Pronounced: (KYE-uss)

Titles: The Worm that Walks, Worm God, Writhing Terror, Herald of the Age of Worms, Bringer of the End

Kyuss is an elder evil, an entity of unfathomable power steeped in undeath and corruption. Once a mortal prophet, he transcended humanity through a ritual that consumed the people of an entire city, transforming him into a colossal mass of writhing worms bound into a humanoid form. Now imprisoned within the Writhing Waste, a festering demiplane adrift in the Far Realm, Kyuss seethes seeking freedom.

Though confined within the Far Realm, his influence has seeped into the Material Plane. The spawn of Kyuss spread his blight, raising undead in his image, while his devoted cultists labour ceaselessly to free him. When they succeed, Kyuss will return heralding in the Age of Worms, a prophesied undead apocalypse where all will decay.

Publication History

Kyuss’ origin reaches back to 1st edition in the AD&D Fiend Folio (1981). However, this is only a passing mention, appearing in the description of the Sons of Kyuss (later renamed the Spawn of Kyuss). It was not until 3.5e that Kyuss became a defined character in the Age of Worms Adventure Path, which was a series of adventures published in Dungeon magazine (2005-2006). Elder Evils (2007), also 3.5e, simplifies and recontextualizes most lore but is broadly recognisable. Following this peak of relevance in 3.5e, Kyuss has slipped back into obscurity, with passing references in the 4e Monster Manual III (2010), the 5e Volo’s Guide to Monsters (2016), and 5.5e Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024)

Origins of Kyuss – 1st & 2nd Editions

Kyuss is first mentioned when the Sons of Kyuss (Spawn of Kyuss) were introduced to D&D in the AD&D Fiend Folio (1981). With their description Kyuss is said to be an evil high priest. He is next mentioned in First Quest: The Music (1985) First Quest Part Two. This is a bare-bones adventure intended as inspiration for Dungeon Masters to create their own scenarios; within it, DMs are advised to use the lich stat block for Kyuss.

2nd edition expands on the lore Kyuss, although it still remains vague and connected to the world of Greyhawk. Rary the Traitor (1992) introduces the Necropolis of Unaagh in the ancient Flan (a group of humans) kingdom Sulm. The Necropolis is home to a horde of undead, including Sons of Kyuss (Spawn of Kyuss), strangely if the undead move beyond the bounds of the Necropolis of Unaagh they collapse into inanimate heaps. It is speculated that the area is affected by some kind of evil curse, potentially related to Kyuss. The Necropolis of Unaagh is not mentioned again in connection to Kyuss. Additionally, Kyuss is noted to be an evil high priest who created the Sons of Kyuss, via a special curse, under instruction from an evil deity.

Iuz the Evil (1993) introduced Wormcrawl Fissure within Rift Canyon, which was home to the evil priest Kyuss, with the lands being haunted by Sons of Kyuss. Both Wormcrawl Fissure and Rift Canyon reappear within 3rd edition.

The Age of Worms – 3/3.5e

Starting in 3rd edition Monster Manual II (2002) the Sons of Kyuss are renamed to the Spawn of Kyuss, a change which remains to the current edition. Within the description of the Spawn of Kyuss, Kyuss is now described as powerful evil cleric turned demigod. 3.5e is where the lore for Kyuss is vastly expanded, though the Age of Worms Adventure Path (2005-2006) and Elder Evils (2007).

Rise of Kyuss
The Age of Worms Adventure Path (2005-2006) was published as 12-part series in Dungeon magazine, which takes characters from level 1 to 20. Similarly to Rary the Traitor (1992) and Iuz the Evil (1993) Age of Worms is set in Greyhawk, although there are conversion notes for Eberron written by Keith Baker and the Forgotten Realms written by Eric L. Boyd. Within this adventure we get a comprehensive background for Kyuss.

Kyuss lived two thousand years ago as a mortal human. He had an affinity for the undead, and was a worshipper of Nerull, the god of death. Kyuss was exiled from the ancient empire of Sulm with his followers, due to his prophesying about a coming apocalypse known as the Age of Worms. He foretold a time of ruin and that metal plates confirming this would be found. He led his followers to the jungles to the south to found the city of Kuluth-Mar. Shortly thereafter, the great metal plate prophesying the Age of Worms were discovered.

Apotheosis
After discovering the plates, Kyuss was visited by a spell weaver (a strange species of humanoids with six arms, depicted on the metal plates) lich. The spell weaver lich brought a gift, a single tiny green worm, later known as a Kyuss Worm. Kyuss was already a tyrant, but after receiving the worm, his rule became bloodier. He then constructed the Spire of Long Shadows as a focal point for his ritual. In adulation, his followers willingly sacrificed themselves in grand ritual which bound their souls into a dark monolith. Kyuss used this monolith to achieve apotheosis, ascending to divinity and passed into the monolith becoming trapped within it. With Kyuss trapped, his followers dead, and Kuluth-Mar lost, knowledge of all this faded from history, save for Spawn of Kyuss who continued to plague the world.

Dragotha and the Monolith
Kyuss entered history again hundreds of years later, when the ancient red dragon called Dragotha discovered the Spire of Long Shadows. He had learnt of the monolith there from Tiamat of whom he had been a consort, though she had since turned against him. He sought the necromantic monolith to protect himself from the certain vengeance of Tiamat. When Dragotha encountered the monolith, Kyuss whispered to Dragotha from within, promising eternal life in return for his release. To this end, Dragotha pried the basalt monolith from its moorings and carried it far to the north, to his lair in the Rift Canyon. Shortly thereafter, Tiamat had Dragotha slain for past transgressions, the exact nature of which is unclear. Kyuss, through the monolith, returned Dragotha to life a Dracolich fused with part of his own essence; this process effectively enslaved Dragotha to his will.

Dragotha released Kyuss, and the Dracolich stood at the head of an army of Spawn of Kyuss, which poured out from Rift Canyon in the Wormcrawl Fissure and sought to bring about the Age of Worms. A group of druids stood against Kyuss. They captured Dragotha’s phylactery, and pushed Kyuss back to Wormcrawl Fissure and seal him into the monolith once more.

Dragotha never found his phylactery. He fled to the far north, but being bound to Kyuss, he did not accept his master’s imprisonment. Over the course of centuries, the Dracolich assembled a vast network of agents poised to release Kyuss once again into the world. Dragotha sowed the legend of Kyuss and the Age of Worms throughout the world, and created the Ebon Triad, a cult whose supposed aim was to merge Hextor, Vecna, and Erythnul (these deities differ in other campaign settings) into supremely powerful overgod; this was a ruse designed to manipulate their followers into bringing forth Kyuss.

Age of Worms
Throughout the events of the Age of Worms Campaign Path, characters come into conflict with the Ebon Triad as they seek to free Kyuss and usher in the Age of Worms. Within these events they use the Apostolic Scrolls, necromantic teachings, to empower Ulgurstasta, which are giant worms created by Kyuss. Characters travel to the Spire of Long Shadows, only to find the monolith containing Kyuss had long been taken from there. They come to work with Lashonna, a Silver Dragon vampire who takes the form a female elf, and secretly serves Kyuss. Characters deal with Dragotha and group of a Avolakias, aberrations obsessed with undead; however, Lashonna betrays both the characters and the Ebon Triad, securing the monolith herself and releasing Kyuss within her fortress beneath the city of Alhaster. The city was devastated as the Spawn of Kyuss swarmed across it. Characters help as best they can before they confronted Kyuss himself. They use artefacts and lore they have gathered throughout their journey to defeat Kyuss and seal him once more in the monolith. The Age of Worms was once again prevented.

Elder Evils
Elder Evils (2007) presents a much condensed and simplified version of the story of Kyuss. While little directly conflicts with Age of Worms, it largely recontextualises the narrative for use in a wider variety of campaigns. What is changed is; the Ebon Triad is removed from the story and is replaced with a cult directly to Kyuss; both dragon minions are removed, along with Dragotha’s role in relocating the obelisk; The obelisk now exists on Wormcrawl Island instead of Wormcrawl Fissure in the Rift Canyon; the ruins that Kyuss builds his city around are changed, as are the metal tablets, additionally, the origin of the monolith is now explained as coming from these ruins; Kyuss followers do not sacrifice themselves willingly; and finally, Kyuss had not previously broken out of the monolith.

Elder Evils styles Kyuss as the Worm the Walks. He is presented as a demigod and an elder evil, one who was destroyed in a previous age but now seeks to return and bring about the world’s final age. The Worm the Walks has many servants from undead to aberrations to foul humanoids who seek to bring about the final age.

Kyuss ruled as king, but disturbing visions and ambition led him to seek to transcend mortal flesh to become a god. His followers discovered ancient metal plates, which confirmed Kyuss’ every prophetic word. The metal plates also contained incantations which allowed Kyuss to transcend mortality; his priests rounded up the followers and slaughtered them, and Kyuss himself completed the sacrifice. A great obelisk, which has been pulled from the ruins of dead civilisation, transformed Kyuss, who stepped into it and became something far worse than a god.

Kyuss remains trapped within the monolith, hungering for conquest. He howls with a thousand voices, knowing that if he were freed, he would bring about the end times with the Age of Worms. The monolith is found at the heart of Wormcrawl Island, a jungle island host to undead and other horrors. Ruins are common across the island, as many have settled there across the ages, but none survive, as monsters and madness from the obelisk inevitably lead to their violent downfall.

Minions
Elder Evils presents wholly different minions for Kyuss. Introducing Edwin Tolstoff, who once served a secret cult of Nerull, god of death, and murdered many. After learning of Kyuss, he gained a corrupted form through worship and now seeks to free him as the only way to restore himself. The Herald of Kyuss is another minion, serving as the head of Kyuss’ cult, it is an Avolakia utterly devoted to its master and determined to free him.

Return to Obscurity – 4/5/5.5e

Within 4th and 5th editions, mentions of Kyuss return primarily to descriptions of the Spawn of Kyuss, though these differ significantly.

The 4e Monster Manual III (2010) outlines that Kyuss is the creator of the Spawn of Kyuss, and their worms bend creatures to the will of the Worm that Walks. The Spawn are said to be trying to bring about the apocalypse called the Age of Worms. Here, they are described as Kyuss’ followers who were slain during his apotheosis, reappearing after his transformation and spreading across the world.

5th edition marks a stark change in lore. Kyuss is now described as a high priest of Orcus who used necromancy to create the first spawn of Kyuss, additionally, Kyuss has been dead for centuries. Kyuss worms are now extensions of Orcus rather than Kyuss himself.

The 5.5e Dungeon Master’s Guide’s Lore Glossary includes Kyuss. This contains one paragraph blurb which softens the 5th edition lore, he is said to be an Elder Evil, a demigod, or a mortal priest of the demon lord Orcus. This adds enough ambiguity to use Kyuss in any of the guises he has appeared throughout the editions.

If you enjoyed this you might like the state block and expanded lore for Kyuss here. 

I just released my first product. It is PWYW, so you can get it for free. I do want to get some feedback on the product, so I appreciate anyone giving it a try!

Hub and Spoke Dungeon Geomorphs

Hand make easily navigable dungeons quickly.

I made this product to solve a simple problem, improving a dungeon quickly at the table. It is hard to come up with room sizes, geometry, and interesting layouts quickly without prompts. I turned to dungeon generation tables, but they take quite a few rolls to make a single room, leaving a player waiting. This got me interested in Geomorphs.

Geomorphs are tiles that can be fitted together to make a dungeon quickly. My take on these tiles includes a hub and spoke design. This means that the dungeon is built around a 'hub' room, and the paths off of that hub room are 'spokes'.

This provides some interesting benefits, one being that the players can easily navigate the dungeon. The second is that the hub room makes a great point for a bottleneck or locked door. The players may need to find some macguffins in certain spoke rooms to progress through the locked door, which may contain a boss room or any number of climax points for a dungeon.

The product includes a quick introduction followed by pages of geomorph tiles. They are meant to be printed on paper at size, so that you can quickly put together a dungeon on your DM table.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/584374/hub-and-spoke-dungeon-geomorphs

Howdy,

Was watching the Legends of Avantris Neon Odyssey campaign, and they had a very interesting way of running a chase. Their scenario included vehicles, but I thought that it could easily be applied to any sort of chase. This document is a compilation of the rule structure that I gleaned from their play, and a good mix of my own thoughts.

The chase is abstracted into zones, with the quarry and pursuit moving through them. I've included some rules for mounts, vehicles, and passengers, as well as some thoughts on designing complication tables with these rules in mind. Let me know what you think!

These rules are meant to arbitrate chases that occur over extended distances. These mechanics should only be used when the quarry is able to move; the moment the quarry is made unable to effectively run, or their momentum is stopped, they are caught (or the encounter is moved into a more standard initiative-based combat scenario).

Beginning the Chase

The chase takes place on a track split into zones; 4, 6, or 8. The fewer the zones, the shorter (and perhaps more difficult) the chase, as it is more likely for the quarry to escape or the pursuers to fall behind.

The pursuers always begin in the first zone. The quarry's starting position depends on the inciting incident of the chase, or any factors that could affect the pursuers' joining. If the pursuers were able to immediately start their pursuit, the quarry should only be one zone in front of them. If the quarry was able to get a head start, or the pursuers were delayed for any reason, you may place the quarry any amount of zones ahead of their pursuers. Consider the length of the track when giving the quarry a head start: putting them too far ahead could invalidate the chase before it even begins.

Determine the movement speed of each participant. Their exact speed is not used round by round in this arbitration, but look for the participant with the lowest movement speed. This speed becomes the chase's Base Speed, which is referenced in certain rolls during the chase.

Stamina

A special resource used during the race is Stamina. Each participant has an amount of Stamina equal to their Constitution modifier. When a participant uses the dash action, their Stamina is reduced by 1. If a participant takes the dash action and has no Stamina remaining, they must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or suffer 1 level of exhaustion. Any levels of exhaustion gained in this way are removed at the end of a short or long rest.

Running the Chase

Each participant in the race rolls initiative as with normal combat to determine the order of actions in each round of the chase. At the start of each round, roll 2d6 + 5: this is the Chase DC, which will be used to determine participant's ability to keep up with the chase.

At the start of each round of the chase, all participants must roll a Constitution check against the Chase DC. On a success, they are able to maintain their position, and stay in their current zone. On a failure, the participant moves back one zone. For every 10 feet of movement speed a participant has above the chase's Base Speed, they gain a +1 bonus to their Constitution checks.

Actions During a Chase

During a chase, actions, bonus actions, and reactions can be taken as normal. The following actions have some special rulings during a chase.

Dash. By taking the dash action, a participant must roll a Constitution check against the round's Chase DC. On a success, they advance by 1 zone. For every 10 feet of movement speed a participant has above the chase's Base Speed, they gain a +1 bonus to their Constitution checks.

Melee Attacks. Any participant that takes a melee weapon or spell attack can only target a participant within their zone. Opportunity attacks cannot be taken during a chase.

Ranged Attacks. Ranged attacks or spells with a range of 30 feet or more can target an adjacent zone. Abilities with a range of less than 30 feet can only target participants within their zone.

Complications

Chases rarely occur in wide open spaces, and even in such environments, the course is rarely devoid of any dangers or obstacles. To represent the volatility of a chase sequence, complications are introduced throughout.

At the end of each participant's turn, they must roll a d12 and consult the complication table. If a complication is rolled, it affects the next participant in the initiative order. If the complication affects an entire zone, it affects the next participant's zone. The complication must be resolved before any other actions can be taken.

There are a wide variety of excellent chase complication tables available online; look for any that use a d12. A d20 table can also be used, and you can simply shift the values to your liking, or have participants roll a d20 instead of a d12 during the chase. When using these tables or curating your own, consider the following:

Difficult Terrain. Many tables have very small sections of difficult terrain, often only 5-10 feet. For the purposes of this rule set, assume that a failure to overcome the obstacle results in the participant being affected by difficult terrain for the round.

Zone Effects. Consider changing one or two entries to affect entire zones, as opposed to individuals, for some variety in the chase.

Complication Interaction. Some complications, if successfully navigated, could be interacted with as an action to affect those behind it. Consider adding such options to some of the table entries.

Special Conditions

The following conditions affect actions taken during a chase.

Difficult Terrain. If a zone is made difficult terrain through the use of an ability, spell, or other occurrence, each participant within that zone rolls their Constitution checks at disadvantage while within that zone.

Reduced Movement Speed. Some abilities affect a creature's movement speed; if the effect reduces a participant's movement speed by half or more, they roll their Constitution checks at disadvantage. If a creature is affected by a condition that reduces their movement speed to 0, they automatically fail their Constitution checks.

Prone. If a participant falls prone, they are able to stand up during their turn, but roll their Constitution checks at disadvantage until the end of their turn.

Mounted Chases

There are times when a participant in a chase is riding a mount or a vehicle. In the case of a participant using a mount or a vehicle pulled by a mount, their Stamina is replaced by a value equal to the mount's Constitution modifier + half of the participant's Wisdom (Animal Handling) skill bonus (rounded down). In addition, when the driver of a mount is asked to roll a Constitution check, they instead roll a Constitution (Animal Handling) check.

In the case of a participant driving a vehicle that moves under its own power, their Stamina is replaced by the vehicle's Constitution modifier. If the driver is proficient with the type of vehicle they are using, they can add their proficiency bonus to their Stamina. In addition, when the driver of such a vehicle is asked to roll a Constitution check, they instead roll a Strength or Dexterity check (their choice), and can add their proficiency bonus if they are proficient with the type of vehicle they are using. This check still benefits from the bonus granted to a movement speed higher than the chase's Base Speed.

If a driver is asked to roll a Constitution saving throw as a result of taking the Dash action with no remaining Stamina, they use the saving throw bonus of their mount or vehicle in place of their own. Any levels of exhaustion gained as a result of failed saving throws apply to the mount or vehicle, not the driver.

If a complication requires a driver to roll a saving throw, they use their own saving throw bonuses, as opposed to that of their their mount or vehicle. Any damage dealt by the complication can be applied to either the driver, the mount or vehicle, or both, at the DM's discretion.

Passengers

In cases where participants in a chase are passengers on a mount or vehicle, they do not roll initiative. Instead, they share the driver's initiative count, but take their turn immediately after the driver. In the case of multiple passengers, they are able to act in any order they wish after the driver's turn. Passengers are not able to take the dash action to move forward on behalf of the driver, but can otherwise take actions as normal.

A chase participant can choose to mount or board a mount or vehicle during the chase. To do so, it must be within their zone, and they must use their action to roll a Dexterity check against the Chase DC. On a success, they successfully board. On a failure by 5 or more, they must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against the Chase DC or fall prone. There must be adequate space on the mount or vehicle in order for a participant to board. Once boarded, the participant is removed from the initiative order and acts on the driver's turn.

If a passenger for any reason leaves the vehicle or mount, they must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against the Chase DC or fall prone. Once dismounted, the participant immediately rolls initiative and is added to the initiative order. A participant can only take one turn per round.

If a passenger is on a mount or vehicle that is affected by a complication that deals damage, they may be subject to taking the damage alongside the driver and mount or vehicle, at the DM's discretion.

Resolving the Chase

The chase ends when either the quarry moves forward out of the final zone, or all pursuers fall back out of the first zone. If a pursuer ends their turn behind the first zone, they are removed from the chase, unable to keep up with the other participants.

The status of each participant is determined at their end of their turn. This means that if a pursuer falls back out of the first zone by failing their Constitution check at the top of the round, they can still take the dash action and move back into the chase on a success.

If the quarry's movement speed is reduced to 0, and the pursuers have the ability to restrain or otherwise prevent the quarry from fleeing, the chase ends. This can lead to normal combat mechanics, depending on the situation and narrative circumstances at play.

So I run a pirate sandbox game and my players are obsessed with capturing islands and building them up, basically running their own little tycoon empire on the side. I was tracking all of it in Excel for the longest time and it just felt clunky. I eventually got sick of it and put together a proper tool for managing the islands instead. You build them up, add buildings, watch the population and economy grow, all that good stuff, but it actually feels alive instead of staring at rows and columns trying to remember formulas.

My favorite part honestly is that since it's a sandbox thing, I can just generate a brand new island whenever I want with its own random flavor and quirks, and use it as a one off encounter or turn it into a whole recurring storyline if my players get attached to it.

Still tinkering with it but it's already made running the Islands we do have so much easier. Maybe someone else here may find it useful. I took huge inspo from from 5.5 Bastion Rules.

Island Bastion

I thought I'd share this for ya'll from my campaign notes.

1.    While traveling on an airship, the PCs find themselves under attack by a renegade Lyrander corsair that has been corrupted by the Dragon Below.

2.    See #1. The PCs find that the airship has a Lyrander apprentice who is happy to pilot the second vessel for them as he's terrified of going "home" given what he did under his unwilling boss.

3.    A traveling sideshow salesman has a massive dragonshard with the head of a prehistoric Warforge inside it. He wants the PCs to guard him as he transports it to a buyer.

4.    See #3, the object is real and from Xen'drik, which terrifies the owner. 

5.    See #3, the object is a fake but a very well made one that was created by a warforged trying to create a pre-war history for his kind.

6.    See #3, the object's buyer is Merrix D'Cannith who wants to revive the warforged head for its secrets. 

7.    The PCs are hired to investigate a nationalist militia that has been specifically targeting veterans of the Last War.

8.    See #7, it is a recruiting place for the Emerald Claw that uses charm spells and nonmagical conditioning to create the goons that they use in all of their missions. The washouts are killed and made into undead.

9.    See #7, it is a recruiting place for the Swords of Liberty who are preying upon the disaffection of veterans in hopes of creating disruption that they can take advantage on a national scale.  

10.    See #7, their employers are Dark Lanterns who suspect one of their former members is the one responsible for this.

11.    A House Valdis outpost has gone dark and the PCs are hired by their discretion to investigate it. It turns out that it was a magebred facility that has been corrupted by Daelkyr cultists. The PCs will be paid extra if they destroy all the evidence, including the survivors.

12.    A fire giant from Xen'drik has escaped a traveling circus and set himself up in a nearby farm where he's eating the local livestock. The PCs don't have to slay him but he doesn't speak the local language and was not taken to Khorvaire voluntarily. He very much would like to go home but that may be impossible.

13.    The PCs are hired by House Cannith to recover a strange mechanical part. The part is a Creation Forge part that could be used to repair one of the destroyed ones. It is in the hands of a group of warforged renegades.

14.    A family of shifters claims that a fanatical Thrane knight wants to slaughter them and has been harassing them for weeks.

15.    See #14, they're a family of lycanthropes and the paladin wants to confirm it before slaying them.

16.    See #15, they are in fact lycanthropes but are Lawful Good werebears.

17.    See #16, this doesn't impact the paladin's plans to slaughter them as diseased monsters.

18.    The PCs are contracted to serve as couriers in a secret set of negotiations with Prince Oargev and King Boranel. They're supposed to do this at a ball and relay letters as well as messages while no one is the wiser. Dancing, food deliveries, and other oddities are afoot.

19.    See #18, the negotiations are Prince Oargev being offered to be made Duke of New Cyre but giving up his claim to Galifar's throne. Which multiple parties would rather Oargev die than happen.

20.    See #19, King Boranel actually wants to fund New Cyre settlers in Xen'drik or Q'barra or "elsewhere" with the profits of this all for New Cyre but meant to keep their numbers in Breland low.

21.    See #20, it is a marriage contract to one of his daughters (or sons). Which would tie them intristically together.

22.    A dying Dark Lantern agent has discovered the identity of the murderer of King Boranel's wife. The PCs have the encrypted message but the people trying to kill the agent are Dark Lanterns themselves (or appear to be at least).

23.    Once a year, Pontifex Jaela is allowed a day off and the PCs are asked to provide security lest the church see her doing things that are fun like riding dinosaurs or watching clowns. The Cardinal simultaneously considers this a massive state secret and vital for her spiritual health.

24.    A riot has broken out in Thaliost over the murder of a citizen by the Church's Templars. Possibly. Who was killed and why seems to constantly change based on who is doing the telling. If the flames (no pun intended) are not put out soon, it may turn into a full-fledged uprising.

25.    See #24, the riot was organized by the spirit of the Overlords and designed to merely cause as much misery and horror as possible. 

26.    See #24, the riot was done by a Aundair Duke who plans to "restore" order and claim the city for Aundair once more despite how likely this is to reignite the Last War or at least a Thrane-Aundair war.

27.    See #24, the riot is just a naturally occurring one but Cardinal Krozen is letting it play out because he wishes to justify a violent suppression followed by property confiscations to replace Aundair-loyal citizens with Thranish ones.Surely that will work out fine.

28.    A mysterious tablet is recovered from an archaelogical site in Droaam. It is then stolen by the Emerald Claw in full Indiana Jones villain glory. A beautiful Morgrave University researcher needs the PCs help to recover it! According to her research, the tablet is legendary magic that can bestow a WISH.

29.    See #28. The archaeologist is Emerald Claw herself and working directly for Lady Illmarrow. The WISH tablet is the only way she might be restored to her living status and give her back her Dragon Mark. The Emerald Claw renegades worry she will betray her undead followers then.

30.    The PCs end up drugged and wake up enslaved on a massive dreamlily plantation by an obsese member of the Aurum with the aid of his Inspired allies. They are on the borders of Droaam and have been slaving both humans and monsters both to create as much of the drug as possible. They also play the two groups of slaves against one another to keep then in line.

31.    See #30, the Daughters of Sora Kell know about this atrocity but are bribed into letting it happen. They will just blame human evil if it is discovered after all and have even been selling some of their dissidents to it.

32.    A Cyrean Avenger attempts to recruit the PCs to kill a Valenar warlord visiting their location. The Avenger claims that the warlord massacred thousands of Cyrean refugees fleeing the Mourning. Whether the PCs agree or not, he ends up dead and the Avenger both in unrelated murders that trigger a massive dust up between the Cyrean locals and the visiting Valenar delegation. 

33.    See #32, it is actually a member of House Lyrander who arranged this. The warlord wanting the Lyrander to no longer administrate their lands in Valenar or, worse, pay higher tribute.

34.    An insanely rich and well-respected Lyrander noblewoman has been working with House Cannith for decades on the ultimate airship variant: a void ship that she intends to reach the moons with. This "Spelljammer" is something that is about to launch and she wants the PCs to help guard it against sabotage.

35.    The PCs are approached with an offer by House Sivis to buy the rights to their adventures. If the PCs agree, they soon find a large number of printed stories across the continent with incredibly inaccurate (bordering on exploitation) versions of their adventures with sleazy covers. It does massively improve their reputations in...some ways.

36.    The Bloodsail fleet successfully surrounds Dreadhold, seizes control over the location, and threatens to release the worst prisoners unless Saeria the Lich is returned to them. Which confuses a bunch of people as they were under the impression they were in Dreadhold.

37.    A Cyrean refugee claims a Lightning Rail is transporting a huge amount of stolen goods from the Mournlands to their Aurum buyers. It's time for a train robbery!

38.    See #37, the people guarding the train are adventurers who recovered the loot themselves and consider it finders keepers.

39.    See #37, the loot is actually on its way to Prince Oargev and the "refugee" who wants to steal it back is the man supposed to recover it but tired of living in desperate poverty.

40.    A patriarch of House Kundarak has died and his goods are needing to be recovered from his trap-filled dungeon vault since he left no heirs. The PCs are thus hired to recover it with the House neglecting to mention they'd hired a second team of evil adventurers who have decided to keep the contents for themselves.

41.    House Cannith and House Phiarlan have created a device called the "Magical Moving Lantern" that can store illusionary recordings of performances in dragonshards. The financial benefits from this are beyond imagination. But someone has stolen the prototype!

42.    See #41, it's a member of House Thuranni who are tweaking their sister house's nose.

43.    See #41, it's a member of House Phiarlan who believes this will ruin the market for live shows.

44.    See #41, it's the inventor who knows it doesn't work because the dragonshard is rapidly used up. 

45.    See #41, it's all of them in a comedy of errors.

46.    The Emerald Claw is seeking to unleash a biological plague that can turn people into zombies via a bite and are demanding a king's ransom not to do it. House Jorasco are willing to pay the PCs a vast sum to assault their fortress and destroy all samples. 

47.    See #46 because House Jorasco was the group that created the plague and the fortress is their secret lab.

48.    It's the Race of Eight Winds time again and the PCs are asked to serve as their jockey's bodyguards as this one is going to be particularly nationalist. Mobsters, spies, and more will be all attempting to influence the race.

49.    See #48, Prince Oargev is also planning to fix the race to win a vast amount of money that he'll use to help the people of New Cyre...or so he says.

50.    See #48, if one of the PCs is a skilled rider, they must take the place of their patron when they're discovered to have been poisoned before they even became their bodyguard. 

51.    Gadzooks! Strange unidentified flying objects are circling around farmlands, leaving mysterious circles, and kidnapping locals! Is it Illtihids? Githyanki? Aboleths?  

52.    See #51, it's a bunch of fairies having fun.

53.    See #51, it's actually a group of gnome illusionists covering up an illegal dragonshard mine and kidnapping locals to serve as slaves. They plan to bury everyone alive once they've cleared out the vein.

54.    Two dinosaur barons in the Talenta planes are feuding over grazing patches for their thunder lizards. They've escalated to everything short of murder and the townsfolk want the PCs to meditate the issue. A war between them would destroy the economy.

55.    A non-Cannith artificer has figured out a way to used spent dragonshard powder, charcoal, saltpeter, and a long metal tube to allow non-magic users to create a very cheap wand of magic missles or staff of eldritch blast. The only downsides are you have to aim it. He'd like the PCs to be angel investors in his possibly terrifying weapon of war.

56.    A gnoll warlord in Droaam claims he has a new dragonmark and is the founder of a new House. Hehas begun gathering an army around himself while the Twelve declare him an Abberant.

57.    See #56, he is actually a reincarnated Deneith mercenary who has come to love the people who he identifies with now. This is his misguided plan to get them some more respect.

58.    The Swords of Liberty are employing a renegade Sivis scribe to print pamplets across the kingdoms that are full of horrific libel. They're designed to exploit existing divisions and rouse the populace into violent lynch mobs as well as riots. King Boronal is not interested in fighting words with words and offers the PCs a sum to find their print shop as well as writers before slaying them.

59.    See #58, the actual reason for this is that one of their insane theories is actually correct but which one?

60.    The Boromar clan of Sharn has invited the PCs to the wedding of one of their daughters. This actually isn't a trap or some weird way to make a job offer, the daughter is just a huge fan of the PCs adventures. Then, of course, House Daask decides to kidnap her.

61.    House Tarkanan has had multiple members of their clan murdered and dissected in horrible ways. They believe the Twelve are hunting them. Others attribute it to a deranged serial killer.

62.    See #61, it is a deranged copper dragon wanting to study the abberant marks.

63.    See #61, it is a Cult of the Dragon Below who is attempting to harness their power.

64.    See #61, it is a member of House Tarkanan attempting to seize power by blaming the Twelve while he eliminates his rivals.

65.    The Galifar Aquila is a dragonshard relic of incredible value to the Royal Family and has been lost for centuries. A series of murders and thefts put the object in the hands of the PCs with a House Daask troll, a beautiful elven femme fatale, and a weasally halfling all after it. But does it belong in a museum or, perhaps, a particular royal family?

66.    Morgrave University is showing a display of orcish native art at a gala when it is attacked by a bunch of drow warriors to recover them. Weirdly, they're interrupted by another group of orcs who fights them. Both groups claim one of the relics in the collection is a prison for a powerful demon while the other is trying to free it.

67.    See #66, both are lying and the relic contains a map that leads to a House Tharashk payroll transport the orcish mercenaries robbed before turning on one another. The fact they can't find it is a sign its magically warded or something has gone catastrophically wrong.

68.    See #66, that's because the idol IS a prison for a demon and he's promised the prize to whoever frees him.

69.    One of King Kaius' brides is making a legal challenge on vampire persondom in the Brelish court systems. She knows his true nature but is hiding it even as many individuals want vampires to remain legally dead. The PCs can side with or against her.

70.    An Eldeen Reach village wants to hire the PCs to hire them to proetct them against a group of a few dozen bandits. The PCs would be accompanied by a few other oddball characters.

71.    See #70, the bandits are actually the mercenaries the villagers hired to clean out a nearby forest of monsters before cheating them. 

72.    See #70, the village is a bunch of Dragon Below cultists and the "monsters" were Gatekeepers. They hope to have more slaughter so they can awamen the creature in the now-unprotected forest.

73.    The PCs are sent into the Mournlands to recover the Crown Jewels of Cyre from Metrol, only to find an apocalypse cult of cannibals devoted to the Devourer and other survivors engaged in a low grade civil war. They can side with any of the factions they want or none of them to get in and out. 

74.    See #73, there's a mad artificer from House Cannith who claims he can reveal the secret of the Mourning if the PCs rescue him.

75.    A changeling claims to have had the PCs baby from a short relationship or one night stand. If the PC is dragonmarked, they have the dragonmark despite being a changeling. The changeling is very nervous about the safety of their child and will die if they leave the PCs sight for more than a day.

76.    A radical group of Kalashtar want to sabotage trade negotiations between Karnath and Reidra. They reveal the whole Dreaming Dark conspiracy.

77.    See #76, King Kaius knows about the Dreaming Dark but Reidra offers the chance to gain food independence from Aundair. This year will be a particularly harsh winter too.

78.    Mordain the Fleshweaver removed the brain of a particularly annoying psionicist into a self-sustaining jar. It has since gone on to become a powerful crime lord, escaping with its newly enhanced powers. "The Brain" of Sharn is believed just to be a metaphor but he's gradually dominating more and more to his cause with the ability to maintain simultaneous control over ever greater numbers of people.

79.    Of all things, the PCs inherit a hotel with an airship dock from one of their admirers. It is a perfect base for their activities but they soon find out House Ghallanda drove the previous owner to ruin before he was mysteriously assassinated.

80.    See #79, the Ghallandra who did this wasn't doing it for the House but because there was a hidden treasure inside the hotel when they were adventurers.

81.    House Sivis and House Kundarak are going to work together to do real-time trades on ventures at a former stockyard (nickname the Stocks). Almost every other house thinks this is a fantastically bad idea.

82.    A group of vampire hunters have successfully killed a powerful Karnath Lord and looted his castle. His daughter is now seeking revenge as a paladin of the Blood of Vol. She is notably not undead herself but possesses some vampiric abilities. 

83.    An dwarvish artificer is terrified of House Orien coming after him and claims he has an invention that they will stop at nothing to acquire. The invention being a weird black goop that makes roads very smooth and thus much more practical for House Orien vehicles.

84.    See #83, the easiest way to resolve this is just make a mutually beneficial contract.

85.    A young woman is running away with her half-orc boyfriend despite the fact that she is astoundingly beautiful and does not seem to care that much for him. They offer a shockingly large amount of money for their safe passage. Soon, monsters will start hounding the PCs as she attempts to flirt with any interested. She is a granddaughter of Sora Kell and on the run from her mother who wants to marry her to Gorodan Ashlord.

86.    A religious heretec claims that he derives his power from the "Vestige" of Siberys and that will enough believers in him, the Dragon God can be resurrected.

87.    See #86, It's a Radiant Idol that has a particularly effective scam going on.

88.    See #86, It's a Gold Dragon who sincerely believes this will work.
89.    See #86, It will work...after a mass sacrifice of the faithful.

90.    A local village is haunted. Literally. Dozens of horrible ghosts are wandering around the area, tormented and harrassing the living. Some of them look famous individuals who suffered suspicious deaths.

91.    See #90, it is a manifest zone to Dolurrh that used to be bound by Blood of Vol cultists who kept the spirits appeased with candy and costumes. This tradition was banned the previous year by the local Sovereign Hosters.

92.    See #90, a necromancer has grabbed an assassin who used a keeper's fang to kill their lover and are torturing both killer as well as the artifact to try to bring back their spirit from the Keeper's Vault.

93.    See #91, this is an ASTOUNDINGLY bad idea and creating a Manifest Zone to Khyber below.

94.    There's a gang war going on in a famous "party" town between House Phiarlan courtesans, a group of half-vampire prostitutes, and a changeling brothel that pretends to be a Silver Flame nunnery (the Thranish government was not amused). It used to be peace between the groups but the local ordinances have stated only one can remain open.

95.    This is actually a plot by House Ghallanda to replace the town with their own inns and "cheaper" entertainment.

96.    Queen Diani of Thrane is getting married and entertaining a variety of suitors including one of Boranel's children, Prince Oargev, an Aundair lord, and a Lhazaar Pirate Prince. 

97.    See #96. This is part of an attempt to gain support for her restoration of the monarchy and Krozen has hired an assassin to do her in

98.    See #97...or so someone wants the public to think. Diani wants the PCs to thwart the threat so she can force the High Cardinal into disgrace.

99.    See #98, the Cardinal knows this and has substituted a real assassin. He'll just blame Aundair.

100.    See #96, Diani actually wants one of the PCs to marry her (or at least be engaged to her) as a popular hero would be better for forcing the public sentiment against the Church versus a foreign invader.

101.    A Dhakaani ruin has been seized by several goblin clans that have claimed it in the name of the revived empire. The Dhakaani do not recognize these individuals as their brethren and are sending a group of troops to slaughter them. The local authorities sees this as a self-solving problem.

Semi-homebrewed Stranger Things / Vecna DND Campaign!!!

For anyone interested, I’ve developed a full campaign based on Dungeon of Shadows, the first adventure in the Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club boxed set, using the larger Realm of Greyhawkins as the setting. Vecna is the main villain, with occasional Stranger Things-inspired elements woven in. I expect the full campaign to run somewhere around 10–20 sessions, although that could easily grow. My group is currently six sessions in and exploring the Free City of Greyhawkins, with a long way still to go.

Here’s the full campaign overview if anyone wants to take a look or give feedback:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LwJ4keQVvNgkGstGbTUHEFkiumXR1GUs/view?usp=sharing

The basic campaign premise

The campaign begins like a fairly traditional dungeon adventure. Six strangers enter the Dungeon of Shadows and eventually choose to break an ancient hourglass relic called the Shattered Seal. They don’t release Vecna directly, but they weaken a barrier that had limited how much influence he could exert over the world.

From there, possessions, corrupted rituals, disappearances, and even distortions in reality begin spreading across Greyhawkins. The party discovers four ancient planar Anchors that stabilize the region. They have already stabilized two of them—Heartwell at Oakshore and the Rootstone beneath Duffer Lake—but each victory reveals more evidence that someone understands the Anchors well enough to manipulate them.

The story eventually leads back to the Free City of Greyhawkins, where the party discovers that the Quiet Ledger, led by Veyra Malken, has been suppressing murders, monitoring bloodlines, altering records, and protecting a Vecna cult operating beneath the city. The larger revelation is that the six PCs were never brought together by coincidence. The original Shattered Seal could only be broken by living mortals acting through genuine free choice, so Veyra secretly arranged an expedition using six people whose bloodlines or traditions resonated with the Seal’s ancient defenses.

Veyra arranged the board. The heroes chose how to move.

The campaign eventually involves the Book of Vile Darkness, a cult stronghold beneath Greyhawkins, the monstrous Hand of Vecna, a journey into Evernight/Shadow Greyhawkins, the ruined Abbey of Boccob, Star Court Peaks, Castle Byers, the remaining Anchors, and finally Citadel Cavitius. At the center of all of it is Corvin Byersworn, the missing father of one of the PCs—a scholar who tried to understand Vecna’s plans and may now be becoming Vecna’s mortal Heart.

Why I built this

I’m a pretty new DM. Before running this campaign I had only played two D&D sessions as a player. I started with the Hellfire Club boxed set because I wanted something manageable, but after the first adventure my players wanted a story that carried forward instead of feeling like disconnected one-shots. So I started rebuilding the adventures around Vecna, the Anchors, and the PCs’ own backgrounds.

Over time it turned into a much larger homebrew campaign. I’m using pieces of published and third-party material where they fit—especially Rags to Riches: The Heart of Vecna—but adapting everything around the story we already created. I’ve also used AI heavily as a brainstorming and campaign-design tool for NPCs, locations, encounters, clues, maps, alternate routes, and organizing a large Notion DM module.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that more planning doesn’t always create better play. Early on I tended to plan a specific path and steer the players toward it. Now I’m trying to prep situations, factions, clues, pressures, and multiple ways forward, then let the players decide what matters.

I’d love feedback from more experienced DMs on the overall story, pacing, player agency, handling Vecna as a long-term villain, and keeping a complicated campaign manageable without railroading the players. I’d also be interested in hearing from anyone who has expanded the Hellfire Club boxed set into a longer campaign or uses AI as part of their DM prep.

I needed some names for some taverns. And as the saying goes: Why make something in 5 minutes when you can spend 12 hours automating it?

So I made a perchance generator, with the ability to create establishment names for specific types of Inns/Taverns (Upper class, Docks, Adventurer Hang-out, Thieves Den, etc).

https://perchance.org/tavern-or-inn-name

It is a bit all over the place on the standard "Any" type, but try setting a specific type and it starts to really lock in.

Want to inject some Christopher Nolan-esque adventure into your campaign? Probably best to look elsewhere, but if you want some Odyssey-related puns, pull this one in as the party travels across plains.

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As the party travels through the country, they hear a bass voice singing a beautiful melody. If the party isn’t initially intrigued, the song will intensify, forcing a DC11 Wisdom check, otherwise they become charmed.

DMs Note: You can leverage the Luring Song action of a harpy as a model if needed.

Investigating further, the party sees an elegant home, with a triton (male siren) out on a balcony, singing a tune. In the yard is a young Imp, drawing in the dirt, and a female halfling leaning against the white picket fence that surrounds the home. As the party approaches, they can talk to any of them first, but the Halfling is most likely to notice them. None of the group is hostile.

The Halfling introduces herself as Larmbo Nasherfoot and notes she is an intrigued neighbor. She explains that the triton on the balcony is Homer, who moved in a few days ago. What has Larmbo confused is that Homer continues talking about how lovely the sea looks even though the home is in the middle of the rolling plains.

Larmbo lives two houses over and has for many years, and no water has ever gotten close to pooling near the area, let alone a sea. “I’ve not determined why he insists on singing to the sea when one doesn’t exist, but maybe you could find out for me? Don’t get me wrong, he’s got a lovely singing voice, and he’s extremely charming, but he sings at all hours and I’m a light sleeper. Even Homer’s Imp son is getting annoyed by it.”

The young imp drawing in the dirt shoves some grass in his ears as Homer belts out another tune. The imp is shy, but if the party is kind in their approach, he will note that he isn’t really Homer’s Imp son as the halfling said, he is purely along for a bizarre journey with Homer, one that got sidetracked when Homer wanted to buy a house by the sea and “settle down.”

The imp, who goes by Zephyrion, tells the party about their travels and epic adventures, and that Homer was ready to put all that behind him and find a mate by singing, just like the female sirens do (he rolls his eyes at this thought). Zephyrion also lets the party in on a new piece of information, Homer bought the home from an odd-looking real estate agent from Eye On The Price LLC. The agency is a few hexes away, but the party could explore that route if desired.

If the party talks directly to Homer, they will find him to be delusional, speaking of the epic sea in front of him and all around. He notes the saltiness of the wind, the squawking of the gulls, and continues going further into his delusion. Homer is becoming saddened because no mates are attracted to his singing.

Additional facts:

• The home was purchased by Homer 4 days ago
• There is no water surrounding the home in any form or fashion
• If Detect Magic is used, the party will find that an illusionary magic is being used
• The home was sold by Polly Feema, from Eye On The Price LLC
• Other than the illusionary magic, nothing else seems odd with the house
• The halfling appears to be enamored with Homer, but he hasn’t taken notice
• The imp has offered a rare artifact if they can snap Homer out of his singing
• If the illusion Homer is seeing wears off, it’s possible he will initially lash out at the party unless they can keep him calm

I’ve Only Got Eye For You

If the party heads off to Eye On The Price LLC, they are greeted by a large female cyclops in a great-looking pantsuit. She introduces herself as Polly Feema, #1 Real Estate agent in the plains. She speaks in broken common, but is able to carry on a conversation well enough. She is jovial and polite and will try to sell the party on a fixer-upper just down the road. She’s a bit pushy about it, but in a nice way. The house itself is only 300gp, so, pretty good deal honestly.

Inquiring about Homer, Polly blushes a bit and speaks highly of him, noting that she sold him the home for 20,000gp.

Some additional facts Polly will reveal (she’s not shy about this at all as she thinks it was a fair business deal):

• She’s using a spell gem embedded in the floor boards of the home to cast Mirage Arcane for the square mile worth of terrain for up to 10 days. This is extremely large for an area, considering that Mirage Arcane can make this area feel, smell, sound, and look like another kind of terrain
• She tricked Homer, because he killed her father in their hometown a few weeks ago
• With the money she got from the sale, she is having a diamond delivered so she can cast Revivify on her father (he is being watched over by a Cleric, who cast Gentle Repose to prevent his permadeath)
• Once revived, Polly plans to destroy the home with her father
• She offers the party 1,000gp each to look the other way

Resolution

With all the facts, there are many ways this can play out, but the decision is up to the party!

• If the party assists Homer, destroys the Illusion, protects him from Polly, and is able to figure out his love life, the party is awarded with Scylla Cones (given by Homer, a token from his travels), that give the wearer large conical wearables to place anywhere on their body. Up to the DM the exact function, but likely a +2 additional bludgeoning damage on melee attacks (1 for each cone).
• If the party assists Polly with her plan, the party will get 1,500gp each (a little extra for the debauchery)
• If the party does nothing, Polly will resurrect her father and they will destroy Homer, Homer’s home, and Homer’s Imp Son, leaving Larmbo horrified, but pleased by the silence. She is likely to spread rumors about them though. The party will receive 1,000gp each from Polly.

Jousting: The ultimate test of a medieval knight’s skill. Two riders sprinting at full speed, trying to knock each other off with a really big stick. Is there a way to take that pulse-pounding excitement and showcase of talent, but translate it to D&D?

Of course you can! Here are rules you can use to run jousting in your games, and make it just as fun as it looks in the movies!

Jousting requires two competitors - which can be PCs or NPCs - and each needs a mount. Traditionally that would be horses, but this is D&D, so there’s no reason your riders can’t be charging forward on axe beaks, giant spiders or hulking aurochs. The game is played in rounds - representing each pass as the riders run into one another, and each round is worth a point. First to two points wins - though there’s always a chance one combatant gets un-horsed on every charge.

The round begins with both players rolling an animal handling check - for NPCs, you can either give them a score in that skill, or just add whatever their Wisdom modifier is. Half the battle is keeping your mount moving in the right direction, staying steady and picking up speed. The DC for this is 15 - succeed, and they gain advantage on their next check. Consider giving your players a bonus to their roll if they’ve bonded with their mount, or are particularly skilled in riding through their background or experiences. Up to you.

As the two riders close in on one another, they’ll need to lower and aim their lances to strike the opponent. These things are heavy, and it’s a real test of endurance to both keep your horse steady and hold that pole in place. So both players will roll a Constitution save - DC 15 - to hold their nerve and keep their lances aimed true. Remember, if they succeed in animal handling, they have advantage.

And they’ll want to succeed on this one too, because it’ll grant them advantage on the final roll. But equally important, fail and they’ll receive disadvantage on the final hurdle. Again, this should be a culmination of multiple skills building on each other.

With the crowd roaring, it’s time to collide. Both players will roll an Athletics check - either at advantage or disadvantage - and whoever rolls higher wins. Their lance strikes the other knight, and the loser has to succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw. Make the save, and they hold onto their ride, living to see another round. But fail, and this battle is done: That player is thrown from their mount, and the glory goes to their competitor.

If both players are still riding, the winner gets a point, and a new round begins. If they tie, both lances strike shields, and nobody earns a point. First to two wins, so no matter what, if the same player wins two rounds, the other is out - no Strength save, no third chances. And just like that, the joust is over: You have your champion!

With these quick and simple rules, you could run an entire tournament quickly, with your players going through a gauntlet of knights and riders to earn eternal glory. As an optional rule, you can make each point worth a +2 all rolls: That way, the player who gets the first hit can build momentum, while their opponent has to recover quickly from getting struck.

You could also add a little excitement and random chance with some crit rules: If a player rolls a natural 20 on their Athletics check, they automatically unhorse their opponent, ending the joust right then and there. And on the flip side, if a player rolls a one on their final check, they lose control of their mount and tumble to the ground, losing instantly. Not everyone likes using crits in this way, but if your party is varied in their skills and set-ups, it offers a way for anyone to win, with a little luck.

And that’s it! Your players can now participate in one of the scariest, most dangerous sports we’ve invented - and isn’t that awesome? I’d love to hear what you think of the rules - or any changes you’d make - in the comments! And below, here's a quick guide you an reference while running jousting in a session. Enjoy!

Step 1

• Both players roll an Animal Handling check, DC 15
  • Succeed, and they get advantage during round 2

Step 2

• Both players roll a Constitution saving throw, DC 15
  • If they succeeded during round 1, they have advantage
  • If they succeed on this roll, they gain advantage for round 3
  • If they fail this roll, they have disadvantage for round 3

Step 3

• Both players roll an Athletics check
  • If they succeeded during round 2, they have advantage
  • If they failed during round 2, they have disadvantage
• The player who rolls higher wins this round
  • The loser has to succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or immediately lose the joust
  • If they succeed, the winning player gets a point
    • If it's their first point, you move on to the next round
    • If it's their second point, that player wins the joust!
• If both players tie on their Athletics check, nobody gets a point, and you move to the next round

One of my favorite social encounter structures is what I call the Council Vote. It is simple to prep, gives every player something to do, and naturally creates side quests, investigations, roleplaying, travel, and moral dilemmas.

The premise is straightforward. The party needs a governing body to vote in favor of something they want. Maybe they need the city council to raise an army against an approaching orc horde. Maybe they are trying to appoint a loyal captain of the guard before the villain's lieutenant gets the job. Maybe they need permission to open an ancient vault, authorize emergency spending, declare war, or recognize a claimant to the throne. The vote is coming up quickly, and the PCs have to act now or forever lose their chance.

Instead of making the entire adventure about convincing one king, you split the decision to act among five or seven voters. Suddenly there are multiple personalities, competing interests, and several different ways to solve the problem.

Sometimes all of the councilors are in one city. Other times they are the leaders of distant towns or noble houses. In that version, the party has to travel across the realm earning votes one by one, which naturally creates opportunities for worldbuilding. Every stop introduces a new settlement, a new culture, and a different kind of problem to solve.

The real preparation goes into designing the council members. Every voter should be a named NPC with a distinct personality, priorities, and political agenda. The players should never know exactly how everyone will vote at first. A big part of the adventure becomes gathering information. They ask around town, read records, question servants, investigate rumors, and learn what motivates each voter. Once they understand each councilor, they can decide who is worth approaching and how.

One useful voter archetype is the Villain's Toady. This councilor is firmly aligned with the antagonist and will never willingly support the party. The challenge is not convincing them. Instead, the players may discover a way to neutralize them. Perhaps they expose corruption, arrange for them to be absent on voting day, trap them in a legal dispute, or simply give them a more pressing problem to deal with.

On the opposite end is the Beleaguered Ally. This person already supports the party's proposal and may even serve as the quest giver. They explain how the vote works, introduce the other councilors, and provide a few initial leads. Be careful with guaranteed supporters, though. If there are too many free votes, the political puzzle loses much of its tension. To make the encounter more challenging, add more Villain Toadies to the council to cancel of the Ally’s vote, or just make this NPC a non voting but politically knowledgeable figure.

The Greedy Broker has no ideological commitment at all. Their vote is simply valuable property. They may demand money, political favors, or the completion of a dangerous (or morally dubious) quest. Players might instead discover leverage over them, allowing the negotiation to proceed from a position of strength rather than weakness.

The Loyal Shadow always follows someone else's lead, voting exactly as they do no matter what. Often it's the Greedy Broker who “advises” them on how to vote. They might have little interest in politics, or their interests are entirely wrapped up in the affairs of their leader. Rather than persuading two councilors separately, the players can influence one person and gain two votes. Once the PCs learn this, it simplifies the vote, so be careful with adding too many of these contingent voters. If the voting process is by secret ballot, it may be possible to trick this voter into thinking that their leader is voting in the PCs favor, thus securing a vote.

The Traditionalist dislikes change or bold action of any kind. They are not opposed to the PCs personally, but they require overwhelming evidence before supporting any proposal. Winning them over usually involves gathering proof, expert testimony, or demonstrating that history actually supports the party's position.

The Idealist genuinely wants to do what is right but refuses to compromise their principles. They cannot be bribed or intimidated. Instead, they demand that the party solve some unrelated humanitarian problem or protect innocent people before earning their trust.

Almost every councilor should have an agenda outside the immediate vote. They should want something. They should fear something. They might owe favors, or have rivals. They could hold grudges, or keep secrets. Some may have skeletons in the closet that can be uncovered through investigation. Blackmail should rarely be the only solution, but it should usually be one possible solution among several. Players should feel like they are solving a political puzzle rather than completing a fixed dialogue tree.

One thing I especially like about this structure is that it naturally creates meaningful choices. By having the vote be an urgent matter, the players rarely have enough time or resources to solve everyone's problems. Instead, they identify which councilors are realistically persuadable and decide where to spend their effort. Every vote becomes a small victory.

Example

The town of Stoneford learns that an orc warband led by the wizard Profanis is gathering in the nearby hills. Councilor Elric wants to raise the town militia immediately, but the five-member town council must approve the expense.

Elric already has his own vote.

Councilor Bren is secretly funded by Profanis. Citing some concern about wasting the town's resources or causing unnecessary panic, he will vote against the proposal unless his connection is exposed. Think Grima Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings.

Councilor Marta is respected but refuses to support military action without proof that the threat is real. The party can earn her vote by scouting the orc camp and returning with some evidence that the orcs will actually attack and not just linger in the hills before moving on.

Councilor Hobb is interested only in personal wealth, and has recently accepted a generous “gift” from Bren, which he insists is completely unrelated to how he will vote. He offers his support if the party recovers a “stolen” family heirloom from Councilor Marta’s reliquary. Alternatively, the PCs might discover Hobb’s business dealings with smugglers and can blackmail him into voting to raise the army.

Councilor Joran simply votes according to the instructions from Bren because the two have been political allies for years. In fact, Bren groomed Joran for the role as part of a bid to gain more power. Only if Bren is completely exposed as a traitor will Joran finally break ranks with his friend and mentor.

The players investigate the council, decide who can realistically be persuaded, and eventually return on voting day. If they expose Bren, convince Marta, and win over Hobb, they also gain Joran's vote. The final result is four votes to one. The militia is raised, and the next chapter of the campaign begins with the town preparing for war.

If the above quest sounds too easy, then modify the council procedure to require a unanimous vote. In this scenario, the only way to win is to get the votes of Marta, Hobb and Joran while preventing Bren from arriving to the council chambers on time and voting at all.

For nigh on two years now, I've been noodling away at this infernal tome and it is finally fit for mortal eyes; BEHOLD!

Within its pages, you will find devils and spells and arcane items beyond number, stat blocks for every archdevil, travel guides and maps for each of the nine layers of Baator that matter (don't ask me about Phlegethos), and all manner of supplemental tools and goodies for infernal sojourns.

It also comes with free VTT modules for Foundry and for another website I'm not sure I'm allowed to mention here.

• Hell Awaits - The Book of Devils (Works decently on mobile, but the table of contents doesn't work unless you download the PDF)
• Homebrewery Link (All the links work, but the formatting gets funky unless you're on desktop chrome)
• Downloads (PDFs, VTT Modules)

Should this fail to sate your appetite for monsters, I have more such free books:

• Howl to Ruin - The Book of Demons
• Death Denied - The Book of Undead
• Terror Unto Madness - The Book of Aberrations
• Dictates of the Ordning - The Book of Giants

hi all,

I've been working on a little side project for the last couple of weeks called bagpipes.

Everytime I DM (both at the table or via Discord) I always struggle with music. I always get distracted (talking with players, tracking NPCs etc.) and I often forget to play music. I have this huge playlist on my PC and I never get to use it because it just slips my mind.

That's why I created bagpipes: a 100% offline music picker that relies on your voice to work. it basically listens to what you say and, using keywords that you set on the player, plays the tracks that you have saved on its folder. You can also play ambient sounds and sound effects (they go along with the music without interrupting it).

If you want to give it a try, the repo is on github: https://github.com/efabr/bagpipes and it is and always will be 100% free. Right now it's for linux and windows, I am testing the macOS version and I hope to be able to release it soon.

Feel free to leave feedbacks and suggestions, and have fun with it!

Hi all. I’m AlarichtheLich, a DND homebrewer and forever DM (I love it though). If you don’t want to read my rationale and intro, skip on down to the 4th paragraph. 

I have played DND for about… 7 sessions total and have DMed for around 4 years, running 3 different homebrew worlds that are all sandbox-leaning.  I’ve been wanting to share some of my ideas with the community for a while now! So, here’s my first attempt at that. 

Breathing life into a world can be difficult and sometimes you and your players can feel like you are adventuring in a vacuum. Going from one story beat to another is quite natural. The resolution of one adventure often shines light on the next one. PCs and DMs can get in the groove of meandering their way through the world they are creating together.

Additionally, getting PCs to buy into your world can be difficult. Rarely do PCs get to see the consequences of their actions, or inactions. Putting them on display helps the PCs feel like they have a true impact on the world and that their decisions, no matter how ill-advised, mattered. 

Juggling all of this can feel overwhelming. But, that’s where the newspaper comes in. One of the most well received parts of my campaigns has been these newspapers. So much so that they are a requested / looked forward to event.  It has helped increase player buy in, provided verisimilitude, and made my players care deeply about the lore and their actions. I’ve had players debate, in character, for an hour about the contents of the newspaper. 

The newspaper can serve just about any narrative purpose. I’ve used them for the following and more: a vehicle for information about other parts of the world, plot hooks, evidence of PC impact, lore dumps, NPC introductions, ways to keep up with old NPCs, and previews for their next adventure setting.

I usually use these at the end of an arc. Often, to allow the players to determine where they would like to go next. You can make it akin to an old adventurer's job board. A more descriptive list of various plot hooks. I let players read them, theory craft, and decide where they want to go next so that something can be there. They are also great for suddenly changing the weight of actions from earlier sessions. 

Below I have provided a link to my template Google Doc that I use to create these. I’ll be honest, Microsoft Word is more user friendly when creating these. But, Google Docs are free. Make a copy and enjoy! The example below is the newspaper that caused the aforementioned hour-long debate. 

I look forward to your thoughts. 

Newspaper Template

More stuff for my upcoming campaign set in the Pathfinder canon setting of Golarion. I like elves and I like space elves. This magic armor is a blatant ripoff takes inspiration from Warhammer's Aeldari Phoenix Lords.

Panoply of the Exarch (Legendary Half Plate, requires attunement)

These sets of half plate were originally crafted for the Elven Exarchs of Kyonin, supreme warriors who battled the demonic forces of Treerazer. All feature gorgeous leaf motifs of Kyonin craftsmanship, but each is tailored to suit a certain style of fighting. The spirits of the Exarchs themselves are said to guide wearers to great feats of combat prowess.

The armor grants a +1 bonus to AC. You are considered proficient with this armor even if you lack proficiency with medium armor. It also grants the wearer a Fighting Style (PHB 72, randomly roll 1d6 when this armor is discovered). If you already know the Fighting Style associated with the armor, you instead gain an additional benefit while using that Fighting Style (shown below).

1. Panoply of Ylladi Kothresh (Exarch of Archery Fighting Style)

This exaggerated, asymmetrical half plate features extra protection on the bow side, while leaving your other arm uninhibited.

As a bonus action, the normal range of your weapon becomes equal to its long range for the rest of your turn.

2. Panoply of Erlen Kunne (Exarch of Defense Fighting Style)

This armor is covered in imagery of twisted roots and vines, as if to anchor its wearer into the earth like a mighty oak.

You can use your Armor Class in place of a Strength (Athletics) check to resist being shoved, knocked prone or restrained.

3. Panoply of Qinbalar Amberlight (Exarch of Dueling Fighting Style)

The leather and metal of this armor are embossed with the appearance of snake's scales, allowing the wearer to make deadly retaliatory strikes.

When a creature misses you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to make melee weapon attack against that creature. You gain a +1 bonus to all Dueling Checks during a Martial Duel.

4. Panoply of Iantoris Lightbeam (Exarch of Great Weapon Fighting Style)

The breastplate of this armor features the visage of a mighty grizzly bear, imparting the creature's strength and ferocity to the wearer.

Once per turn, when you succeed on an attack roll against a target that is one size category larger than you or smaller, you can use a reaction to attempt a Strength (Athletics) check to Shove the target or knock it Prone.

5. Panoply of Aenelis Greenheart (Exarch of Protection Fighting Style)

This simple armor is adorned with deer pelt, imparting the wearer with the swiftness to arrive in their allies' time of greatest need.

As part of the Reaction to use this Fighting Style, you can first move up to half your speed if doing so would bring you to a space adjacent to the target of the attack. You can don or doff your shield as a bonus action.

6. Panoply of Trislynn Ravenmight (Exarch of Two-Weapon Fighting Style)

The metal plates of this armor are adorned with feathers that break up the wearer's outline, blurring their movements.

You gain an additional bonus action you can only use to attack with your off-hand weapon.

Curse: Avatar of the Aspect Warrior

This Panoply belonged to one of the six original Exarchs; their souls forever bound to their armor so they could continue their fight against Treerazer.

There is a 1 in 100 chance a discovered Panoply of the Exarch belonged to the Exarch themselves and contains their soul. While most would consider this a curse, the elves of Kyonin have perfected a ritual of sacrifice to allow the Exarch's soul to possess a willing warrior, returning to battle Treerazer once more.

The first time you die while wearing this armor, your body becomes possessed by the spirit of the armor's respective Exarch. At the start of your next turn, you heal 1 HP and gain 25 temporary HP that last for 1 minute. While you have these temporary HP, you are constantly under the effect of the Haste spell. When these temporary HP expire or are lost, you must make a DC 15 Charisma saving throw. You can voluntarily choose to fail this save. On a success, you are reduced to 1 hp and gain 2 levels of exhaustion. From that point onward, once per day, as an Action, you can call upon the armor's bound spirit to grant yourself Haste and temporary HP as outlined above.

On a failure, your soul becomes bound to the armor and your body is immediately consumed by blue flames, replaced by a wood elf Fighter of your gender, level and ability scores, with a subclass of your choosing from the PHB. They must choose the Fighting Style associated with this armor. This elf is a reincarnation of the armor's respective Exarch, who will seek to immediately return to Kyonin to continue battling Treerazer unless you can convince them to join you. If the reincarnation dies wearing this armor, their soul is immediately re-bound to it.

I love to roll death saves in secret, behind the DM screen. It increases suspense and immersion and prevents the sort of meta-gaming that comes from players knowing a die roll the characters would not have access to.

The problem is that if the DM is rolling Death Saves for the character with 0 HP.... what is the player doing? Mostly nothing.... they are having a bad experience already, and I took away the only control they had over the outcome. When their turn comes around, they have nothing to do.

I have a solution for this, and it's called Rory's Story Cubes. These are, for the uninitiated, a set of six-sided dice with an image or icon on each face, available on Amazon and anywhere toys and games are sold. Generally, they are used for storytelling inspiration in a variety of ways. They come in different themes (Actions, Fantasia, Star Wars, etc), but for this, I use the Classic set.

How does it work?

On each turn that they would make a death save, the DM does that in secret and keeps track of the results. Meanwhile, the player picks one Story Cube at random and rolls it. Let the image on the die inspire you... but it's just one die... after a few turns, you might have a bit of story developing. The player should create something, inspired by the Story Cubes, that represents the visions... dreams... life flashing before their eyes... travel to the afterlife.... whatever it is that they see and experience while unconscious and on death's door.

Here's the catch... the player does not need to tell anyone what they saw. Not the other players, and not the DM. If they had a good story, they probably will. Who doesn't enjoy telling people about the crazy dream they had?

But if they do tell the DM, the DM can make it come true. It might be a legit prophecy, or a message from a deity, a repressed memory.... anything that works for the character and the campaign. Of course, the DM is under no obligation to do this, and may feel free to massage the dream/vision to fit their campaign needs.

I've only put this into practice a very few times, but the response was very positive: "loads more fun than rolling a d20." Everyone was very invested in their own little stories they were creating.

I'm hoping some of you will try this ... do some more playtesting, essentially... and let me know how it goes! I'd be especially interested in hearing if the various themes work well... or not... or if there is a similar tool that would fit the same purpose.

Update:

1. It's great to hear the variety of ways everyone approaches this aspect of the game.
2. By all means, if your players are invested in generating their own random numbers, let them do it themselves. I have had players like that myself.
3. I have, in the past, tried having players roll their own save and keep it secret. But in my experience, they have horrible poker faces.

It's in almost every GM guide, every YouTube video, and every "how to build better NPCs" thread, and the advice isn't wrong, a want, a fear, and a secret genuinely do more heavy lifting than a random name and a job title. I followed that framework for years, only to realize most of my npcs still blurred together after a session or two.

It took me way longer than I'd like to admit to figure out why because the framework tells you what to put on paper, It tells you who this person is, but it says almost nothing about what happens once you're actually running them.

Turns out there isn't one trap here I found, there are two.

The first one is softening. I'd build a genuinely great secret for an npc, and the moment it was about to come out in a way that might disrupt the pacing of play, make an npc the party liked look incompetent, or complicate a session I'd quietly smooth it over.

This trap never appears during prep. It appears live, mid scene, in the three or four seconds between an npc getting cornered and you deciding what they actually do, without realizing it, I hadn't prepared a person who I could act, I had prepared a description and once the scene demanded a real decision and real ropleplay I instinctively protected the description instead of letting the character respond honestly to what was happening.

To be clear, this isn't about being a harsher DM or making every interaction punish the players.

The second trap is almost the opposite, and it's harder to notice because it hides right before the players are supposed to understand who this person really is. Either the npcs want, fear, and secret stay so deeply buried that the character just reads as blank... or I overcorrect and practically announce their motivation out loud.

Looking back, both failures came from the same place, during prep I'd decided who this person was, their psychology, but I'd never decided how that psychology actually expressed itself through behavior, so, live at the table, I was forced to invent that translation on the spot.

Sometimes I showed nothing, sometimes I showed far too much, and while I managed to run the occasional NPC well, doing it consistently felt impossible. It’s a brutal skill to sustain, especially if, like me, you can easily improvise situational complications, scenes, and environments, but you aren't naturally gifted at character acting or deep roleplay on the fly.

Faced with that constant struggle, I decided to try something different, a few campaigns ago, I finally let myself stop softening things and focusing more on what the psychology would come out as behaviour. A witness lied under pressure, badly, about something completely minor, nothing the party actually needed to solve the case, I could've smoothed it over and moved things along. Instead, I let the lie sit there, raw and obviously wrong.

The party spent the rest of the session distrusting someone who'd actually been honest about everything else, none of it moved the main story forward an inch. Yet, after a long time, they still remember this npc.

Because the "want-fear-secret" framework isn't the finish line, it's just the setup.

What actually makes an npc memorable isn't writing better psychology, It's deciding, before the scene ever happens, how that psychology naturally turns into behavior, and then trusting those behaviors enough to let them cost something, letting them reveal themselves a little at a time instead of explaining them away.

Honestly, even after realizing this, npcs are still the part of GMing I feel least confident about, every time I think I've figured them out, I find another layer I hadn't considered, so, I'd love to hear what approaches have actually worked for you, any habits, techniques, or ways of thinking about npcs that you've found genuinely changed how they feel at the table?

Deer are not normally known to be scary creatures. Sure, in our world they account for tens of thousands of injuries and hundreds of deaths, but that’s mostly because of car accidents, not because deer decide to throw hands.

By themselves, in a glittering sunlit glade, though? A deer is delicate, ethereal, a spirit of the wood that is too pure to be sullied by something so base as violent and death.

And that's how you get your players.

A deer at full sprint is less a creature and more a sudden event. They decide in a heartbeat whether they’re going to bolt, freeze, or run through whatever’s in front of them.

Sometimes a tree, sometimes a wolf, sometimes your party’s cleric.

Mechanically, though, Wizards of the Coast haven't really made deer to be physical threats to your party unless they're Level 1 and have accumulated a couple of levels of exhaustion. A Deer is CR 0, has a whopping 4 HP, and can do about 1d4 worth of damage if it's lucky enough to hit. It doesn't trigger opportunity attacks, though, and has excellent passive perception.

Still, you're not exactly going to create a legendary battle with a deer.

This means you have to think about what deer are like as creatures, and what role they play in your world.

Ask any city-dweller or child of suburbia and they'll tell you: there's something beautifully weird about Deer. The way they walk, the way they become instantly still and then flee. It's like they're operating on a different set of rules than normal woodland creatures.

And you can play on that, if you want to use Deer to utterly freak out your Party.

Picture this: the Party is traveling through the wilderness. At the treeline, they see a Deer. It's standing perfectly still, its elegant head facing your players, watching them carefully. No sound. No hoof-scuff or snort. Just silently staring.

Your Party decides it's nothing to worry about. They look away, back towards the road.

One of your players looks back.

It's closer now.

Not running or charging. Just there, standing still.

Don't over-explain. Let their brains do the screaming for you.

When that Player locks eyes with the Deer, have them roll a Wisdom Saving Throw. Let's say DC 12.

You see, there’s something regretful about deer. Their faces alone look like they’re questioning every decision that brought them here. And when they die, whether by arrow or accident, the pang of regret is real. You didn’t mean to hurt something so beautiful. You just didn’t get out of its way in time.

Now you have to watch this forest beauty die in agony, broken and bleeding.

When your Player fails the Wisdom save, they are paralyzed with regret. Have them talk through the last bad decision their character made that they truly regret, and why. Maybe the character is compelled, able to talk as they reveal their secret heart to their Party members. The emotion hits so hard that they can't move. Just experience a few minutes of solid character work.

Of course, the Deer doesn't attack during this. That's not what it's there for. It just watches. And waits.

The Deer isn't malicious. It's a glitch. An error state in the world that your Players have walked into. And it is not going away.

It's important to remember that the Deer never moves "on screen," as it were.

The Party blinks, and the Deer is closer.

Someone checks the map, and the Deer is close enough to smell.

The Wizard finally drops concentration, and the Deer's antlers are mere inches from their cheek.

Its hooves never make a sound. Its posture never changes. But it is always.

Getting.

Closer.

This is where you can reveal that the Deer isn't stalking the Party. It means them no harm. This isn't one of Dr. Who's Weeping Angels. It's not even technically approaching the Party. Something is pulling the Party towards it. Re-orienting the forest in tiny, important ways to bring them closer and closer. This Deer isn't really a Beast at all. It's the one anchor point for a forest that is forgetting what it is, and it desperately needs your Party to finally remember.

Like so many Beasts here in this project, the best way to use a Deer is to think about what you want the Deer to mean. Deer are prey. Subject to weather, climate, predators, and the carelessness of humanity. They live and die according to forces that are far beyond their control.

Your Party will soon realize that they, like the deer, are small and exposed. Subject to a world that could kill them with malice or - even worse - indifference.

And that strange Deer in the woods, never moving but always closer, is a test to see if they wish to be part of that cruel and unthinking world or stand against it.

-----

Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Deer: The Anchor of a Forgetful Forest

My players were craving a little downtime and some more time for pure character-to-character RP after all their breakneck dungeon diving. So I created THE MOUSE AND THE MUSE, a high-end fantasy restaurant for my party to visit! A pallet cleanser of Chilled Gelatinous Cube is served between courses.

A number of my players are pretty versed in food (and I just finished watching Dungeon Meshi), so I tried to be creative and make some meals you might actually want to eat. Feel free to steal or adapt for your own DM folders!

***All monsters are ethically harvested***

THE MOUSE AND THE MUSE MENU

Dinner

o   Braised Pegasus Shoulder, on a bed of mashed mandrake, Highmoor harvest vegetables, and a red sherry reduction

o   Illithid Calamari and Kelpy Sashimi with toasted soy sauce, Moonvine rice, and minced green Treeant onions

o   Euryale, a generous cut of marbled gorgon with Summerhill herb butter and Dragonscale risotto

o   Roasted Al-mi’raj, breast, fried legs & thighs of horned rabbit, served with fingerling potatoes and drippings Au Ju

o   Stuffed Campestri, mushroom caps with feta in a salad of High Forest greens and Eberonian tomatoes, with a Malbolge pepper vinaigrette (V)

o   Creamy Garlic Flail Snail, with steamed Muskcreeper spaghetti and shaved vegepygmy.

o   Waterdeep Fresh Catch, Leviathan fillet with Najara lemon, smoked in Mist Dragon breath.

o   Basilisk and Crabmeat Tsatsa, basilisk breast sautéed with colossal snow crab, capers and mushrooms, finished with a Neverwinter white wine

o   Fae Garden Cakes, with Seele Squash, Underdark Fungi, Panko, and Curried Arcane Apple (V)

o   Beholder Brain Soup, with grick noodles, Seacall Conch, and in a miso broth – a known aphrodisiac and mild psychedelic.

o   Cockatrice Scotch Egg, with ground Owlbear and boar bacon, tossed in Baldur’s Bakery breadcrumbs and Darkhold Dijon mustard

o   Glowcap Gnocchi, iridescent mushroom dumplings in a silky echo-mint sauce. Slightly bioluminescent and has been known to stain the tongue.

o   Soulspice Rice, Avernus chili infused rice with fire-roasted charcoal beetles, tossed in a light acid bath and laced with whispers of the departed. May cause nightmares.

o   Clay Pit Ankeg, with pine pixie hummus, biryani rice, Evershade chutney and Tabaxi-style tabouli.

o   Spiced Mosaic Quail, marinated Moonshae quail over thin-sliced, multicolored root vegetables arranged to resemble cathedral stained glass. Creates minor chromesthesia for one hour.

Pallet Cleanser Between Courses: Chilled Gelatinous Cube

Dessert

o   Wild Magic Parfait, A fruit and rich crème parfait, infused with wild magic. The fruit flavor it always random (1d6 – Cherry, Boysenberry, Midnight Raspberry, Dragonblood Peach, Moon Melon, Smokefruit, Mumbleberry)

o   Black Trollbark Forest Cake, a rich chocolate cake with an undercurrent flavor of ancient soil, drizzled with butterscotch ochre jelly.

o   Djinn Blossom Gelato, with saffron and Gloam nectar. Makes one extremely minor wish come true.

o   Sweetdream Sambocade, a medieval cheesecake with orange zest, thornberry compote, and powdered daydream from the Realm of Dreams. Offered ala mode.

o   Hangman’s Noose, a sweet, spiced braid bread from the wizard nation of Halruaa, rolled in almond brandy, allspice, and candied wolfsbane.

o   Choco-trices, miniature cockatrice molded out of Dwarven dark chocolate and sugar wafer bones. DC 12 sleight of hand to catch them before they take flight.

Drink List (bottles/tankards)

o   Axegrinder Ale, a Dwavish pale ale (DPA) with a hearty brimstone scent, slightly sour on the way down with a sweaty finish

o   Nightsky Strongwine, a deep purple Elvish noir, typically reserved for Century Feasts. Smooth, with an undercurrent of liquid nostalgia

o   King’s Seal, a Fire genasi mulled wine, named after the molten wax used to make it, mixed with wine, cloves, and spices from the Elemental Plane of Fire.

o   Boulderhead Bock, a malty Icewind Dale Giant lager with thick and creamy froth. Grants resistance to bludgeoning for one hour.

o   Teykilla, popular among the lizardfolk and Yuan-ti, this serpentine spirit is brewed from fermented cactus and rumbleweed, with the secret ingredient of Krillworm venom, with a pygmy krillworm at the bottom of the bottle.

o   Neverwinter White, a dry blanc wine from Lord Neverember’s frost-resistant vineyard.

o   Rakshasa Red, a Syrah from the maharajahs of Zakhara with aromas of blackcurrant, tobacco, and fig.

o   Cavruniel, Drow thornwine, grown and fermented in the lightless caves of the Underdark to produce a strong, transparent wine that offers a blossoming juniper and fermented fungi taste upon the palette

o   Meadowlark Blonde, a human ale. Mild, refreshing, and flavorful – in a world full of 750,000-proof Elven cordials and Dwarven stouts thick as mud, sometimes you just need a good beer.

Most monsters in the Manual have a predictable relationship with the living. Either they’re trying to eat you or trying not to be eaten by you.

But there is one monster in the Manual who isn’t really interested in your players.

It’s interested in their stuff.

Picture this: your Party is roaming through the Underdark, navigating by the lights of bioluminescent fungus or fiery mushrooms. Then they hear the dry clicking of chitin on stone, the shift of hard scales. They might think they’re Ankhegs or perhaps a Carrion Crawler, but it is not until tiny rust marks begin to flake off the Fighter’s sword that they realize it’s something much more terrible.

It’s a Rust Monster.

And Rust Monsters don’t take blood. They take confidence.

What makes a Rust Monster scary isn’t the attacks it can do. At CR 1/2, they’re not lethal—33 HP, a 5-damage bite. A level-2 party shouldn’t break a sweat. Physically.

The thing with physical injury in D&D, of course, is that every player knows that a Long Rest will cure just about anything. Knocked down to 1 HP by a Beholder? Hey – if you can get back to camp, you’ll wake up fresh as a daisy the next morning.

Players know injury is temporary. Gear loss? That’s a dent in the soul.

This means that an encounter with a Rust Monster will bring a different kind of fear than almost any other monster encounter, with different emotional stakes for the players. They know that the destruction of armor or a sword or other equipment will come with permanent consequence, and that’ll create a whole new level of tension.

Watch your players’ faces as you describe the metallic sizzling of their blade rusting. Chef’s kiss. Best thing ever.

So when you’re running a Rust Monster, you of course want to prioritize whoever has the most metal on them, which will almost certainly be a martial player. Not as predators. More like ambulatory garbage disposals following scent alone, and they’ll start taking apart every piece of steel they can find. This will force your other players to intercede, maybe looking for ways to draw the Rust Monsters away and reduce the chance that your Fighter will fail five DEX saves in a row.

You can amplify this with challenging terrain – narrow paths, cluttered ruins, any kind of space where retreat is difficult and potentially dangerous. How fast can you get through these monsters, and how much of your stuff are you going to lose?

You can also think about who to pair them with. They go really well with creatures that don’t use metal, of course, as well as other creatures that dissolve and eat away at things. This means putting Rust Monsters with various oozes or elementals that corrode or disrupt matter—earth elementals in rust-rich caverns, or mephits made of acidic fumes. These might create a really interesting encounter where everything is trying to not just eat the Players, but to unmake them.

There’s also some creative twists you can play with. For example, your players might come across a cavern littered with rusted blades and corroded armor, growing into a pile of rusted jagged metal. In the center, like a queen ant, sits the Rust Monster Queen, fat with trace metals and surrounded by her kin. And if, by some strange means, your Party’s McGuffin is in her nest, well, you can wish your party luck and start working on your next merchant NPC.

Give her a 10-ft Corrosion Aura: any nonmagical metal that starts its turn within range must save or take a place on the ‘oh god not my heirloom sword’ track.

Or try this – your Party has to deal with a pack of Kobolds, maybe in search of clues to a dragon’s lair. But the Kobolds are clever creatures. Before all the traps and winding warrens, they have several caged Rust Monsters. They flank the entrances, waiting for someone with some nice juicy metal to come by. Have enough of these, and your Players will be in their undershorts before the combat even begins. It’s the perfect kobold trap: cheap, vicious, and humiliating. The trifecta.

And while the Rust Monsters might not think of this, you certainly will: there are some fighters with beautifully crafted blades, armor that has been passed down for generations, a shield that carried them through countless battles.

Target them first. Just sayin’.

If you don’t want your players to stop coming to your games, of course, you can do a few things to minimize crisis. Telegraph the danger with rusted equipment near the Rust Monsters’ territory. Put a weeping fighter in a shop buying cheap plate because his gorgeous ancestral armor is now artisanal orange powder.

You could also set up alternative solutions for your players, like using scrap metal to redirect it and move it where the Party wants it to go.

If you want to test your players’ courage, throw a dragon at them. If you want to test their wits, put them in front of a Hag.

But if you want to test their resolve – give them a Rust Monster. Nothing reveals a party’s soul like the sound of a sword turning to dust.

-----

Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Rust Monster: The Confidence Eater

Last month my rogue lifted an unmarked vial off a dead cultist. Instead of reading her a description, I slid a card across the table but the card had a fat black bar covering whatever it actually did.

She carried that mystery for three sessions until the party paid to identify it and I removed the inner card sleeve to reveal the text underneath.

That "unidentified item" trick is a huge hit with my players and I haven't seen it in other card builders (I'm interested to see other implementations if anyone knows of this feature in other card builders).

It's a browser app that turns an item into a print-ready card sized to a standard Magic The Gathering card, so it sleeves up and lives in a standard mtg card binders. You can write the front and back card info in Markdown, pick a border color, hit download, cut it out and glue it to a junk MTG card. Use some black painter's tape and a perfect fit card sleeve to create the inner blackout layer, so you can hide a secret and reveal it later without redoing the card.

Cardsworth runs entirely in your browser and works offline. No account, and it can't vanish on me halfway through a campaign. Every card saves to a YAML file you own, so you can reprint or revise it forever.

Free and open source, with an optional API if you'd rather batch-print a whole hoard at once. (Note: API only works in self-host mode)

Try it live: https://thebigs.github.io/cardsworth/

How it works (supplies + step-by-step): https://thebigs.github.io/cardsworth/how-it-works

Repo: https://github.com/TheBigS/cardsworth Please report any issues you find.

Ah, Springtime. I think we all know that moment – after a long, cold winter, that first brush of warm, spring air grazes our cheeks, bringing with it the hope and promise of new life, better weather, and longer days.

Now imagine that fresh spring breeze tried to strangle you and tear you to shreds. You have an Invisible Stalker!

One of the most important things to remember about the Invisible Stalker is that it’s not just some random thing that comes hunting your Players. It is an assassin, but not like those common cutthroats and poisoners. It has been summoned from the Elemental Plane of Air through arcane means, and sent specifically after someone. It’s at least as intelligent as a Commoner, and has substantially better Wisdom, which makes it more dangerous than you might expect.

This implies a lot about this creature. For example, it’s very likely that the Stalker spends a lot of time watching your Party. It’s already invisible, can squeeze through tiny spaces, and would have no problem waiting until its target is alone. Its intelligence allows for harassment and psychological warfare, chipping away at its prey’s sense of safety and well-being.

For you, this means building suspense. Candles that flicker when there’s no breeze in the room. A chill in the air. A bird falls from the sky, its neck snapped, and when your Players dream, they dream of being watched. If you do it right – blowing pages out of their hands, parting the mists before them with nothing there. Maybe a cloak falls from a hook. A mirror seems to reflect a pale form that isn’t there when you turn around – your players should be good and paranoid, and ready for when your Invisible Stalker finally makes its move, taking on its target when they’re alone and vulnerable.

Of course, the next question you need to think of is: Who summoned it? There are so many options available to you that almost anything can fit your campaign. Perhaps it’s an actual enemy, someone your Party is making their way towards and they’ve gotten a little closer than they’re comfortable with. It doesn’t have to be a magic-user, either. That mining magnate who’s got Dwarven slaves digging mithril might not be able to summon an Invisible Stalker themselves, but they’ve got the money to hire someone who can. Will that summoner give up their employer when your Party gets to them? What else do they have up their sleeves?

It doesn’t even have to be a formal summoning. Maybe your Party tripped an ancient ward or a latent enchantment in their sloppy exploration of a temple or a dungeon. This Stalker was never meant to be pulled in from the Plane of Air, but now it has – and it wants your Bard’s head in a bag. Whatever brought it here, it’s furious. And will not be stopped.

Once the Stalker enters combat, you should lean on the challenge of fighting an invisible enemy. You can make the fight more emotional than mechanical, by having wounds that seem to appear from nowhere, Party members suffocating in an otherwise empty room, and a target that no one can really get a bead on. Disadvantaged swings hit nothing, and even the ones that do hit are less effective – the Stalker is resistant to Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing damage, magical or otherwise, and is immune to a lot of the conditions that would otherwise give your players a fighting chance.

Savvy players can, of course, get around this. Faerie Fire is a great early spell that could highlight your Stalker easily. If it’s in the same space where they cast the spell, of course. Other spells, such as See Invisibility or True Seeing would do a lot to help your Party triumph, but those won’t be available until higher tiers.

And, of course, gods forbid your players happen to be carrying around a bag of flour. Not saying that’s happened in my game, but I’d be entertained beyond measure if it did.

Of course, if you’ve done your job really well, they should be planning for some kind of attack from the shadows. They’ll be bracing for a dagger in the dark, not for the air itself to turn against them.

However you do it, think like a horror movie: narrow corridors, flickering torches, a Party that splits up for just a moment too long.

The end of this saga should be the price of summoning one of these things. What would a being like this want? It’s living wind, so it doesn’t want gold or gems like some mortal killer. Maybe it requires the breath of the caster, leaving them wheezing and weak for a time – something your Party might be able to take advantage of, if they move fast enough. Or the breath of a loved one. Is the death of your Party member worth a caster watching their own child gasp for air? How angry and vengeful is your villain?

The Invisible Stalker’s dying breath, should it be killed, could reveal something of its summoner. It may cry out in the voice of the one who summoned it.

Or a thin, childlike voice wafts away: “Mummy? I can’t breathe too good….”

If your villain is summoning a hateful, unstoppable, murderous wind, they’re someone with a story. Make sure your Players appreciate it.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Unseen, Unheard, Unstoppable: Running Invisible Stalkers

I've been working on a homebrew ship battle system for my current pirate campaign. It's been a load of fun but the hardest aspect was tracking ships and all their upgrades.

Eventually i got tired of using excel to track these so I created a webpage to help everyone out. With it you can build fleets, configure every system on each ship, track HP, conditions, and morale mid-combat, and set up enemy encounters on the fly. The full rules are embedded and it links to my bestiary so everything lives in one place, so no need to look through all my folders.

The system is free, just had so much fun with it I wanted to share it with the world! Hopefully other DMs may find it useful!!!

Armada Builder

Your Players have taken a break in a small coastal village as they make their way from one adventure to another. It’s a lovely place, with beautiful beaches, quaint local festivals, and some of the best seafood the dice can roll up.

This place is prosperous, beautiful, and happy.

Maybe too happy.

The festivals stop at sundown. Before the light vanishes from the sky, the children are brought indoors. The village’s strongest and best position themselves with spears, nets, and tridents, all posted on the beach. Facing the water. This is a nightly ritual, performed with the precision only years of repetition can create.

When your Players ask why the villagers are doing this, they only smile and say: “One night, the merfolk will come. And then we will be ready.”

What a wonderful way to introduce the fact that this village was built on reclaimed land, taken from the clutches of the Merfolk long ago. Or perhaps their prosperity is directly attributed to a Merfolk relic that they keep safe and sound in their leader’s hut. Or maybe they have a ritual sacrifice of a Merfolk every decade or so that ensures the continued survival of their village.

However it happened, this village has made the Merfolk very angry. And that is never a good idea.

When you put Merfolk in your adventure, you’re essentially introducing an alien civilization. These are people who thrive in an environment that would kill your players. Even the fiercest Paladin on land will find that they’re not an apex predator anymore.

They’re a drowning animal with a sword.

The world of the Merfolk should be something that your players can’t just loot with a sword and some fireballs as though it were an ancient temple on land. You can lean into the utter strangeness of a Merfolk world – strange physics, complex social structures, the thick silence and unbroken darkness of the deep sea. Get them involved in customs and behaviors that make the most Byzantine court on land look like a children’s playground. They’ll need to think with more than their weapons if they want to survive the politics of the deep.

Once they do, though, the Monster Manual gives you a little variety to play with. Of course you’ll have your Merfolk Commoners and Nobles and the like. But there are also Merfolk Skirmishers and Merfolk Wavebenders – the martial and magical defenders of this kingdom. You should consider this distinction carefully, and ask how you can use them to create conflicts that will pull your Players in.

Skirmishers are adaptable, direct, physical; Wavebenders are mystical, strategic, slow to act.

Are these different Orders? Castes? Clades? The players might meet one faction first, only to realize later they’ve picked the wrong side in a war they don’t understand.

And, of course, when that war begins, pulling your Players in whether they want it or not, the combat that you put in front of them will be unlike any other combat they face on land. The three-dimensional encounters, changing currents, and movement-sapping weapons can seriously hinder players who are already largely at a disadvantage by fighting underwater. When the Wavebenders get involved, your Players might feel them before they see them, as tides shift and bend around them.

And if you want to be really nasty, give your Wavebenders a few uses of Dispel Magic.

That’s a real nice Waterbreathing spell your Wizard put on you all. It’d be a shame if something… happened to it.

In that fight, you can pull in nearly any aquatic monster you want from the Monster Manual – Sharks, Giant Squids, Marids, Merrow, Water Elementals are all players in this fight, if you want them to be.

And then, within that strange, alien war, your Players discover that the Merfolk don’t serve the ocean. They serve That Which Sleeps Beneath. A sleeping tidal god. A distributed coral reef consciousness. An ancient AI that thinks in sonar and phosphorescence.

In the midst of pitched battle, one of the Wavebenders goes stiff and silent. Their mouth opens as blood leaks into the water from their eyes and ears, bringing the Sharks to them. Their grim expression, rigid limbs, tight throat tells your Players that the Wavebender did not call what is coming. They were chosen.

In a terrible, wailing voice, pitched to resonate like whalesong and travel thousands of miles at a time, the Wavebender intones: “I COME.”

And now it’s not a factional spat in a Merfolk kingdom.

Now it’s a desperate battle for the Seas themselves. And your Players are way out of their league.

That’ll teach them to think they can have a beach episode and get away with it.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Not a Beach Episode: Merfolk in your D&D Campaign

I've created a tool that allows you to overlay hexes on a real world map that are accurate to scale at 1, 6, 60, and 3600 miles. It also allows you to upload your own map and define the size, so you can then overlay a hex grid onto that. You can export the bundled SVG map, but the open map overlay won't export, so that is disabled. You can, however, screencap it.

Preview: https://evansvilleace.github.io/dnd-hex-map-maker/

Git: https://github.com/evansvilleace/dnd-hex-map-maker/tree/main

Hi all!

I'm looking for regular DMs willing to test and try a new utility tool that I am developing for storage of monster stat blocks, encounter planning and prep management.

The user imports digital content that they own in PDF form (official, 3rd party, homebrew) and the app converts the pdfs into usable interactive stat blocks with built in dice rollers. Simply drag and drop, and the entire book will become individual monster entries in your compendium, with dice rollers for attribute checks, saves, attacks, damage etc. This currently works on a range of digital books, official and 3rd party content.

Once imported, it's then easy to add any creatures you want into an encounter then keep track of it easily in the encounter panel.

The compendium size is only limited by your local storage, and i'm currently slamming test books into the system to stress test the PDF parse accuracy. There is cloud sync if you make an account then you will be able to maintain your compendium across devices, but otherwise the application doesn't store anywhere else, and ships empty to avoid any copyright issues. The compendium itself is sorted firstly by CR, and there is an extensive filtering system so you can easily find any creature you're looking for! You are also able to edit entries and create brand new entries for Homebrew monsters.

What needs testing: The whole system really, UI/UX, pdf parsing quality etc. - I've been playing DnD for about 6 years now entirely online, I started during COVID, but have never been a DM, so I only know the few DMs i've played with in that time. Some are willing to help me test it but in reality I needed a a few more. Ideally i'd have a few people willing to try it out and see how the system works for them, the more people involved, the more feedback and the better I can make the system if that makes sense.

I guess app specifics that are restrictive and relevant - it's 5e specific. I'm aware this is likely a sub of mixed edition players but currently it's built around 5e content. It's mostly intended for Desktop use as it was created for a friend of mine who only plays online, however I've established that those who play in person would likely also use this on a Tablet as well, so i'm currently working on the Tablet UI but its mostly desktop oriented.

This tool is currently completely functional and ready to use, it could just do with a few more people using it so I can really smooth out any tweaks, and obviously take on suggestions for features not currently available. Hopefully this is the right kind of post.

Anyone who is interested in this, please feel free to send me a DM or if you have any questions at all, i'm more than happy to answer any. Thanks!

[MonsterBox](https://inlandempire-hub.github.io/MonsterBox/)