D&D Campaign 2: D&D Harder

[Sly Boots]

Oh, absolutely, embrace the chaos

[Raid]

So perhaps inevitably, I've had a first crack at drawing Opus, along with A'herr and Kuraku.



I was going to make a point of trying to find some armour to disguise A'herr while visiting civilisation, but now that I see him in comparison to Opus, and I think I've got the scaling about right (Opus is four feet tall, A'herr about eight - he's probably the skeleton of a goliath rather than a human), I think I'm probably going to go with slinging a big sheet over him as one of you suggested in session 0, because he's bloody massive.

Kuraku is Opus' familiar, and given that I won't have an actual raising of dead things spell until level 5, is an skeletal raven and for flavour I'm calling him Opus' first necromancy experiment (but in gameplay terms he'll just be a standard familiar). I designed him as being wreathed in black flame, so that from a distance he largely looks like a regular bird otherwise he'd be alerting anything he's spying on, but given the conversation on the previous page I'm going to hope this doesn't means he'll set anything he lands on on fire.

How do people feel about me attempting to illustrate parts of our campaign? I can't say whether this would be a regular thing or not, but thought it might be fun. I wanted a go at drawing a character from different angles, and given that the image above was the most recent thing I'd worked on, I started making a model sheet for Opus, and given that we're a fairly diverse party, wondered if the rest of you would like to see your characters drawn at some point too.

[Wrathbone]

How do people feel about me attempting to illustrate parts of our campaign?

Having the campaign world brought to life through art I think would be something quite special.

[Sly Boots]

Feel free to say no, but I was also wondering about whether I might record our sessions. I'm fully set up to do so, and I'd just upload the vids to this thread for us and other forumites to see. I wouldn't want it to make sessions awkward, but thought it might be a nice archive of our adventures.

[Wrathbone]

I’d be fine with it, and it could be handy to refer back to in certain circumstances (e.g. if I come up with a name on the spot and forget to write it down ).

[Sly Boots]

Cool, no rush obviously, but as long as everyone is happy with it we can give it a go anyway!

[Mantis]

I'm all up for the illustrations but not sure how comfortable I am with the entire campaign being audio recorded.

[Sly Boots]

That's fine, it was only an idea, the last thing I'd want is for people to feel uncomfortable playing that way.

[Sly Boots]

And seeing how Sage ended the last campaign I can understand why you might not want things recorded for posterity

[Raid]

I've PM'd a little questionnaire to the other players to get some ideas for visual designs of your characters. You can complete as much or as little as you'd like (or ignore the whole thing if you're not interested), but I figured I'd try and work with you all given that they're your characters and we might be playing as them for a long time. No rush whatsoever, but I've got a fair bit of time on my hands at the minute and watching Legend of Vox Machina recently got me thinking about D&D character design, so this is something I'd like to work on.

Pete, I'm happy to do the same with you if you want, but I figured that's something that might come later down the line as there are bound to be characters that are more important or that stick out more than others based on how the game goes.

[Wrathbone]

Yeah, there are a few NPCs who are likely to become prominent, but it’s usually some random NPC not intended to be significant who sticks out the most (i.e. Jeff).

[Mantis]

I'll have to think about the answers to some of these before responding as I hadn't really solidified a lot of the details in my own head yet.

[Raid]

S'fine, I wasn't expecting people to be replying immediately. I don't think I've got answers for all of it yet even for my own character that I've already drawn once.

[Sly Boots]

Sorry Raid, I did mean to get to this today, I got distracted by being finally being well enough to sit at my desk and play games for the first time in days

[Sly Boots]

Sorry mate, forgot again (and out all day tomorrow)... Monday, I promise!

Anyway, carrying out our pre-campaign general D&D tootling, wanted to announce that for Christmas I got the kids this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paizo-Publishi ... C55&sr=8-1

I know it's Pathfinder so a slightly different game system, however it's a really cool set with a nice big (two-sided) gaming board so it's all visual, game pieces, premade characters (and step-by-step instructions for making their own)... I really wanted a proper introductory framework to get them into D&D.

DMed our first campaign session tonight, and it was a ton of fun, I tried to keep the rule-strictness to a minimum, mainly using them for skills checks and combat stuff (in this edition there's a slightly confusing action points system, so I instead run it with more familiar D&D action, bonus action, movement rules) and instead concentrate on storytelling and humour, and a good time was had by all. When I suggested we stop after about an hour they were immediately asking when we could play next, which I took for a good sign!

And, like all good TTRPG sessions, there was many moments of utter chaos and it was great. My favourite moment was the first mini-boss encounter in the module. It was a cobweb-covered room, in the corner of which a giant spider was hiding. Combat wasn't inevitable - in fact the module had a lot of text describing how adventurers could get through the room unscathed by making a series of successful acrobatics checks to avoid the webs, touching any of which would activate the spider.

The first thing my kid did when entering the room?

"I taste the web"

Chaos continues to ensue for some time