of Dice and Dragons

Two years and 206 posts ago today I started this blog about gaming - hard to believe that much time has passed.

For all those that have been following my musings over that time I thank you for that and if you’ve just joined us I hope you find the posts here interesting and helpful.

So what’s on tap for next year? While I won’t make any grand promises I will say that I’m going to be making a more concerned effort to post more frequently - something that I’ve been struggling with since I started the blog. I’ve got ideas for a number of posts and I’m always looking for ideas from you, the folks reading this small slice of the Internet.

So once again, I thank you, my readers for stopping by and taking a few minutes of your time to read and share - it’s what makes our hobby a great one.

Now, let’s blow out the candles and have a piece of cake!

May your dice roll well.

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I mentioned in my post on September 14 Prepping for a New Game that instead of starting by diving right into the creation process for my next campaign I was going to do a postmortem, or review, of my last campaign The Realms of Rylon or Rylon for short. Here we are three months later so I figured I better get this postmortem started.

Here are the points I’m going to hit during this process:

• What was the original campaign idea?
• The good - what was well received, done well or enjoyed by all
• The bad - what could have been done better, could have been good if handled differently
• The ugly - what hurt the campaign and the players/GM’s enjoyment

Will that cover everything? Probably not but it does force me to focus on where I can improve things for my next campaign and also remember what worked well so I can continue to use it.

Let’s start at the top, what was the original campaign idea?

The original campaign idea for Rylon centered around an artifact called The Keystone. According to legend about 400 years prior to the start of the campaign the Keystone was broken into four pieces to seal off the city of Tangarth and it was the goal of the party to collect the four pieces and return them to their employer.

While I had the above in mind and some preliminary notes put together I didn’t initially put this to my group as I didn’t want to railroad them into it, so I did a soft sell. I did this by writing up an initial adventure during which their future employer was looking to select a group of adventures to complete some task. The adventure allowed the group to bond together by giving them some common experiences and set the stage for a number of role-playing sessions during which the players agreed on terms with their employer and started their quest.

Was the idea good? In a lot of respects it was as it gave a lot of room for creativity and also provided some themes for different aspects of the campaign as I eventually linked each piece of the keystone to a base element, earth, fire, water and air. The theme idea I’ll admit has been done almost to death but it did work well for this.

I also decided that I wanted this campaign to take the group of characters to epic level (for those not familiar with 3.5 D&D that’s above level 20), which translated to five levels per part of the keystone. Here was the first mistake I made and the first lesson I learned - you shouldn’t plan out your campaign based level advancement.

Why not? What happens with the party doesn’t advance in levels? The plot can stagnate. What happens when the party goes off on a side trip? Advancement stagnates. Both situations make it difficult on everyone to enjoy the game.

Lesson learned - don’t tie major plots to character advancement make the two independent of each other.

In the next part of this series of articles I take a look at what worked well in the campaign. I promise it won’t take another three months!

May your dice roll well.

Be sure to check out the rest of the series:
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Good
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Bad
Realms of Rylon Postmortem - The Ugly

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For those that missed it in his posting, Treasure Tables is Unlikely to Continue, Martin states that after taking the 39 days off from posting (he reran previous postings during that time frame) he’s decided that he will most likely end his run with the Treasure Tables blog.

There was a part of me that wanted to post about this the moment I read it on my RSS reader but I stopped myself as I didn’t think it would be fair. I’ve been a long time reader of that blog and learned more than a thing or two about the craft of GMing and will be sorry to see it go.

On the other hand I can see and understand his reasoning.

I had a manager once tell me (in front of his boss by the way) that when something ceases to be fun you should get out. Martin has hit that point with the blog and I salute him for seeing that and making the tough call. To often we continue on down a road where we’re not enjoying ourselves only because we feel we have to and that’s a travesty, not just for yourself but also to those that come to rely on your commitment and enthusiasm.

Martin, if you stop by and read this, I salute you. You’ve given us some great content over the last two years and I will be sorry to see the Treasure Table blog go but hope to find you publishing materials still as I think you are a great asset to the hobby and industry.

May your dice roll well.

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When I first started of Dice and Dragons one of the things I did was start a series of posts with Encounter Ideas that you could use in your campaign and I thought it was high time that we revisit that idea with a new encounter - The Shopkeeper.

Most folks will know the shopkeeper as that kindly individual behind the counter of whatever store or inn the party happens to stop at so why not mix it up a bit by taking the shopkeeper out of the shop?

Some suggestions:

- The party meets the shopkeeper on the street as he’s running errands and gets very upset with the party for blocking his way, after all, “I’m very important here in town, you better watch your step!”
- At their favorite watering hole they over here the shopkeeper drowning himself in drink, wondering out loud what he’s going to do as he’s lost everything in a recent fire.
- The shopkeeper is still in his prime and is only running the shop as he married into the family and really wants to get back to an adventuring life - will the party let him tag along.
- The shopkeeper is not the owner of the establishment, she’s working off the debt of her family. When the party arrives with their latest treasure hoard asks if there’s anyway they can assist her.

Have you used a shopkeeper outside of their shop? If you have, how did the encounter go?

Be sure to check out these additional encounter ideas

May your dice roll well.

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