Delving Wolf

A while ago (almost a year, time flies!) I wrote a post asking whether we should bring back Hit Locations, including an example of a Dragon modified for this idea, the "final boss" of the Icespire Peak campaign I was running online, using Owlbear Rodeo as VTT. I can finally  announce that I've been able to use that stat block, as I've finally managed to finish that campaign! So I can now return to you with my impressions of how the fight went and whether I find it actually usable in play. Let's get to it! First things first, before getting to this fight I added another bit to this stat block, after the Legendary Resistances and Actions, Lair Actions and Hit Locations: borrowing the idea from Nimble 5e, I added a Last Stand to the Dragon, something that would trigger once it reached 0 HP, giving it 40 more HP and adding a bit more damage to its attacks. Now let's get to the fight itself: although it covered most of the last session (after quite a bit of plann...

After creating a realm , a faction and a forest for my future Silksong-inspired duet campaign (I talked about how the idea came to be  here ) I've started creating a dungeon (The Abandoned Manor) that will be part of said forest using the procedure  included in Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide. You can find part 1 here  and part 2 here . We expanded the first 4 rooms of the dungeon last time, so let's continue from there. 5.  LORE .  Room type : 11, Kitchen /  Clue : 6, Leavings 6.  LORE .  Room type : 4, Cistern /  Clue : 18, Temperature 7.  LORE .  Room type : 14, Shrine /  Clue : 5, Footprints 8.  TRAP .  Trap : 1, Ages /  Trigger : 4, Disturbing  5. This room used to be the manor's dining room, where the cult partook in rituals to try to connect with the deceased by having one of them consuming a large quantity of the mushrooms found in forest area 2. Some remains of mushrooms are still present only on o...

After creating a realm , a faction and a forest for my future Silksong-inspired duet campaign (I talked about how the idea came to be  here ) I've started creating a dungeon (The Abandoned Manor) that will be part of said forest using the procedure  included in Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide. You can find part 1 here . Let's continue! After rolling for the general characteristics of the dungeon and the factions inhabiting it, it's now time to roll for the actual dungeon rooms. 1. SPECIAL .  Special:  12, Pool / Feature : 9, Grows 2.  MONSTER .  Group : 18, Shape shifter /  Activity : 4, Fighting 3.  TRAP .  Trap : 10, Drops /  Trigger : 8, Interacting 4.  TRAP .  Trap : 14, Hypnotizes /  Trigger : 15, Speaking 5.  LORE .  Room type : 11, Kitchen /  Clue : 6, Leavings 6.  LORE .  Room type : 4, Cistern /  Clue : 18, Temperature 7.  LORE .  Room type : 14, Shrine /  Clue : 5, Footpri...

After creating a realm , a faction and a forest for my future Silksong-inspired duet campaign (I talked about how the idea came to be  here ) it is now time to create a dungeon that will be part of said forest.To do this I will once again use the procedure  included in Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide. Let's begin! We already know our dungeon will be an Abandoned Manor part of the Shrouded Shelter forest, and that somewhere in it is the place where "The Veil between worlds is thin", where the Mirror can be activated (with all its consequences). First of all, let's make a few rolls to learn more about this place! 1. Let's first roll for the  HISTORY  of the Manor: - Original Use , d20: 12, Impenetrable vault - Built by , d20: 2, A fanatical cult This lines up with my original idea: This cult (whoever they are) built the Manor to secure the Veil; the Wizard we talked about during the forest creation might be the leader of the cult, or maybe its main researcher (a...

It's time to return to the forest I created using Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide generator a few weeks ago  and continue to expand it, weaving the various results together to make it interesting to play in. Let's continue where we left off. In area 9 ( the hut with legs which is also a thieves' camp ) there's a bandit hideout on top of a platform elevated from the ground by four wooden poles and they always have a lookout, so a direct approach has very little chances of success. Attentive characters, though, will notice that a few of the trees around the hut protrude their branches very close to it, giving them another option. The bandit leader,  Neria  (she/her), is usually in the hut, together with 3/4 more bandits. Let's flesh her out a bit using  Cairn 2e's NPC tables , where I already got her name: - Name , d20: 17, Neria - Quirk , d20: 2, Bald - Background , d20: 14, Mystic - Goal , d20: 18, Survival - Virtue , d20: 5, Disciplined - Vice , d20: 2...

It's time to return to the forest I created using Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide generator a few weeks ago  and continue to expand it, weaving the various results together to make it interesting to play in. Let's continue where we left off.   In area 2 ( the toxic spores area with watchful dead ), deep within a field of rotten mushrooms is hidden a Mirror, a magical artifact that allows communication with deceased people...at a cost: whoever uses it becomes the new guardian of the Mirror (a wight). Stepping on the mushrooms requires a successful save (STR in Cairn, CON in D&D and the like) to prevent being poisoned for 24 hours; submerging oneself in running water cures the poison [A river should be added in some other part of the forest, to offer a way to get rid of the poison]. The wight will attack anyone that touches the Mirror which, to be used, has to be in a place where "the Veil between worlds is thin" (area 3). The Elves know all this (it's an El...

It's time to return to the forest I created using Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide generator 3 weeks ago  and continue to expand it, weaving the various results together to make it interesting to play in. Let's continue where we left off. Area 4 (the hidden village popular with smugglers)  is the den of a weretiger, Scratch, who is the "leader" of a group of smugglers. He's the only one permanently living there, but Scratch's Den  is known amongst smugglers even from far away for being a neutral site for exchanges, where things will go well (because no one in their right mind would try to cheat while in the Den, or they'd immediately pay with their life). Only criminals know about the Den. The bandits are not welcome here (they're too loud and "rude" for Scratch). He doesn't know about the Elves. Hidden in area 5  (the rotting farmhouse with the bound creature) , always guarded by 3 bandits, is a  Pegasus , chained to the floor and with ...

It's been a while, but this week I'm returning to Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide, specifically to its  forest generator , to create a a forest to use in the Silksong-inspired 5e Duet campaign I'm preparing for my wife (I'll actually start it, eventually! But for now I'm alternating various different games already). 1. We start by rolling for the  FOREST DESCRIPTION , 2d20: 4,  Dying  and 19,  Sunlit ; 2. Next we need to establish the  SPIRIT OF THE FOREST , 2d20 again: -  Virtue : 5, Cultivating ; -  Vice : 16,  Prideful; 3. Now we need to find out the  FOREST AGENDA , rolling, you guessed it, 2d20: - Goal : 2,  Awakening ; -  Obstacle : 19,  Vulnerability ; 4. The next step is to roll a few d6s on a sheet of paper to generate the  POINTS OF INTEREST (POIs)  of the forest, numbering them and assigning a type to each of them based on the number rolled (each type then has 2 d20 tables to characterize them). Let's see wh...

A bit of context before getting into the meat of it: as I mentioned in other posts, I'm in the middle of running an online campaign of Dragon of Icespire Peak (D&D 5e's Essential Kit campaign) for a few friends, and eventually they'll end up fighting the titular dragon, and I want to make it a more interesting encounter than how it is presented, because as it is in the book it is...underwhelming. So I started planning what to add: legendary resistances and actions, lair actions, some minions, making it fly and change the environment (it's a white dragon, so ice patches for players to slip on or to use as cover), but what else could I add? That's when I went to my library for ideas and, while flipping my copy of  Fantastic Medieval Campaigns  by Marcia B., a faithful rewrite of the 1974 Dungeons & Dragons rules which includes a few snippets from the supplements in its appendices, I stumbled upon Hit Locations, originally published in Supplement II: Blackmoor....

Last Sunday I had a Duet D&D session with my wife, and it led me to think about something related to DMing (GMing, Refereeing) that many of us will take for granted, but it bears repeating for those that don't: games are not sealed compartments, and what you learn in a game can and will make it easier for you to run better games in any system . Let's start with a bit of context: this is a D&D 5e campaign that started over a year ago with me as the DM and my wife and a friend of mine as the players (plus one sidekick and a DMPC to make it a party of 4) set in Eberron, my favorite "official" D&D setting. Sadly, after just a few sessions the campaign ran into an abrupt stop because of...life happening, and it was put on indefinite hold. Recently I found myself wanting to get a regular weekly TTRPG night with my wife, including solo and GMless games...and it felt like the best opportunity to bring this back as a Duet game. We are 3 sessions in at the moment, a...

This week I'm going to create a faction for my future Silksong-inspired Duet campaign, which was the subject of this post  and for which I created a Realm in last week's post . Just like I did for the Realm, I'm going to use Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide procedure  to do so. Let's begin!   1. First of all, let's roll 2d20 to establish the  FACTION TYPES : -  Type : 15, Revolutionaries; -  Agent : 10, Laborer. We have a working class faction already, and the two results work well together. Nice! 2. Next we roll 2d20 again for the  FACTION TRAITS : -  Trait 1 : 12, Keen; -  Trait 2 : 5, Corrupt. Ok, so they're very passionate about their cause, but corruption poisons their ranks. A story as old as time. 3. Now we roll for the  FACTION ADVANTAGES . First we roll 1d20 to establish the number of Advantages this faction has between 1 and 4: 1, so it has 1 Advantage; now let's roll 1d20 again to discover which one it is: 16, Resources. Since ...

Lately my wife has been obsessed, like millions around the world, with Hollow Knight: Silksong. It's a beautiful game, and I look forward to playing it when I eventually finish Hollow Knight first (if I find the time for it!). A couple of weeks ago she found on Instagram  this 5e subclass  inspired by that game, and that immediately sparked an idea in my mind: a Duet campaign where she would get to play a character with that subclass, to merge two of her favorite hobbies...and mine too, which doesn't hurt. The game system will need to be 5e, obviously, and my idea is to not even try to follow the plot of the game of anything like that, it would take too much tweaking; instead, I'm going to create a world which her character would be able to explore freely, and make its own story. It's still a work in progress, but by brainstorming with her so far I've come up with a Monastery, the home of the "Weavers", who are the ones who managed to perfect the art of tu...

This week's post will be a trip down  memory lane for me. Let's go back to November 2021. The world was doing its best to come out of the pandemic which had dramatically changed the way we see and value things for many of us. Many people approached the world of TTRPGs  during  the lockdown, as a way to escape the boredom and keep our sanity, but I didn't; instead, I started  after  I was finally able to go back to work. As I explained in my first entry in this blog , I had started watching D&D related shows but had not pull the trigger yet. But my birthday was approaching, I had no ideas on what to ask as a gift, and I found the D&D 5e Essential Kit, which promised to be a good entry point, for quite cheap on Amazon, so...why not give it a try? I'd like to point out that at that point I had no one to play with; I did start with a friend who was interested in trying it out as a player with me DMing, but I asked him only  after  ordering my gift....

Sometimes inspiration strikes you when you least expect it. The idea for this week's post comes from a walk I was taking with my wife a few days ago; we were talking about a 5e one-shot someone in a Discord server we're both in proposed recently, set underwater and where every player would be of the Locathah race. Now, for those unexperienced with D&D 5e, Locathahs came back as a playable race after 2e (something I just discovered while researching for this post) for a charity bundle, but they are considered - as far as I know - a joke race because of one specific trait:  Limited Amphibiousness. You can breathe air and water, but you need to be submerged at least once every 4 hours to avoid suffocating.  So, as my wife and I were discussing the choice of such a peculiar restriction, we were saying that outside of these specific circumstances (a fully underwater setting) Locathahs are almost unplayable, unless everyone in the party is committed to the bit and is ok with a ...