Conquistador Campaign

We awoke to the smell of smoke, one of the scariest things you can wake up to on a ship except for the feeling of rushing water or the lookout's cries of "KRAKEN!"  We ran abovedecks and saw, to our relief and astonishment, that the smoke was not coming from our ship.  Before us loomed the coast of the New World, and the horizon was on fire.

"Go back to sleep, they're just burning the jungle back," said one of the crew dismissively.  "We'll be at Paradiso in the morning."

Our party consisted of three people: Scoria Stoneturner, a dwarven archaeologist who was coming to find her missing thesis supervisor, Professor Alfonse Stonescribe; Pico de Gallo, a foppish changeling swashbuckler with delusions of glory; and Quetzalcoatl, a brightly coloured tengu ranger who would be our native guide.

Pictured?       via poohadventures.wikia

Regardless of our personal goals, we (well, we two non-natives) had been drawn to the New World with the promise of streets paved with gold, glory and riches free for the taking, and, most importantly, absolutely no snakes or spiders.  As we stepped off the dock that morning, we realized that the New World might have been oversold a little.  Paradiso was a grimy town dominated by massive smelting furnaces constantly belching acrid smoke into the air.  No matter how many Perception checks we made, we couldn't detect a single gold paving stone.  But we did see an army of downtrodden workers collecting charcoal from last night's jungle burn to feed the insatiable furnaces.  The main conflict in our homeland and its colonies was between the rationalist mages, who want to study the treasures of the New World and investigate the natives' magic system, and the Church of Horus, which seeks out native magic items, disenchants them, and melts them down into relics for the glory of the Church.  It was clear which party held sway here in Paradiso.

"Yes, We're All Individuals!" - Reskinning and Reequipping Monsters So They Don't Get Boring

"Hey, remember that time we fought those skeletons?"
"Yeah, I almost died.  It was bloody ridiculous."
"No, you're thinking of the skeletons we fought back in Derdinn's Keep.  I'm talking about when we fought the skeletons in those crypts back when we were second level."
"You mean third level.  There were three skeletons and two zombies."
"No, second level.  The ones with rusty scimitars."
"They've all had rusty scimitars."

We can't all work our way though the Monster Manual from cover to cover; sometimes in our campaigns we have to throw the same kind of monsters at the party that they have already fought.  But that doesn't mean they have to feel the same.  Too often as GMs we become satisfied with presenting monsters just as they are presented to us in the Monster Manual or Bestiary.  But no matter how good a dish is, eating it over and over is going to get bland.

Take a look at these skeletons.  We've got your typical shambling skeleton in tattered scraps of armour:

Duty-Bound Dead, by Johannes Voss (c) Wizards of the Coast

A saintly skeleton decked out in the finest gilded plate:

St. Pancratius - Dr. Paul Koudounaris, via Cartwheel Art

And glowing-eyed skeletons (okay, probably liches) wielding staves and wearing crowns and mighty robes:

Keith Parkinson

In your game, if you pitted your party against any of these three types of skeletons - even if behind the screen they were all just your basic CR 1/3 skeletons - I guarantee they wouldn't remember it as just "that skeleton fight."

The two simplest and best ways to make your monsters unique are reskinning and reequipping.

Sandbox Campaign Part 10: Nemeses

This is part 10 of my ongoing account of the sandbox campaign I am currently running.  Updates are frequent, if irregular, and at the end of each post I talk about one or more subjects pertaining to the adventure but more broadly applicable to all campaigns.  You can find the previous parts here.

Monty, Sigrid, Kat, and Daphne set out into the wilderness in search of Grothmagog, or Greypeak, supposed location of the dreaded Blackhide's camp.  After a day or two of trekking, with early autumn snow falling around them and catching in the trees, they saw in the distance a mountain peak comprised mostly of sheer stone faces which rejected heavy snow accumulation.  A grey peak amongst white ones.  They headed toward it.  The trees began to shake rhythmically with tremendous footsteps, more and more snow sloughing off the branches as the source drew nearer.  Soon, they heard two voices speaking in slurred, booming words:

"Oy, Filk, 'ow much longer we gotta haul deeze little guys around for?"

"Buck up, Wallitz, it's ee-sen-shull for da war effort!" the second voice replied.

"But our back 'urtz!"

"Well dat's da price we'ze gotta pay in order not to get jumped by packs of greasy, disgusting 'umans, innit?"

Then there was a loud sniffing sound, and a third voice cut in, "Quiet, you two! I smell sommat wot I 'aven't smelt in years..."

"Wuzzat, boss?"

"Turnips!"

At that, Monty charged toward the sound of the voices and footsteps.  As he broke out into the clearing made by a dry streambed, he saw a hunch-backed, two-headed giant brandishing twin flails and with a crude wooden howdah strapped to its back from which three goblin scouts peered over the trees, surveying the land.  Two ogres marched at its side, and leading them all was a brutish, orcish-looking giant in splint mail armour.  

"Grathwar!" shouted Monty.  "You'll pay for what you did to my family!"

Sandbox Campaign Part 7: Kill Wighty

This is part 7 of my ongoing account of the sandbox campaign I am currently running.  Updates are frequent, if irregular, and at the end of each post I talk about one or more subjects pertaining to the adventure but more broadly applicable to all campaigns.  You can find the previous parts here.

After a 16-hour rest, the party followed the only path remaining: deeper into the tomb.  They discovered a bottomless tankard of ale in a sarcophagus and another room that was mostly destroyed by a cave in.  After passing through some rubble, they came to a large set of double doors.  Beyond them was a massive stone vault filled with dwarven sarcophagi, one wall broken out into an adjoining cavern by a collapsed pillar.  Prowling the rows of the dead were a small pack of ghoul wolves and two skeletal ogres dragging greatclubs.  At the far end of the room stood  a skeletal grizzly bear and a dwarven barrow wight adorned in ancient bronze chainmail and wrought torcs, bearing Orc-Gutter (+1 dwarven waraxe, deals additional 1d3 points of bleed damage to creatures of the orc subtype).  Beneath the ethereal blue lights that dimly illuminated the hall, he challenged the party: "I am Chief Krannax.  I was the first dwarf to walk these halls, and I will be the last."