After a bit of a break from sessions, my Dungeons and Dragons campaigns have finally begun to happen again. This past weekend (as I’m writing this and two weekends ago as you’re reading it), the campaign I’ve been calling The Rotten came together to do a little more labyrinth exploration, which involved making their way into their first proper hallways, finding some faded text carved into some large stone tiles, finding more faded text carved into smaller stone tiles, avoiding a few traps, fighting some undead that had been animated by the ambient magic just outside this part of the labyrinth, fighting some local raiders who were half-starved but who still nearly took down the party, AND discovered signs pointing them toward some long-forgotten religion! What a fun little session it was! We also talked about adding a few more players to the game–to help pad things out a bit when people can’t make it to a session–started inviting people, got three immediate “yes” responses, and then talked about what it would look like to have three more players. I’m still fairly confident that we’ll rarely have six players at the same time, but it’s bound to happen a few times, other than our next session when I’m hoping to bring them together to handle new character introductions and whatnot. If it happens too often, it might be difficult for some people to participate, what with all the extra faces and voices, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ve got a lot of experience running a bigger group, so I have some ideas to help keep people engaged and interacting if it comes to that.
Continue readingDungeon Exploration
Taking The Rotten Into A Lively Dungeon
This post is a little late in coming. VERY late, technically speaking, since I seem to have forgotten to write about the first full session with my The Rotten group in the shuffle of moving the blog. And then last week, I started writing about the group’s dungeon experience and wound up writing about dungeons in general rather than the Dungeons and Dragons session that the dungeon featured it! Which means I’m a little behind when it comes to session recaps about The Rotten and we actually did quite a bit with the last two! We introduced our characters, established narrative connections, discussed the kind of game we were about to play, worked through details of what it meant to travel such a dangerous world, met some strangers along the road that bore a dire warning of what lay ahead, and spent the party’s first night camping outside beneath the stars. In our second game, we started down into a canyon the player characters were warned was dangerous, spent some time wandering around in the fog, discovered an eerie world within that fog, solved some puzzles, navigated through a maze based on vibes along, rolled a lot of natural 20s in an incredibly short period of time, survived our first combat encounter, and played around with some traps! It was a great time and only one of my players nearly died! Well, technically did die to the first attack roll in the game, but we all decided that was bullshit and we’d just not have it be a crit. Chaos then ensued, the party emerged victorious, and they learned a lot about the difference between rolling for something and working their way through a puzzle free of rolls. It was a good session! Not that the first one wasn’t good, mind you, it was just a lot of settling in and figuring things out rather than focused play. And, ridiculous string of natural 20s from this latest session aside, I’m just happy I got to start running my first proper, DEEP dungeon in a long time! And I’m definitely not stressed about it and how old patterns (which I mentioned in last week’s blog post about dungeons) seem to be repeating despite this being an easy-mode dungeon I haven’t even finished building yet!
Continue readingBuilding A Dungeon All My Own
For the first time in what feels like YEARS (and is definitely at least “years” if not “YEARS”), I started running an actual dungeon in one of my Dungeons and Dragons games. For a long while now, as I’ve tried to explore more expansive storytelling and dealt with groups more interested in narrative than mechanics, I’ve avoided putting my players in what one might consider a stereotypical dungeon. I’ve had some dungeons, sure! I had my players run through a dungeon-esque wizard’s tower that was actually a testing site for traps and puzzles to be used in other dungeons. I trapped my players in a nightmare realm where they had an “ever-renewing” eighteen hour period to solve the puzzle of this time-and-space-locked demiplane. I’ve even made proper dungeons that wound up not getting explored by my players because they chose a different route forward. I think the last time I had a proper dungeon was back in 2019 or 2020, the last time I had a “classic” Dungeons and Dragons group with a “classic” mix of characters played by players who were interested in what it meant to be a D&D Party and to play their classes, specifically. Which is a bit funny to admit because, once upon a time, I loved nothing more than a good dungeon. I was scattering those things every which way. You’d think that would have still happened even in my more expansive play style now, if it was something I cared about, right?
Continue readingThe Most Delectable Anime I’ve Seen This Year
Spoiler Warning for the first season of the Delicious in Dungeon anime.
Continue readingMiradoon The Silent Sorcerer
“Miradoon, can you please take your stupid little toys and get out of the way?”
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