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Modern Magic and a New D&D Movie(s?) Announced

Posted in D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Wizards of the Coast with tags , , , , , , , on August 4, 2015 by boccobsblog

Two D&D 5e updates from Wizards of the Coast:

Modern Magic

Wizards released the latest Unearthed Arcana article yesterday and the topic is modern magic. The UA Modern Magic PDF (also archived in our 5e resource page) outlines content needed to adapt D&D casters to a modern or futuristic setting. The article contains a new cleric domain (city), a new warlock patron (The Ghost in the Machine), the Technomancy tradition for the wizard, hacking tools, and 14 new spells.

All in all it looks pretty cool. The info could be used to make a neat time travel quest, but if I want to play D&D set in the future, I’ll probably stick with Shadowrun.

A New D&D Movie Announced

A press release posted yesterday by Warner Brothers details a partnership between Warner Brothers Pictures, Hasbro, and Sweetpea Entertainment to create a new D&D movie (franchise?) set in the Forgotten Realms. According to the release, a script has already been written by David Leslie Johnson.

From the press release:

“We are so excited about bringing the world of Dungeons & Dragons to life on the big screen,” said Greg Silverman, President, Creative Development and Worldwide Production, Warner Bros. Pictures. “This is far and away the most well-known brand in fantasy, which is the genre that drives the most passionate film followings. D&D has endless creative possibilities, giving our filmmakers immense opportunities to delight and thrill both fans and moviegoers new to the property.”

“This is such an enormous opportunity to bring the rich fantasy setting of the Forgotten Realms to life and, together with the creative powerhouse of Warner Bros., use movies to tell the stories that have enchanted passionate D&D fans for decades,” said Stephen Davis, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer of Hasbro, Inc. “D&D is the role-playing game that started it all and now we have the opportunity to ignite a franchise for its legions of avid fans in a way never done before.”

I remain hopefully optimistic.

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5e Skill Challenges

Posted in D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons with tags , on July 17, 2015 by boccobsblog

While I disliked many aspects of D&D fourth edition, I did like skill challenges. The following article outlines my conversion of that system to fifth edition. Credit where credit is due-this article draws heavily on the skill challenge chapter of the fourth edition Dungeon Master’s Guide II.

Choosing the Skills (and non-skills) for the Challenge
The short answer is, don’t choose any. Present the party with a problem or scenario and let them decide how best to deal with it rather than drawing a box of skills and secondary skills to confine your players, give them free rein to come up with a creative solution. Reward creative thought, award successes for non-skills too, for example if the players want to use a magical item, or a spell in place of a skill. Perhaps they bride the gruff city guard rather than try to use the persuasion skill.

Level of Complexity
Fourth edition used a five-tier complexity system for its skill challenges and I’ve reduced this to four to make it align better with fifth’s easy, medium, hard, deadly encounter scheme. Select a level of complexity from one to four. If your players are just poking about a small village trying to solve a crime, a one should do, however, if they are taking a voyage across a desert or sailing an airship to another country, perhaps a level four challenge is in order. Note: complexity differs from difficulty. Complexity only refers to the number of steps involved in the challenge, not how difficult those steps are. To be successful the players will need x number of successes before y number of failures. I’m using the patterns from fourth edition’s DMG2 where they refined the numbers published in the original 4e DMG.

Complexity Successes Failures
1                 4               3
2                 6               3
3                 8               3
4                10              3

Difficulty Class for 5e Skills/Ability Checks
Much like encounter creation, use a varying degree of difficulty for each step of your challenge. Lob a few soft balls (DC 10 – 15), and put a few challenges in their path (DC 20). Keep in mind that DC’s for skills are much lower fifth edition than they were for third and fourth. Without all those modifiers, the bar needs to be a bit lower. Gone are the days of fifth level bards rolling fifty on their perform checks.

Skill Difficulty Class
Very Easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very Hard 25
Nearly Impossible 30

Dealing with Failure
What if you players botch a roll or fail the challenge entirely? Failure shouldn’t end the adventure, it should just change the path the players need to take. If your players stealth through the prison but fail to unlock the door to the cell of the NPC they were sent to free, unlock the door but sound an alarm or alert the guards. Here are some ideas for failed rolls or failed challenges:

Possible Consequences for Failure:
• Increase the CR of the next encounter or raise the DC of the next skill roll
• Wandering monster
• Loss of a resource (Spell slot, per-rest power, hit dice, etc.)
• Apply a condition (poisoned, fatigued, etc)
• Inflict a curse or disease
• Expenditure of money or time
• Decrease an NPC’s attitude a step
• Disallow additional uses of that skill
• Damage
• Impose disadvantage on the next roll

Experience Points for Skills Challenge
Giving XP for role-playing is a great way to reward RP, but it can be difficult to decide how much XP is warranted. I think the “XP Threshold by Character Level” is a good place to start. Try awarding each player XP based on the chart below based on the complexity of the challenge (1-4) and character level.
Xp Threshold

I hope this conversion helps you maintain a healthy balance of Role and Roll. I would welcome any feedback you may have in the comments section below. Please download the free, Boccob’s Blessed Blog 5e Skill Challenge Cheat Sheet below.

Final Thoughts
A good skills challenge should:
• Involve each player
• Use several skills
• Allow successes from non-skills
• Reward creativity
• Measure how well the PCs succeed, not if they succeed.

Skills Cheat Sheet

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Another 101 D&D Quest Ideas

Posted in D&D 3.5, D&D 4e Content, D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder with tags , , , , on July 27, 2011 by boccobsblog

Many of you may remember the post we did several months back entitled, “101 D&D Quests Ideas”, it has been one of the most popular articles on the blog and one of the most searched terms by readers using search engines like google to find us (in fact if you google, “D&D Quest Ideas” B3 is the first hit- woot!). So we turned out another 101 D&D quest ideas usable for any fantasy-themed RPG, but written with D&D and Pathfinder in mind. Enjoy! (And a big thank you to Dave R. and Adam A. for submitting quest ideas)

1. A minotaur was victimized by a wizard, and now he will hire you to lead him through his own labyrinth to his treasures.

2. A painter has been using magic to easily duplicate his own paintings to sell as originals. But a fowl art critic with a penchant for theatrics is on to him and has sworn to reveal the secret unless he is permitted to marry the artist’s only daughter. The artist hires you to eliminate the critic who knows too much.

3. The sun set 26 hours ago. The world is in panic. The Drow are invading, and only the heroes can stop them.

4. A madman who thinks he is a prophet is slaughtering the livestock of the local farmers in the hopes that it will bring forth Ibanirox, the Night Eater, a long forgotten (and made up) deity of immense power. The farmers offer the group 20 gold or 3 cows per adventurer.

5. A theatre director hires the party to keep his lead actor (who is marked for death by a crime syndicate) alive long enough to perform in front of a powerful monarch. The assassins attempt to make his death scene a real one.

6. A tribe of kobolds has taken up residence in the sewers and has been hunting dogs and cats as food.

7. The pc’s are sent after a powerful artifact/weapon that will make their patron unstoppable.

8. The pc’s are hired by a Gensai sorceress to recover her mephit familiar from an enemy.

9. A character notices an error in a broadsheet posted in the city square, and quickly realizes that the paper has been forged to deflect guilt from a minor noble. The noble hires thugs to “dissuade” the party from investigating further by stealing some of their gear and shifting their attention to the thieves.

10. Mind flayers are performing perverse rituals on local orc tribes and granting them psionic abilities. The party must find and destroy them before psionic orcs destroy the kingdom.

11. Ancient prophecies predict that a star will fall at a precise location on a certain day. Whoever is first to grasp the star will receive a wish. Various dark factions camp and await the coming of the star, intent on making their wish.

12. A devil/caster/demon/warlock has set a fire using hell fire and it can only be quenched by the waters from a spring in Celestia

13. A Devil prince coerces you to sabotage the wedding of one of his political rivals.

14. A besieged city holds a tournament to mock their enemies. The King asks you to sneak into the city and win the tournament to demoralize them.

15. A wizard believes he has discovered the location of the wreckage of a legendary battleship, but so has his rival. You must recover the arcane weaponry from the wreck before the opposing team does.

16. You are hired to perform a filibuster in the legislative body of a monstrous nation. It proves dangerous.

17. An ancient and complex prison facility for extraplanar criminals is malfunctioning. The party must repair it as a group of imps attempts to use the facility against them.

18. The party is sent to investigate the disappearance of a missionary cleric in a vast and dark jungle. Investigation reveals that the cleric has instead been converted by the demon-worshiping jungle people and now mobilizes them against his former mission.

19. Gnolls have dug up the severed head of a lich in the desert, and it has promised them great power if they reunite him with his body.

20. A band of Drow (or similarly evil humanoids) comes to town claiming to be not evil and seeking asylum.

21. Ghostly dryads haunt the grove where their tree was destroyed and they can only be put to rest if the grove is replanted.

22. A werewolf, seemingly immune to wolfs bane and silver terrorizes a village. He is in fact a barghest.

23. A ruined tower is in fact a colossal animated object.

24. A yeth hound poses as a wounded blink dog.

25. The pc’s seek an item buried within a grove sacred to a centaur tribe.

26. A delver tunneling under the city is causing earthquakes.

27. The characters are sent to a primitive island to retrieve an item/find a treasure/seek an npc. The island is filled with dinosaurs, near-humanoids, and dire animals. As the pc’s explore the island they begin to devolve, as do their animal companions, mounts, familiars, etc.

28. The mayor, sheriff, high priest, has been replaced by doppelgangers.

29. A white dragon is freezing ships and carrying them off to his glacial home.

30. A major port is now home to spawning dragon turtles.

31. Dryads have taken loggers hostage.

32. All news and shipments from a dwarven stronghold have stopped; the king frees a Duergar attack.

33. Ettercaps have poisoned village children and carried them off, the pc’s know they have a limited window in which to rescue the children before they are eaten (as ettercaps like to let their dinner hang and liquefy before eating).

34. Hippogriffs, run off their mountain roosts by a red dragon, have begun devouring cattle.

35. All the townspeople in a village have contracted lycanthropy and become were-moose at the full moon. The group must discover that the alchemist upstream of the village’s water supply has been experimenting with dangerous chemicals to turn his beloved pet albino moose, Alabaster, into a sentient best friend.

36. The pc’s break a law in an unjust and evil land while doing something good, but are later pursued by a zelekhut for their actions.

37. The elementals that power a dwarven forge have broken free and must be captured without harming them.

38. A thief tells the party about a dragon graveyard that contains the treasure of a dozen hoards, but is haunted by ghostly-dragon guardians.

39. The pc’s require the help of a lillend, but she refuses unless the party’s bard can impress her with his musical abilities.

40. Ice mephits have frozen the town’s well.

41. Merfolk are waylaying ships from traveling over a sacred coral reef.

42. A gelatinous cube, used to eat waste, has escaped the sewer and must be lured back down.

43. Drunken satyrs have carried off a number of women from the village.

44. Will o’ the Wisps are luring people to their swamp.

45. All the animals in the village have collected on a hill nearby and refused to come down.

46. A splinter cult of Drow are kidnapping townspeople and sacrificing them to a powerful aranea sorceress, they worship as an avatar of Loth.

47. The pc’s hired by a local politician that fears he will be poisoned at an upcoming banquet.

48. Thieves have stolen dragon eggs and put the entire town in jeopardy as the angry mother wreaks havoc.

49. The “haunted forest” is actually filled with awakened creatures.

50. A mage’s guild seeks thieves to steal an artifact that will hamper the use of magic. They plan to use it to control all magic in the city.

51. A stray cat taken in by the pc’s is the familiar of an enemy spell-caster.

52. Mongrelmen living under the city are demanding citizenship and full rights.

53. The local wizard’s college wants to hire the pc’s to capture some new familiars.

54. A con artist posing as a priest is fleecing peasants.

55. The pc’s must stop an angry mob from attacking a peaceful tribe of orcs.

56. A glacier has been discovered with an enormous, nightmarish creature inside and the ice is beginning to melt.

57. The pc’s are asked to serve as guardian to a young noble whose parents have been killed.

58. The pc’s must smuggle a message into a besieged city.

59. A dying dragon holds a contest to give away pieces from its hoard.

60. Lizardman-half-Mindflayers are being spotted in the marshes outside town.

61. A vigilante is killing evil criminals in town. The party is hired to capture him, while the people view him as a hero and champion of good despite his methods.

62. Something has driven all the game from the kings hunting grounds.

63. Prisoners are being sold to mindflayers.

64. Marble carved from a newfound quarry is animating.

65. The prison has been taken over by the prisoners.

66. When the well goes dry, the villagers discover a glowing portal to Sigil.

67. A wizard/engineer wants help capturing elementals to power airships.

68. A wizard polymorphed into a chimera is attacking caravans.

69. The pc’s must acquire an artifact from the hoard of a fiendish-black dragon that resides in the swamps of Othrys on the plane of Carceri.

70. People are disappearing and paintings of the missing are showing up in the inn/temple/manor.

71. Fiendish weasels are terrorizing a farmers chicken coop. The family is on the edge of hunger and ruin.

72. A group of wild elves hire the pc’s to escort their clan to a new home in the Beastlands.

73. Something is causing the dead to rise from the local cemetery.

74. After a dark omen all cure spells function as inflict spells.

75. Wererats are stealing children and infecting them with lycanthropy.

76. After a Drow priestess is hanged, women in the city begin giving birth to spiders.

77. The pc’s encounter a strange man on the road how casts a spell on them/gives them a potion, shortly after they arrive in town to see (with their arcane sight) that half the town are actually changelings.

78. A farmer finds a possessed tablet in his field and begins going on a killing rampage.

79. The city’s most powerful adventurers return from questing in a temple of Tharzidun.

80. A child has been bitten by a rare spider, and the only antidote requires some of the spiders venom.

81. A vampiric bard is dining on the finest artists in town.

82. A pc learns that his family lost a powerful legacy item to a dragon. The item is still in the dragon’s hoard.

83. The party is left to raise a brood of silver dragon wyrmlings after their mother is slain.

84. A child is possessed by a demon and must be exorcised.

85. The pc’s are shipwrecked and must build a raft to escape.

86. A child in the slums is spouting doomsday prophecies and is gathering a large following.

87. The pc’s are drugged and forced into naval service by a violent press-gang.

88. The party’s warriors are invited to participate in the alabaster cup (Com. Warrior).

89. The party is approached by an npc that claims to have detailed evidence of an assassination plot. The npc even shows them plans that he stole from the assassin. After the attempt is made, the pc’s are framed and they detailed evidence is found in their room at the inn.

90. An awaken golem is creating an army of warforged to wipe the lands free of living beings.

91. A barbarian horde threatens to invade unless someone can defeat their leader in single combat.

92. The new mayor of a rural village is a Rakshasa.

93. A massive egg has appeared in the village square and cracks are forming.

94. Each night eerie organ music can be heard from the ruin manor on the hill; in the morning, a townsperson is missing.

95. Lightning continues to strike the same gravestone every night for the last week.

96. A wizard, pretending to be goodly, hires the pc’s to retrieve his “stolen” spell book from a rival.

97. Cultists have obtained a scroll of Crushing Fist of Spite (BoVD) and intend on releasing it on the countryside.

98. A party member’s soul has been purchased/stolen/bartered for, by Asmodeus and the party must debate the Devil lord to get it back.

99. A gnoll army sweeps from the north, their leader wields what appears to be the Triple Flail of Yeenoghu, Demon Prince of Gnolls.

100. A Cauldron of Zombie Spewing (BoVD) has been unearthed in an ancient ruin by clerics of Neurull.

101. A mad cleric has resurrected the stuffed monster in the party’s favorite inn.

Another 101 quests

The first 101 D&D Quest Ideas can be found here.

 

Buy me an 1/18 of a cup of coffee
D&D 5E Core Rulebook Gift Set
Dungeon Mayhem – D&D Card Game
Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

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3 Games of Chance for Your Fantasy RPG

Posted in D&D 3.5, D&D 4e Content, D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2011 by boccobsblog

Gambling is a reoccurring theme in fantasy novels, games, and films. I guess since they have no TVs or Xboxs all Orcs have to do when they have down time from their pillaging is to throw dice and play cards. Today I wanted to show a few games that could be used in-game to add realism and depth to your campaign’s tavern experience.

For brevity’s sake I will not be going into rules or mechanics of each game, but I will provide links to their site so you can find more information.

Three Dragon Ante

This is supposed to be the premiere card game in the D&D multiverse. TDA works well as a stand-alone card game and is quick and easy enough to be worked into an adventure without taking up the whole night. TDA (and really all of the games mentioned today) give you a great opportunity to role play and let those charismatic players shine. One thing that I really like about TDA is that it has a section in the rule book that lets you us character skills to affect the card game. This option really lets players feel like they didn’t waste those skill points and have a great deal of fun in the process. At the link provided above, you can get a free copy of the rulebook and TDA quest ideas.

Harrow

Not to be outdone by Wizards of the Coast, Paizo has created their own card game for the Pathfinder world. Harrow is a stand-alone card game that can be played in-game or out. One cool feature about Harrow, is that it is can also be used as a future telling device as well. According to Paizo’s website, Harrow features the artwork of Kyle Hunter, whose comics have appeared in Dungeon Magazine.

The Red Dragon Inn: Gambling? I’m In!

This is actually nine games inspired by Slug fest Game’s The Red Dragon Inn, and can be used interchangeably. I had a chance to demo this game (not all nine, but the main game and two others) at last year’s Gen Con and they were all easy to learn and enjoyable. The game includes a 90-card deck and rules for all nine games that can be played as a stand-alone or in-character in any fantasy RPG.

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101 D&D Quest Ideas

Posted in D&D 3.5, D&D 3.5 e Content, D&D 3.5e DM Content, D&D 4e Content, D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 18, 2011 by boccobsblog
  1. News spreads that a dragon was slain while away from his cave, a search for its unguarded hoard is underway
  2. A thief has stolen a powerful item from a lich and then joins the party for protection
  3. A wizard/collector wants a live troll to study
  4. Rat catchers are going missing under the city and a plague is spreading in their absence
  5. A local caster has summoned a creature that they cannot contain and it is destroying the area
  6. A charismatic charlatan claims (and has proof) to be the cousin/brother/son of one of the PCs
  7. A wandering merchant trades a pc for their magic item for a fake he claims is more powerful
  8. Shipments from a nearby mine have stopped when the PCs investigate they find the miners crazed and covered with red welts apparently from exposure to a new element they uncovered
  9. A white dragon is driving monsters from the north into the southern lands
  10. A planar rift has formed and outsiders are seeping through
  11. A powerful noble/wizard is hosting a masquerade ball where the guests are polymorphed into monster as their costume, but an actual monster attends to kill the noble/wizard
  12. A sorcerer has died of old age, strange things are creeping out of his tower as his spells, and dweomers break down
  13. A map has been found that leads to parts of an artifact that once reassembled, will summon a fiendish kraken
  14. The dead are rising as zombies one hour after their death
  15. Slavers are capturing peasants and merchants on the highway and selling them to mindflayers
  16. A shop/traveling merchant sells pets/familiars that are actually polymorphed people
  17. The PC’s are sent to find a hermit that lives on the “moving island”, a zircon/dragon turtle
  18. A traveling circus/faire comes to town and completely vanishes in the morning with several children
  19. An Ur priest cult is killing all the divine casters in the area
  20. Water drawn from a certain well is animating into water elementals/mephits
  21. An evil druid has taken up residence in the sewers and is waging a guerilla war on civilization
  22. Anyone who reads a cursed book, brought into town by an adventuring party, dies after reading it
  23. A killer is leaving rare flowers in the mouths of his victims
  24. A member of a planar cartographical society offers the PCs membership into the elite group if they can complete a scavenger hunt that leads them across several planes in one day
  25. A mysterious helmed/hooded/masked figure has forged an impressive army by bringing tribes of kobolds, goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins under one banner. The leader is actually a cleric disheartened by the lack of faith and respect of his flock and means to increase belief and prayer for his deity by leading an army of wolves against his flockHave you see D&D vs Rick & Morty?
  26. The owner of a failing inn claims to have the entrance to a mysterious dungeon in his cellar hoping that the ruse will draw business from adventurers
  27. A pack of displacer beasts/displacer beast lord is preying on farm animals and farmers alike
  28. Two rival gangs are actually devils and demons fighting a Blood War battle on the city streets
  29. The daughter/apprentice of a caster that polymorphed himself into a golden cup and placed himself in the hoard of a green dragon in an attempt to learn more about dragons, but it has been weeks and he has not come home contacts the PCs
  30. Reports that a gold dragon is ravaging the countryside turn out to be true. The dragon, sick with a rare disease, has gone mad and must be stopped
  31. Grave robbers working for a necromancer are running out of graves and start looking for easy prey
  32. A “red” dragon demanding tributes from a village is actually an especially greedy copper dragon
  33. A killer is released from prison and the father of one of his victims stages a similar murder in the hopes of framing him
  34. A traveling “holy man” is selling relics that disappear in the morning
  35. The new judge is in fact a devil hoping to harvest souls for not guilty verdicts
  36. A logging camped is being haunted by the ghost of a treant/forest haunt and his dryad followers
  37. A band of fey has been stealing wine from a rural tavern
  38. A good and helpful aranea has been captured and tried for murder while the true culprit is a drider that resides close by
  39. A college that teaches science over magic opens and arcane casters start going missing
  40. Drug-related deaths lead the PCs to an evil alchemist
  41. The PCs are hired to retrieve a meteor, but find it is being worshipped by a tribe of goblins/orcs/lizardmen etc.
  42. Several women in the area are pregnant under strange circumstances, an incubus is to blame
  43. An artifact is needed to avert a major catastrophe; its last known owner was Levistus the arch devil trapped within a glacier
  44. The PCs must find a rare herb only known to grow within Gith monasteries
  45. The PCs visit a strange village where all the people are simulacrums, an ancient wizards mark is seen everywhere
  46. The PCs are sent to a distant land to find an NPC that it turns out has been dead for 20 years
  47. The PCs must help a conflicted Erinyes to the Cradle of Creation (phb2) to be reborn into a non-evil body
  48. A map leading to the legendary Shield of Praetor has been found, it states that the shield is in the cave of a dracolich. The map was sent by the dracolich’s minions in the hopes of freeing their master who is sealed magically into his cave
  49. A local orphanage is actually run by a demonic cultist that sacrifices the weak children and raises the strong ones to be followers
  50. A powerful artifact that will allow teleportation through the layers of the abyss/hells has been uncovered and a race to claim it has begun. The PCs must beat the groups of devils and demons that see the artifact as a powerful tool to end the Blood War

    Grab a copy of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

  51. An overmatched Marut seeks assistance with a powerful lich/vampire/mummy
  52. Rumors of “The most powerful sword” lead the PCs to an evil, intelligent, dancing sword that can animate other weapons to fight for it
  53. The PCs are sent to a battlefield to retrieve a family heirloom from a missing soldier where a necromancer and his corpse collector golem are raising the fallen as undead
  54. A cult of Tiamat have discovered a spell that ages living creatures and they are trying to use it on dragon eggs to raise powerful allies
  55. The PCs are sent to deal with a raiding ogre that turns out to be a gnome illusionist
  56. The PCs are looking for an arrow used to slay a dragon a hundred years earlier, but when they pull the arrow from the dragon’s skeleton, it animates and attacks
  57. The PCs need the help/information of a treant that will only add them if they agree to be shrunk down to clear out an infestation of insects that invaded his roots
  58. The PCs are invited to a Three Dragon Ante tourney, either as guards, VIPs, or to play
  59. A lawful good lich (Monsters of Faerun) seeks the PCs to protect him from a zealous paladin on a quest to rid the world of undead
  60. Thieves have plundered a tomb and until his golden burial mask is returned, a ghost/ghast/specter will continue to kill innocent people
  61. A group of fire giants has taken up residence in an inactive volcano, their activity threatens to awaken the volcano and cause widespread devastation
  62. A grandmotherly, if slightly senile, NPC asks the players to rid her attic of rats. The rats are in fact a group of thieves trying to open a magical doorway left by the wizard that previously owned the home
  63. A monster seen roaming close to town is actually a cursed person and not evil
  64. The PCs find a genie in a bottle, but the genie agrees to help/grant wishes/serve only after the players travel to the City of Brass and save someone the genie cares about
  65. The PCs find a wounded angel that is being hunted by powerful outsiders
  66. A newly discovered dungeon is actually a complex trap to harvest souls/magic/life energy
  67. The PCs must break an innocent man from a complex magical prison
  68. Murders attributed to a small girl are being done by her doll, a slaymate (libris motris)
  69. An ancient beholder has gone mad and his destroying the Underdark, driving monsters to the surface
  70. A gnome settlement has been overrun by Drow displacing hundreds of citizens
  71. A mad wizard has been selling potions that have poisonous/odd effects
  72. Mind flayers are draining people of their quintessence in hopes of using the substance to return to the far realm from which aberrations came
  73. A spelljammer has crashed in a remote forest/jungle and the inhabitants seek materials to repair their helm
  74. A foreign diplomat seeks the party’s monk to protect him on a mission to a country/city where magic and weapons are not allowed
  75. The tarrasque is wreaking havoc on the countryside and the party (lvl 10ish) must slow it down until the champions (20th) can arrive, but the tarrasque is actually a simulacrum (cr 10) sent by an outsider/caster/etc. and not the real thing
  76. Cultist seek a tablet that depicts a ritual that will summon a Fist of Spite (BoVD)
  77. The party must save an NPC from the stomach demiplane of Dalmosh (MM5)
  78. The guild master of the cooper’s guild wants to discredit the owner of a local winery with whom he has had an argument by poisoning his barrels
  79. A local sage/astronomer is convinced that a massive meteor is going to strike the kingdom/city/town
  80. The normally-inert gargoyles atop the temple/castle/mansion have animated and started attacking people who approach the building
  81. A group of bulettes is keeping anyone from entering or leaving the city/town/inn
  82. A doppelganger/changeling serial killer claims the identity of their most recent victim for one week before killing again
  83. A gnome settlement has been overrun by fiendish duergar led by a demon
  84. PCs seek out a powerful dwarven, smith who traded his soul to Asmodeus for unearthly crafting abilities. Before the smith will help the PCs, they must reclaim his soul from the arch devil
  85. The players find/are sent to a city that reflects the entire multiverse scaled down with a neutral inn in the center run by a power caster
  86. The PCs search for a legendary library that when found, has no books only the corpses of long-dead sages and librarian clerics that use speak with dead to obtain the knowledge
  87. The PCs need a party member/NPC raised from the dead but the only cleric powerful enough to do so has recently been turned by a vampire he was hunting
  88. The PCs find/buy/are given a strange bag of holding that has a small pocket dimension inside it where a frightened caster hides. He/she created the bag to hide in and saw that it ended up in the PCs hands to keep it safe
  89. The PCs seek an answer/information from a forgotten bard. When they find him, he is a ghost and he will only help them if they give him peace by finishing his final poem/song/movement
  90. A chaotic good horselord (CAd) has led all the horses in the region/city/town away into the hills to freedom
  91. The huntsman of a local lord/mayor has kidnapped the NPC’s daughter, and only a highly trained tracker can follow the trail and find the girl
  92. An aged and grizzled warrior is going town to town offering his magic sword/shield/armor to any fighter that can best him in honorable combat
  93. After returning from a diplomatic journey, the noble/diplomat/prince/queen is acting strangely. The PCs are asked to look into it only to find that the NPC is a doppelganger/changeling/simulacrum/charmed/possessed
  94. A pair of ethereal filchers are stealing all the curative magic in the area/city/town
  95. The answer/riddle/name/code that the PCs require is etched onto the helm of a massive golem that paces a deadly dungeon
  96. Monthly full moon attacks are blamed on a good lycan, and are actually being carried out by a pack of Moon Rats (MM2)
  97. Summoned Thoqqua threaten to compromise the structural integrity of the city/town/inn/dungeon/ as they melt tunnels through the ground below
  98. Centaur knights (phb2) are running any humanoid from their forest
  99. The PCs are sought by the patrons of a desert land where a despotic temple of cleric charges impossibly high rates for fresh water to people not of their faith
  100. A temple has hired a large number of bards for a festival where music is to be played from sun up until sundown, the only problem is that no one recalls the obscure holiday because it is a ruse to mask the sound of tomb robbers breaking into sealed vaults below the church
  101. A xenophobic elvish lord has begun to arrest non-elves after his daughter eloped with a human

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101 D&D Quest Ideas

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D&D 5E Core Rulebook Gift Set
Dungeon Mayhem – D&D Card Game
Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

 

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D&D Props

Posted in D&D 3.5e DM Content, D&D 4e Content, D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2011 by boccobsblog

D&D Prop

Warner Bros. Props Department

Here is a list of possible props for use with your D&D, Savage Worlds, Pathfinder, World of Darkness or any fantasy setting.

Beggar’s cup – put a few coins in to make noise, extend the cup to a player (form them to place a coin in), and tilt it so they can see a message folded up inside

Scrolls – Spells printed on parchment and sealed with wax and a seal or a ribbon

Sand timer/ hour-glass – I have always wanted to place a massive hourglass on the timer and announce that the players have one hour to exit the dungeon

Coins – Chocolate coins, foreign coins, or if you really want to shine: Campaign Coins

Lock Picks – Maybe the players didn’t know the NPC was a rogue in disguise until they search his room

Jewelry – I found awesome junk rings and brooches at the Good Will store for next to nothing (unless you count the weird looks from the lady at the counter or the hours of mocking from my wife)

Rocks or Geodes – Tumbled rocks can be purchased at a craft store for cheap. Maybe the work as keys or a spell focus

Compass – Maybe it points to treasure, or the last owner’s killer

Weapons – Every geek has a sword or a mace from the flea market or the Ren faire. Just don’t get all hopped up on Mountain Dew and start swinging it at folks

Sealed Letters – Card shops and specialty store carry fancy envelopes and stationary fit to write an invite to Castle Ravenloft on. Maybe find someone who can knows calligraphy to write the letter for you

Leather pouches – place several small coins, picks, props, notes, red herrings, in there and let the players figure it all out

Game board – I think we’ve all used a chess puzzle at one point or another

Cards – Skip a combat encounter and play a few hands of Three Dragon Ante with your players in their favorite tavern and give them xp for role-playing. Maybe use poker chips or campaign coins

Tarot cards – Read your players fortune and drop hints about upcoming adventures or let the cards write the next adventure for you

Runes – Take flat rocks and paint strange symbols on them. Make custom runes from clay, Sculpey, or Fimo. Place a codex in the dungeon to decode them

Keys – Buy some old skeleton at a junk shop or antique store. Use a fine tip Sharpie or a knife point to make cryptic markings on them

Books – Take an old book from the used bookstore or antique shop and hollow it out, or underline certain words that make a different message

Spell book, journal, – Take a blank book and fill it with dark symbols, runes, sketches, bits of information, lies, misdirection, distress, burn, waterlog the text to make it look ancient. Check out sites on Mythos Tomes to get ideas and inspiration

Puzzle Lock – One year at Gen Con, I went through a True Dungeon Session and we had to pick a lock, rather than rolling dice, the DM had an actual puzzle lock that we had to figure out. There are several degrees of locks available on the web, some are quite challenging

Old bottles – add water, a drop of food color, a cork and you got a potion.

Wooden Puzzle– I found some wooden puzzles at Mejiers for five dollars. My players kept finding small wooden pieces, and finally a strangely shaped lock. (note: you may want to build in a secondary path or make the locked room not essential to the adventure so things don’t grind to a halt if the players can’t figure out the puzzle.)

Puzzle Box– Hide maps, secrets, deeds, etc. in a false bottom

Wand/ Staff – Take a stick from your yard, sand off the bark with coarse grit sandpaper, then smooth with a fine grit. Add a “crystal” to the tip by gluing on a piece of rock salt or quartz. If you really want to get detailed, you could add runes with a knife or a wood burning tool

Figurine – A small glass or wooden animal could serve as a figurine of wondrous power.

Globe – Find an old globe at a yard sale, junk shop or Craigslist and repaint it with your game world map.

Gems – Take plastic or glass ‘gems’ from a craft store like Michael’s or Hobby Lobby and use them as gems, or Ioun stones

Hit those junk, antique, and resale shops, as well as the Ren faire and find a prop for your game. If you’re willing to sculpt a story around the object, anything can serve as a great prop.

 

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How Teaching Helps Me Be A Better DM

Posted in D&D 3.5e DM Content, D&D 4e Content, D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 28, 2011 by boccobsblog

When I’m not writing blog posts or running games, I work as an English instructor at my local community college. The longer I teach, the more I see my teacher-side creeping into my game table, and I think this is actually a good thing. Several of the strategies I use in the classroom have actually provided more enjoyment and an all-around better game (at least in my opinion).

Give your players homework

I find giving my players some small task to do during downtime creates a richer role-playing experience and helps to foster better-developed characters. I always offer some reward as an incentive, usually in the way of XP, but you could offer gold, items, or possibly agree to indulge the play in a side quest or goal.

Examples:

  • Write a summary of the night’s adventure
  • Write a back story for their character
  • Detail the contents of their backpack (a braid of his wife’s hair, the flint his father carried, etc). This one really helps create back story and depth.
  • Map the dungeon or countryside
  • Create a code by which the character lives (I’ve found the easiest way is to make a list of things the player will never do, harm a child, steal from the poor, etc. It helps to define their alignment for them.)
  • Detail a fear or phobia the character has and why
  • Write a brief summary of what your character’s goals are
  • Create a family tree
  • Ask bards to write a poem or a story

Give handouts

As a teacher I like my students to have something tangible they can look at after class and think about we’ve worked on. The same holds true for the game table; as a PC and a DM I enjoy these handouts immensely, especially maps. This may seem weird (but I’m sure I’m not alone on this), but I enjoy looking at maps of the game world and trying to imagine what secrets reside on those hexes, what adventures are waiting for me.

Note: I think handouts differ from props slightly. We’ll cover props in a different article. Where did I put my foam sword…?

Examples:

  • Maps (hand-drawn is fine by me)
  • Fiction from the game world (Pepper these in with the treasure, they will add depth, explain back-story or world history without bogging down the session. The Elder Scrolls series of video games does this seamlessly.)
  • Letters (use a font that resembles hand writing, and don’t be afraid to spill something on it or burn the edges, it’s a bit junior high, but so what it adds flavor. Download a rune font or elvish script.)
  • NPC Portraits (use the archive here, print them out on card stock or photo paper— 4.25×5.5 so you can fit four to a page.)
  • Menus (What’s for dinner at the local tavern?)
  • Treasure Maps (Use these a unique treasure that sets you up for a side quest, don’t level scale either, a treasure hunt should be rough, and have a huge payout)
  • Wanted Posters (makes for great side quests, again don’t level scale, let the gold piece value of the reward and the list of crimes give the players an indication of the difficulty)
  • Scrolls (print of the spell’s effect, maybe print it on parchment-style paper. Seal it with wax if you want to go from handout to prop. This idea also serves to save time during combat. Your player doesn’t have to stop and look up the spell in question. Find obscure spells or spells your player won’t normally take)
  • Newspaper (ok this may seem silly, but in the right setting, Sigil, Sharn, etc it might make perfect sense.)

Make time to plan your class

Students (and players) can tell when you’ve thrown a game together at the last second. It really hurts the game experience because it puts your players closer to reality, while the purpose of role-playing is to immerse yourself in a secondary world and lose yourself for a few hours. One thing that I find that helps with campaign planning is to keep a log of all the happening in the night’s adventure. Keep a list of people and places that players interact with. You will be amazed at how many adventure hooks the players will create for you. (The guy they picked a fight with at the tavern, the person whose pocket they picked, the loved ones of the monster or npc they killed. Etc) While occasionally it is fun to play a session on the fly, more often than not you’ll want a series of possibilities open, and unless you run a pre-planned world, you’ll need to sit down and prep. (Note: We ran an article a while back that provided prep-time reducing handouts for the DM, a list of NPC names by race, and a list of treasures by encounter level. Both can be found here.)

Give course evaluations

Evaluations, when given in a thoughtful, honest manner, can make you a better teacher. If my students didn’t care for a certain text or film, I generally choose something different the next time I teach the course. The great thing about teaching at the college level is that every sixteen weeks I get to try things differently.

The same approach holds true at the table. Ask your players for honest feedback. Ask your players what they like and write to that. I have some players for example, that could really do without combat, while I can’t remove all they action from the game, and I always try to put some level of mental challenge or puzzle in for that player when they’re present. Sometimes DMs write for themselves rather than for their players. Don’t be afraid to ask your players what they like and dislike about your game. It may be awkward at first, but it will lead to a more enjoyable experience.

-Andy

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How to Make Tokens for Any Game System

Posted in D&D 3.5 e Content, D&D 3.5e DM Content, D&D 4e Content, D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, D&D Next, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, The Crafty DM with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2010 by boccobsblog

It is hard to match the coolness of gaming with 3D miniatures and terrain, but miniatures can get expensive. A cheaper alternative to miniatures is 2D tokens. Tokens have two major advantages over miniatures: they are much cheaper, and you can create a token to accurately match any creature in your game regardless of system or genre.  Best of all, tokens are very simple to make.

Materials List

Time and patience (seriously)                    Circular paper punch

Photo paper                                                       Chipboard

Glue stick                                                            Wax paper

Digital images

Step one

Select the images that you want to make tokens of. You can find anything you need by simply running a Google image search. I take my images directly from Wizards of the Coast. You have to search around (or click this link), to find them, but all the art from all the 3.0/3.5 books can be found free of charge. (That is one problem I have with 4th edition, most of the art galleries require a DDI subscription)

Step two

Once you have the images that you want, paste them into a Word or Publisher document. I have seen other sites mention fancy token making software and Photoshop programs, but you don’t need any of those. Simply paste your images onto a MS Word document placing them in even lines. By double clicking the image on the page, you can adjust its size, color, etc.

For some large pictures, you may want to crop the portion that you intend to use. Again, you don’t need fancy software, your computer’s Paint program will work just fine. Make sure the image is larger than the token. For example, a tiny, small, or medium token will be a one-inch circle, so make you image 1.25 – 1.5 inches to ensure you don’t lose any part of the image when you cut it.

Also, don’t bother trying to make a fancy border around your picture, they are hard to cut out and take up valuable space.

Step three

Once you have your images arranged on a Word document, you’re ready to print them out. Use a high-grade photo paper. It costs more, but the added quality is worth the cost.

Learn from my mistakes. In the past I have tried several different paper types, sticker paper (don’t cut cleanly, and the image is grainy), various cardstocks (any images will be low quality) to name a few, photo paper is your best bet.

Step four

Once your images are printed out, you’re ready to cut. (Note: the printer ink will likely still be wet on your photo paper, so be careful and allow it an hour to dry before messing with it)

Save yourself a world of trouble and purchase a circle cutter from your local scrapbook store. They come in various sizes, and you will need a 1” punch for tiny, small, and medium, a 2” for large, a 3” for huge, a 4” inch for gargantuan, and a 6” for colossal (but you will use this one so rarely you can skip it and cut out squares if you like).

By using these punches, you will save yourself a great deal of trouble and frustration. I started out with just a 1” punch and tried to cut the larger monster into squares. The end product (regardless of the tools used), was not high quality. The circle punch will give you a perfect cut every time and look amazing.

Marvy or EKsuccess brands work well

Step five

Next, you will need to glue the circle onto a sturdier material. Some sites recommend washers, but that can get costly, take up more room and weigh a ton. Just use chipboard (thin cardboard) that you can get for next to nothing at the scrapbook store where you bought your circle punch. Punch out several chipboard circles. Glue your photo paper images onto the chipboard circles with glue and you’re nearly done.  (Note: don’t try and save time by gluing the photo paper to the chipboard and then trying to punch out the images, the photo paper/chipboard combo will be too thick and you’ll get ragged cuts)

Final step

Place your tokens on a flat, hard surface, cover with a piece of wax paper, and place several heavy books on top. Leave the tokens to dry for several hours.

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