We discuss our experience with the downtime rules in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Topics: fictionally involved vs summarized, small addition to campaign vs focus of campaign, using the rules to improvise a campaign, mechanical details of the activities.
If you want to use Daniel’s conversion of first level of the Haunted Keep from the Moldavy basic set, the TaleSpire copypaste codes for the two towers and the gatehouse are below, with overview screenshots:
Our first actual play screencast. Our dungeon academy students have a school phase, follow some personal quests, see what it’s like to be in dungeon-school, observe portents, and then head back into the dungeon for some wilderness crawling and find a secret entrance to a new dungeon level.
An update about how gg no re is going quarantine mode. We’re still playing, and we should have another group podcast soon. This virus has also opened the door to remote play to us.
Here’s what our Dungeon Academy megadungeon setup looks like now.
What the players see while exploring:
What the DM sees:
For something fun for the players to do while they wait during the school phase of a Dungeon Academy game, I implemented the “map pins” system for the campus map and the map of their dorm. This lets them click on any location and (after a couple more clicks) get some additional info about it: flavor text, images, etc.
I have found these Roll20 settings to be just what I want.
Page settings
This makes it so that players can only see, at any time, what their characters can see. Previously explored parts of the map outside light radius are blacked out. Definitely possible to get lost.
fog of war & advanced fog of war: off; dynamic lighting, enforced LoS, update on drop, restrict: on
Token Sight Settings
These are under the advanced tab. Set this for each character bearing a torch. Can also create a dummy token and assign it these settings if they drop a torch.
emits 30 feet with 15 feet dim, all players see, has sight
Dynamic Lighting
Here’s what my dynamic lighting walls and doors look like. Walls are orange; blue is doors. You can use the select tool when on this layer to move the door out of the way once opened and move it back once (re)closed.
Tim and Daniel recap the events of the first proper foray into the dungeon beneath the academy.
A couple visuals are below, but check out our patreon to get a post detailing the actual stuff in those rooms, including illustrations, new spells, and the parts of the map they’ve been through so far.
We talk about our most recent session of EPIC GAMING, in which the first Dungeon Academy “plot arc” wrapped up: what happened, DM techniques employed, some behind the scenes info.
Music is “Me and the Man in the Moon” by the Ambassadors