden, I used a simple design technique. Each location had a “challenge” (e.g. combat, social, puzzle, etc), and a “function". Challenge speaks for itself - function ties your encounters together into a more unified experience. Thread:
I had five categories of function (there could be more I'm sure). “Obstacles” cannot be bypassed until a certain key is found elsewhere in the dungeon. I like to place obstacles prominently, so my players have a clear goal to aim for as soon as possible.
“Clues” provide hints and warnings about other locations or challenges in the dungeon. Ideally, you must complete a location’s challenge to gain its clue, but that’s hardly essential. It could just be a book on a table, or an interesting painting on the wall.
I'm really enjoying my ongoing 5E Tyranny of Dragons campaign. It's amazing how easily the opening chapters of Tyranny can serve as a launchpad into later campaign books - and how useful those later books are when running Tyranny. Spoilers to follow.
Tyranny opens with a Cult of the Dragon raid on the town of Greenest. The players track the raiders to their hideout, infiltrate the camp, and then storm a dungeon below it. I love this opening – it’s action packed and all three pillars shine. It's a heroic setup for your group.
You’re supposed to come out of those opening chapters at level 4. I combined the infiltration and dungeon into a single milestone, so my group capped out at level 3. Felt better. Level 3 is a sort of name level that’s nice to play in for a while, I think.
If I was to run Tomb of Annihilation again, I'd make the following three big changes: 1) Start in Cormyr. Introduce the party as members of the Society of Stalwart Adventurers sent to find Artus Cimber (much like Cimber was sent to find Rayburton in Chult). No death curse yet.
2) Meet the Yellow Banner on the ship to Chult, then have Aremag wreck the ship to separate them. The party is scooped up by pirates, escapes Jahaka, then treks overland to Port Nyanzaru with few supplies. Many adventures en route. Arrive around level 5.
3) At Port Nyanzaru, they learn of the death curse from Jessamine. She hires them to put an end to it and points them pretty much direct to Omu.
Playing and running #dnd at conventions has taught me SO MUCH about my game. Here are the ten most important tips I've picked up for DMing at conventions so far (most apply to home game too!):
1) Ask each player to introduce their character at the start of the game. Not just Class/Race/Level - ask them to describe their character entering the scene. It only takes five minutes, but it's CRAZY how many DMs skip this, leaving players wondering who they're gaming with!
2) Try to run your game standing up if you're able. It keeps the mind active. It can feel unnatural to start a game that way: my tip is to stand up and hand out initiative cards once everyone's seated, and then never sit down again.