We make it into town, get the rumors, chat up the locals, level up.
Really short ep this time. Next ep will be the start of a new session and be the normal length, with Jim jumping in.
This is what a hawthorn tree looks like.
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Hawthorn tree image from Wikimedia Commons
Last time on gg no re:
We (the inquisition) traveled to an edgy land with vampires and stuff, looking for a girl who might know where the angel Avacyn might be. Angel-chan’s absence has been causing problems in the realm.
Along the way we met a sketchy weirdo who gave us holy bling (the arm of the faithful) and points us to Shadowgrange, the town where our contact resides.
Before long, an encounter on the road! Skeleton-bat-balls! But we #rekt them and carried on.
Someone rolls a 20 on a death save:
Rolling 1 or 20. When you make a death saving throw and roll a 1 on the d20, it counts as two failures. If you roll a 20 on the d20, you regain 1 hit point. (5e rules)
Pops up with 1 hp like:
We encounter strange creatures on the road and try to talk to them, but they don’t want to talk to us :*(
We make camp for the night. Asa takes first watch.
Our rest is interrupted in the second watch when Ava gets attacked by a shadow and gets a cool shadow scar of fingerprints around her neck.
I think Tim cheated to keep us alive. I’m waiting for my revenge IRL.
We continue to Shadowgrange when we hear an explosion in the hills. Smoke is billowing out of a cave. We investigate, find suicided culty folks arranged around a hole in the ground, the source of the smoke. Naturally, when we get close, baddies pop out, roll initiative.
After an abortive interrogation, we loot the corpses and carry on toward Shadowgrange.
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
We start a new module, Army of the Damned, an indie 5e joint, with Tim taking the Dungeon Throne this time.
Actual play starts at 10:39.
Our discussion & review of Deep Carbon Observatory, text by Patrick Stuart and art by Scrap Princess. MAJOR SPOILERS.
tl;dl: it’s a work of superlative imagination. It refreshes the underdark and specifically the drow, and contains some structural/mechanical experiments you can lift for other purposes. It’s a no brainer purchase. However, needs a second edition that focuses on the “presentation layer”—how the ideas are to be communicated to the players, both in the maps and in the room contents.
Here’s the character generation episode we did for the module, and here’s the first episode of the module proper.
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Soundcloud player background image by Scrap Princess, from the module.
We wrap up the campaign.
Our next episode is the recap & review, here: https://ggnorecast.com/53.
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (aff link): get it on Amazon
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Soundcloud player background image by Scrap Princess, from the module.
We continue to explore the observatory.
A comedy of errors.
Situations grotesque, risible, & fantastical—all for you.
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Soundcloud player background image by Scrap Princess, from the module.
Bickering and exploring. Mostly bickering.
A quick note here from Daniel re: module design: don’t have multilevel treasure tables for generating finite treasures. If there are going to be XdY treasures of properties that you need to generate by rolling yet further, save the DM the trouble and pre-generate the most interesting ones. You’ll see what I’m talking about in this episode. I could have pre-rolled them, but why not save the end-user some work?
Update: our confusion over “Sense Nearby” was just cleared up by the writer of Into the Odd. The character starting package doesn’t indicate that you can “sense nearby” (whatever that means) and also get an Arcanum. “Arcana” should be read as the object of the sensing: “sense nearby Arcana,” like detect magic. I (Daniel) hadn’t looked at the entry until now, but I see that its being split up over two lines is what caused the confusion for us.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History: http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“Pixelland” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Soundcloud player background image by Scrap Princess, from the module.
We enter the observatory and behold its wonders.
Follow dungeon SOP, achieve expected results.
This didn’t go as planned or desired at all, but ya gotta kill yer darlins. Or have them exploded.
Thank you, bone magnet.
Also, I (Daniel) am not sure at all that I ruled correctly re: the climactic moment here. I think I was interpreting metaphorical language in the text too literally. But it was a magical anatomy judgment made the heat of the moment. Perhaps Patrick can find it in his heart to forgive me.
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Soundcloud background image adapted from Scrap Princess’s illustrations for the module.
crossposted from Detect Magic, Daniel’s RPG blog that hasn’t been updated in a thousand years but has tons of mostly useless stuff on it
Someone on G+ was asking about Blood & Bronze, a newish fantasy adventure D&Dish game set in the Ancient Near East.
TL;DR: if you like the historical setting, worth a buy. If you like Apocalypse World / D&D mashups, probably also worth a buy. Mechanical callouts in bullet points below.
The ANE is my jam; so of course I’d already purchased the book. (Note that links to drivethrurpg are affiliate links for my podcast, gg no re.)
You can get it here: Blood & Bronze @ drivethrurpg. Here’s the website for the game: https://bloodandbronze.com/. Proper review by Swords & Stitchery here: http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2016/02/review-and-commentary-on-blood-bronze.html.
For D&D remixes like this, I usually buy if they have some sort of interesting simplification of the typical mechanics or if they mash up the old school formula with new tech. B&B does both, but not really in a way that I care to adopt.
Very barebones though written apparently for beginners (lots of talk about having paper, dice, how to roll and calculate things). However, not enough procedural stuff and thorough examples to really be suited for beginners. Organization unintuitive to me.
Nevertheless, the game has a ziggurat on the cover; so I love it.
At last, the Observatory. Our pointcrawl concludes, and we experience the moment of eponymony.
“Lewis and Dekalb” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Soundcloud background image adapted from Scrap Princess’s illustrations for the module.
gg no re 
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