Tag Archives: fiction

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 17

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This is terrifically delayed, and a departure from plot hooks because I’m in need of a palate cleanser. I’m also not as present in the TTRPG spaces as I have been previously and so I’m playing a little catch up on some of the discourse (which should shock no one).

Let’s all keep in mind these are my views and opinions on the topic(s) that follow and that they are by no means the be-all, end-all. At all.

That said?

Let’s talk about the value of Modules, especially for new DMs, DMs who haven’t run 5E as often, or DMs who have been away from running 5E.

Dungeons and Dragons 5E has no shortage of modules and multi-adventure books that can be used as a starting point for longer, larger adventuring campaigns. From as far back as Hoard of the Dragon Queen all the way through recent installments such as Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen or the updated Phandelver adventures, modules have generally acted as a solid foundation upon which DMs could build a campaign for their table.

I could go on about how I feel modules are only as restrictive as you let them be or how they are valuable tools, but instead I’m going to switch to my own perspective and lived experience getting into DMing 5E.

My journey into DMing D&D 5E began with the whimsical, wonderful Wild Beyond the Witchlight, an adventure that takes players through the curious and captivating Witchlight Carnival and into the Feywild where they discover the land of Prismeer has been fragmented by the three witches of the Hourglass Coven into separate domains – Hither, Thither, and Yon. There are clever hooks with which to draw players into making their way to the Feywild and get them on a path to saving Prismeer, as well as different routes to getting the players to the Witchlight Carnival in the first place.

There is also plenty of room to find ways to introduce players into the world at large.

I originally had planned on running the module as-is, prepping meticulously ahead of Session 0 for how I would introduce my players to the Witchlight Carnival and its awe-inspiring inhabitants.

The day of Session 0, much of that was scrapped and gave way to Thistlewood—a little village with its own curious cast of characters, some drawn from previous games I had played in—as a starting zone of sorts. It allowed me as the DM to give breadcrumbs to the players and guide them to the carnival and the circumstances that could lead them to the Feywild. Much of the initial sessions were homebrewed details – including a security system that manifests an illusion of Tiamat, for instance.

Now please note that this is not the way to go for everyone, but if there’s anything you can take from this as a new DM or someone who is less comfortable DMing a module I would like it to be this: allow for plenty of breathing room. D&D 5E, similar to its peers, is still a game of collaborative storytelling and there is a lot of fun to be had with building upon modules with whatever the players come up with along the way.

My Witchlight game is far from over—hell, the players only just arrived in the Feywild and it’s been on-and-off for over a year (life, as it turns out, continues to happen without regard for games and other such things). Though the pacing isn’t quite where I’d want it, I wouldn’t change the experience my table has helped create for anything in the world because it is unlike any other game of Witchlight that’s been played (much like many other such games that take place in this setting have been—their own twist on the module’s material).

Have fun, stay curious, be whimsical, and of course: good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 16

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Reminding myself that I’m working on these on my terms, which is good but also bad because now I’ve got four to work on today. I’m under no obligation to make sure I do four so as to catch up, but with the way my brain works I am in fact obligated to do exactly that.

Anyway – back to it!

They Lived in the Sky

You and your now-adventuring party remember it like yesterday – the day the sky became a mirror to the world below. It had been raining for days with no break in the clouds—not even a hint of sunlight managed to break through.

One conundrum quickly gave way to another as a mirrored version of the world hanged suspended in the sky. The most senior mages, scholars, and historians are baffled by this unusual, unprecedented situation, and none of the major forces of darkness have claimed to be behind it. Based on intercepted communications, they all seem just as confused and concerned as the world leaders.

What awaited the adventuring party in the world above? What caused this? And what happened when the adventuring party started to search for solutions to this curious, potentially precarious situation?

GM Tools and Tips:

The world in the sky is an exact mirroring of the world the players have become familiar with, so let them enjoy time leading up to their journeying to this strange mirrored world in the sky. Let them establish their characters in the world and what brings them together once this event occurs.

The main conflict can be whatever you’d like, but this is a great opportunity to have the players face down their own party (in some form or another).

Good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 14

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Manifesting Dreams

Your adventuring party, tired from an especially challenging dungeon crawl, happens upon an idyllic inn and tavern in a scenic village. They paid for their rooms, enjoyed a meal, and turned in for an early night.

The adventure that followed seemed so real—at least the parts your party could remember of it did, at any rate. The enchanted forest. The spectral dragon who only spoke in riddles. The distant tower, just out of reach thanks to a shattered bridge.

At breakfast the next morning, over light conversation, your party realized they shared the same dream. More peculiar, however, was the arrival of two stone workers who were looking for your party about a bridge that needed mending. With a little collective recollection, the party located the forest…and suddenly found themselves living out the adventure they just had in their dreams. Details, however, weren’t exactly the same. The bridge was more damaged, the tower beyond more ominous, and a dark oppressive presence filled the air like a challenge.

GM Tips and Tools

The goal here is to establish your adventuring party’s collective dream and how it is bleeding into the real world. Showcase this as they rest while trying to make their way to the tower, adding in more details with subsequent dreams.

Additionally, they find that 1) their dream is not the only thing bleeding into reality and 2) nightmares are dreams, too, and one such nightmare has taken up residence in the tower the adventuring party is journeying towards.

Have fun, dream big, and good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 12

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What Slumbers Deep Beneath the Ice

Warmth and life has gradually begun to return to the realm after an especially bitter, cold, dark winter, and with the warmth your adventuring party too finds themselves returning to some of their familiar haunts that were less hospitable in the frigid days.

The scenic village of Umbraport is one of the party’s first stops. Known for its bustling marketplace, love of adventurers, and frequent feasts, your adventuring party finds themselves greeted by a very different tone than they are used to here. Shops closed early or indefinitely, and wary glances from between shutters are the closest the party receives to a greeting until finally a friendly merchant spots them and ushers them into his home.

Umbradeep Lake, he informs them, has been frozen for much of recorded history. It’s a lake so steeped in legend, largely due to its unfathomable depth. No two sources seem to agree on the specifics, but it’s commonly accepted that Umbradeep Lake’s depths are greater than the height of the highest mountains in the realm.

Other legends tell of a horrific creature from ages past that was sealed away beneath the lakes depths by the never-melting ice Umbradeep was famous for having year-round.

The ice, the merchant notes, had begun to thaw, and as it did the villagers noticed strange and worrying happenings. The dark of night seems to arrive before the sun has fully set. Odd shadows and strange sounds prowl the alleys at night, often leaving deep claw marks in walls and cobblestones.

Far beneath the melting ice, or so villagers say, something seems to have begun to awaken.

The ice is still quick dense, but your party feels a sense of incredible unease upon visiting. Will they find a way to stop the ice from melting? Are they ready to confront whatever ancient darkness lurks beneath its surface? Can Umbraport be saved, or is it doomed to be lost to shadow?

GM Tools and Tips

Ease into the adventure with emphasis on everything having warmed and woken from the especially bitter cold that has finally left the world. Give the players a trail of breadcrumbs leading them to Umbraport but allow it to happen organically. If you’re running this in a system that utilizes clocks, now’s a great time to start counting down a few regarding the lake thawing, the strange happenings in town, and so on.

While this is absolutely a more horror flavored bit of fantasy adventuring, please also remember to keep it within the parameters of what’s safe set forth during Session 0 (and this is a great time to remind myself I’ve been meaning to do a post about Session 0 at some point so maybe I’ll sprinkle that in as a bonus post one of these days).

Save the day, stop the thaw, or face the darkness in the depths of Umbradeep. Whatever happens? Good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 11

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Lucky 11/11, or 11/11 if you type the date that way. Hope you remembered to make a wish! You’ll need it if you happen upon the item in today’s NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist. This works best with games that incorporate tarot decks in them, but can be modified for just about any TTRPG. Any tarot works, but if you’re so inclined I would suggest breaking out your favorite tarot deck from a small business or indie artist (or picking up a new one for such an occasion).

Ominous Arcana

Your adventuring party is winding down from their most recent, most perilous adventure yet, when a stranger appears, bestows a gift upon them, and flees quickly. They don’t merely leave – they flee. The gift has been set down quickly and as if it could bite or claw or harm in some way.

Upon investigation, the party discovers an ornate box within layers of cloth. Within that box is a tarot deck. The backs of the card are an elaborate series of geometric shapes intersecting in curious ways, some of which accentuated with foil inlays.

It becomes apparent quickly the tarot deck cannot be explored except on its own terms. The deck, when shuffled, only showcases the back of the cards no matter how it is oriented. Until one day, surprising the party, a card can be drawn. It features one of the major arcana, but it’s numbered incorrectly. Should the party try to shuffle this back into the deck and draw another they find themselves having pulled the same card (again and again).

The next day the party awakes to discover the next card in sequence—the number of the major arcana mismatched with the card itself—drawn. It quickly apparent that the deck is counting down to something, but to what is a mystery. Can your party learn the meaning of the arcana as they present so as to learn the path this mysterious deck has set them on before it’s too late? And what awaits the party as the final card?

GM Tips and Tools

Again: this is a great chance to break out a tarot deck you love (especially if you’re playing an in-person game)!

There’s loads of room for what order you’d like to have the major arcana in. A few examples: you could lead to The Tower to signify a major catastrophe resulting in serious upheaval of the current state of things. Death could signify a major change—in the party, in the world, etc. Or you could go with off-the-beaten-path interpretations of the major arcana. The limits are your imagination (and the rigidity or flexibility of the table with regards to tarot, obviously).

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a countdown to a bad thing—it can just as easily be a shift towards good or simply just the cards counting down to change.

See what fate the cards have in store for your players, take care, and as always good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 10

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Couldn’t quite manage to write last night, so here we are with two days worth of NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist. Coincidentally, this ended up with more American Gods flavor than I originally intended, but I’m not mad about that.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Anyway? Onwards!

Old Gods and New Truths

Your adventuring party is approached by a cloaked figure at a crossroads late one night while traveling between towns. The party does not know them, but they know the party quite well. And they plead a very compelling case to take this meeting somewhere a little less out in the open. They state they have a request most dire, and they can’t request prying eyes and ears being present.

Should the party agree, the cloaked figure will reveal themself to be an Old God—one from before the light of the earliest stars—and they are desperate to set the record straight.

The Old Gods, or at least the bulk of them, have gotten some truly bad PR over the years. The narrative had been shaped and shifted by New Gods—Gods that crept into existence by way of the hubris of mortals who knew not what they had done at the time.

Does your party accept this perilous quest to face down the New Gods and present the truth to the world? And will they find that there’s more to the truth than what was presented to them by the Old Gods?

GM Tips and Tools

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this is another plot hook that works best with a solid Session 0 foundation. This will rely on having multiple unreliable narrators/NPCs and leaves plenty of room to have fun with what the truth—subjective as it is—turns out to be.

Keep in mind that you’re putting your players up against Gods—Old Gods and New Gods—and that this needs to be conveyed in both subtle undertones showcasing the Gods’ capacity for displays of power as well as overtones (overt threats, moments of their more pleasant facades breaking, etc).

Have fun—build worlds, forge heroes, play god, and of course good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 7

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You Meet at a Tavern…

Your adventuring party meets at a tavern. It’s not the first time they’ve been there. The barkeeper swiftly greets them with your typical orders and the party settles in at a table you’ve sat at a dozen or so times before. Tales of adventure are shared before raucous laughter gives way to heart-warming drinking songs. Other patrons offer up quests for reasonable rewards to the party, and thus begins the next round of adventures.

Your adventuring party meets at a tavern. It’s your usual haunt, but something seems off. The other patrons seem apprehensive of the party if not outright hostile. The barkeeper accepts orders with more than a hint of suspicion and after giving no small amount of side-eye. Your party continues about the evening in relative silence before turning in for the night. Halfway through the night your party awakens to the sound of footsteps in the hallway, heavy and menacing. After some time, whoever was paused outside of your party’s room walks away.

Your adventuring party meets at a tavern. The tension is so thick you could cut it with a dagger. Humanoid patrons barely disguised with armor and magic sneer and scowl at your adventuring party. The barkeeper refuses your party service, but not before eyeing them suspiciously. Before your party can leave, however, your all notice Wanted posters with caricatures of each party member’s likeness.

Can your party uncover what is gradually warping this familiar, warm, welcoming place into something monstrous before it’s too late?

GM Tips and Tools

First and foremost, it’s imperative to make it clear in Session 0 there will be some fuckery afoot in terms of characters, location, and familiarity there. Leave enough up to the play through so as to not give all of the details away while making sure players are comfortable with being made to doubt their perception of the situation.

In actuality, the tavern and inn were always a clever product of the barkeeper/BBEG’s manipulations, having observed the party and prepared for this moment for some time. The patrons are all amalgamations of friends of the party at first, then amalgamations of those the party had slighted or wronged in some way, before finally becoming amalgamations of the foes the party had slain in the past.

Only once they manage to unveil the truth about the barkeeper does the real battle begin.

Sit back, enjoy a drink, and don’t end up on a Wanted poster. As always: take care; good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 6

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Adventure Deja Vu

You meet in a tavern. Your party feels like they’ve been here before, and of course they have. The barkeep is friendly, and clearly knows your party well. The regulars regard you with warm smiles and inside jokes that for some reason don’t fully feel familiar. All is largely well in the Kingdom, even if you can’t shake the feeling you’re being watched.

And all is as it should be.

At least that seems to be the case until your party gradually finds things that are familiar that shouldn’t be. A mighty blade that seems drawn to your Paladin’s hands. A comprehensive book of spells in your mage’s handwriting though they have no recollection of writing it. A small demonic familiar who trails behind your warlock, only just within sight as if expecting commands from their master.

All roads lead back to the King, and the King seems eager to obfuscate and evade such inquiries. What is going on? What does the king know?

GM Tools and Tips

This is a quick route to a higher level campaign by way of a low level start. Leave breadcrumbs helping to indicate the party’s deja vu isn’t simply that – it’s echoes of a past in which they were mighty heroes, powerful and well-equipped, until they suddenly weren’t.

Role play the king as familiar in ways that point to him knowing why the heroes are in the state they are in. Provide quests that take them through their forgotten past until they reach a broken, forgotten citadel in which they finally recall the truth: the King had shown himself to the adventurers as a deposed ruler in need of aid, and so the party as heroic as they were stepped in to aid him.

Upon arriving at the seat of the kingdom, the King revealed himself to be a powerful devil who then sent the adventurers back in their respective timelines, carefully burying details of their identity while leaving some alone so they were none the wiser.

As the adventurers find echoes of their past they then level up and move closer to being who they once were.

As always: take care; good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 5

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We’re now five days into November, which means we’re five days into NaNoWriMo. This is equal parts encouraging and terrifying. How are you doing? Remember to be kind to yourself no matter what your goal is for the month! (And hydrate and all that jazz.)

Anyway, without further ado as I am le tired:

Luci and the Sky Diamond

The first game/system specific plot hook/one-shot idea! This is specifically for Scum and Villainy, but you can absolutely use it for any game. It was just written with Scum and Villainy (powered by Forged in the Dark) in mind.

The Hegemony’s upper crust—the most powerful elites among the most powerful elites—have secrets just like everyone else. Your Crew has been hired to get some of those secrets and help share them, as sharing is caring. And this kind of caring will help liberate a number of worlds from Hegemony control and cause chaos for the empire.

However, those secrets are stored in a highly secure vault known only as The Sky Diamond, a space station turned fortress of sorts by a curious data broker only known as Lucien.

The Crew must find a way to charter approved transport to the Sky Diamond, make their way in, and access multiple servers undetected, as the unspoken rules of the establishment are that any caught with mischief on their minds are simply ejected from the airlocks.

Can your Crew sneak in Luci’s Sky Diamond, steal the requested data, and escape? Will the other treasures here prove too tempting and derail the plain? This could be the heist of the millennium, but only if you don’t get caught.

GM Tips and Tools

The prep portion of this job is critical for things to work out. Gathering intel on the Sky Diamond, the relevant data vaults the Crew will have to steal from, and the potential VIPs who may be present and on the look out for suspicious sorts.

Lucien is, fortunately, both incredibly vain and arrogant, and so he is easily played in terms of gaining entry.

This can easily, like many one-shots turned campaign, be a great starting point or an adventure to plug into an existing Scum and Villainy campaign.

Stay safe in your travels among the stars; good luck and godspeed!

NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 4

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A Time Without Heroes

The adventurers find themselves facing down their arch-nemesis after a seemingly endless journey riddled with perilous pitfalls and fearsome foes. They square up, ready to fight, as their arch-nemesis gives the fully-anticipated monologue. Time seems to stand still.

That’s when the adventurers suddenly, inexplicably, fall into a trance-like state. Everything goes black. What feels like an instant later, the adventurers blink away their confusion and find themselves surrounded by their arch-nemesis’s minions. One calls out to alert their boss your party has awoken, and they rush over with a curious expression on their face—not one of unexpected victory or devious plotting, but one of concern.

A new monologue begins, far less villainous in nature. All around the world, other villainous sorts shared stories of the adventurers who were about to thwart their plots—the true end goal of most sinister sorts—suddenly falling out of time. Nothing could explain it and nothing could fix it. It was simply a time without adventurers—without heroes. And in that time greater evils than ever imaginable were able to rise up, and all the monsters, fiends, and villains of the world could do was tend to their heroes and hope the cosmic balance would once again right itself.

Your adventurers find themselves in a weakened state, as though they were fresh to journeying forth to best evil, but this is a world in which evil has been redefined. How do they proceed? Do they have what it takes to save the day and restore the natural order of things?

GM Tools and Tips

Taking this approach will absolutely require table buy-in, but approach it vaguely enough to allow for a surprise. Make sure you talk through starting with high level characters that are going to revert back to lower levels. Then build to that point, allowing players to experience being a fully-powered adventurer.

Play the villainous NPCs as ones that aren’t necessarily easy to trust—think like an unreliable narrator when stepping into their shoes. Everything is seen through the lens of what these villainous sorts do being the right thing, for the greater good, etc. They view themselves as the heroes of their own stories, and therefore are trying to proceed as such. But they are also eager to do what they can to help restore the adventurers so things can get back to the standard good versus evil normal they had come to know and love.

This can easily be used as a mini-campaign or a full-lengthy campaign.

Above all else: have fun! Take care and as always: good luck and Godspeed!