The Mists of Lamordia - wrap-up

My Ravenloft campaign, "The Mists of Lamordia" came to its end today with a grand battle against Adam and Victor Mordenheim. The PCs emerged victorious, but battered, bloodied, and with one fallen comrade (though raise dead fixed that). Three of our heroes then departed the realm of Ravenloft, returning to the barge to Luskan whence they came, while one elected to remain and assume the mantle of the new Dark Lord of Lamordia.

All in all, it was a good campaign, and it was an almost ideal finale today. So I'm very happy with that. I do, of course, have some thoughts:

• The campaign went on way too long - it was intended to run for about a year, started in October 2019, and finally ended today. It also dragged fairly seriously in the first act, where things seemed to take forever to get going.
• The campaign was also rather too lore heavy. Indeed, one player unofficially dropped out because by the time they were ready to rejoin things had just moved on so far that they couldn't keep up. Plus, even those players who did attend regularly found it difficult keeping it all square.
• The multi-act structure, however, was a very solid approach (not surprisingly - it also worked in "The Eberron Code"). Basically, for multi-year campaigns I'm inclined always to break it into chunks that can be treated as mini-campaigns with a fairly clean division between them. In fact, the more modular a campaign of this nature is, the better.
• This is the most satisfactory 5e campaign I've run (though "A Quest for Memory" comes quite close), but it most definitely is not one of my Great Campaigns. I didn't really expect that; I don't think the format or cadence really allows for such a thing.
• The Tarokka gimmick doesn't work.
• The new character sheet format is a distinct improvement over the old. However, I need to work up an inventory sheet for those characters who get too much stuff, and especially magic items, for the existing sheet.
• The tension pool doesn't really work with remote gaming. And the Inspiration token approach both doesn't really work with remote gaming and having it once per level also doesn't work in general. I'm inclined to drop both in future.
• The character secrets, and the side dish in general, worked very well. And the manner in which I've both been building encounters and assigning XP awards has been very good.

And I think that's everything. All in all, a very successful experience; but also I have plenty to chew over for the next little while. And in a couple of weeks we'll have another one of these for "A Quest for Memory".

Isles of Dread

It turns out that I have a new "next campaign" - I've been struck by an inspiration that has driven "Blades of the Desert" into second place. And, of course, when hit by such an idea it's a good idea to follow it up.

The campaign is one-part a follow up to the classic "X1: The Isle of Dread", one part "Lost", one part "The Lost World" (and similar). It starts with a shipwreck, then the establishment of a community, then an investigation, and then a long-delayed confrontation with the Others (whoever they might be).

As is so often the case with these things, I have a nice solid idea for how it can start, I have a fairly solid idea of how it can come to a satisfactory end, and I have a few of the bits for the middle. I just need to flesh out the rest of that midsection.

The other thing I need is a "side dish". I have a rough notion of what it could be, but not yet the full thing. It ties in to the Exploration pillar, and involves reconstructing some lore from the original inhabitants of the island.

(Hmm... a thought: perhaps this is one to have two smaller side dishes, one each for the Exploration and Interaction pillars? That would give a much more well-rounded campaign, so it could be of interest. Perhaps one for rebuilding that lore, and another for making peaceful contact with various groups?)

History Repeats

My "Storm King's Thunder" campaign came to a TPK while in the "Forge of the Fire Giants" chapter - essentially, the PCs got themselves into a situation where the enemies converged on their location, they'd cut off all their own escapes, and they were thus overwhelmed.

To bring "The Quest for Memory" to a premature but still satisfying end, I've decided to run one last adventure, and due to the circumstances of the campaign as it was when I made that decision, that means I'm again running "Forge of the Fire Giants".

The results thus far have been fairly astonishing - the PCs started by dealing with the village on the mountaintop, an encounter that ended in violence. Then they descended the elevator to the Forge itself. Proceeding one way, they discovered a fair amount about the area, before investigating the other.

Thus far, the description could apply to either party - the pattern was uncannily similar.

Where it diverges, and where it may diverge in a fairly crucial manner, is that one party then proceeded directly to facing a band of giants, while the other instead faced some hobgoblin minions of the giants, and then went on to face those giants. The upshot of that being that the second group may have left themselves an easy retreat that the first lacked.

But last week's session ended exactly where the penultimate session of the previous campaign did - the giants have been alerted to something being wrong, they're now rushing to investigate, and the PCs run the risk of being overmatched.

It will be really interesting to see what happens next. Especially as I'm hoping to conclude either in the next session or, failing that, the one after. Though, ideally, without a TPK!

Thoughts About Crucibles

As "The Mists of Lamordia" comes to its close, I have locked the PCs in to the final crucible, which will serve as the final adventure location of the campaign. We're now heading to the final showdown, with the next session potentially being the last.

Having had some more time to consider the matter, and having seen the crucibles play out in two campaigns now, I have a few thoughts:

• As I've mentioned once before, the crucibles need to be kept short - a session or two at most. They should also be fairly brutal, as the whole point is to challenge the PCs as they come to the end of one phase of the campaign.
• As a consequence of that, I'm inclined to suggest a crucible should comprise around 5-6 encounters, with those skewed a little more towards the top end of the challenge range.
• Because of the small number of encounters and the need to challenge the PCs, it should not be possible to take a long rest while in a crucible, nor indeed to retreat and then come back. Face the challenge, or fail!
• And having said that, I've just come up against some fairly serious resistance to that "no resting" approach - some players really don't like it!

About Good Races

One of the big issues in modern D&D is the question of 'evil' races, particularly orcs and drow. It is becoming increasingly unacceptable to portray any of these races as being evil, and to a large extent that's fair enough - if orcs are indeed just another humanoid race with free will (as opposed to Tolkien's orcs, who were neither), then you would expect the full range of alignments.

One of the problems with that, however, is that for the most part the evil races are set up in opposition to the good races - drow are, first and foremost, the opposite of the benign and playful elves, and so on.

I'm inclined to think that a big part of the solution to the problem of 'evil' races must therefore include a significant rethink of the 'good' races. If elves aren't the benign and playful creatures we're used to, the contrast can become much less problematic.

And that's no bad thing. D&D's elves basically suck, being one part Tolkien, one part imaginary girlfriend, and generally without character. I'm inclined to think they're much better to adopt Lennier's maxim, "We may sometimes look like you, but we are not you."

So, have the elves lean in to their fey origins, where even the Seelie court were dangerous to encounter. Lean in to Pratchett's portrayal in "Lords and Ladies". Lean into their dedication to protect the environment, even against a humanity that they see as inherently destructive. And that way, the drow are not so jarring.

Likewise, the dwarves can be creatures of grudge and obsession, and an inhumanly powerful work ethic. And thus the dvergar need not be "evil dwarves", they can be a part of dwarven society in good standing, but be those dwarves that the others think take it all a bit too far.

And so on.

Drow: An Alternate Take

I was mulling over the notion of an alternate "army list" structure for D&D - as I've mentioned before, way back in the day Alignment was essentially that structure (before it morphed into the cause of a million arguments), but actually Good vs Evil makes for a bad thematic conflict (since there's an obvious 'right' side). That being the case, I was pondering the major players in such a structure and how they'd fit together.

I started with the Elves and Dwarves, who are both considered 'good' races but which are nonetheless in opposition: Elves are associated with nature while Dwarves are associated with industry. And the 'obvious' notion would be that both these races would be considered allied with humans.

But...

What if it were Drow, not Elves, who were allied with humans?

Indeed, what if the ancient feud between Elves and Drow wasn't the classic "good vs evil" yawnfest, but instead something else?

Specifically, what if Elves (including Drow) were the first practitioners of Arcane magic, and it was the Drow who gifted the secrets of it to the first human wizards (in the manner of Prometheus and fire)? This caused a major schism in the elven race, leading to the drow being driven out and underground. (And Lolth, for her part, was cursed by Corellon with her current form, and so on and so forth.)

The upshot of this would be that elves then are not the exemplars of good that D&D seems relentlessly determined to portray them as, which can only be a good thing in my opinion. It also means that drow are probably not the exemplars of evil that they've similarly been typecast as - they're the losers in an ancient war that was actually not simply good vs evil.

It does have the advantage that drow can then retain most, if not all, of their current design - they remain subterranean elves, they can remain associated with spiders and the like (since, although many people have phobias, spiders aren't actually forces of evil), and so on.

It does mean that Lolth needs a new portfolio, and it does mean that both elven and drow society need overhauled from their previous depictions, but that's probably no bad thing.

(It isn't even necessarily the case that humans being allied with drow means that they must be opposed to elves, due to the way the web should be constructed. It's possible for one force to be allied with two others that are themselves opposed.)

All that said, I suspect this would require a whole new setting to be grafted into D&D, and I'm not inclined to change my minds about not using drow in my own campaigns, so...

A Big Fat Nope

Last week WotC announced a bunch of upcoming products, including Spelljammer. I must admit, I was very surprised to see this, as Spelljammer was always a very niche product, especially compared with Dark Sun, Ravenloft, or Planescape. Still, it was always a favourite, albeit very odd, setting and so something of immediate interest.

That interest was then ruthlessly stamped out. I have three issues:

They've adopted a new product format - three 64-page books in a slipcase. This means that this setting gets only 3/4 of the attention paid to Ravenloft, and 3/5 of that paid to Eberron. Given the need to introduce a whole raft of D&D physics, lots of ship types, vehicle combat rules, and a whole setting, that's just not enough. And when you also consider that one of those books is an adventure, it is even more punishing.

With the new format they're also significantly increasing the price. So, more money for less material? No thanks.

Truth be told, though, neither of those are deal-breakers - I would probably have arranged to get the set as a Christmas present or something. Unfortunately, they've also reimagined the setting, and my immediate reaction to the changes is a big fat "nope". And given the abject failure of "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft", I'm not inclined to give the benefit of any doubt.

Which is all very disappointing. I've been very much a fan of Eberron, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun. But of these, only Eberron has a 5e take that I've enjoyed, and that came about mostly by the expedient of not making any changes.