Dungeon Master
D&D adventures available for download?:
November 15, 2019:
In my last Dungeons and Dragons 5E session Leroy and Co. finished up my current homebrew adventure crowning achievement. (Another group is still going through it so I can't divulge too many details.) One of my players liked it so much he wanted to try running it for his friends. If only it were readily available. But wait! It's already typed up, with a cover page and everything! Because I'm a thorough dork! I've been trying to make the creating process easier and quicker because that particular adventure was a lot. Lots of drama, moving parts, some added mechanics, and player information and stats to keep track of. It was beautiful and that second session was the most epic session of my life. Exactly what I hope to bring to my future homebrewed Dungeons and Dragons games.
A delicious Lovecraftian tale--inspired by a short story I read back in the early 2000s--with eerie atmosphere, cultists, sacrifice, and creepy creatures from other dimensions. The players find themselves in a mill town and everyone seems off, there's something weird going on here. Soon terror and doubt and madness set in and they get to decide what they do in town. Moral dilemmas, self-preservation. Save the town? Save the people? Save themselves? All while slipping into the depths of insanity. So stay tuned for further developments. If you like D&D and you play 5E, are into psychological or B-movie horror, this could be a thing for you. Or maybe you won't find it all that scary. I don't know. I'm not you.
Right now I have art projects and a website I'm trying to revitalize, but soon after I finish up some things I want to look into fixing up a couple existing adventures (this one included) and make them available to whoever wants them, for a small price. There are some legal things I'll have to look into first.
Dungeon Master for so many groups:
November 15, 2019:
It all began a few years ago, about 2015, when I wanted to get back into Dungeons and Dragons. My previous experience was running D&D 3.5 games, in the early 2000s. Life changed and moved on, people came and went, and I stopped playing for several years. And then a little twinkle came back, The current system of Fifth Edition (5E) had come out, so I had to learn new rules. Critical Role helped out immensely. Reading the books can work but it's not the best way to learn how to play. The show allowed me to see how new mechanics worked.
I bought the core three books: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Like in the old days, I wanted to write my own adventures. I get more satisfaction out of it. I've always loved boardgames and writing and playing adventure video games. Making your own D&D adventure is like doing all of those things plus the magic of having your friends "play" in the made up world you created. Then they get their own stories to tell over and over. It's amazing! So I make my own adventures even though it is more time consuming. I want to consume my time by making them.
How many groups do I have? Let's explain who they are and count as we go. Yes, for my first group (one), I wanted to run with all ladies because honestly, playing D&D with boys all the time . . . it's nice to have a change of pace. My first group consisted of four girlfriends. I was suffering from bad anxiety (GAD) at the time so the first session was really rough for me but I did it and it was amazing and I wanted to do more and my players wanted more and that's the thing with D&D: you always want to come back for more. The group calls themselves The Heroes of Everywhere We Go and consists of a ranger (beast master) gnome named Loopy and her cougar companion John Cougar Mellencamp; Bo the gnome rogue who doesn't have much luck in the roguing department; Tarlena the wispy thin elf monk who is pretty much the mother of the group and also the tallest by several feet; and a sorcerer (wild magic) halfling named Kim. This group is adorable and easily distracted by their own musings.
Now, because I ran this game I had to tell my husband about it. He looked sheepish. He wanted to play. So I put together a second group (two) to play through the same adventures I was creating, as an experiment to see how differently they would turn out, based on different character interactions and players. Yes, it was different. The group started out with a character with a split personality played by two people, one was evil and the other was good but crazy, so I had a human wizard named Lucas/Claus and now it's just Lucas because the other player moved on; then there was Etragaan, a tiefling warlock (Great Old One pact) played by my husband; a rogue (assassin) elf named Fi; and a human fighter named Stor Stormwind played by my friend who plays Loopy the ranger in the ladies' group. Stor Stormwind met a tragic fate that first session. He died and was beheaded by a quarterstaff wielded by the evil wizard and had his body dumped in the river. (There is bitterness about it to this very day.) My friend then made Euphemia Hilltopple, a gnome cleric who was going to be the healiest healing cleric that ever healed so there would not be a Stor incident again. This group became Leroy and Co.
Some time after that, I thought about my old 3.5 adventures. I still had all my notes and computer files. What if I tried running a group through them? The Friday night boardgame group would be easy to do with designated gaming time set aside already. They were definitely into it. So I started a 3.5 campaign using my old adventures (three). It's been rough. The 3.5 rules are a lot fiddlier than 5E. I had to cross reference between three books and four pages just to figure out a single monster's special attack. I'll switch them to 5E once we get through the old adventures. They call themselves Murray and the Stormtroopers and consists of Derrik the Cleric, human, played by my husband; Traci (with a heart over the "i") a human ranger played by my friend in the other two groups; Vola a very squat, cube-shaped half-orc bard who is played by the friend who plays Fi the rogue; and Arnold "Wally" Waldorf, a sun elf wizard who is always out of spells and strangely adept at grappling enemies.
Let's see. Who came next? A friend who played with us back in the day was interested in giving D&D a go again and also introducing his then girlfriend, now wife, to the game. My husband had a co-worker friend who really needed a bit of the D&D. So I put the group through the first adventure I wrote that the other two 5E groups had gone through (four). This new group became Almost Heroes and added a fifth player in the last session because another friend really needed D&D in her life. So we have Tipps Fedora, a gnome bard; Nik Beerd, played by my husband, the rogue (assassin) dwarf and cohort to Tipps; Pete the fighter (battle master) human; Aliya a tiefling sorcerer (wild magic); and Tauri a human druid (forest circle) who seems to be the group mom and added balance to a group that sorely needed it. Group dynamics are interesting.
My final and most recent group are my son and husband (five!). I had the idea of running a simple, lighthearted game for just the family. My husband is a goliath fighter named Mungo Schlomo who wears a tiny, sharp bowler hat he can wield as a weapon; my son is a human bard named Miles who beats people with a spikey banjo and has a monkey companion named Slim. We've only done one session so far so no talk of a group name yet.
With all these games going on, you'd think we played all the time. Nope. Not enough and not that often. Sometimes we get one session in a year. People have lives and it's harder to organize a time for everyone.