Tuesday, March 30, 2010
BONUS POST: Monsters!
I'm actually hard at work on encounter design already. I'm looking at around a half dozen or so custom monsters. Thanks to the magic of the Monster Builder, here's the first two:
Trouble in the Mines
It's never too early for prep work! Which is why, despite not having characters made yet, I'm already working on the first adventure. It really is pretty easy, just leave the hook potential as wide open as I can, and when we sit down for character creation, I'm going to say, "I have this idea for a first adventure. It involves clearing out this small, possibly abdandoned mine outside of Briarridge. How do you guys think you would get involved?" Start with the player involvement right from the get go.
With that left open for later, I can work on the overall shape of the adventure itself. While I can't design individual encounters until I have a group (both players and PCs), I can decide what they will be in general terms (e.g. goblinoids looting a wagon, PCs get the drop on them), and on the flow of the adventure. Fot the big bad, I had the idea of a pair of orcs, twin brother and sister, heretics exiled from their tribe, that have attracted a ragtag band of similarly outcast goblins and orcs, and set up shop in the mine in question. The twins are going to be the PCs first contact with the Cult, though they likely won't relize it at the time. Indeed, what I want to aim for is, when they see the eye symbols the twins have, they just assume it is Gruumash's symbol. It won't be until later (say, when dealing with their chieften father who exiled them), that they find out different.
As for the twins themselves, they will be a pair of elites, the brother as the soldier melee type, the sister as the magical artillery type. While I am not designing them yet, I do have an idea of a mechanical hook: each will have an ability that triggers when the other becomes bloodied. As for why they are there, beyond general monster lairing, what if they choose this site because it allows them acces to the flows of energy and primal magic, allowing them to twist and draw on them for their own purpose? I was already considering this when I found out one of my players is pretty solidly set on playing a shaman, so that pretty much locks this idea in.
It also leads to another encounter idea. What if the actions of the twins have driven the primal spirit of the mountain mad? Encounter! Imagine a fight with a solo, a kind of mid-boss, as the PCs are attacked by the spirit up on the mountain. Defeating it doesn't kill it, but frees it from its frenzy. It can explain that the mojo of the land is being messed with and call on the shaman and his allies to set it right. Oh, and it can also imbue the shaman's totem with power, turning it into a magic item. Not only is it a great point to hand out a juicy bit of treasure, but it makes it personal. Win!
Another encounter I brainstormed up was an attack by bandits on their way to Briarridge. This will showcase the rough and dangerous nature of the area, as well as give everyone a chance to stretch their wings and see their characters in action. Especially with new players, this is going to be a softball encounter, and I will likely encourage them to use their dailies, letting them know they'll make it it to town okay from here. Metagamey, sure, but I want this to be the try-everything warm-up. Plenty of minions, scruffy desperate brigands, and the PCs being awesome.
At this point, I have a beginning, a mid-point, and a boss encounter, so its time to start weaving them together and filling out more. The overall flow of the adventure that I see (barring PC willfullness) takes shpe like this:
Bandit attack
Time in town (Rest, NPC interactions, another post will cover Briarridge)
Journey to the mine
The mine itself
I start considering links and encounters to flesh all this out. The spirit mid-boss is definately part of the journey portion, and its climax, but I need to get the PCs there without resorting directly to the shaman's PC sense. What if the madness afflicting the mountain spirit also affects other things? The PCs are breaking camp (cause it will take a couple days to get to their destination), on a foggy spooky dawn, when they are attacked by animals obviousilly under some unnatural influence or compulsion. When they defeat them, their spirits rise and depart up the mountain, beckoning the shaman to follow. Link, spookiness, low-visibility battlefield. Sounds good.
I also want an encounter with the goblinoid followers of the twins, give the players a taste of whats to come. With the bandits and the animals attacking the PCs, I decide I'll turn the tables. The players with find a band of goblins that have attacked a wagon from another mine, killed its driver, and are picking through and arguing about loot, when the PCs come on them and get the drop. Also, a good point to have some treasure.
That pretty much leads the party up to the mines. Since this is the focus of the adventure, and I already have four encounters before the mines, I figure I will want around six or so for the mines. The boss encounter is a given, so that gives me about five to play with. I want some variety, so I decide that while three of those are going to involve the twins' followers, I'll have two with other things that happen to live (or otherwise reside) in the mines. I don't have too much in mind yet for those individual encounters, save for a possible "overcome the guards to secure entrance to the mines."
For flow troubleshooting, the main potential I see is the party skipping the spirit mid-boss. Since part of character and party creation will include coming up for reasons for them to be on this adventure, getting them going won't be a problem. If they do decide to skip the spirit encounter, then I'll just up gun the twins a bit, as they have that stolen primal power, and add the shaman's totem to their treasure.
At this point, realizing I have a level or more of encounters here, I break them down into a list like so:
From this point, as I come up with ideas for the other four encounters, I'll pencil them in, and start assigning treasure parcels. I also figure that clearing the mines is a prime example of a major quest, and the spirit is a good minor quest. I am open to more minors once I have character ideas and backgrounds that I can tailor too. This will certianly see them going into level 2, and I'll probably be drawing from the first few parcels for that level for this adventure.
Coming Soon: Once I have a confirmed party, I can start designing encounters, some of which I will feature here!
With that left open for later, I can work on the overall shape of the adventure itself. While I can't design individual encounters until I have a group (both players and PCs), I can decide what they will be in general terms (e.g. goblinoids looting a wagon, PCs get the drop on them), and on the flow of the adventure. Fot the big bad, I had the idea of a pair of orcs, twin brother and sister, heretics exiled from their tribe, that have attracted a ragtag band of similarly outcast goblins and orcs, and set up shop in the mine in question. The twins are going to be the PCs first contact with the Cult, though they likely won't relize it at the time. Indeed, what I want to aim for is, when they see the eye symbols the twins have, they just assume it is Gruumash's symbol. It won't be until later (say, when dealing with their chieften father who exiled them), that they find out different.
As for the twins themselves, they will be a pair of elites, the brother as the soldier melee type, the sister as the magical artillery type. While I am not designing them yet, I do have an idea of a mechanical hook: each will have an ability that triggers when the other becomes bloodied. As for why they are there, beyond general monster lairing, what if they choose this site because it allows them acces to the flows of energy and primal magic, allowing them to twist and draw on them for their own purpose? I was already considering this when I found out one of my players is pretty solidly set on playing a shaman, so that pretty much locks this idea in.
It also leads to another encounter idea. What if the actions of the twins have driven the primal spirit of the mountain mad? Encounter! Imagine a fight with a solo, a kind of mid-boss, as the PCs are attacked by the spirit up on the mountain. Defeating it doesn't kill it, but frees it from its frenzy. It can explain that the mojo of the land is being messed with and call on the shaman and his allies to set it right. Oh, and it can also imbue the shaman's totem with power, turning it into a magic item. Not only is it a great point to hand out a juicy bit of treasure, but it makes it personal. Win!
Another encounter I brainstormed up was an attack by bandits on their way to Briarridge. This will showcase the rough and dangerous nature of the area, as well as give everyone a chance to stretch their wings and see their characters in action. Especially with new players, this is going to be a softball encounter, and I will likely encourage them to use their dailies, letting them know they'll make it it to town okay from here. Metagamey, sure, but I want this to be the try-everything warm-up. Plenty of minions, scruffy desperate brigands, and the PCs being awesome.
At this point, I have a beginning, a mid-point, and a boss encounter, so its time to start weaving them together and filling out more. The overall flow of the adventure that I see (barring PC willfullness) takes shpe like this:
Bandit attack
Time in town (Rest, NPC interactions, another post will cover Briarridge)
Journey to the mine
The mine itself
I start considering links and encounters to flesh all this out. The spirit mid-boss is definately part of the journey portion, and its climax, but I need to get the PCs there without resorting directly to the shaman's PC sense. What if the madness afflicting the mountain spirit also affects other things? The PCs are breaking camp (cause it will take a couple days to get to their destination), on a foggy spooky dawn, when they are attacked by animals obviousilly under some unnatural influence or compulsion. When they defeat them, their spirits rise and depart up the mountain, beckoning the shaman to follow. Link, spookiness, low-visibility battlefield. Sounds good.
I also want an encounter with the goblinoid followers of the twins, give the players a taste of whats to come. With the bandits and the animals attacking the PCs, I decide I'll turn the tables. The players with find a band of goblins that have attacked a wagon from another mine, killed its driver, and are picking through and arguing about loot, when the PCs come on them and get the drop. Also, a good point to have some treasure.
That pretty much leads the party up to the mines. Since this is the focus of the adventure, and I already have four encounters before the mines, I figure I will want around six or so for the mines. The boss encounter is a given, so that gives me about five to play with. I want some variety, so I decide that while three of those are going to involve the twins' followers, I'll have two with other things that happen to live (or otherwise reside) in the mines. I don't have too much in mind yet for those individual encounters, save for a possible "overcome the guards to secure entrance to the mines."
For flow troubleshooting, the main potential I see is the party skipping the spirit mid-boss. Since part of character and party creation will include coming up for reasons for them to be on this adventure, getting them going won't be a problem. If they do decide to skip the spirit encounter, then I'll just up gun the twins a bit, as they have that stolen primal power, and add the shaman's totem to their treasure.
At this point, realizing I have a level or more of encounters here, I break them down into a list like so:
- Bandit attack
- Wagon looting
- Animals attack
- Frenzied spirit mid-boss
- At the mine entrance
- Followers 2
- Followers 3
- Others 1
- Others 2
- The Twins
From this point, as I come up with ideas for the other four encounters, I'll pencil them in, and start assigning treasure parcels. I also figure that clearing the mines is a prime example of a major quest, and the spirit is a good minor quest. I am open to more minors once I have character ideas and backgrounds that I can tailor too. This will certianly see them going into level 2, and I'll probably be drawing from the first few parcels for that level for this adventure.
Coming Soon: Once I have a confirmed party, I can start designing encounters, some of which I will feature here!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
PUGging For Great Justice
Just a bit of happy news: I found a couple more players for the game, so at this point, it is a go. We're getting together in a couple of weeks for character creation. I'm doing it as group so people can bounce ideas off each other, come up with a group composition that works, and get a feel for who and why the party is the party they are. I am going with the idea that they are already an established party of adventures, so it's coming up with that bit of backstory, and what will be hooking them into the first adventure.
The couple of players are, themselves, a couple. A husband and wife who are pretty new to 4E. They've done some delves and the D&D Encounters, and played in their first LFR game this weekend, at the same table as me. They are really liking the game, and are quite excited about a stable ongoing game that actually allows for some deeper character and story development. Chatting with them at the meet up and online, I think they are going to be having and providing a lot of fun, so I'm really jazzed,
There's been some brainstorming about character possibilities, and the player I thought was going to be playing a shaman is planning on doing something else. I going to keep the primal encounters, as they do add variety, and can be spun to show the unnatural activities of the twins. I'll just have to decide who to grant the weapon imbue to, but that'll be no problem.
The couple of players are, themselves, a couple. A husband and wife who are pretty new to 4E. They've done some delves and the D&D Encounters, and played in their first LFR game this weekend, at the same table as me. They are really liking the game, and are quite excited about a stable ongoing game that actually allows for some deeper character and story development. Chatting with them at the meet up and online, I think they are going to be having and providing a lot of fun, so I'm really jazzed,
There's been some brainstorming about character possibilities, and the player I thought was going to be playing a shaman is planning on doing something else. I going to keep the primal encounters, as they do add variety, and can be spun to show the unnatural activities of the twins. I'll just have to decide who to grant the weapon imbue to, but that'll be no problem.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
We're Building a World / We're Building it Bigger
One of the interesting things about 4E is that it comes with not so much a weak default setting, as a stronger default meta-setting. While it talks about "the world", it isn't so much about a single specific world, as it is a style of world. Sure, it uses some consistent names and ideas: some of the fallen empires, the gods, and bits of peices of classic D&D lore, and a default cosmology. There are no maps of anything more than, "Here's a valley as an example starting campaign area." Modern places and things, are either example fluff for game elements, or exist in the context of a module that needs a bit more setting material to hang together. The world as a whole? It is really more a collection of themes and tropes than a place.
As a DM, that gives me a lot of flexibility, especially with potential new players. As they read through the books, they get a feel for the setting, without having to worry about if I am using or changing specific details. The world-as-places is a blank slate. The vibe of the world is something that, when we come to the table, we're on the same page about.
Using this default meta-setting, the Points of Light background, thus presents a strong advantage for me. It is designed to help support the core D&D trope of adventuring. It presumes a world that has seen the rise and fall of successive empires, each leaving their marks on the world. The most recent, the cosmopolitan human empire of Nerath, failed over a century ago. Civilization now exists as mostly isolated bastions: city-states, loose confederations of towns, individual communities with tenurous trade links. Most of the land, though, is wilderness. There are no great nation-states or other spanning organizations. Much of the land between these pockets of civilization is full of monsters and ruins and other such adventurer-attracting fodder.
Perhaps a way to think of this default PoL background is as a specific palette of colors. While many different paintings can be made with them, they'll still have a certain unity in feel. While one can certainly change out colors for others, changing the themes and nature of settings that result, I like the PoL and what it offers me, so I am going ahead with that.
With that decided, it's time to start applying those colors and make this world mine, so that I can then hand it over to the players. Of course, the key here is that while I am building a world, I'm doing so for a game. As such, I'm leaving most of it aside for now, and choosing one particular corner I can use as setting and background for the start of play, and likely most of the heroic tier, at least.
My intital thought, when I conceived of Operation ZEaGAuiOS, was a setting focused on the colder, more northern climes. I kicked that idea around a little bit, but ultimately rejected it, as it felt a little overdone to me. I still love the broader concept - I regard Frostfell as one of the best 3E books - but it wasn't working for me here. So why not take it down the other way? Something temperate, verging on sub-tropical; almost Mediterranean. That then melded with a bit of idea I had a while back reagrding "ancient fortresses floating over the southern coast."
And so it was that....some region I have yet to name, was born. Yes, I suck at names, which is part of what makes running a game so fun and exciting. Anyways, it is a stretch of southern coastline of the larger continent, separted from it by a fierce mountain range running roughly parallel to the coast. See the scanned sketch of it below:
Yes, it is a very rough sketch. No scale yet, the barest of terrain features. It exists, at this point, just to give me a view of the shape of the land, with plenty of open areas to fill in details.
This region represented the southern most outposts of Nerath. I imagine it wasn't heavily settled or exploited by Nerath, more of a military (likely mostly naval) presence to help secure the area, and plans to expand and colonize. When Nerath fell, an influx of refugees fled down to the area, as good land and relatively distant and secure from the decline and death of Nerath.
As part of the Points of Light, I imagine there are roughly a half-dozen major-city states. The only one I have strongly defined in my mind at the moment is Torrenvald, the City of Blades. It is dominated by the church of Bane, and is essentially a theocratic militocracy. It is the single strongest city-state in the region. It has been involved in skirmishes and small conflicts over different resources in the area, but there has been no major wars, and no attempts to conquer any of its neighbors (a constant fear of theirs).
The only other place that's gotten any solid though put into it is Briarridge (I hate that double "rr", maybe just Briaridge?), a mining town in the mountains. It serves a complex of very lucrativce iron mines in the area, which were one of the few things that Nerath had been exploiting, as well as empires before them. Yup, plenty of dungeon fodder there. The town, and all the mines, are indepenent, with many different interests operating different mines. Torrenvald would love to bring the whole area under its "protection", but realzies that while it may have the force of arm to do so, such an act would almost force the other city-states into some form of alliance against it. This is where I am planning to have at least my first adventure or two.
There are some other fragmentary ideas I have. There's the aforementioned floating fortresses, which are the legacy of a much older empire. They slowly drift about, seemingly sealed, though they occassionaly vanish and reappear else where along the coast. Basically, instant side dungeons. One of the city-states, as another relic, is built around bridges and streets of solid yet flowing water; one of the things I came up with to show off the elemental theme. A lot I am leaving undefined at this point, to give the players plenty of room to add their own elements to the setting. If someone says, "Hey, can I be from a place like X?", then I want to be able to tell them, "Sure! Tell me about X, and let's figure out where it would be." All while considering how I can use X in the game and spin some adventures out from it. One of my goals for heroic play is to have an adventure focusing on the background of each character, to really weave them in and make the setting matter to them. That will both help make the settings theirs, and make the later big threats to it all the more exciting.
Coming up next, how the first adventure started coming together.
As a DM, that gives me a lot of flexibility, especially with potential new players. As they read through the books, they get a feel for the setting, without having to worry about if I am using or changing specific details. The world-as-places is a blank slate. The vibe of the world is something that, when we come to the table, we're on the same page about.
Using this default meta-setting, the Points of Light background, thus presents a strong advantage for me. It is designed to help support the core D&D trope of adventuring. It presumes a world that has seen the rise and fall of successive empires, each leaving their marks on the world. The most recent, the cosmopolitan human empire of Nerath, failed over a century ago. Civilization now exists as mostly isolated bastions: city-states, loose confederations of towns, individual communities with tenurous trade links. Most of the land, though, is wilderness. There are no great nation-states or other spanning organizations. Much of the land between these pockets of civilization is full of monsters and ruins and other such adventurer-attracting fodder.
Perhaps a way to think of this default PoL background is as a specific palette of colors. While many different paintings can be made with them, they'll still have a certain unity in feel. While one can certainly change out colors for others, changing the themes and nature of settings that result, I like the PoL and what it offers me, so I am going ahead with that.
With that decided, it's time to start applying those colors and make this world mine, so that I can then hand it over to the players. Of course, the key here is that while I am building a world, I'm doing so for a game. As such, I'm leaving most of it aside for now, and choosing one particular corner I can use as setting and background for the start of play, and likely most of the heroic tier, at least.
My intital thought, when I conceived of Operation ZEaGAuiOS, was a setting focused on the colder, more northern climes. I kicked that idea around a little bit, but ultimately rejected it, as it felt a little overdone to me. I still love the broader concept - I regard Frostfell as one of the best 3E books - but it wasn't working for me here. So why not take it down the other way? Something temperate, verging on sub-tropical; almost Mediterranean. That then melded with a bit of idea I had a while back reagrding "ancient fortresses floating over the southern coast."
And so it was that....some region I have yet to name, was born. Yes, I suck at names, which is part of what makes running a game so fun and exciting. Anyways, it is a stretch of southern coastline of the larger continent, separted from it by a fierce mountain range running roughly parallel to the coast. See the scanned sketch of it below:
Yes, it is a very rough sketch. No scale yet, the barest of terrain features. It exists, at this point, just to give me a view of the shape of the land, with plenty of open areas to fill in details.
This region represented the southern most outposts of Nerath. I imagine it wasn't heavily settled or exploited by Nerath, more of a military (likely mostly naval) presence to help secure the area, and plans to expand and colonize. When Nerath fell, an influx of refugees fled down to the area, as good land and relatively distant and secure from the decline and death of Nerath.
As part of the Points of Light, I imagine there are roughly a half-dozen major-city states. The only one I have strongly defined in my mind at the moment is Torrenvald, the City of Blades. It is dominated by the church of Bane, and is essentially a theocratic militocracy. It is the single strongest city-state in the region. It has been involved in skirmishes and small conflicts over different resources in the area, but there has been no major wars, and no attempts to conquer any of its neighbors (a constant fear of theirs).
The only other place that's gotten any solid though put into it is Briarridge (I hate that double "rr", maybe just Briaridge?), a mining town in the mountains. It serves a complex of very lucrativce iron mines in the area, which were one of the few things that Nerath had been exploiting, as well as empires before them. Yup, plenty of dungeon fodder there. The town, and all the mines, are indepenent, with many different interests operating different mines. Torrenvald would love to bring the whole area under its "protection", but realzies that while it may have the force of arm to do so, such an act would almost force the other city-states into some form of alliance against it. This is where I am planning to have at least my first adventure or two.
There are some other fragmentary ideas I have. There's the aforementioned floating fortresses, which are the legacy of a much older empire. They slowly drift about, seemingly sealed, though they occassionaly vanish and reappear else where along the coast. Basically, instant side dungeons. One of the city-states, as another relic, is built around bridges and streets of solid yet flowing water; one of the things I came up with to show off the elemental theme. A lot I am leaving undefined at this point, to give the players plenty of room to add their own elements to the setting. If someone says, "Hey, can I be from a place like X?", then I want to be able to tell them, "Sure! Tell me about X, and let's figure out where it would be." All while considering how I can use X in the game and spin some adventures out from it. One of my goals for heroic play is to have an adventure focusing on the background of each character, to really weave them in and make the setting matter to them. That will both help make the settings theirs, and make the later big threats to it all the more exciting.
Coming up next, how the first adventure started coming together.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Dungeons & Dragons? Tell Me More...
Just saying that I am going to be running D&D doesn't necessarily say much. As an RPG, it is very broad in its scope of potential game and story ideas. One of the things I love about D&D, and 4E in particular, is its focus on the action-adventure fantasy gaming. D&D is about doing STUFF and having fun doing that STUFF. Not to say there isn't room for story or character development or such - and I plan to have a good dose of both - but deep exploration of those aren't the itch that I choose D&D to scratch. So what I'm looking to run is basically "as-advertised" D&D: kick ass team-based fantasy action-adventure. Especially since a couple of my prospective players are new to the game, if not tabletop RPGs in general, going with the default playstyle the game puts forth will be easier on them. And, as a very rusty DM, easier on me!
I pitched the idea of running something to a couple of friends, who were fully on board with it. My first thought, once I had decided on running a game of D&D, was "what is this game going to be about?" In the sense of if there's going to be action-adventure and kicking ass, what kind of ass is going to be kicked in what kind of adventurous places and ways? While I'm a fan of all things Far Realm and Lovecraftian, I discarded that for some of D&D's own backstory: elementals and giants. Elemental themes to the game struck me as pretty cool, both for world and adventure building, and how can you go wrong smashing giants (and they have some smahsing minis). Giants are tough customers, so that means the primary arc of the game would have to be at the paragon stage. Which works out well, because that gives me the heroic tier for folks to get used to their characters, some general D&D adventures, and laying the groundwork for Operation: ZOMG Elementals and Giants All In Our Shit.
Before I had even thought much about the potential shape and source of this threat, I was flipping through The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos and came across the section on the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye. Too damn perfect. Right there was the driving antagonistic force for the game. It delivers my desired elemental and giant action, with room for plenty of other nasties under its umbrella to boot. The old school D&D ties are just bonus coolness. I already have some general flow shaping up just based on this. During heroic, I can have the PCs encounter some scattered elements of the Cult, and foreshadow the coming conflicts that will define paragon play.
Further, by using the Cult, I now have ready-made epic tier potential, if any ideas don't arise in the course of game - or in addition. Both Tharizdun and Zuggtmoy, as well as the Elemental Evils themselves, all give me lots of fodder for epic adventuring. Espeically one nasty little idea that occured to me: what if, after all these centuries, Zuggtmoy nurses a grudge about how her operation got jacked out from under her? The concept of Zuggtmoy as an uncertain ally for the PCs in their fight against the powers behind the Cult is a fun one.
With this, I now had the broadest of roadmaps for the game, a rough idea of what each tier would be largely revovling around. Paragon and epic are a (long) ways off, so it's time to start breaking into heroic and planning that out. I want to include a solid propotion of adventures based on PC backgrounds, which, lacking players and their respecitive PCs, I can't really plan around yet. But before even that, I need a where for things to happen....
I pitched the idea of running something to a couple of friends, who were fully on board with it. My first thought, once I had decided on running a game of D&D, was "what is this game going to be about?" In the sense of if there's going to be action-adventure and kicking ass, what kind of ass is going to be kicked in what kind of adventurous places and ways? While I'm a fan of all things Far Realm and Lovecraftian, I discarded that for some of D&D's own backstory: elementals and giants. Elemental themes to the game struck me as pretty cool, both for world and adventure building, and how can you go wrong smashing giants (and they have some smahsing minis). Giants are tough customers, so that means the primary arc of the game would have to be at the paragon stage. Which works out well, because that gives me the heroic tier for folks to get used to their characters, some general D&D adventures, and laying the groundwork for Operation: ZOMG Elementals and Giants All In Our Shit.
Before I had even thought much about the potential shape and source of this threat, I was flipping through The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos and came across the section on the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye. Too damn perfect. Right there was the driving antagonistic force for the game. It delivers my desired elemental and giant action, with room for plenty of other nasties under its umbrella to boot. The old school D&D ties are just bonus coolness. I already have some general flow shaping up just based on this. During heroic, I can have the PCs encounter some scattered elements of the Cult, and foreshadow the coming conflicts that will define paragon play.
Further, by using the Cult, I now have ready-made epic tier potential, if any ideas don't arise in the course of game - or in addition. Both Tharizdun and Zuggtmoy, as well as the Elemental Evils themselves, all give me lots of fodder for epic adventuring. Espeically one nasty little idea that occured to me: what if, after all these centuries, Zuggtmoy nurses a grudge about how her operation got jacked out from under her? The concept of Zuggtmoy as an uncertain ally for the PCs in their fight against the powers behind the Cult is a fun one.
With this, I now had the broadest of roadmaps for the game, a rough idea of what each tier would be largely revovling around. Paragon and epic are a (long) ways off, so it's time to start breaking into heroic and planning that out. I want to include a solid propotion of adventures based on PC backgrounds, which, lacking players and their respecitive PCs, I can't really plan around yet. But before even that, I need a where for things to happen....
Welcome!
Disclaimer: I am scared nigh-witless by the thought of DMing.
Yet here I am, gathering together people to play Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition with. Not just playing with them, but being the Dungeon Master for them. Why? Becuase I want to game, and someone has to step up and take that extra responsibility. Because, despite the things that frighten me, I know it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Because 4E makes running the game so much easier. Most of all, though, I want to challange myself, and hey, make some fun for people in the process.
Thus, I welcome you to Watch Me DM, a blog about the process and experience of creating and running this game of D&D. The intent is not to be an actual play log - though you will undoubtedly get plenty of reports of action from the table - but to share the behind-the-scenes, off-the-table side of Dungeon Mastering. Herein I will share the adventure design, story concepts, and encounter building. I will talk about how I got a great idea from an NPR story, how flipping through a book catalyzied elements that were floating through my mind. I will take my players' thoughts and backgrounds, and here examine them, ponder them, and weave them into the greater fabric of the game.
And shy, stage-fright me, I am not only going to be running a game, but sharing all this with you. How hard can it be? More importantly, how fun will it be?
Let's roll for initiative and find out!
Yet here I am, gathering together people to play Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition with. Not just playing with them, but being the Dungeon Master for them. Why? Becuase I want to game, and someone has to step up and take that extra responsibility. Because, despite the things that frighten me, I know it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Because 4E makes running the game so much easier. Most of all, though, I want to challange myself, and hey, make some fun for people in the process.
Thus, I welcome you to Watch Me DM, a blog about the process and experience of creating and running this game of D&D. The intent is not to be an actual play log - though you will undoubtedly get plenty of reports of action from the table - but to share the behind-the-scenes, off-the-table side of Dungeon Mastering. Herein I will share the adventure design, story concepts, and encounter building. I will talk about how I got a great idea from an NPR story, how flipping through a book catalyzied elements that were floating through my mind. I will take my players' thoughts and backgrounds, and here examine them, ponder them, and weave them into the greater fabric of the game.
And shy, stage-fright me, I am not only going to be running a game, but sharing all this with you. How hard can it be? More importantly, how fun will it be?
Let's roll for initiative and find out!
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