The End of Shadowfell, The Begining of War

My group eventually got to the bottom of the the Keep on Shadowfell and I was able to use the provided maps to their full intent. Funny part was the groups ranger was unable to show up for this encounter, and this was the first time there was a massively large open area to fight in.

Oddly enough the final fights where very anti-climatic. The group stood on the stairs as I acted out the events. Nothing really happened, except a bunch of murder. From then on, I really wanted to go overboard with a "Final" campaign fight, so I thought up a war to be waged on the keep.

Keep on the Shadowfell Dungeon

When taking my first ever D&D group through the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure I took the basic layout and desgined off of what they had provided.

I purchased a set of the D&D Dungeon Tiles and a number of 2' x 3' black foam boards. I used those as a backing to tape the tiles onto. But even given that large of a canvas, I had to break up the dungeon into separate levels.

The following images  few rooms I built, with some of my players on the board. Unfortunately there are not many, well just two:

After the group battle their way through two levels of the dungeon, they eventually came across the mega custom room that I built for and epic boss show down:

The features of this room where:

• Drinking from the cauldron caused you to be bloodied (no health loss) and damage would be increased by 1d12.
• The skull piles near the cauldron would explode they where hit by a burst or blast fire attack, causing 2d10 per pile.
• Falling in the hole was instant death.
• The Blood glyph allowed the boss to perform two basic attacks.
• The Boss when he was killed would resurrect at the top of the Skull Pile, until the Skull Pile was destroyed.
• While the Boss was near the Flaming Statue within its Aura 5 it grants the Boss an ongoing 5 fire damage to his attacks.

The fight in the boss room was a little too overpowered. I had to swing it in favor of the players. The next boss lair would be a bit better.

After the boss room occurred, I finished off the dungeon with the last two levels from the adventure packet. Overall the dungeon went pretty well.

The Wonders of Premade Maps

So for my first and second adventures I used a preset map that came with the D&D starter kit. When I first looked at the Monster Lair map my initial reaction was that it was very basic and very rigid. It was very well drawn and had a lot of visual depth, but I wondered how the map could be used outside of the preset adventure that had come with the map.

Crossroad and Monster Lair

I played through the second part of the adventure. The adventure consisted of assaulting the goblins lair and retrieving an item for the injured driver. My two friends assaulted the cave, it went pretty much as the starter kit adventure had laid out. I added an Orc into the mix, mostly because my two friends breezed through the adventure and retrieved the item for the driver very quickly.

In more then a years time since that game, I have come to use the Monster Lair map more then any other premade map to date. I have also gone out of my way to find and collect as many premade maps as I could. They have been a life saver for when I have not had the time to fully plot out and design an encounter area or full dungeon. Many times I would overlay a tile from a tile set or a custom print out onto the map in order to avoid giving the players any red herrings. So far It worked out very well.

I would definitely suggest that any new or current DM, to pick up as many of the premade maps as they possibly can. A lot of the starter sets and bundles come with at least two types of maps. Not to mention that the bundle adventures will always come with some specific for that adventure. For example the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure came with a two maps. One was a generic set of roads/rivers/bone pit and the other was a cathedral/shadow pit. The cathedral/shadow pit was a map that made up the last two encounters of the adventure and had the most role played and interesting encounters of the entire bundle.

Cathedral                                                Shadow Pit

I liked that the adventure came with very detailed adventure specific maps, and while they are more limiting then the generic roads or monster lair, I have learned to work them in at different times when the location fit the map setting. The players never seemed to mind and I love having the flexibility of pulling out any random location whenever I need.

My next post will be the building of the Keep on the Shadowfell dungeon, lucky I took some pictures. 

 

The Red Box

So I was walking through Wal*Mart one fine Saturday evening, when I stopped by the card isle. Its the isle near the front of the store that has Sport, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic the Gathering cards. Well I saw something new there that I had not noticed before. There was a The Red Box. It was sitting in the bottom corner all by itself. I could barely read the Gothic text on it, so I bent down and it read “Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set.” Being only 20 dollars, I purchased it on a whim. I brought it home with eager intent, and rapidly opened it.

In the starter set I received everything I needed to play D&D. I received my first set of dice, maps, creature tokens, and a short single player adventure. I played through the single player campaign with eagerness, and then played it again, and then again, and again. Once I finished, the book sent me to the Dungeon and Dragon website for a second adventure, the first multiplayer adventure. Knowing that D&D was for multiple people, I called up some friends and arranged a game for the following day.

***The Next Day***

After purchasing a small poker table, a few more sets of dice, and some D&D miniatures, me and two friend sat down and played our first official game of D&D. I had decided to run them through the same single player adventure that I had played the previous day, just upgraded to be multiplayer.

The adventure started with the two players, a mage and rogue, riding on a cart from one town to another. When all of the sudden an arrow hits the driver of the cart and falls limp. Goblins then appear and attack the players. The players jump out of the cart and quickly dispatch the goblins. So far everything is going to plan and following the adventure in the book.

So now here comes my first “Oh Shit!” moment as a DM, the rouge decided to go to the driver and the rob the “corpse.” When he got near the dwarf, I informed him that the driver still seemed to be alive. The rogue quickly retorted back with “I cut his throat.”

“Oh Shit! What should I do.” The driver was needed to continue the story so I could not let him die, but at the same time I did not want to stop the player with what he as a player wanted to do. So in a panic, I told him that the driver quickly pops back up and stabs him in the chest dealing 20 damage to the rogue.

Well the rogue has 23 life at full health.....sigh.....I almost killed the player without even thinking.

So in my first game as a DM, I panicked at a player choice, then punished the player unintentionally with basically loosing his entire Hit Points.

Looking back I would have had the rogue perform a melee basic attack to attempt a coup de gras, or maybe even had the driver role play something as the rogue went in for the kill. I have learned not to panic anymore because making a quick un-thought out reaction definitely does not lead to good things within the game.

Next entry will be the result of the attack on the cart and learning the rules within the rules.

Under Construction

Entering the blog sphere before you is a large creature dressed in ragged leather, covered in maps, books, and architecture tools. It is the Dungeon Constructor. Builder of Dungeons. Creator of Towers. Layer of Traps. Unintentional Slayer of Adventurers. Yet no one speaks of him, no legends talk of him, and no bard sing his tale.

Okay, I am done with the hamming. So I have a hobby that I have been perusing for just under a year now; I have started playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). In saying that I play D&D, I must clarify in saying that I play the role of a Dungeon Master (DM). The DMs role is to create the environment for the adventuring players to play through. This includes the story, the dungeon for the story, the monsters for the dungeons, and most importantly the drive for the players to want to go through the story.

Even though I am seventeen years late to this game, I have thoroughly enjoyed the game and the task of being the DM. I have probably spent more money and time then I should have on the books, tiles, maps, figures, dice, markers, and pretty much anything else Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) stamped their mark on. So, suffice to say, I have been a little enveloped in this game and have spent a good amount of time working on a a very specific aspect of the game, creating dungeons.

Onto the purpose of this blog. I have made a number of dungeons and have put a lot of thought into creating them, as well as tailoring the provided dungeons from WOTC, and I kinda feel the need to put my thoughts down on paper. This will be my ultimate purpose for this blog, recording my thought and recapping my experiences DMing. My next post is going to cover the first few games of dungeons and dragons that I ran and how I overcame my rookie issues as a DM.