ToA DMing Discussion (beware spoilers)

12:00 AM

Again, some of the encounters take five minutes. "You see aaracokra overhead." "Ugh, aaracokra are so lame, stay under cover." "Next roll?"

THiebert

@DaleM or start out at higher level?

Dale M

@nitsua60 Goes back to what you said - treat the encounters as set decoration.

nitsua60

But a different party was "you see aa overhead." "Let's call to them!" And 20 minutes of chatting with aa ensues, along with tidbits about the land of Chult.

Dale M

One thing that happens as the party levels up is they get access to better ways to travel so the hexcrawl becomes moot. Fly spells are pretty low level and once they get Teleportation travel is irrelevant.

nitsua60

@DaleM Right--one encounter with a Zhent party (I've rolled 00 more times than is reasonable) led to the mention of Red Wizards. "What're Red Wizards?" And story-time ensued. (I had every player who knew anything of FR lore play the part of a zhent and tell stories as they all had dinner together.)

Dale M

12:03 AM

Anyway, I'm talked out on this. Bye.

nitsua60

@DaleM Have a good night!

@THiebert I'm sitting supervising a study hall for the next two hours, so I'll definitely be around =|

THiebert

12:27 AM

@nitsua60 I think I'm the only on in my group that knows anything about FR lore

nitsua60

I think it's important in a campaign like this, particularly, to keep very cognizant of how much more information we have than they.

THiebert

I should talk to them about how much lore matters to them

We've never really had that discussion.

nitsua60

I intentionally look for a chance during every encounter to tell them something (a) they'd have no way of knowing and (b) that I'd have not thought to mention otherwise.

THiebert

Like how?

nitsua60

@THiebert I like presenting it as one of the ways that we can continue to play the game together even when away from the table.

THiebert

12:31 AM

That's a good frame for it

nitsua60

@THiebert Aarakocra encounter: the aarokocra talked about how they try to generally patrol the skies to keep the pterafolk from terrorizing surface humanoids too much. And that one day they almost got shot down by an entire goblin village.

Zhent encounter: Red Wizards, as mentioned above.

Hadrosaurs led to discussion with guide and tagalong about the merchant princes and how "average" Chultans feel about the planned/directed/cartel-ized economy.

THiebert

I'm afraid of at least two members of my group taking any information as if it were a quest hook

"Oh there's evil red wizards, where are they, we must vanquish them"

nitsua60

Quippers led to a discussion of throat leeches--those had never been mentioned before.

THiebert

Throat leeches are deadly.

nitsua60

@THiebert (Luckily, there's some in Omu!)

What do you think about renaming this room "ToA DMing discussions (beware spoilers)"?

THiebert

12:36 AM

Do I have to do that?

Because if you can, I approve.

room topic changed to ToA DMing Discussion (beware spoilers): (no tags)

A player was discussing possibly playing a red dragonborn. I've been considering how I could have Hew Hackinstone react to that.

Considering how frequent/infrequent dragonborn visits are ok the island, general intelligence about the races if Faerun, etc.

nitsua60

@THiebert It didn't have to be you, but as creator I felt it'd be rude to do something like that without at least sounding you out over it =)

Remind me: are you playing AL or no?

THiebert

Not AL

nitsua60

Good--that gives you a lot of freedom.

So, are dragonborn rare/shunned/disliked in your version of the FR?

THiebert

I figure I could have him react violently, confusing dragonborn for young dragons, or I could have him be knowledgeable, and try to leverage the dragonborn hatred for dragons to convince them to work together against Tinder

I haven't had any Dragonborn in my games that weren't PCs

Honestly, every NPC I create tends to be human, dwarf, or gnome.

nitsua60

@THiebert If dragonborn have a hatred for dragons, and that's a known thing, I think that's a great hook.

Esp. if d'born are rare enough that word of one hitting Port Nyanzaru could have spread and sent Hew looking for your party.

THiebert

12:45 AM

Yeah, and with Zindar, I think people in Port Nyanzaru might understand the differences a bit more than most.

nitsua60

Right... people would have run to him right away saying there's a "bad" d'born in town, and Hew could have been down there trying to scrounge up business.

THiebert

@nitsua60 was dragon-dragonborn hatred something I made up? I could've sworn that was outlined in the PHB

nitsua60

@THiebert I have no idea. Dragonborn are a thing that happened during my ~15-year D&D hiatus. (Draconians, on the other hand, I'm totally cool with!)

THiebert

I'm not familiar.

nitsua60

The Dragonlance Saga.

List of Dragonlance creatures

The list of Dragonlance creatures attempts to list the races that can be found in the Dragonlance setting. == Dragons == According to the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, dragons are the original beings of Krynn, born from the world and the elements. The dragons of Krynn are distinguished from other dragons because they take active roles in the fate of the lesser races. The dragons of Dragonlance appear much as their counterparts in other Dungeons & Dragons worlds. === Chromatic Dragons === The chromatic dragons are red, white, green, black and blue varieties of dragons. They are evil an...

THiebert

12:49 AM

Ah. I haven't looked into dragonlance at all

I may have my normal group run through ToA as well, but they'll be starting at 5 rather than 1

nitsua60

The Dragonlance modules are well worth a look. (1e products.) The books... let's say I have a childhood-nostalgic soft spot for them, but I can't really recommend them.

THiebert

Haha. I know the feeling.

nitsua60

Unless you're super-into D&D history, in which case they give you a great feel for what an early 80's campaign was like.

(Particularly the annotated version.)

amazon.com/Annotated-Chronicles-Dragonlance/dp/0786918705

THiebert

I'm thinking with the higher level group, I may just push them to Orulunga then Omu quickly, but I also feel like they'd get a lot more out of the exploration of Chult than the newcomers would.

Were they written about campaigns people played, or are they their own thing?

nitsua60

I'd totally do that. Tell 'em it's a hexcrawl. Remove the "pressure" to get the soulmonger.

Maybe even drop a few different smaller modules onto the peninsula as new fixed locations.

@THiebert The first trilogy was written about a campaign played, then later books were straight-up books, and the modules were written with feedback from the campaign/playtest and the experience of writing/marketing the first books.

(IIRC)

THiebert

1:01 AM

Nice. Might get into it sometime. I've been meaning to find some novel reading material

Bad joke, I'll go home now

Yeah, with this group, I'd considered adding in the jungle dungeon from TftYP

nitsua60

@THiebert Hell, with a group that was willing to spend the time I might just drop Syndra altogether. Or have her only appear when they search out information on the curse that nobody's talking about. (And they only hear about once they've established a good rapport with some NPC.)

THiebert

I think I have to include syndra. They're wanting to merge two different parties, so everyone can play their own favorite characters, and syndra is the best way to bring them together and put them in Chult, that I can come up with.

nitsua60

1:16 AM

Eh, let them be two rival dino-racing teams. But when the out-of-nowhere edict comes down that racers can only use padded pugile sticks and the traps have to be nonlethal, rather than compete under "wussie" rules these two teams decided to sit it out. And found themselves in the same empty bar on race-day.

But, of course, use Syndra if you like. Just trying to throw some ideas out there, because I'm bored sitting high-schoolers doing crappy jobs on their homework.

THiebert

1:45 AM

You teach high school?

Miniman

2:53 AM

@nitsua60 Thanks!

nitsua60

@THiebert Yes. You? (I mean, "what do you do," not, "oh, do you also teach HS?")

@Miniman Acererack's the connection.

That's not really a spoiler, as he's on the cover of ToA, but if we get into details of what the whole ToA campaign's about it could get spoiler-y

Miniman

@nitsua60 I mean more like - is it a remake? A sequel? Thematically connected?

nitsua60

Definitely not a remake. Sequel's not a bad comparison.

More like sibling?

Or "distant cousin you met once that time your family went to Colorado."

ToH is one of the trap-centric places Acererack built just to kill/toy with adventurers.

ToA is basically a laboratory where he's doing $bad_things and the traps really are there to keep you out.

(By killing you, of course.)

Miniman

Hmmm.

nitsua60

@Miniman A really neat meta-campaign might be to pursue Acererack through the ages/planes/editions. In fact, dndclassics should totally sell the "acererack bundle."

Miniman

3:01 AM

@nitsua60 That's one for a very specific group, I think.

THiebert

@nitsua60 I'm a software developer, but i've lately been considering getting certified to teach HS Computer Science (and maybe math)

@nitsua60 I've considered appending the TftYP Tomb of Horrors to the end of ToA

nitsua60

@Miniman Oh, sure. One that really likes (RL) D&D history/lore. And doesn't mind playing some characters in one adventure, then their grandkids (statted in another system) in another, and another, and another....

@THiebert I was underwhelmed by TftYP ToH.

THiebert

was it nerfed significantly? I haven't read either yet

nitsua60

@THiebert No, it was a pretty faithful (basically room-for-room) porting.

I think the key is that I played a L14 5e character in this one, when I don't think I ever played an "honest" 0e/1e/2e character above 7th or 8th level.

The power curves/assumptions in "modern" D&D are just so different from what's in my bones.

@THiebert That's... exactly my dept. head's trajectory.

THiebert

you're used to playing a peasant?

I honestly think that the speed of character advancement in 5e is one of it's weaker points.

nitsua60

3:07 AM

@THiebert Too fast? Too slow?

THiebert

you go from nobodies to Demi-gods in what could be a very short period of time

It's one of the reasons I conceptually prefer Fate. But when I experiemented with Fate with my group, nobody else liked it

nitsua60

@THiebert Yeah... I feel like 5e characters are stroking pretty well in levels 6-12-- I'd consider something like an "E11" or "E7" variant in my next homebrew.

Alright, I gotta turn into a pumpkin. Have a good night, all.

THiebert

Thanks for your help today!

nitsua60

12:35 PM

@THiebert No worries--glad to chat! I'm running a group through it on Wednesday nights (AL) and have played the whole thing, so I've starred the room and will keep an eye out for activity =)

THiebert

3:26 PM

@nitsua60 how have you already played the whole thing? was it like daily games or something? that's incredibly fast.

nitsua60

4:01 PM

@THiebert If you look on the "Credits" page you'll see my RL name.

THiebert

4:14 PM

@nitsua60 how'd you manage that?

nitsua60

I was invited to be a playtester for 5e products a while back. I happen to know a guy....

@THiebert And it was three to four sessions per week for a while--it was a real crunch.

THiebert

Intense, but super cool. I'd love to do something like that.

Can you give a brief overview of the route your group took?

nitsua60

@THiebert It's a little hazy at points. Partly because it was so intense, partly because sometimes we jumped to a fixed location just to specifically playtest it.

We took silvertusk's invitation to Vengeance, from there did the patrol that Bonebreaker demanded, met up with an Enclave party who's trying to track Ras Nsi; we hit Mezro and Kir Sabal and Firefinger, but I don't remember which were "natural" hits and which were jumps.

Then to Omu, nine tombs in one afternoon, two sessions in the Fane, then a solid week of sessions in the eponymous tomb.

Asscrack power word killed me. But I'd just killed his proto-god, so I guess we're even.

THiebert

4:39 PM

Are parties actually expected to kill asscrack?

nitsua60

6:38 PM

@THiebert No-ooo.

IIRC, if you even start to make the tiniest bit of headway on him he just says "I'm outta here."

THiebert

7:00 PM

I've not read most of the end stuff yet. Basically only through chapter 3.

Transcript for

ToA DMing Discussion (beware spoilers)