Sandbox Campaign Part 13: Blood on the Snow

This is part 13 of my ongoing Sandbox Campaign, a campaign which, for a long time now, has totally not been an actual sandbox campaign.  

Before I get started on the adventures of the Graverobbers, I have some news!  My good friend Kent Hamilton, official illustrator of d20 Despot, has launched a companion site called d20 Doodler, where he will be posting daily warm-up sketches of characters, monsters, and scenes from my campaigns or just D&D/Pathfinder-inspired stuff.  I'll be using a lot of these as preview images for my posts, but there'll be plenty more over at d20doodler.com!  Let's check out today's preview image - a sketch of Rikkit, the Graverobbers' lovable goblin sorcerer:

The Death of Rikkit Nightingale - Kent Hamilton

Oh.  That doesn't bode well.

"Where Do You Keep All That Stuff?" - Storing Things on Your Person

How much can you hold?  I'm not talking about carrying capacity - there are already rules for that and I encourage you to use them.  I'm talking about potions - where do you keep them?  How many can you easily store?  I'm talking about arrows.  Do you remember buying a quiver at the start of the game?  Where exactly do you fit your 40 arrows?  I'm talking about weapons.  You can't just scroll through your entire inventory of weapons like Gordon Freeman, you've got to put them somewhere.

Most of the time, this is just sort of abstracted.  The character has a backpack they probably store things in, but everything they need in battle at the moment is always right there on their belt, even that cold iron morningstar they found in the crypt a month ago and the potion of invisibility they've been carrying around since their first adventure.

This makes the average adventurer seem like a bad 90s comic book hero.

Rob Liefeld, via progressiveboink

"I don't need to worry about encumbrance because I have the belt of many pockets, 

the pants of crotch-asterisk, and a magnetic back."

The following items in gold are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars and d20 Despot.

Expanded Reincarnation Tables - Back from the Dead with a Brand New Body

I don't care how you die, the most fun way to come back is reincarnation.  Sure, spells like raise dead and true resurrection bring you back just as you were before, but with reincarnate, you could come back as anything!  Well, so long as your definition of 'anything' is 'bugbear, dwarf, elf, gnoll, gnome, goblin, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human, kobold, lizardfolk, orc, or troglodyte'.  I really like the element of chance involved in reincarnate; it feels right to be rolling on some big percentile table when you come back from the dead in D&D.  But it feels like there should be more options for what you come back as, for better or for worse.  So when one of the characters in one of my ongoing campaigns died (you'll see who in a later update), I decided the time was right to make my own table.  Well, tables.

I took some inspiration from the old AD&D version of reincarnate, which gave you a chance to come back as a centaur, a satyr, a badger, or any number of other woodland creatures.  It makes sense for a druid spell.  So on my tables, you have a chance (albeit a much smaller one) to come back as an animal or fey creature.  I even added plants and vermin, something I feel druids would appreciate, though the recipient of the reincarnate might feel a little less comfortable with it.  I think the possibility (however small) of coming back as a flower or a cockroach really adds to the sense of risk that this inexpensive shortcut back to the world of the living should have.

"Okay, maybe we should have sprung for raise dead, but I think we still have what it takes to bring down that lich!"

Illus. Paul Bransom via Wikimedia

I also wanted to expand the number of races you could come back as, making full use of the Advanced Race Guide.  This is where more of my own personal opinions went into this table, because there are some races in the the ARG that I am wholly against.  Some, like the half-vampire dhampir or the sci-fi android I left out because I think they are dumb and I would never let my players play them.  Others, like the half-wyvern half-kobold wyvaran and the four-armed kasatha, I think are overpowered, cheesy, and dumb, and I would never let my players play them.  But, hey, feel free to modify these tables to include them if you like them.  I won't judge.  I would have excluded the notorious Mary-Sue-bait catfolk race from my campaigns had one of my players not convinced me that they could be played realistically, like asshole cats, not just as special snowflake fetish-fodder.

I also, of course, put my own homebrew races in there.

So there are a lot of things a player could come back as using these reincarnation tables.  Even some monsters are available as rare options!  Take a look, and use them in your game if you like.

Review: "The Hobbit III: Well, I Guess That's It"

Warner Bros. Pictures

Going to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was a weird experience for me.  I kept thinking back to seeing the Lord of the Rings movies in theaters when I was young.  I was probably one of the last people to read the books before the movies came out; I remember skimming through the appendices on the drive up to the theater.  I was so invested in those movies.  As The Return of the King approached, I was filled with a mix of emotions: anticipation for the coming movie experience, sadness that this would be the last cinematic journey to Middle Earth, excitement at the prospect of seeing the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, speculation about what things from the book would get included and what things wouldn't (I'm still sad that Prince Imrahil was cut out, but I'm not so disappointed with the exclusion of the Drúadan Forest as my 14-year-old self was).

I felt nothing when I went to see the final film in the Hobbit trilogy.  The previous two film had done nothing to make me excited for it, nothing to make me look forward to seeing all my favorite parts from the book on the big screen.  Heck, I barely remember the first movie, and I only remember the second because I wrote that barely positive review of it about a year ago.  I went into this movie with low expectations, because all the previous two movies had done was train me to lower them.  I did have hope, of a sort.  I hoped that because the second movie had been a bit better than the first, that this movie would be a bit better than the second.

[SPOILERS!  SPOILERS LURK BELOW!  Also, some swearing.]

GotWK Campaign Part 2: Blood on the Rails

This is an account of part 2 of my ongoing campaign set in my homebrewed wild west setting, Guns of the Western Kings.  Get caught up with part 1 here.  

Vulture-Tribe Orc Berserker - Kent Hamilton

When we last saw our heroes - Face, Blair, and Heather - they had vanquished a bandit gang of hobgoblins and kobolds in the Sunbeam Silver Mine and discovered that the old mine, long thought to be played out, was still producing silver.  That night, Blair struck off on his own, still convinced that he was evil inside and hoping to save his companions from himself (translation: Blair's player wanted to play a different character).

The next morning, Face and Heather sat in the sheriff’s office.  Sheriff Flant sat across from them, his dirty old boots propped up on his messy desk.  Two of the hunks of silver ore that they had liberated from the Sunbeam Silver Mine rested atop a stack of coffee-stained papers.  Flant took another puff from his pipe, then wheezed, his grey moustache bouncing along with his rattling cough.

“I have to say, everyone in town is mighty pleased that you found silver in that mine, seeing as we was all told it was played out.  Silver was the lifeblood of Sunbeam; without it we been withering up, fixing to expire.  Problem is, that mine is still property of the Deuclair Mining Company.  Mr. Deuclair bought up the whole damn mountain less’n a year after the first silver strike.  Course, weren’t two years after that the mine up an closed, citing a lack of ore, which we can clearly see is no longer the case!”  He laughed and tapped the ore with his foot.  “We cain’t draw none o’ that silver out without oversight from Deuclair.  Our town’s got hope again, but hope’s gotta go through a whole mess o' clerks and lawyers afore it can reach the people.”  He paused and took another puff from his pipe.  “Course, being as the silver ore you liberated was already mined, that’ll fall under spoils of war.  No need to notify Mr. Deuclair on that account,” he winked.

Escape from the Lair of the Krampus - A Holiday D&D Adventure

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!  My Boxing Day present to you is my holiday adventure, "Escape from the Lair of the Krampus!"  It is available to download for free from my Patreon page.

"Escape from the Lair of the Krampus" is a short dungeon-crawl for four to six 7th level characters.  The adventure comes with eight pre-generated characters for your group to choose from, but I have also included guidelines for creating your own characters to run through the game with.  Last night, I ran (part of) the adventure for some very cool friends and family members, some of whom played the pre-generated characters and some of whom played their own characters - it works fine either way.

"Escape from the Lair of the Krampus" is the first part of a trilogy of Christmas adventures I have planned.  "The Chaining of Krampus" will come out for Christmas 2015, and "Assault on the Fortress of Christmas" will come out the following year.  They will use the same characters advanced to 10th and then to 13th level.  I'll try to have them out sooner next time.

I should note that one of the reasons it took so much longer than I anticipated to get this adventure ready for you is that I created five original monsters specifically for this dungeon, including the figgy pudding and the frostjack.  Expect more original holiday monsters in adventures to come!

-your holly-jolly d20 despot

Monster Monday: Frostjack - the Frost-Touched Fey

As a bonus preview for my upcoming Christmas adventure, "Escape from the Lair of the Krampus", today's Monster Monday is the frostjack, a frozen fey creature based on the legendary figure of Jack Frost.  This is one of five brand new monsters I have statted up for this dungeon (one of the big reasons for my lateness in getting the adventure written up.  Expect it before Christmas!)

Here's a lovely picture of some ice crystals,
because I can't find a good jack frost picture that isn't from some Legend of the Guardians fanfic.  

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.