Dungeons and Dragons: *spoilers, Allie and Hannah do not read
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I will be finishing up preparations for my final session of Dungeons and Dragons with this party. This time of year is absolutely horrible for scheduling, so I am already working with my players to determine a viable session time. This has been the most frustrating part of my Genius Hour, but I'm working on solving all conflicts.
As for final preparations, I only needed to work on a few final details due tome doing most of the intense work last week. For this campaign, I've been using milestone-based leveling for the characters. This means that they level up whenever the Dungeon Mater thinks that they have reached a progression milestone, rather than leveling up determined by enemies killed in combat which is the other method. Every level the characters gain new abilities, but level three is a significant increase in power with most classes of fighter. Due to the impact of this increase, I wanted to make it part of the story.
At level three, Nyssaadi decided to pick up the eldritch knight subclass. Nyssaadi's main class is a fighter, and hey usually have no access to magic unless they choose to be an eldritch knight. Because she is a fighter with somewhat a lower intelligence stat, she does not have the most powerful magic. I decided to incorporate this into the story by having Snargog give Nyssaadi magic lessons while they have been traveling. Given that she is only an apprentice mage, it makes sense that her magic is not as powerful. Xanaphia got to choose her druidic circle at level three, which means that she got to choose what kind of nature magic she is most attuned with. I incorporated this in the story by saying that Xanaphia was horrified by the destruction of the forest by the cult and this allowed her to grow closer to her home. Snargog learned some higher level spells at level three, which I attributed to his time studying magic after the battle that almost killed his dog.
The other thing I had to do was complete preparation of Balmoral for the adventurers to visit. The village has been mostly destroyed by the cultists, so I decided to only include the tavern and a few stubborn farmers left in the area. The tavern will be named The Jade Dragon and be comfortable but devoid of most frills. The people left in town will be a combination of human and dwarven, with the tavern owner Tazvian being the de facto leader of the town.
And that's all I have for this week! Next week will be our final session and if technology is on my side there will be a podcast released with our live gameplay.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Genius Hour 2.6
Dungeons and Dragons: *spoilers, Allie and Hannah do not read
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I will be detailing the most vital components of what I do to prepare for a session in the "List Post" blog format. Due to how my group's scheduling has turned out, I'll be taking this week and next week to prepare for our final session. This means that there may be some gaps in my planning with this blog, but I will be finishing up details and missed items next week.
All of the components of gameplay that I'll be detailing are intertwined, so the numbering of the list is trivial. Every aspect has its own significance.
1. Review the characters
The most important detail of my storytelling is the motivations of my characters. As such, I need to constantly be thinking of where the characters are physically, as in equipment, leveling, and actual location, and where they are in their character arc. I won't go into too much detail with this, as that will be the topic of next week's podcast.
2. Outline potential scenes
This is definitely the most intricate part of my preparation process. Some Dungeon Masters go absolutely crazy with scene options and storylines, but given that my players are relatively inexperienced they tend to go in whatever direction that I suggest. This makes my job a lot easier in the end. The final session, I'll be sending the players back to Port Swordbreak before they accompany Thess'ahlia to the final cultist stronghold. They'll have relatively free reign to explore the city and have some fun before entering the more serious combat scenarios. The party will travel through the countryside until reaching Balmoral and will battle their way through the outpost.
3. Define lore and secrets
Depending on the tone of the campaign, lore and secrets can add a lot to the narrative. However, I'm running a more combat heavy campaign so lore it not that important. Secrets can be pretty interesting for character motivations, so I'll be hiding a few things through the session in some puzzles that the characters could discover and solve.
4. Develop locations
This can be anything from dungeons, towns, or trails. I made the basics for all my locations before we started playing, so all I need to do is further develop the dungeon and the town of Balmoral. I know that Balmoral will be almost completely ravaged and destroyed, so I'll only have to create a central tavern and a few stragglers who are clinging on to hope that someone will save their town.
5. Choose relevant monsters
My absolute favorite part of planning campaigns is finding unusual monsters for my party to fight. I've mostly been choosing humanoids as enemies, but this session I will be setting up some Displacer Beasts, which are essentially magical panthers, as guard animals. Of course the cultists will be present at the stronghold.
6. Outline NPCs
I have this step mostly taken care of. I've done all of the preparation for Thess'ahlia and all NPC shopkeepers and acolytes at the Temple of Tyr and Torn. All I need to do is come up with some unimportant NPCs for the tavern in Balmoral.
7. Decide rewards
My final session will probably be the last in the campaign, so I will not have much in the way of rewards. If the party succeeds in defeating the cultists, they will gain local prestige and become folk heroes in the region.
And that's it for my basic outline! I'm doing pretty well on following my genius hour and my overall goal of learning how to plan ahead. If everything goes well, this final session should go very smoothly and prove that my skills in planning ahead have improved.
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I will be detailing the most vital components of what I do to prepare for a session in the "List Post" blog format. Due to how my group's scheduling has turned out, I'll be taking this week and next week to prepare for our final session. This means that there may be some gaps in my planning with this blog, but I will be finishing up details and missed items next week.
All of the components of gameplay that I'll be detailing are intertwined, so the numbering of the list is trivial. Every aspect has its own significance.
1. Review the characters
The most important detail of my storytelling is the motivations of my characters. As such, I need to constantly be thinking of where the characters are physically, as in equipment, leveling, and actual location, and where they are in their character arc. I won't go into too much detail with this, as that will be the topic of next week's podcast.
2. Outline potential scenes
This is definitely the most intricate part of my preparation process. Some Dungeon Masters go absolutely crazy with scene options and storylines, but given that my players are relatively inexperienced they tend to go in whatever direction that I suggest. This makes my job a lot easier in the end. The final session, I'll be sending the players back to Port Swordbreak before they accompany Thess'ahlia to the final cultist stronghold. They'll have relatively free reign to explore the city and have some fun before entering the more serious combat scenarios. The party will travel through the countryside until reaching Balmoral and will battle their way through the outpost.
3. Define lore and secrets
Depending on the tone of the campaign, lore and secrets can add a lot to the narrative. However, I'm running a more combat heavy campaign so lore it not that important. Secrets can be pretty interesting for character motivations, so I'll be hiding a few things through the session in some puzzles that the characters could discover and solve.
4. Develop locations
This can be anything from dungeons, towns, or trails. I made the basics for all my locations before we started playing, so all I need to do is further develop the dungeon and the town of Balmoral. I know that Balmoral will be almost completely ravaged and destroyed, so I'll only have to create a central tavern and a few stragglers who are clinging on to hope that someone will save their town.
5. Choose relevant monsters
My absolute favorite part of planning campaigns is finding unusual monsters for my party to fight. I've mostly been choosing humanoids as enemies, but this session I will be setting up some Displacer Beasts, which are essentially magical panthers, as guard animals. Of course the cultists will be present at the stronghold.
6. Outline NPCs
I have this step mostly taken care of. I've done all of the preparation for Thess'ahlia and all NPC shopkeepers and acolytes at the Temple of Tyr and Torn. All I need to do is come up with some unimportant NPCs for the tavern in Balmoral.
7. Decide rewards
My final session will probably be the last in the campaign, so I will not have much in the way of rewards. If the party succeeds in defeating the cultists, they will gain local prestige and become folk heroes in the region.
And that's it for my basic outline! I'm doing pretty well on following my genius hour and my overall goal of learning how to plan ahead. If everything goes well, this final session should go very smoothly and prove that my skills in planning ahead have improved.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Genius Hour 2.5
Dungeons and Dragons: *spoiler free for Allie and Hannah
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I'll be providing a recap of how our second session of gameplay went. Despite my best intentions, I cannot get the audio editing platform I want to use work. I believe part of the issue is that I'm uploading way too large of a file to edit, so instead of recording the entire session I will only record smaller highlights. Hopefully by session 3 or 4 I will be able to post a highlights reel of our session.
This week was also out first real scheduling conflict, so I had only two players present during the game. I knew this would happen eventually, so I was fully prepared to take control of our missing player's character and be them for the session. However, managing a larger amount of characters was quite challenging for me. At some points in combat I was managing four characters, but I made it happen. This was achieved through lots of note-taking to keep track of everyone and my players reminding me of things that I forgot.
As for the actual story, the players were successfully able to investigate the disappearance of Thess'ahlia and track down the cult that kidnapped her. When they were gearing up for the trek to Addersfield, I introduced more items to the players for purchase. Some of these items included health potions, cursed weapons, and types of armor. I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for useless and/or extremely dangerous cursed weapons, and Nyssaadi ended up buying a bow that only hits when the user is blackout drunk. When the players reached the cultist stronghold, they defeated all enemies except for the leader. The players rescued Thess'ahlia and looted the stronghold, where Snargog found a ridiculous amount of gold thanks to a natural 20 investigation roll.
Finally the players took Thess'ahlia back to Port Swordbreak, where she implored them to help her destroy the last of the cult once and for all. The players accepted, and that is where the session ended.
The final three weeks of my genius hour will be highly dependent on everyone's scheduling, so the next two weeks I'll either be working on plans for the final confrontation with the cult or doing a smaller side-quest if we all can find a time to play. The biggest lesson I've learned from this is that scheduling for four people to meet up semi-regularly is more difficult than one would think.
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I'll be providing a recap of how our second session of gameplay went. Despite my best intentions, I cannot get the audio editing platform I want to use work. I believe part of the issue is that I'm uploading way too large of a file to edit, so instead of recording the entire session I will only record smaller highlights. Hopefully by session 3 or 4 I will be able to post a highlights reel of our session.
This week was also out first real scheduling conflict, so I had only two players present during the game. I knew this would happen eventually, so I was fully prepared to take control of our missing player's character and be them for the session. However, managing a larger amount of characters was quite challenging for me. At some points in combat I was managing four characters, but I made it happen. This was achieved through lots of note-taking to keep track of everyone and my players reminding me of things that I forgot.
As for the actual story, the players were successfully able to investigate the disappearance of Thess'ahlia and track down the cult that kidnapped her. When they were gearing up for the trek to Addersfield, I introduced more items to the players for purchase. Some of these items included health potions, cursed weapons, and types of armor. I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas for useless and/or extremely dangerous cursed weapons, and Nyssaadi ended up buying a bow that only hits when the user is blackout drunk. When the players reached the cultist stronghold, they defeated all enemies except for the leader. The players rescued Thess'ahlia and looted the stronghold, where Snargog found a ridiculous amount of gold thanks to a natural 20 investigation roll.
Finally the players took Thess'ahlia back to Port Swordbreak, where she implored them to help her destroy the last of the cult once and for all. The players accepted, and that is where the session ended.
The final three weeks of my genius hour will be highly dependent on everyone's scheduling, so the next two weeks I'll either be working on plans for the final confrontation with the cult or doing a smaller side-quest if we all can find a time to play. The biggest lesson I've learned from this is that scheduling for four people to meet up semi-regularly is more difficult than one would think.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Genius Hour 2.4
Dungeons and Dragons: *spoilers, Allie and Hannah don't read
Greeting fellow adventurers! This week I will be planning my next session's encounters and creating more world building materials. After completing our first session of gameplay and listening to the footage that I recorded, I found a few areas I could improve on. My biggest issue was coming up with reasonable numbers for purchasing weapons and coming up with NPC names and appearances on the fly. The main goal of my genius hour overall is to learn how to plan ahead and have lots of backup plans; however, I did none of this my first session and I felt like it showed. My players didn't have any comments on this, but they were all first-time players so they would not have known any better.
To better prepare for my next session, I created a few shop names and shopkeepers and kept them in my Dungeon Master notebook to pull from as I needed. I also wrote down a few prices of goods that the players may want to purchase and drew a rough map of the fortress that my players will be raiding next session.
As for what's next in the narrative of the adventure, the players will be headed back to Port Swordbreak after their first mini-quest to accept a larger quest from one of their contacts. This quest will entail rescuing a kidnapped cleric from a cult and investigating the motives of the cult. I know that I want the cleric to join the party for the final confrontation with the final boss in Genius Hour 2.8. I will be controlling this NPC, so I rolled a character from scratch without using any websites for assistance. This was actually pretty difficult, but all of the resources I needed were in the Player's Handbook so I got there eventually. The luck of the dice were on my side for this character, so all of her stats and abilities turned out very well and I couldn't be happier.
Greeting fellow adventurers! This week I will be planning my next session's encounters and creating more world building materials. After completing our first session of gameplay and listening to the footage that I recorded, I found a few areas I could improve on. My biggest issue was coming up with reasonable numbers for purchasing weapons and coming up with NPC names and appearances on the fly. The main goal of my genius hour overall is to learn how to plan ahead and have lots of backup plans; however, I did none of this my first session and I felt like it showed. My players didn't have any comments on this, but they were all first-time players so they would not have known any better.
To better prepare for my next session, I created a few shop names and shopkeepers and kept them in my Dungeon Master notebook to pull from as I needed. I also wrote down a few prices of goods that the players may want to purchase and drew a rough map of the fortress that my players will be raiding next session.
As for what's next in the narrative of the adventure, the players will be headed back to Port Swordbreak after their first mini-quest to accept a larger quest from one of their contacts. This quest will entail rescuing a kidnapped cleric from a cult and investigating the motives of the cult. I know that I want the cleric to join the party for the final confrontation with the final boss in Genius Hour 2.8. I will be controlling this NPC, so I rolled a character from scratch without using any websites for assistance. This was actually pretty difficult, but all of the resources I needed were in the Player's Handbook so I got there eventually. The luck of the dice were on my side for this character, so all of her stats and abilities turned out very well and I couldn't be happier.
And that's all for this week's session prep! Next blog I should hopefully have a highlights podcast of how the session goes if my audio recording and editing goes well.
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Genius Hour 2.3
Dungeons and Dragons: *spoiler-free for Allie and Hannah
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I will be giving a brief recap of the events of our party's first session of Dungeons and Dragons. I had originally planned to do a podcast of sorts for every time we play, so that the audience could feel more immersed in the game. However, this plan did not exactly work out due to some technical difficulties with the voice recorder and audio editing software. I am attempting to learn how to use either Audacity or Ocenaudio to edit down our sessions into a highlights reel rather than just posting two hours of footage. Hopefully by next session I will have resolved these issues.
Most of the events and worldbuilding that I wanted to happen went off without much issue. All of my players had very positive feedback for me on how I ran my first game. In hindsight, I realized a few elements of combat that I messed up on, but I did not teach any of my players false information instead I just left out a few elements. For my character's first roleplaying and world interactions, I introduced these basic mechanics in the Sour Pig adventurer's tavern, were the players received their first adventure.
I was terrified of accidentally making the combat encounters too difficult and accidentally killing my players' characters, but everything worked out fine. On a whim I made the first encounter a lone wolf attacking the camp, which the players defeated with no issue. Eventually the group reached the Clear View Point Outpost and cleared out all the bandits and got some cool loot. I also introduced some luck mechanics at this point, with Xanaphia rolling really high and finding a rare dagger and Nyssaadi rolling low and only finding junk.
The adventurers then made their way to the final destination of the session and I let the players free to do whatever they pleased for the evening. Notably, Snargog managed to trade his talents as a drag queen for free lodging in a tavern.
And that's all for this session. Feel free to ask me any questions about game mechanics and I'm planning some exciting adventures for the future!
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I will be giving a brief recap of the events of our party's first session of Dungeons and Dragons. I had originally planned to do a podcast of sorts for every time we play, so that the audience could feel more immersed in the game. However, this plan did not exactly work out due to some technical difficulties with the voice recorder and audio editing software. I am attempting to learn how to use either Audacity or Ocenaudio to edit down our sessions into a highlights reel rather than just posting two hours of footage. Hopefully by next session I will have resolved these issues.
Most of the events and worldbuilding that I wanted to happen went off without much issue. All of my players had very positive feedback for me on how I ran my first game. In hindsight, I realized a few elements of combat that I messed up on, but I did not teach any of my players false information instead I just left out a few elements. For my character's first roleplaying and world interactions, I introduced these basic mechanics in the Sour Pig adventurer's tavern, were the players received their first adventure.
I was terrified of accidentally making the combat encounters too difficult and accidentally killing my players' characters, but everything worked out fine. On a whim I made the first encounter a lone wolf attacking the camp, which the players defeated with no issue. Eventually the group reached the Clear View Point Outpost and cleared out all the bandits and got some cool loot. I also introduced some luck mechanics at this point, with Xanaphia rolling really high and finding a rare dagger and Nyssaadi rolling low and only finding junk.
The adventurers then made their way to the final destination of the session and I let the players free to do whatever they pleased for the evening. Notably, Snargog managed to trade his talents as a drag queen for free lodging in a tavern.
And that's all for this session. Feel free to ask me any questions about game mechanics and I'm planning some exciting adventures for the future!
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Genius Hour 2.2
Dungeons and Dragons: * spoilers, Allie and Hannah do not read
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I'll be planning my introductory session and a pre-quest of sorts to introduce my players to the basic mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons. At first glance, the premise of this Genius Hour may seem a bit silly, but this project more about teaching myself how to teach others effectively. Due to this, my first session will include most of the main tenants of the game and I'll see what my players enjoy the most. From this input I'll be able to better tailor the world and story to my players' wants.
Now for the story:
All of the players will be running into each other in the town of Port Swordbreak, each having a different reason for being in town. Nyssaadi is in town looking for one of her father's old military friends, Muhrren. Muhrren is the owner of an adventurer's tavern, The Sour Pig, where individuals of the surrounding community put of job contracts for wandering adventurers. A job with a vague description but a large reward requiring a group of three adventurers at the least catches Nyssaadi's eye. Nyssaadi can either ask Muhrren for advice of who to recruit at this point, or can find the other players herself.
Xanaphia happens to be in the tavern at the time, and due to her Folk Hero status among the town folk, whispers of her reputation eventually will reach Nyssaadi's attention. As for Snargog, even though he has only been in town for a few days, he has also made a reputation for himself as being a powerful wizard that's always up for an adventure.
Muhrren will then reveal that he put out the vague quest, and insist that the group of adventurers do a small task for him to prove that they can work well together as a party. He offers a seemingly simple quest for the adventurers to escort a caravan of his through a dangerous mountain pass to the town of Graycott. He also says that he will provide his son, Ivan Shermov, as a guide through the mountains.
Up to this point, what I have planned is relatively simple worldbuilding and practice with interacting in towns with NPCs. After this, the story could take many directions as the adventurers travel on their four day journey through the Clear View Point pass. This will be where I introduce combat mechanics to my players, and what they will fight will be determined by their perception skills.
Between all the wild encounters, Ivan will have time to do some exposition. The players will at first expect there to be a fort at the halfway point of the pass to rest at, but Ivan will reveal that this area has been overtaken by bandits. The players will the decide if they want to fight the bandits and clear the fort, or if they want to take any other course of action. It's probably most likely that they will want to attempt to clear out the fort, and in that case I have a map of the fort, bandit locations, and potential loot already set up.
As I really do not want my players to die on their first session, I made Ivan a fairly powerful ranger that I will be controlling alongside the bandits. If things start looking too rough for any of my players, Ivan will be able to step in. However, I won't be doing this unless it's absolutely necessary.
The adventurers will eventually reach Graycott, where Ivan will give them part of their reward and a bonus as an apology for Muhrren's lie by exclusion about the nature of the quest. The players will have a little bit of downtime to shop around for upgrades before heading back to Port Swordbreak.
Normally, campaigns are not this structured and more is left up to the players. However, most resources I looked at said that first-time players need more structure so they know what all they can do in the game. As I continue on I will most likely be giving the players more liberty to shape the adventure as they please. Although, that is not to say that it's impossible for players to do the unexpected in this session. If the players want to take some creative approaches to problems, I'm all for it. I'll just need to work on thinking quick to fit their actions into the greater narrative of the campaign.
Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I'll be planning my introductory session and a pre-quest of sorts to introduce my players to the basic mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons. At first glance, the premise of this Genius Hour may seem a bit silly, but this project more about teaching myself how to teach others effectively. Due to this, my first session will include most of the main tenants of the game and I'll see what my players enjoy the most. From this input I'll be able to better tailor the world and story to my players' wants.
Now for the story:
All of the players will be running into each other in the town of Port Swordbreak, each having a different reason for being in town. Nyssaadi is in town looking for one of her father's old military friends, Muhrren. Muhrren is the owner of an adventurer's tavern, The Sour Pig, where individuals of the surrounding community put of job contracts for wandering adventurers. A job with a vague description but a large reward requiring a group of three adventurers at the least catches Nyssaadi's eye. Nyssaadi can either ask Muhrren for advice of who to recruit at this point, or can find the other players herself.
Xanaphia happens to be in the tavern at the time, and due to her Folk Hero status among the town folk, whispers of her reputation eventually will reach Nyssaadi's attention. As for Snargog, even though he has only been in town for a few days, he has also made a reputation for himself as being a powerful wizard that's always up for an adventure.
Muhrren will then reveal that he put out the vague quest, and insist that the group of adventurers do a small task for him to prove that they can work well together as a party. He offers a seemingly simple quest for the adventurers to escort a caravan of his through a dangerous mountain pass to the town of Graycott. He also says that he will provide his son, Ivan Shermov, as a guide through the mountains.
Up to this point, what I have planned is relatively simple worldbuilding and practice with interacting in towns with NPCs. After this, the story could take many directions as the adventurers travel on their four day journey through the Clear View Point pass. This will be where I introduce combat mechanics to my players, and what they will fight will be determined by their perception skills.
Between all the wild encounters, Ivan will have time to do some exposition. The players will at first expect there to be a fort at the halfway point of the pass to rest at, but Ivan will reveal that this area has been overtaken by bandits. The players will the decide if they want to fight the bandits and clear the fort, or if they want to take any other course of action. It's probably most likely that they will want to attempt to clear out the fort, and in that case I have a map of the fort, bandit locations, and potential loot already set up.
As I really do not want my players to die on their first session, I made Ivan a fairly powerful ranger that I will be controlling alongside the bandits. If things start looking too rough for any of my players, Ivan will be able to step in. However, I won't be doing this unless it's absolutely necessary.
The adventurers will eventually reach Graycott, where Ivan will give them part of their reward and a bonus as an apology for Muhrren's lie by exclusion about the nature of the quest. The players will have a little bit of downtime to shop around for upgrades before heading back to Port Swordbreak.
Normally, campaigns are not this structured and more is left up to the players. However, most resources I looked at said that first-time players need more structure so they know what all they can do in the game. As I continue on I will most likely be giving the players more liberty to shape the adventure as they please. Although, that is not to say that it's impossible for players to do the unexpected in this session. If the players want to take some creative approaches to problems, I'm all for it. I'll just need to work on thinking quick to fit their actions into the greater narrative of the campaign.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Genius Hour 2.1
Dungeons and Dragons: *spoiler-free for Allie and Hannah
Greetings fellow adventurers! This Genius Hour I will be teaching myself the ins and outs of Dungeons and Dragons, and teaching my players how the game works. I'll be functioning as the game's Dungeon Master, which is quite a demanding role considering the intricacies of the game. I will be in charge of creating an entire fantasy world for my players to explore. The world will be filled with lore and potential adventures, and I will be guiding my players through whatever decisions they make.
As for my players, the first thing I needed to do was find a group of nerds such as myself that were curious about the game. I then sat down with each player and we created a character for them to role play throughout the campaign. I used this as a tool to gauge what the players want from the game. The character creation process is somewhat complicated, so I won't be detailing the full process in this blog post. The basic premise is you create a creature, choose their adventuring class, make a backstory, and roll for their basic stats.
The Characters:
Snargog, played by Hannah, is a rock gnome and a wizard. His specialty of magic is necromancy, although is is weak right now because all characters are level 1. He is from the city of Larkbog, which was mostly comprised of other gnomes and small creatures, and has a pet mastiff named Blarkog. He has a mysterious and haunted past that motivates him to hunt monsters to find redemption.
Nyssaddi Immek, played by Allie, is a dragonborn fighter. Her military background and upraising in the military outpost of Blackridge leads her to be a warrior of legends and a local hero. However, she has grown tired of military life and is on leave to wander the nation in search of her next battle.
Xanaphia Amastacia, played by Rachel Bell, is an elven druid. She spends most of her time in seclusion in the woods between the town of Port Swordbreak and the Baldare Mountains. She spends most of her time communing with nature, but has been known to step in and protect the town from hostile mountain monsters. This has giver her the nickname "The Watcher" in Port Swordbreak and has left her somewhat of a town legend.
For locations and the world as a whole, I decided to start pretty small and simple for beginning. My descriptions of the world may seem a little much to those unfamiliar with the game, but they are nothing compared to some resources I've looked at.
The nation the adventure will be taking place in is the Wayrand Empire in the world of Calterra. The Empire has only been around for about 100 years and was created after a successful uprising against the previous Amakiir Dynasty. Aesir Wayrand, commander of the rebels, pushed the oppressive and elitist previous Dynasty north to the unforgiving lands of Wintervale. Even in current times, there is an ongoing border war between the old Dynasty and the Empire.
Besides the northern border and the Fey Wilds, the rest of the country is fairly safe and at peace. The Empire is run by a human monarchy, with local elected officials that report to the crown. Being a fairly new nation, there is still some Royal Guard presence in some towns with possible old Dynasty sympathizers. The nation has active industry fueling the northern war efforts, some sea ports for trading, and the capitol city of Venzor holds an illustrious magic academy.
Magic in this world is fairly common and is known to be the remnants from when the old gods lived on this plane. Magic users are esteemed in more rural areas, but not so much in cities, Most of the nation has a favorable view of the government, being a much needed reprieve from the restrictive old Dynasty. The elite of the old Dynasty, dark elves, moon elves, and silver dragonborn, are regarded with suspicion in most areas.
And that's all I have for world building this week. Next week I will be preparing for our first session of gameplay, which will be released Genius Hour 2.3. If you want to learn more about D&D, some of the resources I used were dndbeyond.com, a character building website and forum, The Adventure Zone, a D&D podcast I used to familiarize myself with playing, the official D&D rulebook set, and Critical Role, a Youtube channel of a bunch of professional voice actors and D&D players with very advanced and complicated campaigns.
Greetings fellow adventurers! This Genius Hour I will be teaching myself the ins and outs of Dungeons and Dragons, and teaching my players how the game works. I'll be functioning as the game's Dungeon Master, which is quite a demanding role considering the intricacies of the game. I will be in charge of creating an entire fantasy world for my players to explore. The world will be filled with lore and potential adventures, and I will be guiding my players through whatever decisions they make.
As for my players, the first thing I needed to do was find a group of nerds such as myself that were curious about the game. I then sat down with each player and we created a character for them to role play throughout the campaign. I used this as a tool to gauge what the players want from the game. The character creation process is somewhat complicated, so I won't be detailing the full process in this blog post. The basic premise is you create a creature, choose their adventuring class, make a backstory, and roll for their basic stats.
The Characters:
Snargog, played by Hannah, is a rock gnome and a wizard. His specialty of magic is necromancy, although is is weak right now because all characters are level 1. He is from the city of Larkbog, which was mostly comprised of other gnomes and small creatures, and has a pet mastiff named Blarkog. He has a mysterious and haunted past that motivates him to hunt monsters to find redemption.
Nyssaddi Immek, played by Allie, is a dragonborn fighter. Her military background and upraising in the military outpost of Blackridge leads her to be a warrior of legends and a local hero. However, she has grown tired of military life and is on leave to wander the nation in search of her next battle.
Xanaphia Amastacia, played by Rachel Bell, is an elven druid. She spends most of her time in seclusion in the woods between the town of Port Swordbreak and the Baldare Mountains. She spends most of her time communing with nature, but has been known to step in and protect the town from hostile mountain monsters. This has giver her the nickname "The Watcher" in Port Swordbreak and has left her somewhat of a town legend.
For locations and the world as a whole, I decided to start pretty small and simple for beginning. My descriptions of the world may seem a little much to those unfamiliar with the game, but they are nothing compared to some resources I've looked at.
The nation the adventure will be taking place in is the Wayrand Empire in the world of Calterra. The Empire has only been around for about 100 years and was created after a successful uprising against the previous Amakiir Dynasty. Aesir Wayrand, commander of the rebels, pushed the oppressive and elitist previous Dynasty north to the unforgiving lands of Wintervale. Even in current times, there is an ongoing border war between the old Dynasty and the Empire.
Besides the northern border and the Fey Wilds, the rest of the country is fairly safe and at peace. The Empire is run by a human monarchy, with local elected officials that report to the crown. Being a fairly new nation, there is still some Royal Guard presence in some towns with possible old Dynasty sympathizers. The nation has active industry fueling the northern war efforts, some sea ports for trading, and the capitol city of Venzor holds an illustrious magic academy.
Magic in this world is fairly common and is known to be the remnants from when the old gods lived on this plane. Magic users are esteemed in more rural areas, but not so much in cities, Most of the nation has a favorable view of the government, being a much needed reprieve from the restrictive old Dynasty. The elite of the old Dynasty, dark elves, moon elves, and silver dragonborn, are regarded with suspicion in most areas.
And that's all I have for world building this week. Next week I will be preparing for our first session of gameplay, which will be released Genius Hour 2.3. If you want to learn more about D&D, some of the resources I used were dndbeyond.com, a character building website and forum, The Adventure Zone, a D&D podcast I used to familiarize myself with playing, the official D&D rulebook set, and Critical Role, a Youtube channel of a bunch of professional voice actors and D&D players with very advanced and complicated campaigns.
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