TURN YOUR SOUND ON FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Drafting the Adventure: Dungeons Without Walls

I love the idea of dungeons, but there was a significant portion of my life as a DM where they didn’t feature in my games. While Pathfinder and 5e provided a great framework for character building and tactical skirmishes that I could build story on top of, neither was really great when it came time to detour into a  dungeon. My players tended to get confused when we headed out to plunder the local ruin or cave system, spending a lot more time figuring out where they were and what they should be doing than actually doing anything. 

The problem as it turned out was limited information.  I had a picture of the dungeon in my head/notes but I couldn’t telepathically infer that to the party, and the back and forth questions where they tried to orient themselves within my mental labyrinth ate up a lot of session time prevented us from attaining that snappy pace that every table needs to keep the players invested.

Recently though I had an epiphany about overhauling exploration in d&d, and wrote up a whole post detailing how you could build and run wilderness adventures the same way you could a heist or a murder mystery. Because I was already writing a series about dungeon design it didn’t take long for me to realize that this exploration overhaul was 100% applicable, and could solve a lot of the delay and confusion my players usually faced on their next trip underground.  Spoilers: it worked amazingly.

 The key to this overhaul was giving my players enough information to see the dungeon as a sort of abstract checklist, and then giving them the power to investigate and check things off that list in whatever order they wished, when they enter a new level of the dungeon they get a new checklist to fill out which still keeps that sense of exploration. Folk love checking things off lists, and I as a dungeonmaster love it when players engage with the content I’ve spent so much energy creating even if it’s only poking their head in the door to realize they want to run away as fast as possible. Likewise, designing the dungeon this way let me tackle much larger concepts without having to sweat the details of filling up every little room as I would have to in map-centric design.

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The classic betrayer

This is where everyone subtly knows that this guy's going to turn the other way.

The betrayer puts on a show for our heroes - kind, compassionate and supporting at first.

it just so happens that the villainthinks the heros are the bad guys.

make them actually likable.emotionally ruin the hero upon betrayal.

The remorseful traitor

whether he had bad intentions from the start or was deceived by others, the betrayer regrets his choices.

when he realizes his mistakes, it's too late to stop the evil, which introduces guilt.

throw the guilt and shame on the character.

even the protagonist can be a traitor! will others forgive him?

The Double Agent

this type of traitor will keep the readers wondering whether this guy is truly on your side.

keep your readers guessing. is that an evil smirk or a genuine smile? does he really love drinking, or is he just trying to get the hero drugged?

Snape in Harry Potter is a great example.

The guy can be good or bad - just keep balancing the two

Unrealiable narrators

these characters are not entirely betrayers, but horribly misinformed. they can make others appear like traitors - when in truth, they just have it wrong.

pit your narrow-minded narrator against his allies.

these characters are great for misunderstanding plots.

have your narrator do irreversible damage to the hero. would they forgive him?

Tragic betrayers

these are characters, due to their past wounds and trauma, cannot help but betray the group.

they confess the hero's secrets under physical/mental torment and doesn't have the backbone to do otherwise.

these characters can either be pitiful or frustrating would the hero still fight for the betrayer?

Play around with pov

you can have the readers know about the upcomong betrayal by switching points of view, building up anticipation to the moment of realization.

on the flip side, you can change povs in a way that the reader doens't see what's happening at the hero's back.

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Campaign 3 Class Predictions

This is just what I think the cast might pick as their classes for next campaign (I have no idea what races they might pick, aside from Sam)

Travis - Either a Cleric or a Paladin or a Wizard. He is very much the dad of the group and he has said multiple times that he enjoys strategizing and being able to play an intelligent character.

Marisha - After Keyleth and Beau I feel like she'd choose something with a high charisma to shake things up, so I feel like she'd choose a Sorcerer.

Laura - Barbarian. She has made it incredibly obvious that she just wants to deal a shit ton amount of damage. She might also pick a race that is large like a Goliath, Half-Orc, Aasimar, something like that. Or she might choose something exotic like a Tabaxi.

Sam - I feel like Sam might play either a Fighter or a less standard class like Blood Hunter (especially since we didn't get to see the full extent of a Blood Hunter's abilities in this campaign). I also feel like after playing two Small characters he'll switch it up to a Medium or Large character.

Liam - I feel like Liam might choose either a Bard or a Druid. With both his natural charisma and his incredible insight as a person he'd be naturally adept at either. He also just rocks spellcasting classes.

Taliesin - WARLOCK.

Ashley - Honestly I have no idea on this one. She has played both a Barbarian and a Cleric now, two classes on opposite sides of the spectrum (I mean I know she was a War Cleric so she was still technically a Tank but she was also primarily a Healer). She might pick Rogue as a good medium but I'm honestly not sure.

Again, these are just my personal predictions, I have no idea if they're gonna be right or not, I'm just throwing this out there.

It would be cool if most of the class picked some of the stranger classes or subclasses available now that so many of the Unearthed Arcana material has been officially published. It would also be cool if for their Races they picked more exotic characters like Tabaxi, Genasi, stuff like that. Fuck, even a Kenku or Aarakocra would be cool.

Either way, it's so weird to think about this because this campaign doesn't feel like it's close to ending. At least for me. In campaign one it definitely like the endgame because of all of the build up and the stakes being set super high and everything, but this one just doesn't have that same feeling.

But I am still excited to see how this all ends and to see how the ending of this campaign will affect the beginning and world of the next campaign.

Space Marines are not your friend

… and the Imperium of Man are not the good guys.

These guys, with the iron crosses and the scary face-masks, surprisingly not very nice.

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Writing Resources

My main thesaurus website which is up while I write:

My favorite Random Name Generator: There are so many ways to tweak the settings and generate names to choose from:

Behind the Name

Random Name Generator

This random name generator can suggest names for babies, characters, or anything else that needs naming.

If you have spare credits/moolah/kruge, these are awesome:

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression (2nd Edition) - WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Released on February 19, 2019. The bestselling Emotion Thesaurus, often hailed as “the gold standard for writers” and credited with transfor

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Emotional Wound Thesaurus - WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Below are samples of the entries in our popular emotional wound thesaurus. For the complete and enhanced collection, please visit One Stop F

Translations: Nothing beats having a native or fluent speaker's help, but DeepL tends to do better than Google Translate:

deepl.com

DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator

Translate texts & full document files instantly. Accurate translations for individuals and Teams. Millions translate with DeepL every day.

I don't heed even a third of its suggestions, but the Hemingway Editor is good for finding stupidly long run-on sentences that I otherwise skim over. It encourages me to rework some things, make them more succinct:

Matt Damon explains why they don’t make movies like they used to. Pls watch.

Lorn's Lure is a sci-fi free-climbing adventure scale a massive megastructure in search of a glitchy ghost owl!

Lorn's Lure is out now on Steam

Gameplay Video:

Painted a bunch of little skulls for the Planescape: Adventures in Multiverse book, including my beloved childhood friend Morte and this funky guy all covered in stickers :)

Please notice little Mahadi, the Cassalanters' crest and Barovia postcards I allowed myself to slap on him :)

Plus the rest of the mimirs.

AD: Emi Tanji

JK Rowling really named that dude Xenophilius Lovegood.

XENOPHILIUS.

XENOPHILE.

Fucker of foreign ppl.

"ius" is a suffix meaning "belonging to" or "made of"

Foreign people fucker made of Lovegood

Noise Marines - Plan C

I did what I didn't want to do. A valiant servant of the chaos gods sacrificed a critical part of his armour kit to give me something that looks a bit like a speaker for the muzzle of the sonic blaster.

I don't think he minds.

The end result looks just like I hoped. The skull and jaw placement will need some finesse to ensure the grille's not hidden, but I'm surprisingly happy. Also meant some pinning to line it up properly and I'm a sucker for pinning, just a tad more than I'm a sucker for magnets.