This post has been a long time coming, as it has been a while since there has been an update and much has happened in the last two months! First, with regards to our D&D 5E game, our adventurers find themselves staring their journey in the darkness of the Jungles of Chult! We have also somehow (miraculously!) all survived a whole three levels in Meatgrinder Mode. Yay for us!
Just before leaving (possibly forever) into the dark arboreal canopies that cover the majority of the continent of Chult, we decided to spend one last day in the warm, comfortable embrace of Port Nyanzaru ?, the last bastion of civilization for the foreseeable future. We went shopping for canoes for the long river journey ahead and grabbed a armful of quests in the process.
Desperately in need of coin for our journey, we made a final stop to the the casinos and bet on the dinosaur races! Many of us even participated:
The setup for the dino races.The starting line. Everyone is tense as bets are made and riders mount their dinos. I lost all of my money to Hank’s riding skills. What kind of cowboy can’t ride a dinosaur?! I’m still bitter. The first race!The second race!
The following week, we took on a ghoul bounty from Fort Belluarian with the help of our new druid guide Qawasha and his little sidekick Weed.
After some searching, we find some ghouls hiding in the jungle and attack. Each head is worth 25 precious gold!The ghouls advance at a “28 Days Later” speed and surprise us with their alacrity. Some of the party is briefly knocked down in the fight, but thankfully nobody dies! Theo hunts down a ghoul in the tunnels. It was Sam’s birthday, so Mikaela made a dragon-themed cake. It didn’t just look awesome…it tasted great!The birthday girl enjoying her cake. Ash and Brett set up our awesome new gaming table with an embedded screen! So cool. I’ve wanted one of these for us to play on for ages. Thanks again for the holiday gift Sam and Anthony! You guys are the best!Just as we finally muster up and decide to embark on our jungle journey down the river, the city gates of Port Nyanzaru are attacked by an army of zombies! We help the city watch drive off the invaders then set off into the wilderness. Our first day into the jungle we run into a goblin scouting party. We exterminate it with prejudice. Tavsirak teleports onto the top of a tree at the first sign of danger. Sorcerers are delicate. Look at that gorgeous terrain. Well done Grant. The goblins get revenge later when they attack in the middle of the night, catching us off-guard while we sleep. The next day, Aubry (Mikaela) almost gets air-lifted away as food for hungry harpies after she eats a fruit that causes her to laugh so hard she debilitates herself as she is foraging for the groups’ food. We all look in horror as they carry off her paralyzed body.We all disembark off of the canoes in a hurry and are (barely) able to successfully rescue her before she is flown off to who-knows-where. Later that night we camp in some local ruins, hoping to finally get a good nights’ sleep, ending our session for the night.
This post ends up on a sad note, as our long-time friend and playing companion Mikaela is moving away from the area. We are sad at your leaving at the same time joyous at to your new-found opportunities. Regardless, you will be missed Mikaela, and I think I speak for everyone when I say we always will have room at our table for you.
The Strahd Campaign affected us all in different ways.
At the same time our good friend Matt has also moved before the start of the current campaign as well. While you might not have moved across the entire country, you are already missed during the games and a spot is ready for you at any time.
Ration tracking can be cumbersome in 5E. I found a few things that might help in this endeavour. You can check it out here or by clicking on the Ration Tracking link under Game Notes.
We certainly don’t have to do this, but let me know what you guys think.
Answer the question above in the comments section below if you have an idea!
Well, its time to start a new Forgotten Realms campaign, and by group vote we have chosen to do the Tomb of Annihilation! Prepare your tears and pray to your gods, because hard core meat grinder mode is coming your way, and we are all probably going to die. Fun times!
We started Session 0 being sent by sea to Chult and being stopped by both pirates and a giant turtle dragon demanding taxes. Session 1 continues as we romp around Port Nyanzaru as we get our bearings in the last bastion of civilization before entering the savage jungles of Chult. Most of the session ended up with us searching for survival supplies and scrounging for information about the jungle before we are openly mugged in the streets of the town by thugs. For more details, feel free to read the Game Journal.
Amazing new jungle terrain! Damn good job, Grant!The Lions are ambushed by common street thugs. Which is about all we can handle at level 1. Our DM judges the battlefield like the Hand of God.
Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Don’t forget to mention what dinosaur you want below!
MPMB’s Character Sheet (Printer Friendly Version) is the most comprehensive character sheet I’ve ever seen for 5E (sorry Andy). To be honest, it’s a full-on program with the skin of a PDF file. It pulls upon all of the source books to fill in information as you need it on your character sheet, such as Class Features, Spells, Feats, etc. without having to look them up manually.
You can only really utilize its functions in Acrobat Reader (which sadly makes you install McAfee Antivirus software you will have to uninstall after you install the main program). Then, if you Right-Click->Save this file then follow these instructions starting at “Step 2” under “How to import a script”, you can get a character sheet that pretty much fills itself out. Great for characters with a ton of spells with descriptions you don’t want to copy-paste. I did it for my cleric Milo earlier and it completely filled out my spellbook without needing to type a thing. Wohoo!
If you’re interested in more information, you can jet over to their official website.
As we move forward to begin playing in-person again (finally!), character sheets for our various tabletop games have been posted on the Media page. If there are any other resources that you think we might need as we move from computers to paper and pencil, feel free to let me know in Discord.
Based upon a suggestion by Sam, a dice rolling bot named Avrae has been added to the discord server. Feel free to mess around with it if you guys like; there are all sorts of cool commands you can learn, found on the official Avrae Bot website. If want want to mess around with the bot, please limit it to the #dnd-session chat channel so as not to clutter up the other channels.
If anyone else has further suggestions on what to add to our Discord server, feel free to contact me (Patrick).
Google Meet, our go-to conference app for Roll20, is hungrier than Ghandi for Internet bandwidth. Discord is our backup for when Google Meet is too much for our group to handle (it takes fewer Internets to run). Discord runs in-browser, so you don’t need to download anything – just make sure you have an account and the settings are how you like it.
This will all be less important when we start meeting in-person again, but for now, it’s good to keep in mind!
To start your Discord adventures, simply click the “Connect” button on the Discord applet to the right.
What will the next few months in gaming look like?
Well, it has been a crazy 14 months since last March. The loss of in-person games and the stress of school really weighed down on me mentally for quite some time. But at the very least the year of COVID has brought families and loved ones closer together, and that is a truly beautiful thing. If all goes well, we should be going back to in-person games soon and more time should be free for games, events, and writing. With things beginning to open back up a little and as more and people are getting vaccinated, life as we knew it should be returning to normalcy, although it will be a new normal.
Everyone should try to keep in mind our schedule moving forward. The game masters try to put as much time into planning as they can, with as much forewarning of dates as we can, because we know that everyone’s life is busy. So, make sure to click whether you can go or not to the events. Most of the Geeks have voted, and Top Golf was a resounding victory. To the BBQ voters, fear not! We should be having something small within the next few months as well. Top Golf event is up, so please try to save the date if you can make it. Top Golf is not only a great way to have fun while making a huge ass of yourself in front of your friends, but they also have a great restaurant and bar.
The Forgotten Realms game is in full swing. This is the highest-level campaign for many of our newer players as we are now fully in tier 3 level of play, within Adventurer’s League. It has been fun, as our players scrape by to survive a cruel and dangerous world in Ravenloft. Although this group is fully vaccinated, we will be finishing off this game on Roll20 due to funding by our wonderful players and sponsors. We will return to our normally programmed gaming first week of September.
The Star Wars game has grown and expanded over the last couple of months. We here at TTG would like to take the time to welcome Ash, and Christian to our table. Thank you all for coming. This group of scoundrels has found itself embroiled within the galactic civil war, and has made itself an invaluable to the Rebellion. This game, since it is a little smaller and due to their being almost zero support on Roll20 for older Star Wars game settings, will be moving back to in-person by July. Keep an eye out for invites.
We here at the Guild fully intend to have in-person games by the end of Summer. In-person Star Wars games will begin again on July 3rd, and in-person Forgotten Realms games will start again on September 4th. But we will still be following protocols suggested by the CDC. Meaning, the house would like to see everyone’s vaccination card at least one, if you are sick STAY HOME, and we probably will not be bringing food to share for a while. I know, everyone, I miss the snacks most of all, too! If anyone has an issue with this, thinks we should start in-person sooner, or feel that the rules are not stringent enough, please send us an email or IM.
The Geeks have spoken and it looks like our next module for Adventurer’s League will be the Tomb of Horrors. As mentioned previously keep your calendar and minds open, as these dates are tentative an assume that the world does not face a worse global catastrophe over the next few months. Sorry, I like my nihilism sunny-side up. New Adventurer’s League in-person game starts on September 4th! Venue will remain at Grant’s.
A few here at the guild have brought up the prospect of group terrain. This has been a responsibility usually shouldered by us here behind the dungeon master’s screen, but how would people feel about throwing in on things like community terrain, models, and paints to help liven up our games even more? I know everyone’s wallet is a little tight, right now. Let me know your thoughts and ideas, I would love to hear from you!
Last game we were discussing the possibility of others DMing and maybe even expanding beyond our currently used rule sets. While I love “Dungeons & Dragons 5E” and “Star Wars Saga”, I know I’m always down for a new game system! For those curious, you can find a great online collection of all of these rule sets online at The Trove. Many of you already know about this website, but it’s good to put that information out there again.
Just started a listing of podcasts we listen to, both tabletop gaming-related and otherwise. Feel free to add to the list, by either direct editing or sending me a message. Also added a menu link to the Facebook page for Hobby Badger Games, a store run by our good friend Anthony. Please support him and his business!
