New Vanguard Warbands

In case you don't follow the Mantic Blog (link below), today they released the stats for the previously missing factions.  The new stuff is at the end of the Warband Creation Guide in the free rules.

As always these are somewhat abbreviated, as they plan to eventually release full ranges for all faction with extra models, rather as they have already done in the game's launch with the Northern Alliance, Abyss, Nightstalkers and Basileans.

I might start looking at building 15mm warbands for my Varangur, and the Kingdoms of Men should inspire myself and Merlin to do some historical variants to go with our Greeks etc.

The Mantic blog also mentions some of the future plans for expanding the miniatures range, there's some exciting looking developments there.

2018 - That Was The Year That Was

As 2018 draws to a close its traditional to look back on what a blogger has achieved; which of the goals set in the heady days of the beginning of the year have been met and which have been missed.  And possibly most interesting, which new projects sneaked up and were done (or at least started).
Last year about this time I set myself quite modest goals.  Did I meet them?  Let's go through each goal and see.

Paint Star Saga and Dreadball minis, no.  Despite getting the final chunk of stuff for Star Saga (and very nice it is too)  I haven't done any of this (actually I began a Nameless DZ force, but gave up when I couldn't get my colour scheme to work, nothing got finished), nor have I played Dreadball, though I did get in a game of Star Saga.

Finish (the current batch of) 15mm League of Rhordia for Kings of War, yes, though they met a terrible fate when the box fell out of the loft.  Not even the best magnetic basing is going to save that.  They aren't ruined, but so far I have found it too dispiriting to do much more than look at them.  Do 15mm Varangur for KoW, no.  some have been finished in their other role as Scythians, but I don't have a working KoW army yet.

D&D and terrain building; well, if you've read any of my recent posts you'll know that the long running 4th edition D&D game has finished.  I'm writing it up starting here.  I made a fair bit of terrain for it, and also painted some minis.  I also experimented with different sorts of floor plans, and although they have been used for my 5th edition group rather than the 4E games, I have at last made a set of Wylock style dungeon tiles.  I haven't posted about these yet, but the accompanying cave tiles are shown starting here.

I did build enough 15mm cottages etc to run a 15mm Dragon Rampant version of Bloodbath at Orc's Drift, and painted the elven force for the first game.  There are a few posts about it on the blog, here is a write up of the first battle, we haven't got any further than this yet!  I hope we can finish the campaign next year.  I also got a bit of terrain built for 15mm, altogether a satisfying year for this scale (apart from unexpected army drops).

I got the Battle Companies book, though so far I've held out against the new version of the rules.  I'd really like to read a good comparison with the old rules before I buy.
I painted a new Battle Company of orcs and got a couple of games in, but against dwarves I did so badly, and other new shiny stuff cropped up, that I haven't got any further with this.

I haven't touched my exEmpire/Kingdom's of Men stuff all year.  Maybe next year?

I did manage to get in more games though.  This was a big goal for me, as I did so much RPG that I hardly ever got any other gaming done.  In 2018 I did get at least one game per month, at least on averages.  This included finishing the Nexus Psi campaign for Deadzone, a whole day of Kings of War battles to play out a short, escalating three game campaign, several games of Kings of War Historical, including our small scale variant, Clash!, games of Star Saga and Dungeon Saga, Dragon Rampant, including the first of my DR adaptations of the classic Bloodbath at Orc's Drift campaign, a couple of games of Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, some Frostgrave and a game of Vanguard.  There may well have been some more games as well, but since several of the above were more than one game, I certainly managed the 'one game a month' goal.

Now for the extras.  The foray into 15mm for DR somehow ended up with me collecting and painting a decent sized 15mm Greek force for Kings of War Historical.  With Merlin, who is now a writer on this blog as well, we came up with a framework for small sized KoWH battles that we called Clash!, and we have had several games of this and some larger KoWH battles.  We looked at the lists given in the rulebook and revised them somewhat based on our understanding of the type of game we wanted.  I have yet to show off this army, I'll get a post done on them soon (UPDATE; here).  As I mentioned above, I also finished some of my Scythians.  These make a quite powerful army in KoWH, especially against a largely infantry army like the Greeks.  They will eventually do double duty as KoW Varangur, once I've sorted out some infantry and heroes for them (I already have a monster or three).
I did a bit more for Frostgrave, and played that a bit too, though nothing major.
With the imminent arrival of Mantic's Vanguard skirmish system I painted up an orc force.  I've so far played one game, and hope to get some more in in the new year.

Kickstarter wise, Dreadball landed at the start of the year.  I loved this game in its first edition, though there were some balance issues, and a tendency for 'new team power creep'.  The new edition aims to address this, but I haven't yet (in nearly a year) played it.
Terrain Crate arrived, which focused my painting on that for a while, (I should class that as painting for D&D), but I still have far more to paint than I've finished.  It is very nice stuff, and the newer sets (including the special Vanguard objectives set) look great.
The textured roller KS also completed, I have one roller printed out so far, and the results look good.
I also got the Deep Madness game.  This took a long time to complete due to the massive popularity of the game. It looks fun, though I'll admit my main reason for backing this was for the minis which I intended to use in the 4th Edition D&D campaign.  That of course has finished, and we never got to the section that required hordes of mutated citizens.  I'll give the game a go though as I think it's my sort of thing, and its got a solo mode too.

A major change is my adoption of the five box system for organising my projects.  In brief it gives me a limited number of projects to work on, and I give myself permission to switch from one to another without feeling I've abandoned anything.  So far it seems to be helping a lot.

So, a fairly busy year hobby wise.  Looking back I am surprised I kept on track with so many projects, though I'm shamefully aware of the targets I neglected.  I've also got a few projects to go back to and photograph and post and things that I've shown part done that just want a catch up post.  Something for the start of next year I think.

If you want to see 2019s targets, check them out here.

All Good Things - Epic Tier

The heroes entered Epic Tier knowing that a threat to the fabric of reality faced them.  Clearly that should be the focus of their efforts, but all of the heroes had threads of backstory and character development to tie up.

I had already decided that this would be our last calendar year with this edition. The characters become so complex, and there are so many extra options available outside the books, that it is pretty much vital to use the online character and adventure tools.  I use them a lot for monsters too.  The subscription isn't cheap, so I wanted to avoid paying for an additional year.  By now I was well into a 5th edition campaign at my FLGS, and was really enjoying that system, 4th Edition didn't stand up well in comparison, but I'll talk more about that in the final post.

In brief, we had limited time, both as a group playing this edition, and in game to save reality.  Given that Proteus was an Immortal of the Sphere of Time, he was able to give the heroes a little lea-way, especially since the next adventure would take place outside the normal flow of time.
I asked each player to come up with a plot thread or two that they would like resolving in a personalised one shot.  Some came up with interesting ideas, some trusted me to come up with something (and seeing as I had to design the adventures, that made sense).  Each player ended up with a one shot focused on their character, with the other players running pregens.

In brief; Switch helped his family out and strengthened his bond with them.  At the beginning of his story he was the black sheep of the family.  He was actually called 'Gabriel Windchime' but was told in no uncertain terms to leave and switch his name. Now he was fully accepted again, and even stepped back to let his brother woo the woman he loved.

Memnon officiated in the wedding of his mother and his uncle (she had travelled with two brothers and was never sure if she chose the right one).  Alas, Morgash, who the heroes hated on principle for his allegiance to the Black Eagle, proved to have a darker master still, and when he refused to sacrifice his new bride, was taken in her place.  memnon's mother was wed and widowed the same day, but was now the leader of the new village of Eagle's Nest.

Tol explored further the Watchers of Dymrak, an organisation of rangers and druids that the player himself largely designed.  I gave them a legendary evil to track across the forest and finally imprison.
Ozzie showed that he had a duty of care to the students at Ozwarts by leading them on a trip to the Wizard's Guild in Specularum.  Unfortunately there was a malfunction with the portals and they ended up in a puzzle and trap filled tomb.  After a session that played out like the Crystal Maze, Ozzie was able to save everyone.

Kathra/Kathka's player asked for something different.  So with the reappearance of Howler, an NPC first met in the Fae Realm, and an investigation into strange phenomena connected to something called the Well of Worlds, Kathra was lost to the Nexus.  Fortunately, others were also investigating, and a pale elf emerged.  Althea was back.  I think the loss of Kathra was a real shock to the rest of the players, which I presume was the player's intent.

With all that sorted it was back to the main story.  Proteus wanted to send the heroes back to what he had identified as the critical point in time, the days leading up to the destruction of Lhomar.
For him to do this they needed an artefact called the Protean Hourglass, which was currently in the safe-keeping of a mysterious race called the Temporal Masters, and was used to direct their home, a mighty ziggurat that travelled through both space and time (and was definitely larger on the inside than on the outside).

Unfortunately, when the heroes arrived at the current location of the ziggurat, something was wrong.  There was no sign of the Temporal Masters, and parties of Carnifex were currently exploring the ziggurat and trying to take control of it. 
I based this adventure on the Dungeon magazine adventure Ziggurat Beyond Time, though I substantially altered and expanded the original.  My version of the ziggurat adventure focused on taking control of various power sources and their focusing systems.  There were two possible routes to the 'bridge' of the ziggurat, and each went through several energy type systems.  Some were protected by defence systems, others had already been taken over by the Carnifex and they and there servants were encountered in these areas.

By the time the heroes got to the bottom of the ziggurat they had learnt something of the history of the Temporal Masters and met some of them.
The triumphant heroes emerged with the hourglass and readied themselves for Proteus' next mission.
This is one adventure I wish I had done slightly differently. It didn't help that I was designing and altering the structure as the heroes were exploring it.  I think the idea of the different power sources was good, but I probably didn't need two rooms dedicated to each one.  I think the adventure would have worked better if entering the rooms had been a choice rather than the route taking the heroes through the rooms.  If they had been off the corridors and stairs then the players would have had the choice to enter or to avoid them and if they had some way of knowing what power source was in the different chambers they could have prepared in advance in many cases.

By now I felt that the campaign needed either a dramatic final adventure, or a series of smaller adventures building up to a climax.  Given the time pressure I opted for the former choice, and so the heroes found themselves back in time once more, trying to prevent the Carnifex from ripping open the portals in Lhomar and letting The Beyond in, thus destroying everything.

The heroes landed in the area between the Carnifex siege lines and the city of Lhomar.  I got the name of the city from the work of various Mystaraphiles on The Piazza.  The idea of a series of portals allowing trade and travel was my son's.  He suggested the City of Eight Stars, where each star is a gate or portal, as an interesting place for D&D adventures, and I borrowed his idea for the end point of the campaign.

I ran the final adventure a bit looser; there were several possible goals including keeping the morale of the citizens of Lhomar as high as possible, and perhaps even finding a place of safety for them.  There were various fifth columnists present in the city, and eventually a city wide revolt by the golem workers and defenders.  There was also the issue of the nightmare aura that the Carnifex projected against the populace.  Amongst other problems, it prevented the heroes benefitting from a long rest.  Fortunately (after some prompting) they remembered that the flow of time between the Natural Realm, the Shadow Realm and the Fae Realm was different, and they learned that there were portals to the different realms.  The chose wisely and entered the Shadow Realm.  After defeating the undead creatures who dwelt their, they were able to rest, and soon a group of citizens followed them seeking safety.  When the heroes revisited, only hours to them but days to the new residents, they discovered that the ennui of the realm was already having an effect.  Perhaps these were the origin of the various Shadow races that they had met during their careers?

The main goal however, was to first determine how the Carnifex planned to carry out their scheme, and then try and stop it.  A couple of commando raids to the Carnifex siege lines first prevented a horde of zombies from assaulting the city (not a danger in themselves, but when they are bodies of captives taken by the Carnifex...)
They also sabotaged an arcane siege tower who's purpose was to loose off soul energy at the portals.  Permanently sealing some of the gates put the Carnifex pan in the balance.  Unfortunately, unguarded conversation to a shape shifted serpent folk spy meant that the Carnifex were able to cobble together a back-up plan.  A strike team (including a Chaos Dragon) lifted another crystalline device into the city itself. The heroes were able to wipe out the Carnifex strike force and destroy the device just in time to prevent the plan coming to fruition.  They were unable to save Lhomar, though they guessed that this would be the case, as nothing survived of Lhomar in their time.  As bolts of soul energy blasted Lhomar to ruins (and obliterated the Carnifex army) Proteus whisked them to safety in their own time again.
The heroes triumphed, the Carnifex plan was defeated.  They may have had other plots, but that's something for the future.

Phew, that's a lot.  I'll leave the final summing up to another post.  Meanwhile perhaps you'd like to comment.  If you are one of the players, please leave your thoughts.  If you've been in a long running campaign, either as a player or a GM, tell us about it

All Good Things - Paragon Tier

I started Paragon tier with no real idea of where I wanted to go with the campaign.  I gave the characters a few months in game time to sort out their new holdings or businesses and wondered if I could tie in anything from their character backgrounds.  All the players had provided me with background material, some of it very extensive.  Each player had provided at least one interesting past event, contact or location; it was more a case of narrowing stuff down.

Tol’s player asked if he could set up a Frost Fair on Lake Windrush north of Threshold.  He wanted to run events that would help bring the peoples of Karameikos together.  I thought this sounded promising; it allowed the players to have some social interaction, emphasised their importance in the land, and could be a smooth introduction to Paragon tier.  I designed a map of the various stalls and tents on the ice and a timetable of programmed events that was based around Tols’ player’s suggestions of groups to invite.  The programme divided each of the seven days of the fair into four (morning, afternoon, evening and night).  Each block of time had at least one scheduled event and many had events that provided adventure opportunities.  A lot of the events were simply to enrich the background, and allowed the heroes to catch up with various groups they had met before, such as the Galeb-Dhur of Gorion.  There were also incidents that played on tensions which needed the heroes to address them if the fair was to be a success.  This included elves and dwarves, and Thyatians and Traldar.  There was also a list of interesting visitors, including a being from a realm of extreme cold, and the Thyatian emperor.

Alongside this was a plot line of young children going missing.  This was a hark back to the hags of Heroic tier to indicate that the less active members of the Karameikan coven were still active.  A powerful hag like creature (the Ice Queen) periodically took young girls from the surrounding settlements to train as apprentices.  She always left a substantial reward with the families, part bribe, part exchange.  Ozzie was able to use an Object Reading on a child’s doll to reveal something of the nature of the abductor. 

By the end of the fair the heroes had ensured its success, enjoyed a romantic entanglement in the case of the ranger, had met the Emperor of Thyatis and the Grand Duke, had driven off a vampire feeding on the fair-goers, and had a mystery to solve.

The frost fair was a great example of how my players were good at giving me ideas to work with.  Tol’s player had a lot of input in setting up the Frost Fair, I came up with the mechanics and the various elements that made it a fun adventure.  Furthermore, we did this during a short break form D&D which allowed us to surprise the players, just as Tol surprised the characters.

I think the adventure nicely transitioned into the new tier, with the heroes able to explore some of their new abilities and responsibilities.  Memnon was able to promote Eltan’s Spring Ale, while Switch sold pipeweed and met up with various traders to make deals.  Ozzie led a school trip and got his apprentices to provide magical services and act as general goffers.  Kathra organised a team of dwarves to fix any structural issues, essentially a maintenance team for the fair.

Once the Frost Fair was over the heroes wanted to rescue the missing girl.  A bit of investigation revealed a pattern over the years; the winters would get colder and longer, then a girl would go missing.  I had already dropped hints about the more severe winters during Heroic tier (though without a specific reason other than to increase a sense of menace and to explain why certain monsters were moving out of the mountains) so the players accepted that this was the pattern repeating itself.

The tales led them north into the debatable land between Karameikos and Darokin.  Here a small village of dwarves welcomed them, and further investigation turned up the tale of a dwarf prospector, long thought crazy, who claimed to have found a hidden valley of beautiful women.  They welcomed him, but when he stole from them they turned him out.  The dwarf had since vanished, but Ozzie was able to use a ritual he had learnt to work out where items the dwarf had stolen had come from.

The Valley of the Frost Witches was a fairly straight forward adventure.  The valley had several opportunities for adventure, including the tombs of Frost Giants, now inhabited by the Undead, and a tribe of yeti that could perhaps be swayed to the heroes cause.

Inside the Frost Witches’ ice caves the heroes battled through various cold creatures, some of the apprentice frost witches, and also encountered the souls of past victims.  The Ice Queen was willing the talk with the heroes and explained something of her history.  Ozzie realised she was a childhood acquaintance, and begged her to return with him.  She rejected his offer, and said she would allow the heroes to leave, provided they kept the valley secret.  The young girl, she said, was happier with her that she would have been with her parents.  The heroes refused, and after a long battle (including a ‘time out’ thanks to a powerful ally they met at the Frost Fair) felled the Ice Queen, though at the cost of Kathra and Ozzie’s life.

Memnon brought Ozzie back quite happily, but Kathra’s player was uncomfortable with the ease with which the spell worked.  He also was unhappy with the party killing off one of the apprentices, who was, in effect, only defending herself and following the orders of her mistress.  As a result of conversations about this I decided that the Heroes of Dymrak might be ready to face the consequences of their actions. 

The heroes returned to Knosht, location of Ozzie’s magic school.  The first bit of bad news was that Kathra was unavailable for Raise Dead, her soul refused to answer Memnon’s call.  The second was the appearance of Bargle, acting on behalf of both Baron von Hendricks and the Grand Duke.  He had a warrant for their arrest.  Switch, Tol and Ozzie agreed to accompany him, but Memnon, stung by his failure to bring Kathra back, snatched her body and fled, now an outlaw.  The three heroes found themselves well and truly under arrest.  The charge was murder, that of one of the Ice Queen’s apprentices who had been knocked senseless by the party before being dispatched by Tol and Switch.  To make matters worse, although as Court Lords they were allowed to be tried by nobles, the judge chosen for the initial hearing was von Hendricks (though he was later replaced by the Duke’s son).  With Bargle assisting the Baron was able to prove that the crime had indeed taken place, the girl was defenceless when slain.  Switch’s player found this hard to accept, after all, Switch was a tax-paying resident, whereas the girl was a monster (it was pointed out that one of the rewards the Duke had given them was exemption from tax for a year).

After much interesting and tense verbal exchange, the heroes (along with Memnon, who had surrendered himself) were found guilty.  There were extenuating circumstances, and they were punished by being given a task to perform; slay a Black Dragon that was menacing the Black Eagle Barony.  To ensure the party’s compliance, they were accompanied by an elven woman who had been one of the witnesses.  Kathra’s player brought in another character, Althea, who happened to have been the nursemaid of one of the girls taken by the Frost Witches and then killed by the heroes.  Knowing that the heroes were responsible for her charge’s death she was happy to help in their trial, and at the end agreed to try and keep them on the straight and narrow.

The next adventure involved the heroes travelling to Fort Doom and encountering Falorax the Black.  Their interactions with von Hendricks and Bargle didn’t make them change their minds about the Baron, indeed they disliked the pair even more, but were forced into compliance by the terms of the verdict, and Althea was there to keep an eye on them, though she did begin to wonder about the motives of the Black Eagle.

There was much to-ing and fro-ing with Falorax attacking Fort Doom apparently after the currently absent Bargle, then the party rushing to Knosht to defend it against Falorax, as that was where Bargle was currently dwelling.  The attack on Knosht cost the heroes Ozzie (again) and Memnon’s father, this time the wizard’s body was carried off by the dragon, preventing Memnon raising him.

Francesca, a wizard acquaintance of Ozzie’s was enlisted to help find Ozzie’s body, and take down the dragon.  The heroes traced Falorax back to his lair and fought him, eventually slaying him after learning that the dragon was in thrall to Trinkla the Black (another reference from the module AC11), a legendary, and apparently Undead, wizard, who also now was in possession of Ozzie’s body.  Falorax wasn’t finished however, his flesh sloughed off his body, and a skeletal dragon stood where he had died.  Trinkla’s voice taunted the heroes as it flew away.

Chasing the undead dragon to Trinkla’s lair, the heroes were forced to entertain the lich; this deadly game included fighting the now undead Falorax and Ozzie himself.  Once both were defeated Trinkla allowed the heroes to depart, taking their slain wizard with them.

The fights with Falorax proved exciting and suitably climactic.  The heroes faced him four times, including his dracolich form, and the first couple of times he escaped them to face them again.  I had to handle the fight against Ozzie carefully; there is a danger with putting characters against each other that the group can fracture.  For this the players were in no doubt that the Ozzie they faced was not their friend, and that they had to defeat him to get him back.  Full marks to his player who played him pretty deadly, though the combined might of the rest of the party proved too much.

Although Heroic Tier marked the end of the Eyes of Traldar campaign arc, the end of this adventure marked the point where the heroes moved away from Karameikos and became more wanderers in the wider world and beyond.  There were plenty of plot threads left dangling, some of which we returned to, but the main focus of the campaign shifted.

The newly raised Ozzie proved a darker and more sinister person.  His light-hearted approach to life seemed to have died in the swamp.  He was more driven, and had received disturbing news about his father, long thought to have died defending Knosht with Ozzie’s mother when Ozzie was just a child.  Now is seemed that what all thought was his father had in fact been a shape-shifting serpent folk. 

Ozzie wanted to trace his father’s movements and seek out his goal, the Lost Library, but he still had sufficient loyalty to want to find Kathra.  His time in the Veiled Lady’s court (my version of the Raven Queen) revealed that Kathra’s soul was not in the Shadow Realm or the natural world.  Travelling to the Shadow Realm to find out more, the heroes thwarted plans to create a powerful shadow creature that would have threatened the rule of the Veiled Lady, Immortal ruler of the realm.  In return she revealed that the dwarf's soul was elsewhere, and sent them to the Fae Realm to seek it out.  Here more of Kathra's strange backstory was revealed, and two warring tribes were reconciled.  The dwarf was once more one of the Heroes of Dymrak, though now inhabiting her sister’s body, but Althea mysteriously failed to travel with them to the Fae Realm.  The heroes learnt many things about the nature of the different realms, including the (later very significant) fact that time moved differently in each realm.

Once more reunited, the heroes traced Ozzie’s father’s travels.  In Thyatis City they became involved in the unrest of the times and uncovered a nest of serpent folk who were working to somehow take over the world.  The serpent folk answered to a larger group somewhere beyond Sind, a long way to the west.

The heroes took ship to Sind and travelled through the country to the deserts beyond.  Here they found an underground civilisation of elves and gnolls (or beastmen as Memnon insisted on calling them).  They learnt to trust these strange allies and fought a beholder for them, learning more about the threat from creatures ‘beyond’ the normal world.

The beholder lair was great fun to do, as I wanted to give a feel of something truly alien.  Given that beholders hover through the air, and have the ability to disintegrate, I thought they would have no need of flat floors.  The lair consisted of circular tunnels that connected spherical chambers.  The heroes struggled to simply get around, and it was obvious they faced a very different foe to the norm.

They were then taxed by a huge Blue Dragon who took magic items off each of them, and found an old fort now inhabited by the Serpent Folk.  In the caverns beneath they found a whole city of the creatures, and rescued many prisoners, including Ozzie’s father.

The quest for the lost Library continued, and the heroes eventually found it and discovered that it had been overrun by creatures from beyond the natural realm.  Many of the staff were still there, though now warped into hideous forms, and definitely hostile.  The heroes eventually triumphed and took control of the Library.  They continued to use it as a hide away and treasure store for the rest of the campaign.

This was perhaps the most epic looking adventure.  The set up (see here for more details) encouraged the players to see the site as truly three dimensional.  Lots of flying monsters helped.  I was also influenced by a feature in many video game dungeons; that of the large central space that has to be revisited several times to progress ever further into the complex.  The ever present threat of fiend (demons) in this space meant that careful mapping allowed the heroes to prepare for expected encounters and the repetition helped them learn and develop tactics.  Shutting the doors would have helped too.

They learnt enough in the Lost Library to drive them on to the end of Paragon Tier.  An ancient evil, the Carnifex, had lain various plots against the world as they seemed to worship powerful beings that dwelt Beyond.  It seemed as if there was a threat mounting now, and the heroes learnt of a ruined Carnifex city in the southern continent of Davania that might provide more clues.

I took the development of the Carnifex from various writers on the Piazza Mystara Forum.  The creatures appear in one module, M3 Twilight Calling, where they are described thus; The Carnifex are an ancient evil race, kin to both lizards and dinosaurs. Long ago they developed a civilization based on the darkest exploitation of magic. Their lust for power became dangerous but one experiment that went wrong left them trapped in another dimension. They have been developed by various Mystaraphiles, notably Geoff Gander, as a race connected with and subservient to a powerful group of entities, effectively a Mystaran version of the Great Old Ones.  As a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos, this works for me as an ultimate evil for the heroes to struggle against.

Back in Specularum the heroes met once more with the Duke and explained their theories and fears.  After discussion with Teldon, head of the Wizard’s Guild he agreed to sponsor their expedition to Davania.  A ship was chartered under the guise of a trading expedition, but even as they set out it was clear that enemies were on their trail.  The Cult of the Ebon Key chased them out of the harbour, and it seemed that even the Wizard’s Guild had been infiltrated. 

Various plots dogged the heroes’ journey.  Machinations in the Minrothad Guilds ensured that a Minrothadi agent was hired as part of the crew, pirates attacked, resulting in some fun ship to ship action, and a cures placed on the ship required a stop-over on an island for repairs.

On the island the heroes investigated a recently exposed underground complex where they uncovered evidence of the Carnifex, including something foul that they may have worshiped, and a map of the ancient empire.

They also explored the remains of a doomed Thyatian settlement and fought of undead while they discovered the tragic tale of the settlement.

South again to Davania and the Thyatian city of Ravenscarp.  Here the Ebon Key again tried to disrupt their plans; then on to the ruins of the Carnifex city. This city is mentioned in one of Geoff Gander’s stories.  There is a suggestion that a strange effect takes explorers back to the time of the city’s grandeur.  I borrowed this idea to demonstrate the evil of the Carnifex and to foreshadow some of the future events in the campaign that I had in mind.

To make the trip into the past really different I had the heroes’ souls inhabit the bodies of just sacrificed victims.  I also used 5^th edition rules, with the characters being first level.  I’m not sure how well this worked; perhaps I tried to be too clever and the new rules were one too many things to keep track of.  I think the general feel of the city in the past came across well. There was a lot of information provided that would help with the heroes’ exploration of the ruined city and its catacombs, I think some of this was lost.  Anyway, everything ended with a bang as the heroes sabotaged a nasty Carnifex device that collected and focused ‘soul energy’ from mass sacrifices.  The heroes were contacted by the Immortal Proteus who explained a bit about the dangers the Carnifex posed, and that he had sent their souls back to find out more.  They then awakened in their present, in their own bodies, and could explore the ruined city. 

I hoped that their experiences in the past would have given them some insight into the layout of the complex.  To some extent this worked, and the players enjoyed revisiting areas they knew from the past.  The dungeon ended with a boss fight against a Carnifex lich who they were sure was following some complex Carnifex plot.  Once it was destroyed the dungeon collapsed around them and they beat a hasty retreat.  They hadn't found the lich's phylactery, and could only hope it was buried under the rubble.

Above ground they walked straight into an ambush.  The Ebon Key had followed them and were out for vengeance.  As the battle started, help arrived from an unexpected quarter; an Alphatian sky ship was overhead and signalled to the heroes to come aboard.

Apparently Ozzie was a Prince of one of the Alphatian cities, though not close to the throne.  The ship was sent to inform him of certain duties he should undertake to ensure his place in the line of succession.  However, more important events overtook this.

On the voyage the heroes were once more contacted by Proteus who had a plan.  He believed that a great danger existed in the past.  If the Carnifex were able to rip open a series of portals in a city known as Lhomar, they would weaken the fabric of reality enough for that which exists Beyond to smash through.  It didn't matter that history said that they had failed.  History could change, as the heroes had seen for themselves.  Proteus wished to ensure that the Carnifex failed, and the heroes were his tool to do so. The heroes requested they be taken straight to Specularum to prepare for the next phase of their adventures.

Paragon Tier ended with the players and heroes poised to begin the arc that would see them try to save reality itself, a suitably epic storyline for Epic Tier. The story so far seemed to have worked.  At times I was unsure quite where to go to.  The Obsidian City of the Carnifex was a fun end to the tier, but I think I would have been better off not changing to 5E.  There was enough going on without the intelectual load of trying a new game system.  I suppose Basic D&D would have been a more appropriate system, given that we were supposed to be harking back to the past, but I wanted to introduce the new system and some of the players hadn't experienced it.

I also had a suitable climax planned with the heroes once more confronting the Blue Dragon that had taxed them in the desert.  While not a fully designed adventure, I had roughed out a series of encounters and developed suitable creatures for the dragon's servants.  However, once I started bringing a reality threatening danger into the picture the players decided, rightly, that nothing else really mattered.

You can find out how we fared with Epic Tier here.

Frostgrave Warband (almost) Complete

When I talked about how I use the five box system, I said that the Star box currently has Frostgrave stuff in it.  I've now just about finished the warband in there that I am painting for a friend.  Still to do is the knight/man-at-arms and the wizard and apprentice are still to finish.  Since it's his birthday I've tried to get something I can hand to him, so here are seven of the soldiers.

Thugs, taken I believe from Crooked Dice for their 7TV game (which looks great fun).

(Elven) Archers, note the green skin.  I'm not sure what manufacturer they are.

Crossbow and Thief.  Again, I don't know the maker of the crossbowman, but the thief is another Crooked Dice mini.

I tried to put more care into these, so I tried blending and shading rather than just a wash and/or drybrush.  I hope the extra attention shows.  The owner GMs Runequest, and wanted these to fit into that game as well, so he instructed me to paint weapons etc as bronze rather than iron or steel.  Likewise the elven archers have green skin, because apparently that's a thing in Runequest.

We didn't have a definitive idea for the bases, so I went for a few flatish stones amongst largely bare earth.  With some winter tufts (Cos I like tufts, did I mention that?)

Goday My Lord Sire Christemas

Or Merry Christmas. 

If that's not your thing, have as good a day as you can in whatever way is most appropriate to you.

I hope you've enjoyed the blog so far.  I'll run down the year, and look forwards to 2019 in another post. 

All Good Things - Heroic Tier

So my long running 4E D&D campaign is over, here I talked a bit about the set up and the characters; this post is about the plotline (for the first ten levels anyway) and I talk about how things went.

The campaign was focused around a set group of characters; rather like an ensemble cast TV show.   The cast did change somewhat over time, but two of the players kept the same characters throughout, Memnon the tiefling cleric of Halav and Tol-Flemin the half elf ranger.  Memnon has the distinction of surviving the entire campaign without dying.

There was also Ozzie the human wizard.  During one of Ozzie's frequent deaths the player took a second wizard, xxxx. At the beginning of the campaign we had a human rogue, Teflon, but after the character's death the player dropped out, to be replaced initially by Fyodor, a human bard.  The fifth player began with the dwarven fighter Kathra.  When she died the player brought in the elven Warden Althea, then bringing back Kathra (in her sister's body and conveniently known now as Kathka) before finishing epic tier with Althea again.  This player also ran Fyodor the bard, who eventually left the player character roster to take up the position of Seer of the Lake of Lost Dreams. Sometime after Teflon's death another player joined the group with Switch the halfling rogue.

The campaign began with the first published 4E module, Keep on the Shadowfell.  In retrospect this is a poor module.  Whilst there are many good points about it, it has more flaws.  The initial encounter, even just with kobolds, can easily be deadly to a level 1 party, especially if they are learning the rules as well.  The first part of the adventure provides a well detailed and interesting settlement, with a few encounters in the surrounding area, but once the party enter the complex below the ruined keep the adventure is very linear. There is rarely a significant choice of path to be made, and the final fight against Kalarel the Priest of Orcus we found underwhelming.  I added a skill challenge as suggested in a Dragon article somewhere, otherwise there had been no opportunity to use this new mechanic in the dungeon.

It was partly my dissatisfaction with this adventure that prompted me to design my own adventures, or at least adapt commercial adventures.  A side trek in Dungeon magazine included an encounter with a hag, and I've always liked these monsters, especially as they can hide within a society, appearing to be nothing more sinister than an aging crone.  I took the idea of a coven of hags and made them subservient to Orcus.  The Eyes of Traldar are an established item in Mystaran lore (though I think there are only two actually in cannon) so I used them as quest items for both the party and the hags.  Whoever had the most would be able to significantly affect the land of Karameikos.  I decided to theme the Eyes in pairs such as life and death, fire and water.  Their powers were not that strong, though the option existed to replace a character's eye with one of the Eyes.  The players never did this, though one NPC did.  I used an idea I had been considering for a while, that of the societal significance of an item.  The Traldar people venerated the idea of the Eyes, regardless of actual power, if they were known to be in the possession of evil beings, the morale of the citizens would be shattered.  I'm not sure how well this came across. 

A letter in the possession of the hag led the heroes to Specularum where they sought another hag.  This ‘sweet old lady’ had a gang of children swarming around her, among which were Dark Creepers, a Shadowfell race which returned several times in the campaign.  Further investigation revealed a cult popular among the poor and downtrodden, promising redemption at a price.  The heroes powered through their lair and found it was led by Klaus Jorga, a fallen priest of the Cult of Halav (one of Karameikos’ more fringe religions).  He is actually an NPC from the 2E adventure Hail the Heroes, and Memnon’s player recognised him.  They also realised that the Dark Ones were enemies of the cult and were also after the Eyes, presumably for their hag leader. Jorga’s trail then led to an estate outside the city, where a burial vault, along with lots of traps, was plundered to culminate in a battle with the deluded priest.  I lifted the trap level from a Dungeon adventure, though I can’t now remember which one.  The heroes also became aware that House Toronescu wanted to recover the Eyes to use them as a rallying point for a Traldar renaissance.  One of that House, Fyodor, joined the group after they lost Teflon, struck down after resisting arrest.

Information gained from the dead hag showed the existence of more Eyes, along with vague suggestions where they might be found.

The heroes then set out for the Dymrak Forest.  Tol the ranger believed that his organisation, the Watchers of Dymrak, had a long time connection with the Eyes, and might know more about them.  After several encounters, including a night in an abandoned chapel assaulted by hordes of zombies (Dead by Dawn from Dungeon magazine) they met both with a powerful hag and the spiritual leader of the Watchers, the Seer of the Lake of Lost Dreams.  Here they learned of the balance between Light and Dark, and that some of the lesser hags had upset the balance.  The Seer gave them directions to find the Eye of Water and the Eye of Fire, the Blight Swamp and the Caverns of Dhur respectively.  I was all set for the Eye of Fire adventure first; I don’t know why I thought that would be the character’s choice.  I had the adventure ready with the swamp stuff roughed out.  Of course the players decided to go to the swamp first.  Fortunately we found that 4E plays slowly, especially in encounters, so I soon caught up, and using the online tools it was easy to tweak the levels of the encounters for the Eye of Fire adventure later.

The adventurers set out westwards first for Luln.  Here they learnt about an earlier expedition into the Blight Swamp during the Thyatian occupation.  They realised that one of the expedition had one of the Eyes, and learnt something about the dangers to be faced.  I took this straight from a Basic D&D adventure AC11 Combat Shield, which included a short wilderness adventure based around a found manuscript.  Several DMs have placed this in Karameikos in the Blight Swamp area, and I though it fit just fine as background.

The party battled ghouls and lizard folk, and made friends with a smaller, more civilised breed of lizard kin called Cay-men.  They also lost Fyodor, who, in extremis used a ritual the Seer had taught him, was magically whisked back to the Lake of Lost Dreams (to the heroes he had just vanished, though the players were well aware of what happened.  This was because we had a new player who would be running a halfling rogue rather than Kathra’s player running two characters).  They also rescued an angry halfling from the larger cannibal creatures and he, Switch agreed to join them as he was sneaky and good with locks etc.  Eventually they realised that the Eye of Water venerated by the Cay-men had helped them become more civilised.  They couldn’t take it without having a catastrophic effect on them, and the Cay-men would doubtless fight to protect it.  Hoping they would be strong enough to guard it, the heroes left for the mountains and the Eye of Fire.  This may sound like a strange ending, in truth, the players had several options; they could have fought the Cay-men for the eye and left them to (presumably sink back into more primitive behaviour), they could have stolen it, with the same results, and if discovered in the act, a chase through the swamps would have been very dramatic, they could even have reasoned that it didn’t have to be that Eye, one of the lesser powered ones could have been exchanged in the hopes that the Cay-men would still benefit.  In the end the players decided to leave things as they were.  There was a temptation to apply the principle of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ and have a hag wielding the Eye of Water later in the campaign, but I resisted; too much of that makes the players disinclined to do selfless acts.

The journey north included a few encounters, social as well as combat, and helped introduce the heroes to some of the people and places in Northern Karameikos.  There was even a reference to an old character of Memnon’s player.  Eventually they reached the village of Highdell, close to the Mines of Duhr where they believed the Eye of Flame was hidden.  They also heard tales of a strange dragon, Kathra, who had a history with dragons wondered if it were Volvagia, long though slain or imprisoned.  OK, I admit this part was inspired by LoZ games.  Volvagia is the name of the Boss in the Fire Temple, and I used the idea and description of the Gorons, especially as depicted in Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess applied to the Galeb Dhur.  Check the description, they are pretty similar I feel.  I don’t think any of the players noticed anyway, but it did give me some ideas for portraying the GD as NPCs, and I nicked a few personal names as well.

The Mines of Dhur were, I think, the best dungeon I had run so far.  The scale was grand, with movement on the general map measured in hours and days.  Three different routes led to the final chamber where the dragon had been imprisoned (and had presumably escaped).  The GD used the Eye of Fire to seal a rift to a portion of the Plane of Fire.  The dragon (a Volcano Dragon in 4E) had been trapped within, but the manipulation of the hags had weakened the seal.  The chamber could only be entered through a door that required a four part key (shades of the TP Goron mines), these parts were scattered around the mines.  I gave each level of the mines a distinct feel, and a particular set of enemies to be encountered.  The first chamber included a bridge over a river of lava.  Once the party had crossed and were battling fire bats, Volvagia swooped up out of the lava, smashing the bridge and diving back, splashing lava.  The players loved this feel of having been cut off from the outside and being forced to progress.  They had the choice of which level(s) to explore, and there were a few places where they could change levels if they wanted.  The bottom level was winding passages with pools and streams of lava.  Heat was a hazard here, and the creatures were various creatures from the elemental plane of Fire, presumably escaped through the rift with the dragon.

The middle level was natural caves, but without the lava and heat.  There was much evidence of mining here.  The caves and passages were inhabited by Troglodytes and their creatures.

The top level had regular rooms and corridors, though they were walled and floored with iron plates. Various items of smelting and processing equipment were here. Gnolls and similar roamed this level.  In Karameikan history the gnolls are known as the Beastmen, and play an important role in the story of Halav.  I have always ruled that Halav drove them off, and they are more or less legendary.  Now of course they are starting to return, another effect of the hags’ meddling with the Eyes.  Seeing them gave the cleric of Halav a shock, and he responded to them with suitable rage.  Eventually the party made it to the door to the chamber, despite possessing only three keys Switch was able to finesse it open (I didn’t want the lack of a key to halt the adventure, so suitable Thievery checks could substitute.

I modelled the boss fight off some of the Angry GMs articles; there is an issue with solo monsters in D&D, the action economy doesn’t work in their favour.  Merely giving them more hit points doesn’t make up for all the extra attacks and effects that a party can lay on them. They also quickly devolve into a slug fest where the party runs out of options other than basic attacks and just stand there and knock lumps of the boss monster.  The fight against Kalarel in Keep on the Shadowfell was a good example of this.  Angry’s system splits the boss into three stages, each of which is counted as a separate monster with its own stat block and distinctive attacks.  Many video games use this model to good effect.

Ultimately this worked well, but it perhaps wasn’t the epic encounter the players deserved.  Although I liked the three stage boss fight, I didn’t use it again.  I probably didn’t have the stages quite impressive enough, and I’m sure I could do a better job now.  I did approach boss fights differently from this point on.

Once the heroes had won, and claimed the Eye, which due to an obscure Galeb Dhur prophecy, the owners were happy to hand over, the party headed back to Specularum.  On the way they met a military encampment, it seemed as if the Black Eagle Barony had sent troops to the area led by his wizard Bargle the Magnificent.  They knew about the threat the hags posed and had captured one of them.  The heroes were in the situation of knowing that Bargle was bad (he magic missiled a soldier who brought him bad news, just in case they hadn’t got the point), but Bargle was doing their work for them.  In fact, when the heroes called for the hag to be executed, Bargle insisted that she be taken for trial.  This was an excellent introduction to the Black Eagle and his politics.  I have always played him as very suave, very sinister, and very clever at manipulating things for his own benefit.  After all, he has fooled his cousin for years, so I don’t think he is a scenery chewing madman.  Bargle even requested that the heroes hand over any Eyes to his safe keeping (they refused), and allowed them to watch as he questioned the hag.  They learnt about the hag’s ritual of blinding, designed to spoil the Eyes and plunge the land into darkness.  Worse, Bargle’s right hand man was the tiefling uncle of Memnon.  They insisted that the heroes accompany them to the Black Eagle Barony as witnesses to the trial, under guard if necessary.  As things started to look tricky, a group of Knights of the Griffon, led by Alena Halloran, niece of the ruler of Threshold, arrived and arrested the heroes.  The law stated that they must be taken in chains back to Specularum.  Good Insight on the part of the heroes suggested they go along with this, and even though Bargle realised it was a ploy, he was forced to let them go.

This gave the players the opportunity to mix with some of the heroes, and villains, of the land, and built up more resentment for the Black Eagle and Bargle.  This set up some interesting conflicts in Paragon tier.  I also re-introduced Fyodor, now the apprentice of the Seer.  He asked the heroes to help find his master, who had gone missing in the Lake of Lost Dreams.

Using the travel ritual the party arrived at the Lake and discovered that the island on the lake is a nexus between the natural world, the Fae Realm and the Shadow Realm.  They met various denizens of these realms, not all unfriendly, and managed to split the party between realms.  This was an opportunity to learn more about the different Realms (Fae and Shadow).  I don’t run quite the same world as the official 4E world.  Some of the concepts don’t quite fit in Mystara, but there is precedent for different realms that are adjacent to the normal world, so I have used this concept to introduce the Shadowfell and the Feywild.  The heroes met more of the Dark Kin in the Shadow Realm, building on their experiences in Specualrum, and setting up expectations for a further jaunt into the realms in Paragon tier.  The also discovered that time flows differently in the different realms, which would be a very important bit of information in the final adventure (although six years later they did need some reminding).  They underwent a trail to rescue the soul of the Seer (and a powerful hag).  This chase through forest glades sequence was heavily inspired by the Lost Woods section of LoZ:TP, though I don’t think the players realised (none of them every having played this game).

In the ruins of a temple the heroes battled trolls and Grushenka, a powerful hag, who revealed that part of her plan had been to depose the hag leader.  Rather than die at their hands she fled not before ‘blinding’ the Eye of Ice and the Eye of Fire.

Further LoZ inspired puzzles (the statue moving one taken absolutely directly from TP) revealed the Temple as it existed 500 years ago.  Inside Traldar warriors were frozen in time in the midst of a battle with orcs.  The heroes help finish the fight, even when a Beholder appears (what better foe in an adventure series based around magical Eyes?).  Once back in their own world and time, the heroes consult with an ancient being known only as The Historian who provides the necessary exposition.  At his urging the heroes realise that the hags have broken an ancient pact with the Seer, and call foul.  This allows Zirchev, one of the Immortals who watch over Karameikos, to bring them to account.  Sadly, the Seer did not survive, so Fyodor took up his mantle as Seer of the Lake of Lost Dreams.  Zirchev summoned the Eyes, which it is clear were important to him, and scattered them across Karameikos.  He informed the heroes that they had done well and that the danger from the hags was over (for now).  The players then had the opportunity to ask him any questions that they wanted, though they might not always have understood his answers.  He then transported them to a strange banquet that the Grand Duke laid on for them, without really knowing why.  He recognised that they had done great service to his land however, and rewarded them with titles and land grants or other rewards.

Paragon Tier is covered here.

All Good Things - Crafting the Campaign

I've gone on at (great) length about the campaign.  Now I'd like to ramble some more about how I crafted some of the terrain for the encounters, and how I showed them on the tabletop.

4th Edition D&D places a great importance on accurate floor plans of the encounters.  Everything is measured in 5 foot squares, from movement to areas of effect.  The first adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, includes some poster maps of important encounter areas.  I used these, and produced the other areas using Dundjinni, a useful bit of software that got almost continuous use when I was running 3/3.5 edition.  The end results are very good, and there is a lot of freedom, especially with the various art packs available.  It's not a quick product to use however, and probably because it is so detailed I find myself spending ages looking for just the right image.  Printing such detailed maps takes a lot of ink as well, especially if the maps only get used once.
We did experiment with some Dwarven Forge pieces in Keep on the Shadowfell that one of the players owned, but quickly found that it was difficult to match the given maps with the pieces available.  It looked good though.

After the Keep on the Shadowfell we needed some outdoor maps.  I reused some of the ones from that module, and some from the D&D Miniatures games.  I also made some using Dundjinni again.  I already had some building plans from a previous campaign, and these got some use as well.
As we progressed through Heroic tier (levels 1 to 10) I started using Skeleton Key tiles.  These became my main way of showing the encounter areas, culminating in the vast underground Caverns of Dhur with three quite distinctive levels; lava caves, natural caves, and iron plated rooms and corridors. The modular nature of the tiles makes them more flexible than designing specific maps in Dundjinni, and the art style is more printer friendly; there are lots of different sets available too.  Sometimes, though, they just don't have the tile you need.  Of course, when designing my own adventures I just made sure the map fitted the available tile sets.
We did experiment with a more 3D adventure using Fat Dragon card terrain to build a temple that the heroes had to defend against hordes of zombies.  That worked well, but I didn't quite have the knack of building the pieces quickly and efficiently, and at that time FD used a slightly different system, essentially making Dwarven Forge-like pieces out of card, which resulted in a light weight product that easily shifted.
For the Temple of Time at the end of this arc I found a Dundjinni art pack that allowed me to make tiles in the same style as Skeleton Key.  These proved very useful.

The Temple of Time using tiles build on Dundjinni using the Skeleton Key art pack.  This is the ruined version of the temple with lots of rubble.

The early Paragon tier adventures again used mostly Skeleton Key tiles and home made tiles using Dundjinni, but as the story moved to the Shadow Realm I used hand drawn floor plans on one inch squared paper.  This gives great freedom, and the maps are quick to draw, but is never going to give the prettiest of results.
For the finale of the Shadow Realm adventure I used the newer version of Fat Dragon pieces.  These lock into a base plate of foam board and proved much sturdier.  There are some restrictions on the size and shape of the rooms, but when designing a map you can easily take these into consideration, and when making up maps from published adventures I learned to give myself permission to change the map to what I could build.  This might not sound like much, but it was a big step for me.  The results are good, though sometimes very small rooms are difficult to move minis around in and clumsy fingers can struggle over the 2" high walls.  Preparation time is quite long making the pieces, but I view it as making a bank of bits to build future maps from.  Actually making up a floor plan on the fly takes a while though, and the various card pillars and walls can get damaged when rushing.  The sets include furniture as well, and I started using more 3D elements in the floor plans, players seem to like this and usually find some creative way for their characters to interact with the furnishings.  One early down side was the assumption that every item I put down must be of great significance.  This faded over time.
The adventure in the Fae Realm had me using many more 3D elements.  As the bulk of the adventure was outdoors I made quite a few trees from various sets of card terrain; mostly Fat Dragon and World Works Games.  I bought WWG stuff a long time ago, but never made much of it.  I found their lock system fiddly, but the various extras, such as trees and boats were good.  The higher definition of textures does make them greedy for ink though.  I also built a village with Saxon style houses I found on T'interweb along with these Laketown inspired pieces. The final battle took place in a dark clearing with a ruined shrine I built from Lord Zsezse Works.  It's a lovely piece, though my model is now a bit battered, one day I'll rebuild it in foam board and XPS, I'm sure it would make a nice centrepiece on a battlefield or in Frostgrave.
I did another big Fat Dragon build for an urban adventure which once again looked great, was very popular with the players, but was a bit of a pain to build the pieces (being town rather than dungeon I started afresh with the set) and slow to do on the fly.  We all noticed how adding the third dimension really focused the players on the options available (the set up was a street scene with three storey buildings, I wish I'd taken pictures).
The first desert adventure required a fort, I used this from Heroic Maps, which gave plenty of interesting options for a stealth mission.  Once inside I used HM cave sets, and I blogged about building the pieces here.
The Lost Library itself was mostly built using Fat Dragon stuff, you can see the impressive main hall here.  Some of the smaller chambers were 2.5 pieces I made up from other Heroic Maps sets.  All the earlier comments regarding looks vs ease of use still apply, only on a much larger scale.  This build was a beast to transport around, and not practical to set up each time.  I had deliberately designed the central chamber to be revisited on many occasions, this began to seem to be a bad idea!  It did look impressive though, and emphasised the three dimensions, especially with flying enemies.
For the journey to Davania I build the party a boat, the Fat Dragon sailing ship.  It probably wasn't necessary, but looked good.  They even fought pirates in marauder ships from Dave Graffam.
The party stopped on an island where they had several adventures.  For one I crafted cliffs using WWG pieces (alas no longer available) to represent a steep walled narrow inlet.  Docks were provided by Fat Dragon from their Ravenfell set, and I used buildings from Darkfast Dungeon's Innsmouth supplement, which gave the shabby dockside look I wanted. 

FD docks and warehouse, WWG watch tower, cliffs and boats, Mantic barrels

This warehouse is one of the Innsmouth buildings

Whilst on the island the party had their first introduction to the Carnifex and their works.  I wanted to give them a recognisable aesthetic and chose Heroic Maps Ancient Dungeon sets.  I re-worked the way I built them, see the details here, and then gradually added to them to build a set that covered all the remaining Carnifex sites.
As the campaign progressed into Epic tier I found I was crafting more items and creatures such as the plants and constructs I did than floor plans or tiles.  I did experiment with using 6" EVA foam tiles with a grid cut into the surface which I used for the Ziggurat, but while these worked well for that adventure and gave the ziggurat a particular feel, they were not flexible enough for more general use.  I also made some blocks 2" high with a grid and a stone pattern on them.  These represented various structures such at control points within the ziggurat allowing for a variety of levels.  It also gave the architecture a coherent feel. I did have high hopes for the tiles for future use, but I'm going for something new for future campaigns.  The blocks were much more successful and have turned up in a few Frostgrave games.

Ozzie laying down on the job again.

The final section of the campaign was set in a city under siege, and for this I went right back to flip mats and whiteboard pens.  I got this set for Pathfinder (I won't tell if you don't) and they have proven ideal for drawing encounter areas on the fly.  The very open nature of this adventure meant there were very few encounters planned and set in particular locations, rather a list of possible creatures that could be met, thus I drew streets, plazas or muddy battlefields as needed.  It might have lost out on visual appeal, but the fact I was drawing as the minis went down emphasised the freedom the party had in choosing their path.
For the final battle I crafted a special creature and terrain piece, you can see them here.

I also crafted a few props for the players to use.  I produced many handouts, but these were usually just word documents I printed out.  There are some nice fonts out there to add a touch of the exotic to letters and journals.
The Mines of Gorion required a four part key which I made from dowel with card flanges and marbles set in the card.  The four parts fitted together; I wanted to use magnets to hold them in place, but at the time hadn't discovered the joys of neodymium.
Certain doors in the Lost Library required medallions with specific engravings on (tied to the different faculties in the library), and the rarer the metal, the more important the door that could be opened.  These were made using images I found on T'Interweb with inscriptions added in MS Paint.  Different coloured card then represented the different metals, and the players had to display the medallion they were using at any time.

Finally a word on minis.  I love using minis, but sometimes I don't have quite what I want.  At various times I have used card minis, either from sets such as the excellent One Monk stuff, or made my own simply by finding an image and printing it with a mirrored copy to cut out.  The later method lacks an obvious front or back, but its easier to find what I wanted.  When I used minis I picked from my collection including old D&D prepaints, often repainted or converted, or Reaper Bones.  There were a fair few mage knight minis as well, rebased and often repainted.
Each character had it's own mini, often converted for the purpose.  Memnon was provided by the player (T'Other One) as he is also a keen painter, and he even had a larger mini for when his tiefling took diabolic form, otherwise I did the rest.

Well that's a lot of virtual ink on how I presented the campaign.  Looking back all the methods of showing encounter areas had some good points.  There were bad points too, mostly issues with time taken to set up, time taken to build prior to use, and storage.  Systems that produce an encounter area that gets used once are wasteful of effort, but can produce something really  memorable.  Modular systems are more useful overall, but tend to be the sort of system that needs a lot of set up.  If you've been following my blog, you'll know I have been working on both cave and dungeon 2.5D tiles for my 5th edition campaign.  I think these will be the way forward, and I'm sure I'll be building more in the months to come.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and hopefully got some ideas from it.  If nothing else, there are plenty of links to products I have used.  Please leave a comment if you agree, or disagree with anything I've said, and perhaps you have some ideas on how you would have approached this.  If you are one of the players, could you leave a comment saying how it worked for you?

All Good Things - The Campaign Finishes - Introduction

Last night I ran the last session in our long running 4E D&D campaign.  We have been playing for a while, one of the players summed it up personally as "eleven years, seven jobs and three character deaths".  In that time we've also had a wedding and two house moves (and a house fire).  Not all happening to the same person I must add.

Whilst we haven't played continuously for that time, blog readers will recall that we took a few weeks off this summer to try a series of board and skirmish games, and we had a rule that if we are missing two or more players (or of course if I am unavailable) then we pass.  We also took all Bank Holidays off, so that was another good few sessions missed.  Still, we probably got close to 40 sessions a year over eleven years.  You can do the maths.

Although I once planned to play up until 30th level, in the end we stopped at level 23 (they deserve to level up at the end of the last adventure), and the final arc was literally to save the whole of reality.  Or at least the version of it that their game was set in.
That's not how it was planned though; we began pretty much when 4th edition was released and played through the introductory module, Keep on the Shadowfell.  I re-jigged it to fit into Mystara, the world of the BECMI D&D system (often known just as 'Basic' or the Cyclopedia Edition).  I've played in this world for many more years, indeed one of the players (T'Other One) played a 3/3.5E campaign in the same world, and events and characters he knew from that provided background to the current campaign, in an easter egg kind of way rather than a 'you must know this' way.

There's a lot to talk about regarding plot and why I made certain decisions, so I've broken the campaign down into the three tiers of play that 4E uses, and there will be a post about each one.
You can find the Heroic Tier post here, Paragon Tier here, and Epic Tier here.  I'l sum up my thoughts a bit later in a post #'nd of campaign meet-up' here.
There is also a post discussing how I crafted the various encounters throughout the campaign here.

Note that I have altered the way I am presenting this, there was just too much in one post, and I wanted also to analyse the campaign as I went.