Michael E. Shea's Blog, page 29

Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 2

Note: This article contains spoilers for the adventure Descent into Avernus.

This article is one of a series that covers tips and tricks for running the hardback D&D adventure Descent into Avernus. The others include:

Running Descent into Avernus: The Fall of Elturel
Running Chapter 1 of Descent into Avernus

If you'd rather watch a video on this topic, you can watch my youtube video on running Descent into Avernus Chapter 2.

Most Important Tip for Running Descent into Avernus

In previous articles I described this tip but will do so again because it's the best way to make sure your players have a clear motivation to play through this motivation.

Tie the characters to Elturel, Reya Mantlemourn, and the Hellriders.

As written, the characters have little motivation to dive into hell to save Elturel, a city they may never have been to, for Reya Mantlemourn, a woman they haven't ever met. If you tie the characters to Elturel, Reya Mantlemourn, and the Hellriders, they will have a clear motivation to follow through with the main story of this adventure. You can read more about this in Running Descent into Avernus: The Fall of Elturel.

Easily Ran As Written

Unlike chapter 1 and chapter 3, we can largely run Descent into Avernus chapter 2 as written. It's a straight forward chapter with a clear line of quests and straight forward locations. The flowchart in the chapter shows us clearly what must be done, though its important to understand that the goal of the chapter is to lead the characters to Fort Knucklebone to meet Mad Maggie and ask about the location of the Sword of Zariel and the Bleeding Citadel that surrounds it. That is the quest sinew that connects the characters' arrival in Avernus to the main story of the adventure.

We can certainly tune parts of this chapter as we run it, tailoring it for the stories that resonate best with the characters, but mostly this chapter doesn't need modification to keep the overall thread of the adventure going.

Wildcard: Shield of the Hidden Lord

In Chapter 1 the characters likely acquired the Shield of the Hidden Lord, an artifact possessed by the arch-devil Gargauth. This is a fantastic vehicle for secrets and clues and as a fun bit of corruption in the party if you're into that sort of thing. Gargauth's motivation is to escape the shield, which he fails to do when he arrives in Avernus with the rest of the characters. At that point he likely doesn't know how to escape or who might help him do so, so he'll stick it out with the characters guiding their direction towards his escape. Whether the character sense his evil or not may come out over time. If they try to dump the shield, you may want to give them good reason to hang onto it. Perhaps the shield finds its way back to them on the arm of a horned devil or some other way. Make it clear that the power and knowledge of the shield can help them.

In particular, it's possible Gargauth knows of Fort Knucklebone and the sage Mad Maggie who can help the characters locate the Sword of Zariel.

Use the Shield of the Hidden Lord as a vehicle for secrets and clues and a guide in Avernus when you need it.

The Atmosphere of Elturel

When the characters arrive and travel through Elturel reinforce the sights, sounds, and smells of hell. The sky burns and roils above them. The air smells of sulfur and brimstone. Towering black iron spikes pull the massive chains to the soul-screaming River Styx below. Don't lay it all on at once but continually reinforce the alien and damned nature of the world around them. Channel your Hellraiser.

When the characters arrive at one of the two bridges you can describe the huge drop to the wasteland below including the huge massive chains and the spikes lowering the city to the river.

Descent into Avernus has an excellent set of encounters you can run in Elturel. Shake up the encounters based on the pacing of the game. The characters shouldn't face combat encounter after combat encounter against devils and the like. There are plenty of roleplay encounters you can weave in for a change of the story. Let the characters see wars between demons and devils in the streets. Let them see a powerful narzugon riding through the streets on its nightmare with its hell lance leaking burning droplets of molten metal onto the ground. This very narzugon may be Haruman from chapter 3, one of Zariel's generals. Of course, let the characters see it, not fight it, or it will be a quick and bloody battle.

If you're looking to expand Elturel, consider the DM Guild supplement Encounters in Avernus. It's an excellent set of random encounters you can drop into Avernus, the River Styx, or Elturel itself.

Look to drop in an encounter each time the characters travel from one notable location to another. When the characters arrive they may face one interesting encounter on their way to the bridge. Than another between the bridge and High Hold.

When they reach the bridge, it's a great time to reintroduce Grace Lyn, the girl from Fall of Elturel who survived the descent of Elturel into hell. She can be an excellent emotional draw of the characters and a great motivation for the characters to save the city.

High Hall

When the characters get to High Hall they fight more devils and then meet up with the remaining refugees of Elturel. Here they learn that Uldar Ravengard went to the cemetery of Elturel to recover the Helm of Torm's Sight. If you've woven Gideon Lightward in, he can be found here as well.

One bit of fun in my own campaign was changing Gideon Lightward into the leader of the Hellriders now revealed as a vampire. He recruits the characters to close the demonic gate of Baphomet but really he wants to recruit them into the Blood War. Gideon can be one of Zariels generals as well, one who followed her path to darkness and prepared Elturel for its descent. We can have a lot of fun following Zariel's generals this way including Gideon, the vampire Jandor Sundstar in chapter 3, the narzugon Harumon, and the ghost Yael who pierced the Sword of Zariel into the ground of Avernus. This can be a great line of lore to reveal throughout the adventure.

The scenes in High Hall are also great ways to reconnect with Reya and her own motivations in Elturel and discover Lulu's strange connection to the plane. Like the Shield of the Hidden Lord, Lulu is a great vehicle for secrets and clues as well as giving just the right information at the right time to help the characters move forward.

With the refugee meeting completed, the characters head to the cemetery of Elturel to save Uldar Ravengard and learn of the next leg in their quest to save Elturel.

Cemetery of Elturel

Three interesting things happen at the cemetery. First, the characters save Uldar Ravengard and bring him back to High Hall. Second, the characters close Baphomet's gate in the ossuary. Third, the characters face off with Gideon Lightward.

We can run this as-is or we can add a bit of fun. In my own game, as mentioned, I turned Gideon Lightward into both a vampire and the leader of the Hellriders in Elturel. As a vampire, Zariel gave him immunity to the light shining down from the Companion for all those years, letting him hide in plain sight. Now, in Avernus, Gideon shows his true form and recruits the characters by explaining that, as allies of the Hellriders, their best course is to become devils and fight back the hordes of demons as Zariel wishes. We could have Gideon weakened by his own fight with the minions of Baphomet if we want the characters to stand a chance fighting a full-fledged vampire or he could leave disappointed when the characters turn him down, saving Gideon for a future encounter.

As for closing the gate we can spice things up by adding a couple of demonic pillars in the room that the characters must shatter to close the portal before a host of fiendish minotaurs step through the gate. On the other side the characters can see a twisted abyssal layer that looks like an endless labyrinth, the lair of Baphomet. When the characters close the gate, they can save Uldar, have any final confrontation with Gideon, and get back to High Hold.

Final Steps

With Uldar back at High Hold the characters can either cast a remove curse or conduct a ritual to remove the helm from Uldar. At that point Uldar describes the knight, Yael, driving Zariel's sword into the ground of Avernus and creating the Bleeding Citadel. The only question is where it is and no one seems to know. At this point, someone; maybe Gargauth, maybe Lulu, maybe a devil the characters have spoken to; lets the characters know that their next step is to find Mad Maggie at Fort Knucklebone.

Now the characters make their journey, one way or another, down the huge chains to the surface of hell and their journey across Avernus begins.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Support Sly Flourish by using these links to purchase the D&D Essentials Kit, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, or dice from Easy Roller Dice.

Send feedback to @slyflourish on Twitter or email mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Instant NPCs for Fifth Edition D&D

Note, this article has been updated from the original posted in February 2016.

When improvising an NPC or custom monster during the game, you can often start with a base DC between 10 (easy) and 20 (hard). If you end up needing combat statistics for your NPC or monster, grab the closest stat block from the Monster Manual and reskin it for flavor. If you want some quick creature statistics, try out the following formulas (round down):

AC / DC = 12 + 1/2 CR
Attack Bonus / Primary Saves = 3 + 1/2 CR
Hit Points = 15 + 15 x CR
Base Damage = 5 + 5 x CR

The Importance for Improvising NPCs

Monte Cook, designer of the third edition of D&D and the Numenera roleplaying game, wrote an interesting article called PCs versus NPCs in which he discusses the time we often waste putting together statistics for NPCs. These non-playing characters (NPCs), he argues, just show up, talk for a bit, and disappear forever. Here's an excerpt:

NPC (and creature) detail is one of the ways in which designers and GMs are often forced to waste a lot of time. That's because the game has all these great rules for fleshing out PCs and making them cool and interesting. A game that explores how well a PC is at combat, at interaction, at a wide variety of skills and actions, and makes all those things equally interesting is a great game. But then, it comes time to make NPCs.

Monte argues that the details our game needs for player characters to stay interesting doesn't apply to NPCs or monsters. Often some quick statistics are all we need to run most NPCs and monsters. Numenera and the Cypher RPG system has an easy way to manage this. A creature in Cypher only needs a level. The rest of the monster's statistics can be easily generated from this single number between 1 (easy) and 10 (very hard).

5e's design won't let us design a system as simple the one in the Cypher system for combatant NPCs. Monsters in D&D have a lot of crunch to them with six attributes, hit points, armor classes, saving throws, attack scores and detailed attacks. Luckily we have the Monster Manual to handle all of this for us.

Pick a Number Between 10 and 20

At its core, D&D 5e comes down to rolling a die, adding a modifier, and checking it against a difficulty check (DC). In just about any interaction that has a challenge, the DC is all we really need to come up with between a range of 10 (easy) and 20 (hard). Anything below 10 we can assume the characters just do without a check. Anything above 20 is likely too hard unless they're picking the doors to Lolth's vaults in the Demonweb Pits.

When a PC wants to interact with an NPC in some way that might be challenging for example being diplomatic, lying their asses off, or threatening them; all we need to do is ask ourselves "on a scale of 10 to 20, how difficult is this?". The answer to that question is our DC check.

Any particular NPC may have strengths or weaknesses when dealing with the PC. Maybe they're not very easy to intimidate (DC 16) but might succumb to flattery (DC 11).

Reskinning for Combat Statistics

Coming up with DCs for interactions with NPCs isn't too hard, but what about combat? Again, we can't have a system as easy as the Cypher System for this. Instead, we can choose one of two systems that still make it very easy.

First, use the NPC statistics in the back of the Monster Manual. We might be tempted to build new stat blocks or determine that the NPC stat blocks don't fit the NPC we have. Most of the time, though, it really doesn't matter. Choose the closest stat block that fits and go with it. If we need some higher power NPC stat blocks or more variety, we can use the NPCs from Volo's Guide to Monsters. For spellcasters, feel free to change up their spell lineup to fit the new NPC you've created.

If for some reason one of those stat blocks won't do, we can reskin a monster stat block from the Monster Manual into something closer to what we want or need. For example, if we want a barbarian warlord who hits like a freight train, we might use the fire giant stat block for the warlord.

Reskinning stat blocks is the most powerful improvisational tool for D&D.

Quick Monster Stats

The section "Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating" from chapter 9 of the Dungeon Master's Guide has statistics you can use to build a quick NPC or monster on the fly. For a looser and easier system, consider the following baseline statistics. First, choose a challenge level for your NPC or monsters. Consider that a single monster of a given challenge rating is roughly equivalant to four characters of that level. Use the following formulas to determine the rest of a creature's statistics:

AC / DC = 12 + 1/2 CR
Attack Bonus / Primary Saves = 3 + 1/2 CR
Hit Points = 15 + 15 x CR
Base Damage = 5 + 5 x CR

That's about all you need to build a quick NPC stat block if you'd rather not look up a stat block in the Monster Manual. It's definitely a loose system and not perfectly matched to the math of 5e D&D but the whole challenge rating system is likewise imperfect. In particular, it doesn't work well for monsters below CR 1 although just using the baseline stats would work (AC 12, +3 attacks and saves, 15 HP and 5 damage). Still, this will get the job done in a pinch.

You are, of course, encouraged to tweak the results of the above formulas to fit the specific monster. Just don't spend too much time on it.

For a better and more useful look at generating monster statistics on the fly, check out 5e monster manual on a business card including this really useful single-page PDF for selecting monster stats at any challenge rating.

Choose Tools to Help You Improvise

Its easy for us to complicate our lives without thinking about what we're doing. It's comfortable to worry more about monster statistics than the more open and creative components of our D&D games. The truth is, monster and NPC statistics just don't matter that much. Reskinning a stat block from the Monster Manual saves us a ton of time and, 99 times out of 100, works just as well as custom building a monster from scratch.

Keep the tools on hand that you need to improvise a great game. Start with a DC between 10 and 20 based on the situation and, if you need to, reskin a stat block from the Monster Manual. It's the easiest and most powerful way to run NPCs at the table.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Support Sly Flourish by using these links to purchase the D&D Essentials Kit, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, or dice from Easy Roller Dice.

Send feedback to @slyflourish on Twitter or email mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Zone-based Combat in D&D

D&D is a game of action and high adventure yet sometimes we lose the sense of wonder and excitement when we fall into the minutia of the mechanics. We also may want a combat system that doesn't require a battle map to play. Zone-based combat helps us maintain the fast pace and bold excitement of D&D without requiring a 5-foot-per-square grid.

This implementation of grid-based combat is loosely based on the zone-based combat systems in Fate Condensed by Evil Hat Games, Forbidden Rules by Robert Schwalb, and 5e Hardcore Mode by Runehammer Games.

Implementing Zone-based Combat in D&D

Here's a quick summary for using zone-based combat in D&D.

If a combat area is bigger than 30 feet square, break up the combat area into "zones" with in-world names such as "blood-iron throne dias" or "pillars of fallen heroes". If you need only one zone you don't need to define it.
Write down zone names on 3x5 cards, in a text-based list for online play, or as big areas on a battle map so everyone can see them.
On their turn, characters can move anywhere within a zone or move from one zone to another.
Assume characters are not within threatening reach of an enemy unless they were attacked by that enemy with a melee attack.
Ranged attacks can hit someone within the same zone or in an adjacent zone. If they were attaked by an enemy with a melee attack, we assume they're within 5 feet of that enemy and thus have disadvantage on ranged attacks.
Adjudicate specific situations as the come up in gameplay. Base your decision on what makes sense in the situation and favor the character when possible.
Assume characters move and act smartly. They will avoid obvious hazards or unneeded opportunity attacks. Don't surprise the players with gotchas.
For areas of effect, adjudicate the number of potentially effected targets using the rules on page 247 of the Dungeon Master's Guide or using these basic rules: small area = 2, medium area = 3, large area = 4, very large area = 8+.

A Flexible System for Many Different Types of Gameplay

This zone-based approach for D&D combat works with all types of combat styles including elaborate 3D terrain, beautiful pre-printed battle maps, online play with or without a virtual tabletop, hand-drawn maps, a stack of 3x5 cards, a dry-erase flip map, or even pure theater of the mind play. Whatever combat system you use, whatever accessories you enjoy, this zone-based approach works well.

Inspirational Zone Names

Use inspirational in-world zone names with clear hooks the players can grab onto to make things exciting and fun. Here are ten inspirational zone names intended to inspire players to leap into the action:

Large crumbling statues
Boiling oil pit
Spiked throne
Precarious rope bridge
Cracked elemental sarcophagus
Bottomless pit
Burning Unholy Altar
Advantageous Overlook
Lightning-infused monolith
Ancient portal to the eighth hell

If the players need some motivation to use these effects, offer them suggestions and perhaps offer them inspiration if they're willing to take a chance at some danger. Motivate them to take risks.

Handling Edge Cases

Because D&D uses specific 5 foot distances, there are situations that don't fit well into a zone-based approach. The main solution is for the DM to adjudicate such situations as they come up. In general, DMs adjudicate towards what makese sense for the situation and lean in favor the characters.

Character With Extra Movement

Some characters move faster than others such as wood elves, monks, and rogues. When we abstract distances with zones, it takes away from the advantages of playing with these characters. What good is it if a monk gains an extra 5 feet of movement if we're not bothering to play in 5 foot squares?

First, we have to ask, how important is that extra movement really? How often would it come up when we do play on a 5 foot per square grid? For some, like the monk and rogue, it can come up often. They get whole piles of extra movement, not just 5 feet.

For those characters who get entire extra move actions, we can use a nice simple guideline:

Most characters can move within a zone or from one zone to another. Monks and rogues, however, can jump two whole zones if they want to.

For an example, we might have a battle on a three-decked ship. Normal characters can move from one deck to another. Monks and rogues can move from any deck to any other.

As far as the extra 5 or 10 feet of movement that some characters have over another, we have to ask our players to accept that we're rounding that off in order to focus on the bigger and more heroic elements of the battle. You can also go with one of my favorites: "you would have been 10 feet short of your goal but since you're an elf, you made it!" That aways gets a narrowed-eyed harumph.

Adjudicating Areas of Effect

When we put a map down, fill it up with miniatures, and begin to run combat; we're bound to come to the discussion of how many targets—friends or foes—can fit in the area. Our best approach to this is to let the players know up front what they should expect from a spell's area to begin with.

The Dungeon Master's Guide outlines rules for this on page 247. We abstracted this further in our Guidelines for Theater of the Mind Combat into four categories: small areas (2), medium areas (3) large areas (4), and huge areas (8+). That's the starting guideline but circumstances can move that number up or down.

Opportunity Attacks and Sentinels

Opportunity attacks have been in the game even before the game focused on 5 foot squares. Though we may not have a specific visualization to recognize opportunity attacks, we can figure them out easily enough with some simple guidelines:

If a character was attacked by an enemy with a melee attack, they're within that enemy's threatening reach. This means disadvantage on ranged attacks or taking an opportunity attack if they try to move away.
If certain creatures are blocking access to another creature, such as a pair of iron golems blocking access to a lich, we can assume the iron golems will get opportunity attacks if someone tries to run past them to get to the lich.

Most of all, we assume creatures move smartly to avoid opportunity attacks when they can. Don't surprise players with an opportunity attack. The players can't see the situation the same way their characters can. Describe the risks and let the player choose what to do.

On the DM side, we should feel free to have monsters provoke opportunity attacks. It's great fun for players and we always have more monsters.

What about feats like sentinel? Again, we can fall back to the players intent. Ask them what they want to do and then set up the situation so they can do it. This is a fundamental principle for running theater-of-the-mind combat along with running combat with zones.

Focusing on High Adventure

Our overall goal when using abstract battle maps is to break away from the minutia of miniature wargaming and bring the focus back to the fast action and high adventure of our roleplaying game. Beyond being useful aids to ensure players share a common view of the battle, detailed battle maps and miniatures can be a wonderful rich part of this game we love. By abstracting distances while using physical maps, we can get the best of both worlds: detailed physical battle areas with beautiful miniatures and the high adventure we love best in D&D.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Support Sly Flourish by using these links to purchase the D&D Essentials Kit, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, or dice from Easy Roller Dice.

Send feedback to @slyflourish on Twitter or email mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

1d100 Forgotten Realms Factions

In previous articles on Sly Flourish I wrote about the value of randomness in our D&D games and offered random tables to help inspire your own adventures such as those in the Lazy DM's Workbook, Random Lists for Adventure Inspiration, and 1d100 Eberron Factions. This last one is intended to fuel other random tables you find either in the links above or in the Dungeon Master's Guide. With a 1d100 faction table you can tie in-world lore to the objects and locations directly in front of the characters. Each object in the world can teach them a little bit of lore or tie together major world plotlines one dirt-covered coin at a time.

Today we have 1d100 factions for the Forgotten Realms. The Forgotten Realms is vast. There's probably more like 1,000 factions. This list, however, covers much of what you'd find in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, this edition's slimmed down sourcebook for the Forgotten Realms.

Like other 1d100 tables, you can use the items on this list to build your own more refined list that fits the campaign you're telling and what information helps push that campaign forward. A Tyranny of Dragons campaign may benefit from a refined 1d20 list that includes more factions focused on and around that campaign. As the characters dig around they find clues that point to other elements tangential to the campaign.

Each faction includes a symbol that the characters might find while uncovering the secret and clue about this faction.

Without further ado, here are 1d100 Forgotten Realms factions. You can also download a PDF of 1d100 Forgotten Realms factions to add to your DM kit.

1d100FactionDescription (Symbol)
1AkadiGoddess of air. (Cloud)
2AmaunatorGod of the sun. (Golden sun)
3AsmodeusGod of indulgence. (Three inverted triangles arranged in a long triangle)
4AurilGoddess of winter. (Six-pointed snowflake)
5AzuthGod of wizardry. (Left hand pointing upward, outlined in fire)
6BaneGod of tyranny. (Upright black hand, thumb and fingers together)
7BeshabaGoddess of misfortune. (Black antlers)
8BhaalGod of murder. (Skull surrounded by ring of bloody droplets)
9ChaunteaGoddess of agriculture. (Sheaf of grain or a blooming rose over grain)
10CyricGod of lies. (White jawless skull on black or purple sunburst)
11DeneirGod of writing. (Lit candle above an open eye)
12EldathGoddess of peace. (Waterfall plunging into a still pool)
13GondGod of craft. (Toothed cog with four spokes)
14GrumbarGod of earth. (Mountain)
15Gwaeron WindstromGod of tracking. (Paw print with a five-pointed star in its center)
16HelmGod of watchfulness. (Staring eye on upright left gauntlet)
17HoarGod of revenge and retribution. (A coin with a two-faced head)
18IlmaterGod of endurance. (Hands bound at the wrist with red cord)
19IstishiaGod of water. (Wave)
20JergalScribe of the dead. (A skull biting a scroll)
21KelemvorGod of the dead. (Upright skeletal arm holding balanced scales)
22KossuthGod of fire. (Flame)
23LathanderGod of dawn and renewal. (Road traveling into a sunrise)
24LeiraGoddess of illusion. (Point-down triangle containing a swirl of mist)
25LliiraGoddess of joy. (Triangle of three six-pointed stars)
26LoviatarGoddess of pain. (Nine-tailed barbed scourge)
27MalarGod of the hunt. (Clawed paw)
28MaskGod of thieves. (Black mask)
29MielikkiGoddess of forests. (Unicorn's head)
30MililGod of poetry and song. (Five-stringed harp made of leaves)
31MyrkulGod of death. (White human skull)
32MystraGoddess of magic. (Circle of seven stars, nine stars encircling a flowing red mist, or a single star)
33OghmaGod of knowledge. (Blank scroll)
34The Red KnightGoddess of strategy. (Red knight lanceboard piece with stars for eyes)
35SavrasGod of divination and fate. (Crystal ball containing many kinds of eyes)
36SeluneGoddess of the moon. (Pair of eyes surrounded by seven stars)
37SharGoddess of darkness and loss. (Black disk encircled with a purple border)
38SilvanusGod of wild nature. (Oak leaf)
39SuneGoddess of love and beauty. (Face of a beautiful red-haired woman)
40TalonaGoddess of poison and disease. (Three teardrops in a triangle)
41TalosGod of storms. (Three lightning bolts radiating from a point)
42TempusGod of war. (Upright flaming sword)
43TormGod of courage and self-sacrifice. (White right gauntlet)
44TymoraGoddess of good fortune. (Face-up coin)
45TyrGod of justice. (Balanced scales resting on a warhammer)
46UmberleeGoddess of the sea. (Wave curling left and right)
47ValkurNorthlander god of sailors. (A cloud and three lightning bolts)
48WaukeenGoddess of trade. (Upright coin with Waukeen's profile facing left)
49HarpersNetwork of spies who advocate equality and covertly oppose the abuse of power. (Silver harp)
50Order of the GauntletClerics and paladins sworn to destroy evil in the world. (Iron gauntlet holding a sword)
51Zhentarim (new)Mercenary company known as the black network. (Winged serpent)
52Emerald EnclaveDruids and others who believe in nature's preservation Horned stag over green.
53Lord's AllianceOrganization of leaders of the Sword Coast. (A crown over gold and orange)
54Cult of the Dragon (original)Cult aiming to transform dragons into dracolichs. (Eyes within flame above a bone dragon claw)
55Cult fo the Dragon (new)Cult aiming to return Tiamat to Faerun. (Five slashes across a dragon's profile)
56NetherilAncient human magocracy of great power. (Floating city)
57Abolethic SovereigntyAboleths who resided in Faerun for millions of years. (Black swirling glyphs within a circle)
58NeverwinterCity of corruption in the northern Sword Coast. (Eye with three droplets below)
59Waterdeeplargest city in Faerun on the Sword Coast. (Crescent moon over water on blue)
60Baldur's GateCorrupt city of southern Faerun. (Ship and castle on blue)
61SilverymoonJewel of the North and capital of Silver Marches. (Crescent moon and star on blue)
62GauntlgrymAncient dwarven city and capital of the Delzoun dwarves. (Stern dwarven face)
63Mithral HallNorthern dwarven city. (Tankard)
64DelzounAncient dwarves of the sword coast and the north. (Stern dwarven face)
65Myth DrannorAncient elven city of central Faerun.
66ShadowdaleSmall town in the center of the Dalelands and home to Elminster. (Moon over a white tower)
67MenzoberranzanCity of the drow and throne of the spider queen in Faerun. (Spider over a diamond)
68EvermeetIsland paradise of the elves.
69Many-arrowsEmpire of orcs in the north. (Five arrows pointed up)
70MoonshaesIslands with the Ffolk and an elf offshoot known as the Llewyr. (A silver bear on its hind legs)
71Mantol-DerithTrading post between the surface and the underdark.
72AmnA city of wealthy dynasties and trade. (Lady's profile over gold)
73ThayMagocracy of the Red Wizards. (Eight orbeting orbs over a bolting spark)
74CalimshanCity of former slaves under genie masters. (Diagnal stripes across a golden sphere)
75HalruaaReturned magocracy of skyships and earthmotes. (Three rings of silver on red)
76Zhentil KeepPowerful city of the Zhentarim (old). (Black dragon holding a golden sphere)
77Zhentarim (old)Army led by the Manshoon and Fzoul Chembryl. (Black dragon behind golden sphere)
78DarkholdFormer giant citadel of the Zhentarim (old). (Tower on a mountain)
79Iqua'Tel'QuessirThe creator races; reptilian, avian, and amphibian rulers of Faerun 10,000+ years ago.
80AryvandaarSun elf kingdom that fell during the Fifth Crown War.
81BeselmirDwarven realm in hills of the valley of the��River Dessarin 6,000 years ago. (Wheel over a plow)
82Miyeritar��Drow empire in northwestern Faerun, destroyed 13K years ago. (Dancing drow over full moon)
83IllefarnElven city-state that was founded during the First Flowering in -22,900 DR .
84AelinthaldaarCapital of Illefarn, ancient elven civilization in northwest Faerun where Waterdeep stands now.
85EaerlannElven kingdom in the valley of the Delimbiyr River. (Green tree with golden leaves)
86AbbathorGod of greed. (Jeweled dagger, point-down)
87Clangeddin SilverbeardGod of war. (Crossed silver battleaxes)
88Deep DuerraDuergar goddess of conquest and psionics. (Mind flayer skull)
89DumathoinGod of buried secrets. (Mountain silhouette with a central gemstone)
90MoradinGod of creation. (Hammer and anvil)
91Corellon LarethianGod of art and magic. (Crescent moon)
92Sehanine MoonbowGoddess of divination. (Full moon under a moonbow)
93GruumshGod of storms and war. (Unblinking eye)
94YondallaGoddess of fertility and protection. (Cornucopia on a shield)
95EilistraeeGoddess of song and moonlight. (Dancing drow female silhouetted against the full moon)
96LolthGoddess of spiders. (Spider)
97TiamatGoddess of dragons. (Five-headed dragon)
98UthgardtBarbarian tribes of the Sword Coast.
99ReghedBarbarian tribes of the north.
100AscalhornFormer citadel of the Eaerlann elves, now known as Hellgate Keep.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Support Sly Flourish by using these links to purchase the D&D Essentials Kit, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, or dice from Easy Roller Dice.

Send feedback to @slyflourish on Twitter or email mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Text-based Combat Tracking for D&D on Discord

Since all of my in-person games have moved online in 2020 I've become fascinated with the best practices for playing D&D online. While there are many solutions out there, I've found that playing D&D over Discord offered the easiest setup for players and the easiest prep and play time for me as the dungeon master.

I've been running combat almost exclusively in the theater of the mind while playing online. Online programs like Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds offer excellent virtual tabletops for online play and many groups love and swear by these tools. I find they take more work than I'm willing to put in as a lazy dungeon master. I like things simple. I'll take screen captures of Dyson maps and paste them into the text chat of Discord instead of using a virtual tabletop. This style isn't for everyone but it works well for me.

In pure theater of the mind combat it's easy for players to lose track of what's going on. Who is where? Who is next to who? How many are left? Who is grouped up? How many can I hit with grease? Can I reach them with a move action? These questions must be constantly and continually addressed by the players and the DM during theater of the mind combat. It removes agency from the players and that can be frustrating.

Abstract maps are an excellent way to handle these questions and still keep the flexibility and fluidity of theater of the mind combat. There isn't a great way to do this in my Discord-only style of online play however.

Until my wife and I came up with the following idea: text-based battle maps.

What if you could visualize combat in D&D using only text? What would that look like? How could it work? It works if we think about combat not on a 2d grid but in a one dimensional line. For a great example of one-dimensional combat, take a look at the excellent computer RPG Darkest Dungeon. Here's what combat in Darkest Dungeon looks like.

Combat is all in a line with front-line combatants and back-line combatants. We can simulate this style of combat in a simple text list that we paste into Discord's text channel so people can get a general idea where they're positioned.

We can also use Fate-style zones to identify specific locations if there are more than one in a single battle. Let's look at an example.

A Quick Example of Text-based Combat

When we write out a one-dimensional battle map in text, it looks like this:

**Eastern Doorway**
Iron Mohawk Animated Armor 12
_Sabre_
Brass Animated Armor 16
_Banner_
---
**Northern Hallway**
One-eye Gnoll 4
Purple Fur Gnoll 4
_Shane_
---
**Southern Doorway**
_Arwin_
_Zarantyr_
_Shift_

When this Markdown text is rendered in Discord, it looks like this:

Eastern Doorway

Iron Mohawk Animated Armor 12

Sabre

Brass Animated Armor 16

Banner

---

Northern Hallway

One-eye Gnoll 4

Purple Fur Gnoll 4

Shane

---

Southern Doorway

Arwin

Zarantyr

Shift

Our Markdown text lets us bold locations and italicizing characters. We separate "zones" with a "---" which represents a distance of about 20 to 30 feet or so, about a move action. Characters grouped up in a single location are considered within 5 to 10 feet of one another and can generally move around within that zone without taking an opportunity attack. Areas of effect can hit some number of creatures within a zone depending on the size and the situation.

DMs can keep this text-based battle map in a text editor outside of Discord and use it to track damage and status effects. As the battle moves on they update it and re-paste it into Discord so everyone can see the current situation.

Here's another example with a whole ton of crawling claws. We can group up a lot of monsters into a single group with a "Nx" where N is the number of monsters.

Dark Doorway

Royce

Alder

Hiccup

50x Crawling Claws

---

Charnel Pit

25x Crawling Claws

Kraul

25x Crawling Claws

We can use some simplified horde rules to run a battle like this. For example, we can assume about one in five crawling claws hit when they attack or save when hit with an area of effect.

Here's a battle in which the characters are surrounded by trolls.

Western Embankment

3x Trolls

---

Central Island

Lux

Hadrian

Odelle

Coratash

---

Eastern Embankment

3x Trolls

We can use the character positioning to determine who's in the middle of the group (Hadrian and Odelle) and who's outside waiting to face the oncoming trolls (Lux and Cratash).

Markdown Map Syntax

These one-dimensional text-based battle maps use the following Markdown-based syntax:

Player characters are italicized by wrapping them in underscores "_".
Locations are bolded with a pair of asterisks "**".
Three dashes (---) represent distance between groups or locations. Each set of dashes represents a distance of around 15 to 30 feet; generally the distance a character can move on a turn. Each additional set of dashes is another 15 to 30 feet, another move.
Creatures within one location are generally considered within 5 to 10 feet of one another. They can generally move around within the location without taking an opportunity attack but may take an opportunity attack if moving to another location.
Groups of monsters can be represented with "Nx" before their name where N is the number of monsters (example 6x Kobolds).
Damage inflicted to one monster or a group can be denoted with a number at the end of the monster's name (One-eyed gnoll 7). We can account for hordes this way by removing one monster from the group when the damage is equal to the hit points of a single monster in the group (14x skeletons 7).
Status effects can be put at the front of a creature's name like "S" for sleep, "P" for prone, or "H" for hypnotized. You don't need a full key for this, just use the first letter of the effect and people will figure it out. You can also just write out the effect like "(Sleep)" or "(Hypnotized)".

The Character Marching Order

Our simplest group representation can represent the marching order of the characters. Here's the example marching order for a group of characters.

Banner

Sabre

Shane

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

We can keep this in our text editor and paste it and pin it in Discord so everyone knows who is where while exploring. When the characters get attacked, we add monster names to the top of the list. Here our group ran into a pair of ogres.

Ogre

Ogre

Banner

Sabre

Shane

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

Understanding Groups

If the characters split up into multiple groups with distance between them, we can split up the group and note the locations of the area. Here's a single-room example where the party is all together.

Vault Gallery

Animated Armor

Animated Armor

Banner

Sabre

Shane

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

We can assume that any character directly above or below a creature is considered within 5 feet. It's likely that the second one down is also within 5 feet. Thus either animated armor can attack either Banner or Sabre but not Shane, Xi, Shift, or Zarantier. Characters can move around to offer more attacks. We can assume that creatures can move around in the list to surround their foes. If they move two slots away from an enemy, they likely take an opportunity attack. Here the animated armors have waded in to get to the middle line:

Vault Gallery

Banner

Animated Armor

Sabre

Animated Armor

Shane

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

Now the second animated armor can likely hit Xi and Shane. Perhaps the back-line characters wanted to get away from the animated armors. We can represent this with distance by separating groups with "---". We assume this represents roughly 25 feet; enough to traverse with a move.

Vault Gallery

Banner

Animated Armor

Sabre

Animated Armor

Shane

---

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

This sets up a second group of characters with distance between them and the first group. The animated armors can't get to Xi, Shift, or Zarantier without taking opportunity attacks from Banner, Sabre, and Shane.

Using Locations as "Zones"

With this style of combat representation we can separate specific locations in an area. Each location is its own "zone", a roughly 25 foot square area. Some battle areas will have multiple locations. Generally, while moving, characters can move around within a zone or move from one zone to another. We use location names to give players an in-game representation of the location of their characters. Here's an example of a situation with three zones:

Flying Discs

Gnoll

---

Aerial Docks

Gnoll

Gnoll

---

Northern Vault Doorway

Banner

Sabre

Shane

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

One gnoll is flying about 60 feet away from the northern door on a flying disc. Two other gnolls left their discs and are on the docks about 25 feet away from the northern door. The characters are all at the northern door in their marching order.

As combat moves forward, characters and creatures will move from one zone to another. Some characters will move up and engage the gnolls on the docks. The gnoll on the disc is hit with a blast that knocks him off his disc and down onto the towers of Sharn a thousand feet below. Now the battle looks like this:

Aerial Docks

Gnoll

Banner

Gnoll

Sabre

Shane

---

Northern Vault Doorway

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

As the battle moves on we edit our text version of the markdown map in a text editor and paste it back into Discord to show the current situation. Copying and pasting from our text editor to Discord is fast and easy.

We can use a series of "---"s to represent even longer distances. Let's say a gnoll sniper on a flying disc is purposefully staying away from the group:

Flying Disc

Gnoll

---

---

Aerial Docks

Gnoll

Banner

Gnoll

Sabre

Shane

---

Northern Vault Doorway

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

The gnoll on the further flying disc is 50 to 60 feet way or so in this representation. Hard to reach, particularly when flying through the air.

Player-Identified Monster Characteristics

When we first start out we can define monsters by their generic name like "shadowfey skeleton". When a character first inflicts damage to them we can ask the player to define a notable physical characteristic of that enemy to define them better within the context of the game. This is a great way to get the players into the fiction of the game and better define targets for other players. When the player identifies such a characteristic we can rename the monster in our text-based battle map and paste it into the text chat so everyone can see it. After a few rounds of combat, our map might look like this:

Aerial Docks

Manticore 14

Loop-Earring Gnoll 7

Banner

One-eyed Gnoll 11

Sabre

Shane

---

Northern Vault Doorway

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

Tracking Damage

As a DM, we already need some way to track monster damage. We can use this same text-based battle map to track damage and can let our players know how much has been inflicted. The example above shows that the loop-earring gnoll has taken 7 damage and the one-eyed gnoll has taken 11.

If we want to get fancy and run large numbers of monsters, we can group monsters together in a single line of text and track damage done to the whole group. Every time the group takes enough damage to kill a single monster, we remove one of the monsters. Here the characters are getting attacked by a horde of skeletons:

Dark Doorway

16x Skeletons 7

Royce

Alder

Hiccup

---

Charnel Pit

25x Crawling Claws

Kraul

25x Crawling Claws

Instead of rolling dice for all of these monster hordes, we can use our horde rules and assume that one-in-four of them succeeds on an attack or saving throw. If they're particularly weak, this might be one-in-five to one-in-ten instead.

Adjudicating Areas of Effect

We can use the representation of zones and groups to help adjudicate areas of effect. In this example, two gnolls are grouped up at the aerial dock:

Aerial Dock

Gnoll

Gnoll

---

Northern Doorway

Shane Husk

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

Shane Husk moves up to the aerial dock and targets the two gnolls with thunder wave, potentially sending them off the edge and into the night air above Sharn. One of them fails and is sent soaring. The other held his ground but took six damage. Now it looks like this:

Aerial Dock

Gnoll 6

Shane Husk

---

Northern Doorway

Xi

Shift

Zarantier

Hang On with a Loose Grip

This text-based battle map isn't intended to be a perfect representation of what is going on. It's a loose and general representation. Both you and your players need to hang onto this with a loose grip. Keep it flexible, use your verbal descriptions to clarify the situation, and change it as needed. Don't get too wrapped around the "rules" for this battle map. It's imperfect. Treat it thusly.

A Quick, Flexible, and Imperfect Tactical Solution

For players seeking the full tactical experience that 5e can offer with a two-dimensional grid, this isn't going to give it to them. You can mimic some level of tactics with this system. Who is within 5 feet of who, who is grouped up, who is in what location, how far away is someone; that sort of thing can be generally represented but that's not the same as seeing how many skeletons you can hit with a fireball template on a 2d grid.

The intent of this simplified text-based combat map is to help players get a general feel for the situation in a battle while running narrative theater-of-the-mind-style combat. It's meant to be fast, simple, easy, and usable in just about any text-chat (although the Markdown rendering in Discord helps). It doesn't solve every solution for representing combat but it serves well where it serves.

Try it out and see what you think.

New to Sly Flourish? Start here, subscribe to the weekly newsletter, or support Sly Flourish on Patreon!

Check out Mike's books including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, Fantastic Adventures, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

Support Sly Flourish by using these links to purchase the D&D Essentials Kit, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Dungeon Master's Guide, or dice from Easy Roller Dice.

Send feedback to @slyflourish on Twitter or email mike@mikeshea.net.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

1d20 D&D Adventure Hooks from Movies

Few movies work as well as models for D&D games than we think. This is usually for one big reason: the movie's story depends on how the characters act and we can't count on that in D&D. Instead, the movies that work well as models for D&D games are ones built upon a situation in which the characters choose their course. I recently wrote a list of movies with situations I felt work well as the hook for a D&D adventure. Here's the list:

Raiders of the Lost Ark. Find the thing before an evil larger force finds it first.
Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven. Defend a town from an overwhelming force.
Jaws. Hunt down a powerful beast.
The Hobbit. Rout a villain and restore a location to its rightful owner.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. You and two other groups seek the same treasure.
Yojimbo. Defend a town from two different competing factions.
Oceans 11 / Inception. Break into a vault and steal something.
Apocalypse Now. Hunt down a former hero who became a cult fanatic.
Aliens. Find out what happened to a location that stopped responding.
The Thing. Uncover enemies among us.
Mad Max Fury Road. Rescue people from tyrannical villains.
Kill Bill. Hunt down a squad of master assassins.
Escape From New York. Rescue someone from a prison ruled by the inmates.
The Princess Bride. Save someone from a fixed marraige and bring them to their true love.
Saving Private Ryan. Recover a soldier behind enemy lines during a war.
Jurassic Park. Escape a park of monsters gone wild.
Star Wars / Rogue One. Acquire secret information and get it into the right hands.
Children of Men / Willow. Save a child from a world trying to destroy it.
Die Hard / Dredd. Escape from a building overtaken by villains.
The Warriors. Villains and heroes alike hunt you for a crime you didn't commit.

Inspiration

Twitter discussion of best D&D movies
22 Panels that Always Work

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Using Notion.so for Lazy D&D Campaign Planning

For the last few years, while using the steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master to prepare for my game, I'd write my prep notes in a text file using markdown and saved my files to a campaign directory. This all worked well. I could pull up the notes on any device when I needed to and use them to run my game.

View and duplicate the Lazy D&D Notion Campaign Template.

A few months ago, my friend Juliet told me about a program called Notion.so. Notion is "notebook" app, a lot like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote if you're familiar with them. OneNote, in particular, is very popular with many DMs for organizing their game notes and it works quite well. This article isn't intending to convince you to switch from a system you love to Notion. Use what you dig. OneNote is a great program for a lot of DMs and if it works for you, stick with it.

Like OneNote, Notion has clients for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and a web-based client so you can access your notebooks anywhere. All of these clients look and feel like the others. It does, unfortunately, require that you are online to view your notes — a major drawback.

I'm not going to offer a general tutorial for Notion. If you want to learn more about how it works, you can learn more about some of the features I'm using here:

Notion Pages
Notion Views
Notion Databases
Notion Gallery Databases

I also have this Notion D&D Campaign Notebook Youtube video if you prefer a video walkthrough for using my Notion campaign notebook for D&D.

The Lazy DM's Notion Notebook Template

For this article I've created a Lazy DM's Campaign Notebook Template for Notion. To use this notebook do the following:

Ensure you're logged into Notion.so.
Right click on the top-level notebook and "duplicate".
Make any modifications to this duplicated template that you want.
Duplicate that notebook to create a notebook for your own campaign.

This way you have your own custom template you can modify and use for each of your campaigns. As you figure out improvements, you can make them to the template so your next campaign will have all of those changes.

This campaign notebook template has everything set up to jot down NPCs, villains, items, locations, characters, and session notes.

Let's break down this notebook to show you how it all works.

Breaking Down the Lazy DM Notion Notebook

Currently the lazy D&D campaign notebook has the following components:

Character Database. A database that holds character information including character names, player names, trained skills, and passive scores. You can use this as a small DM screen to keep track of trained skills and passive scores to help you smooth out storytelling during the game. In the body of each character record you can put detailed information, links to other notes, and a picture of the character.
Campaign Database. This database holds just about everything else. It has cards for NPCs, items, locations, villains, and scratchpads. Each of these card types are tags you can apply to any card in the campaign database.
Session Template. This page outlines the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master . You'll want to duplicate this page each time you have a session and go through the steps within it. You can link to individual cards in the character or campaign database by typing "@" and then the name of the card. This pulls up a small search that lets you link to that card.
Session Zero Notes. This is a page to help you organize your session zero notes.
Characters. This page links to the character database with two views: a gallery view so you can see the portraits of each of the characters and a table view that lets you see the names, trained skills, and passive scores for each character. This way you can streamline your narrative as you call for particular characters to make trained skill checks or tell certain characters they notice things based on their passive scores.
NPCs, Locations, Villains, and Items. Each of these pages is a filtered gallery view into the campaign database. This way you have a nice gallery of each of these types of cards from the campaign database.
Stars and Wishes. This is an optional dedicated database that lets you record the stars and wishes for your players. This is a great way to get feedback on what characters enjoy and what they want to see more of in your campaign. If you don't want this complexity, you can store this as notes in each character pages.
Scratchpads. This page shows a filtered gallery view of scratchpad cards in the campaign database. You can use these to write down any notes during the game, keep track of initiative, track monster damage, or write down any other temporary notes. I use it a lot for Avrae templates for online games.
Old Session Notes. This is a top-level page intended to let you drop in older session notes so you can keep them but keep them out of the way.

Creating New Notes

You can add new NPCs, villains, locations, items, scratchpads, to the campaign database or right on the filtered view pages by clicking the big plus sign. Write in your notes and add the right tag. If you don't tag it, it won't show up on the views.

You can link internally between cards or pages by typing the "@" sign and starting to type the name of the page or card you want to link. This opens up a small search window of titles. Select the right one and it links in place. This helps you link between your characters, NPCs, locations, villains, and items like a wiki would. It's very handy.

The Importance of Images

I've found it useful and enjoyable to add images to just about everything in the notebook. Every character, NPC, villain, item, or location has an image which makes the gallery views look great and also helps pull my imagination into the game.

I also love adding artwork for the cover of each page to match the campaign I'm running. The default notebook uses artwork from my books but you can customize it for your own campaign. These covers help pull me into the fiction and gets my head into the game. Here's an example from my Descent into Avernus notebook.

When you build a new campaign notebook, add some evocative images to the pages, cards, and covers. You'll enjoy working with the notebook more and it gives you some great images to share with your players.

Notion's Major Drawback: No Offline Mode

Notion's major drawback is that it has no offline mode. While it has clients for just about every platform, including the web, it has no support for running offline. You can export your notes, including your entire campaign, into a variety of formats including HTML and Markdown + CSV but these don't work particularly well for offline play. It's a good way to preserve your notes into a standard format but you lose filtered views and a few other features when you export out of Notion.

Notion has had the request for offline support for a long time. The fact that they don't have it yet means it's not likely something we're going to see in the near future. This will be a game-breaker for some people and I can sympathize.

One of Many Possible Tools

I've come to love Notion as a way to keep track of my D&D campaigns. If you're looking for something, give it a look. There are many outstanding tools out there, all of them loved by many DMs. This one likely isn't for everyone and if you have one you already love, go with the gods. If you're on the look for a new one, though, give Notion a go and see how it works for you.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Building Situations in D&D

Our D&D games can become more fluid, flexible, and easier to improvise when we DMs focus on larger situations and less on specific scenes and encounters.

At it's core, D&D can be broken down into the following steps:

The DM describes the situation.
The players describe what they want to do.
If needed, dice are rolled.
The DM describes the results.

This cycle is what makes our D&D games run. If we look at the biggest or smallest moments in 1st level adventures or 20th level campaign conclusions, it comes down to the DM describing the situation, players describing what they want to do, everyone rolling some dice, and the DM describing the results.

Many times DMs prepare static situations encounter by encounter. There's a dungeon. It has rooms. There are monsters in those rooms. The characters go room to room fighting those monsters. Many DMs break down their adventures into a series of encounters, each like a scene block, with its own introduction and conclusion built-in. Some of them are combat encounters, some exploration encounters, and some roleplay encounters. If these are combat encounters, there are a number of combatants in these rooms waiting for the characters to show up before they begin to act.

The 3rd and 4th editions of D&D focused heavily on these sort of combat encounters. In published adventures they had two-page spreads with carefully balanced battles against a number of foes in various tactical positions. Each battle became its own small board game. Lots of people loved it.

The 5th edition of D&D has largely let go of these static combat encounters. Instead, it, and many DMs who run it, step back and look at the whole situation. Instead of a series of balanced combat encounters, we might look at a whole hobgoblin fort, decide which hobgoblins are there, what their behaviors are, and how they will react depending on the actions the characters will take. In this style, gameplay is much more dynamic and heavily improvised. We don't know how many hobgoblin guards will be at the front gates because it changes depending on the time and other situations around the fort. We don't know if there are any hobgoblins guarding that old well in the back, the one connected to the ancient cistern said to be the home of an ancient and hungry beast.

Instead of having a series of carefully balanced combat encounters, we pull back and look at the whole situation. When the characters confront the situation, spying on the hobgoblin fort from a cliff overlook, we describe the situation and they decide on their plans.

We can call this style of DMing, "building situations" instead of building encounters. Will the characters sneak in through the well, bluff the guards, cause a distraction, or start lobbing fireballs from the cliff? We don't know. That's up to them. How the fort reacts to it is up to us.

We can think of this as though we're widening our aperture when looking at the world. Instead of considering our games as a series of tactical combat encounters, we're looking at the bigger picture.

Ignoring the Boundaries of Exploration, Roleplaying, and Combat

As our aperture widens and we look at the whole situation instead of a series of encounters, we can also let go of the borders between exploration, roleplay, and combat scenes. We likely want to ensure there are opportunities for all three pillars within the overall situation. Some hobgoblins might hate working at the fort and are eager to leave or have the hobgoblin captain displaced. Maybe there are some prisoners. Perhaps the whole fort sits within the ruins of an ancient Netherese castle with a nest of secret laboratories underneath. We can drop in elements of all three pillars into our situation without defining how they will come up during the game itself. We don't define each scene, we just define the situation, and we let the players choose the pillars.

An Example: The Howling Fiend in Legacy of the Crystal Shard

In the D&D Next adventure Legacy of the Crystal Shard, our heroes have an opportunity to deal with a pirate ship from Luskan called the Howling Fiend. In our old way of designing adventures, we might set up a series of well-balanced encounters where the characters fight groups of pirates, pirate veterans, and the pirate captain along with her personal guard. We might have a scene where the characters meet with some drunken pirates who aren't happy with this whole situation in Icewind Dale and might be willing to negotiate. The characters might also explore nearby caves that the villainous wizard Vaelish Gant had used to hold his hostage—the speaker of Bryn Shander.

Instead of breaking this down by scene and encounter, we can look at the whole situation. The Howling Fiend is docked in a huge glacial overhang along Lac Dinneshere. There's a crack in the glacier overhang that leads up to the surface and a couple of pirate guards posted there who can collapse the ice above and seal off this entryway if need be. There are a bunch of ramshackle huts built on an iceflow down by the water's edge and a winding path to an overlook near the crack that leads up to the surface.

Our pirates include two dozen bandits, a bandit captain, a gladiator, and a mage. The captain and her barbarian gladiator bodyguard often oversee repairs to the ship and shipments being moved from the iceflow to the ship. At any given time there are a half dozen pirates on the iceflow, another half dozen working on the ship, another half dozen up along the overlook and the guard post, and a half dozen sleeping one off either on the ship or in the huts.

There are no defined encounters for this situation. There's only the situation. It's up to the players to choose how their characters deal with this situation. They might use stealth to sneak in and assassinate as many pirates as they can. They might negotiate their way in disguised as pirates or barbarian mercenaries. They might decide to go in with swords drawn and hope for the best. They might sneak in through the crack in the glacial wall or come in on a boat painted black.

We don't know how the players will decide to deal with this. We set up the situation and let them choose their course. When we build situations, it's far easier for us to react when the players go in an unexpected direction.

Situations as Heists

We can think of these situations as "heists". Each heist has a location, inhabitants, and an objective. We DMs set up the situation and the objectives, the players choose how their characters engage in the heist, and we DMs adjudicate the results.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist has two such situations. Waterdeep Dragon Heist Chapter 3 has the characters infiltrate Gralhund Villa to chase down an assassin who has stole an artifact that had been intercepted before it could be given to the characters. The DM sets up the situation at the villa, the characters choose their course of action, and the DM determines the results. Later on, depending on how it plays out, the characters may infiltrate the lair of one of the main villains in Waterdeep Dragon Heist. In my own game it was Cassalanter Villa. The devil-worshipping Cassalanters have the Stone of Golorr hidden away in their hidden temple to Azmodeus while conducting a large garden party for the city's elite in their manor. The DM sets up the situation, the players choose their approach, the DM adjudicates the results. The same is true for the infiltration of the Vanthampur estate in Descent into Avernus.

These situations work well. There's a single large location, a faction of enemies at that location, and an objective for the characters to achieve. The rest plays out during the game.

Avoiding the Single Roll Failure

When we build situations like this, we have to be careful not to let a single roll completely ruin the situation or, by default, drop it right into combat. We don't want a single bad roll to ruin the whole plan the players spent an hour putting together. Things may go bad, but it shouldn't be a single bad roll that takes it there. It should come from a series of complications.

We need to keep the idea of "failing forward" always in mind. Just as no single attack roll determines the success or failure of an entire battle, no single skill roll should determine the entire outcome for a heist. Instead, a series of skill checks moves the needle one way or another or steers the path that the scene takes.

A single bad deception roll shouldn't ruin an entire negotiation with the guards in the front. Instead, it might make them more suspicious or greedy.

A single bad stealth check won't cause the entire hobgoblin fort to come down on the characters but it might start to alert one of the sentries. A second bad stealth check might make them come over to investigate but it might take three before the hobgoblin even draws a weapon in concern.

We have to remember that when we're describing a situation, players are only understanding about half of what we're talking about. They don't see it as clearly as we do. Adjudicate the results in their favor, recognizing that they don't have a full grasp of the situation, so things aren't always against them. The bad guys don't have to be fully alert. Their hearing may not be that good. They may choose to ignore or avoid confrontation instead of facing it head on.

Don't let the outcome hang on a single die roll. Instead let each roll move the story slightly more in favor or against the goals of the characters. It's hard to do but it builds wonderfully rewarding and dynamic scenes we could never have anticipated.

Likewise, if things do turn to combat, we don't have to play it that every hobgoblin in the fort comes running. Battles are chaotic. People get lost. They get scared. It's fine to run waves of combatants but give the characters a break in the story to choose their next action. Give them a chance to run or sneak around. Let the gameplay types shift as the situation evolves.

When Situations Don't Make Sense

Developing larger situations doesn't always make sense for the type of adventure we're running. In many cases, particularly dungeon crawls, it works fine if you have scenes from room to room. The dungeon of the dead three in Descent into Avernus is a good example. There's still a situation going on down there but in general, the characters are crawling room to room hunting down cultists. Traditional D&D dungeon crawls can still work well as a series of connected encounters rather than larger situations but even in these series of chambers, there's still an overall situation and the characters may still find a different way to deal with it. For every group that crawled through the caves of chaos cutting down foes, there was another that figured out how to officiate a wedding ceremony between the kobolds and the goblins.

Breaking Away From Assumptions

Building situations helps us hang on tightly to the idea that we're playing D&D to see what happens. We DMs have no idea how the story will go. All we do is set up the pieces and see how the game goes.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

Running Chapter 1 of Descent into Avernus

Note: this article contains spoilers for the hardback campaign adventure Descent into Avernus*.

If you take nothing else from this article, heed these words: the biggest improvement you can make to your Descent into Avernus game is to ensure the characters are tied to Reya Mantlemourn, the Hellriders, and Eltruel from the beginning. Do so during your session zero and all of the motivations for the rest of the campaign flow right in. Your players will never state something like "why would we be the ones to go into hell?" or "why do we have to save Elturel?". When tied to Elturel and Reya, these motivations wire them into the whole rest of the campaign.

I covered this topic in-depth in Running Descent into Avernus: the Fall of Elturel but I believe it's worth stating again because of the huge impact it has when running this campaign. You can use this one-page Avernus session zero sheet to help get the characters connected to the adventure.

In today's article we'll look at some tips for making the most out of chapter 1 of Descent into Avernus.

Ignore the Flaming Fist

As written, Descent into Avernus begins when the Flaming Fist mercenaries recruit the characters to clear out the Cult of the Dead Three. Without their leader, High Duke Ulder Ravengard, the Flaming Fists are nearly out of control. They're brutal, threatening, unforgiving, and inconsequential to the plot.

Consider skipping the entire Flaming Fist angle to this chapter and instead have Reya Mantlemorn, the young refugee captain of the Hellriders, ask the characters to hunt down the Cult of the Dead Three. Reya is currently in hiding in the Elfsong Tavern since the disappearance of Elturel.

You can begin the first chapter with the characters meeting Reya Mantlemorn at the Elfsong Tavern along with her seedy contact, Tarina, who knows the hidden location of the Cult of the Dead Three.

Reya believes the Cult of the Dead Three is responsible for the destruction of Elturel and wants revenge. She's only partially right. The cult did help the Vanthampur family dig up the Shield of the Hidden Lord and hide Thavius Kreeg who gave up Elturel to Zariel. But Eltrurel isn't destroyed and the cult wasn't directly responsible, Kreeg was.

The characters can learn of these things as they hunt down the cult underneath the bathhouse. They can learn that Duke Thalamra Vanthampur herself has hidden Kreeg and is using him to perform a ritual using the Shield of the Hidden Lord to do the same thing to Baldur's Gate, giving her full power over the city until it too descends into hell.

Lore of the Shield of the Hidden Lord

One fun story to weave into this section is the excavation of the Shield of the Hidden Lord from the Hhune crypts beneath Baldur's Gate. As the characters question NPCs and cult members, they can learn that the Vanthampur family hired the cult of the dead three to break into the cavernous tombs of the Hhune family, the family that formed the backbone of the Knights of the Hidden Lord, and recovered the shield. Baldur's Gate's crimes and murders grew exponentially when the shield was lifted from the strange sarcophagus from which it was lifted. The sarcophagus, the characters may learn, was lined with some sort of strange warm metal that burned those who touched it and prevented the entity within the shield from telepathically reaching out. Now that it is free, the shield is like a poisoned seed in Baldur's Gate.

This whole story can be given out in a series of secrets and clues the characters discover during their investigation of the cults under the bathhouse. If you wanted to extend this section, you might look at Shield of the Hidden Lord by MT Black on the DM's Guild. Personally, I recommend moving quickly through the events of Baldur's Gate so you can get to the fun meat of this adventure in Avernus. Still, the story of this ancient shield is a fun one to weave into their exploration. Here are some secrets and clues you can weave into the adventure as the characters hunt down the cult of the dead three:

The Cult of the Dead Three excavated the Shield of the Hidden Lord six months ago by the Cult of the Dead Three under orders of Thalamra Vanthampur. Since then Baldur's Gate has fallen into blood and deception.
The Knights of the Shield were supposedly an honorable order of knights but actually committed terrible atrocities under the guidance of the entity within the shield.
The shield gave the knights information about future tyrants and threats years before they came into power. The knights would murder children and destroy villages because the shield told them they were preventing much greater evils.
The shield had been entombed with the last of the line of Hhune in a sarcophagus lined with a metal that burned when touched. Such metal prevents telepathic invasion.
Thalamra Vanthampur gave the shield to Thavius Kreeg and both are sequestered away in Vanthampur's vaults beneath her manor.

These secrets are enough to keep the story moving towards the Vanthampur villa.

The Shield, the Puzzlebox, and Kreeg

Once the cult of the dead three has been dealt with, the characters should have three main leads to follow, all of which point towards Vanthampur villa. They should learn that Thavius Kreeg, the engineer of the fall of Eltruel, is sequestered away underneath Vanthampur villa along with a strange puzzlebox he brought with him and the Shield of the Hidden Lord excavated from the Hhune crypt beneath Baldur's Gate.

With Reya Mantlemourn as their primary quest giver, the young Hellrider will send the characters to the villa with the intent to kill Kreeg (whom she believes betrayed and destroyed Elturel), acquiring this strange puzzlebox, and recovering the Shield of the Hidden Lord to remove it from Baldur's Gate. She tells the characters that she has a friend in Candlekeep, a sage of the occult, who can tell them more of the shield and the puzzlebox once they acquire it.

Laying out this primary quest so clearly helps move the whole story forward to chapter 2 but still gives the players some agency by deciding how they want to infiltrate Vanthampur Villa.

Skipping the Low Lantern and other Side Treks

If you want to move the story forward, you can skip the section on the Low Lantern and any other side treks in Baldur's Gate. If, however, you enjoyed spending time in Baldur's Gate, there are ways to extend it as well such as the Baldur's Gate: City Encounters supplement by Justice Arman, Anthony Joyce, Anne Gregersen, and Gordon McAlpin.

Otherwise we can skip a lot of what's going on in the rest of Baldur's Gate and head straight to Vanthampur Villa.

Vanthampur Villa

Running infiltrations of villas is a great way to enjoy the bounded sandbox playstyle of D&D. The motivations are clear: find Kreeg, find the Shield of the Hidden Lord, and find Kreeg's puzzlebox. If they saved Mortlock Vanthampur in the dungeon of the Dead Three, the estranged son of the Vanthampurs can give the characters a map of the upper villa to help them plan their caper. How the characters go about infiltrating the villa and accomplishing these goals is up to them.

Good manor heists are awesome to run. We DMs don't know what's going to happen. We set up the situation and help the characters accomplish their goals. Manor staff walk in at just the wrong time. Brothers betray brothers. All sorts of fun things can happen.

The characters will end up in the sewers and chambers below the villa and face Kreeg, Thalamra Vanthampur, or both. It's imperative that the characters deal with Kreeg, get the shield, and get the puzzlebox. If the characters aren't headed to the right place, move the maguffins.

To Candlekeep and Hell

With the puzzlebox and shield in hand, the characters and Reya Mantlemorn make their way to Candlekeep. If you want to expand Candlekeep, even if in just your description, check out the excellent Elminister's Candlekeep Companion, a supplement by Anthony Joyce, Justice Arman, Ed Greenwood, M.T. Black, Jeremy Forbing, Trevor Armstrong, and Laura Hirsbrunner. This book gives an excellent history of Candlekeep, describes locations, offers adventure ideas, and even includes a director's cut of Descent into Avernus worth checking out.

If your goal is to get the characters into chapter 2 quickly, you need not worry about filling it out too much but Candlekeep is a truly unique location in the Forgotten Realms and worth the time to describe to your players.

Sylvira's opening of the puzzlebox can be a bit passive when it comes to the characters. From the time they leave Baldur's Gate to the time they show up in Elturel in Avernus, the players don't really have many choices or many actions to take. One way to give them something to do is to have some demonic ichor drip from the cube and cause spined devils to burst fourth and attack while the cube is opening. They demand Kreeg and, when they do not get him, they attack.

Before they leave Candlekeep, it's likely time for a quick shopping expedition. Give the characters the opportunity to explore Candlekeep, look up lore, and shop for whatever they think they'll need in Avernus. Scented soaps, clean handkerchiefs, chocolate, fine wine; things people in Avernus are going to love.

Convincing the wonderfully strange Traxigor to teleport them into Avernus could also be a fun roleplay scene, even if the foregone conclusion is that he does it. Once he teleports the characters to Elturel and Avernus, he teleports right back out again.

Introducing Gargauth

One big question to consider is how to introduce the true voice in the Shield of the Hidden Lord, the demon lord / demigod Gargauth. You could have Sylvira herself note the fiendish nature of the shield or you could let this burn out slowly, giving the characters useful information and useful help enough so that they continue to stay with the shield. A fiendish nature to the shield can offer some foreshadowing though. Once they learn the true nature of the shield is the time when it should become indispensable to them. That's one of the first times the characters have to make bad choices for a greater good and it won't be the last.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.

West Marches Campaigns in Grendleroot

A west marches campaign is a particular style of RPG campaign, easily transported to D&D, that has some of the following criteria:

There's no regular scheduled time.
There's no fixed group of players; players can drop in and out each session.
The players determine the direction of the game.
The DM sets out potential challenges and the players choose which ones to follow.
There's no overarching storyline; the game is about exploration, discovery, and treasure.

These characteristics are, of course, argued about on the internet but those are the ones I took from it based on this excellent StackExchange thread on West Marches style games. This article isn't going to delve into the criteria of scheduling that makes West Marches style games so unique and instead the types of adventures a DM would put together when running Grendleroot games that focus more on open discovery instead of an overarching story.

This style of game fits perfectly with Deepdelver's Enclave and Blackclaw Mountain in Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot. In this article we'll look at how to change up Ruins of the Grendleroot to fit a more open player-driven exploration game instead of the more situation and hook-driven style of the adventures as written.

Deepdelver's Enclave—Your Adventure Hub

The adventures and locations in Ruins of the Grendleroot center around a hub of exploration called Deepdelver's Enclave. This outpost sits on the edge of the ruins of dozens of civilizations and hundreds of monstrous dwellings. The people of Deepdelver's Enclave are varied and yet all hold the thrill of adventure and exploration deep in their hearts.

Deepdelver's Enclave fits perfectly in a loose campaign of exploration and discovery. Characters can receive information about new areas to discover from many in the Enclave, even rival exploration groups they may want to outwit. Baelon the Beardless, the unofficial town elder of Deepdelver's Enclave may invite them to join his adventuring guild and learn of new places to discover from the guild and its fellow members. For an even simpler beginning we can steal the quest driver from Dragon of Icespire Peak and have a simple quest board outside of the Dragon's Fangs, Baelon's common house for adventurers.

Each location in Deepdelver's Enclave includes a small story hook that the characters can discover and explore beyond the major adventure quests in the book.

Deepdelver's Enclave is a perfect central hub for a West Marches style campaign.

Removing the Hooks from the Main Adventures

Each adventure in Ruins of the Grendleroot has a strong start; an event that drives the characters into the rest of the adventure. This is intended to help the DM dive right into the adventure and get the characters thrown into the action and on their way. These strong starts do not fit a West Marches style game particularly well. There's little choice once the strong start begins as to which direction the characters will take. The obvious choice is to follow the lead.

In our West Marches style game we'll remove these strong starts and, instead, set each adventure out as an optional area for exploration. We'll pull out the urgency of each adventure and replace it with a seed of discovery; an item the characters can acquire, information they can learn, problems they can solve.

Removing the urgency doesn't mean we have to change the storylines. We might drop a quest that a mysterious priest has gone missing in the Forest of Iron and his apprentice seeks his safe return. When they find him, they discover that he is trying to destroy the Grendleroot and must decide whether to capture him or put him down.

Other times we may want to remove the urgency completely from a location. Instead of the White Queen saving the mountain from the destruction of the Grendleroot, the characters might find a quest to receive a bit of valuable information or historical lore from the vampiric queen near Redstone. This lore may be a powerful spell scroll or a piece of history but if the characters never acquire it, that's perfectly fine.

Converting the Adventures into West Marches Quests

Here's a list of quests you can drop in front of your players that convert the adventure seeds in Ruins of the Grendleroot into quests from which the players can choose. It also includes some DM notes to show you how to change the adventure to fit the more passive exploration style of a West Marches style game. These quests are designed to remove the urgency from the location and focus more on open exploration of locations instead of solving problems.

Quest: Restore Starsong Tower. The orb above Starsong Tower has begun filling the minds of the people of Deepdelver's Enclave with nightmares. Enter the tower and restore the light that once flowed from the orb above.

DM Notes. This adventure can be run as-written. It already avoids the urgency found in some of the other adventures. This makes for a good introductory adventure for 1st level characters and you may want to make this the first quest they can complete before expanding out into other quests.

Quest: Explore the Temple of the Forgotten God. A series of tunnels has recently opened exposing a temple to gods long forgotten. Explore these tunnels and acquire the artifacts and knowledge of elven religions long dead.

DM Notes. We can remove the Sophie Wyndrunner hook of this adventure and simply let the characters explore the temple. They may find rivals or enemies among the cultists who have already entered the lost chambers. The characters may still face the dying god and can choose to become disciples or let the god's power die.

Quest: Explore Violet Falls. The lost gnomish city of Violet Falls has been discovered! Travel into the surrounding tunnels, find a way in, and explore the wonders of the gnomes of Violet Falls.

DM Notes. We can remove the attack from the gnome zombies at the start of this adventure or move them to an encounter along the journey when the players decide to take on this undertaking. We can leave Gemtooth and his delusions of grandeur in place if we wish or make him a simple powerful villain who leads the undead of Violet Falls.

Quest: Fistful of Copper? Two local bands of orcs and hobgoblins have been causing trouble for Deepdelver's Enclave. Find a way to get rid of these groups or stop them from harassing our explorers.

DM Notes. We remove the omnipresent threat of the orcs and hobgoblins from this adventure and thus give our players the choice of ignoring the threat completely. The orcs and hobgoblins aren't going to attack Deepdelver's Enclave so we can remove that entire side of the adventure. The characters can still work one group against the other or simply wipe them both out but imminent attack isn't an issue.

Quest: Find the Lost Priest. A blind priest of light named Ardus Fane has gone missing in the Forest of Iron. Please return the beloved priest to his apprentice, Cava Suntouched.

DM Notes. For this adventure we can remove the immediate threat that Fane will blow up the mountain. He may actually be trying to do so when the characters confront him in the Forest of Iron but we can remove the immediate threat so players don't feel like they're forced to deal with it.

Quest: Explore the Sunken Temple of the Aboleths. Deep delvers have found a sunken temple once belonging to the aboleths! Explore this vast temple and return with tales of the mysteries you find within.

DM Notes. We can remove the whole mind-bending strong start of this adventure and simply let the characters know that the place has been discovered. People may go missing down there and Abrim Hesh may still be operating there along with the grimlocks. The overall threat to Deepdelver's removed the players are free to explore the location or not.

Quest: Explore the Cell of the White Sun. Explorers have located a strange vault to the Order of the White Sun deep in the mountain. Rumors speak of a powerful sun sword once belonging to a legendary White Sun knight still held within the cell.

DM Notes. This can be a fun treasure hunt with the twist that the being trapped by the knight in question is still inside. We can keep Dalmus Spiritheart and the Blades of Dawn in the adventure, with the characters discovering them at the site and maybe learning a little bit about them in town before they go. The urgency of the strong start can be removed and the rest can stay much the same.

Quest: Learn the lost lore held by the White Queen. A being of great and terrible power sleeps in a vault near Redstone Village. Someone able to treat with this being could learn magic and lore lost for centuries.

DM Notes. The threat of the Grendleroot needs to be removed from this adventure to make it more laid-back for a West Marches style quest. The whole main motivation for this adventure can be replaced with spells for any wizards in your party, a powerful magic item, or valuable lore. The motivation needs to be strong enough that the characters are willing to face a vampire to complete their quest.

Quest: Explore the Den of Bones. Deep in the Den of Bones, a lair where the monsters of the mountain travel to die, lies a pool of green liquid. This liquid is very dangerous but fetches a great price for the right buyer. Travel to the den and acquire a bottle of this liquid and your future is set!

DM Notes. For this version of the adventure we remove the entire storyline of Ruth Willowmane's hunters. We might keep the assassins in the adventure, however, as rivals who seek the poison of the worm for their own murderous use. The characters may learn that the assassins are heading to the liquid themselves and follow the same tower-defense style game once they arrive at the Den of Bones. The urgency to get there, however, is removed when the assassins' motivation to kill Ruth is removed.

Quest: Delve into the Black Cathedral. We have found it! Hidden in chambers deep within the mountain is the Black Cathedral, the alien fortress built to contain the mysterious Grendleroot. Travel to the cathedral and be the first to lay eyes on the mysterious Grendleroot.

DM Notes. In this modification we remove Alvana's murderous rampage and let the characters choose if they want to find the Grendleroot themselves. We might keep Alvana in the adventure as a rival explorer or villain who still plans to use the Grendleroot for evil but such an event doesn't come into the story until the characters arrive at the location and discover her dark deeds.

Additional Locations in Blackclaw Mountain

Beyond the adventures above, Ruins of the Grendleroot has numerous other locations you can expand into full-fledged adventures. Appendix C, the Rise of the Black Star, includes locations for high-level adventures and, at the end of the appendix, are twelve additional adventure locations perfect for filling out into a full adventure. In a West Marches style game you can drop in these location seeds into whatever vehicle you use to let the players know about other locations. Jobs on a quest board, rumors at the local tavern, or old journals or maps found in other explored locations are great ways to drop these potential locations in front of the players.

Building Your Own Grendleroot Adventures

If you're seeking more potential adventure locations for a West Marches style Grendleroot campaign, you can use the following tips and tools to quickly build further locations to explore. Each location likely needs the following criteria:

An evocative location.
A motivation to go there.
A map of the location.
Monsters and denizens who inhabit the location.
An optional boss.
Potential NPC with which to interact.
Ten secrets and clues to discover in the location.
An optional complication.
A treasure or reward.

You'll notice that many of these steps follow the steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. There are some exceptions. In particular, we aren't worried about a strong start here because such adventures are driven from the players' desires to travel there more than some event that pushes them there. Likewise outlining potential scenes isn't important because such scenes happen as the characters explore. Secrets and clues, monsters, NPCs, locations, and treasure all have as much value when building these adventures as they do for any adventure we run in D&D.

Here are the steps we might take when building a West Marches style Grendleroot adventure location.

Generate locations. Locations can be generated from two lists: an origin (who created the location) and a structure type (what was it physically built to do). You can use the tables in appendix B in Ruins of the Grendleroot, the random monuments tables in the Lazy DM's Workbook, or the dungeon tables in chapter 5 of the Dungeon Master's Guide to generate ideas for adventure and dungeon locations. Mix in the origin table for relics from either appendix B of Ruins of the Gendleroot or the Lazy DM's Workbook to wrap the location in an origin such as elvish, infernal, or undead.

Develop motivations. Motivations for adventures in West Marches are generally looser and less urgent than you'd have for a more story-focused game. In general, any motivation you create should be interesting enough to get a player's attention but not so critical that they can't pass on it. Here are ten example motivations you can use or modify to suit your adventure.

The location has a valuable treasure.
The location has some valuable lore.
Someone or something went missing at this location.
Monsters at this location have become dangerous to the region.
Local miners, explorers, or historians want to get into the location but cannot due to the danger there.
A powerful boss monster uses this location as their lair.
This location houses a gateway that should be closed.
An NPC wants to visit this location.
Something must be returned to the location.
A dangerous artifact must be acquired before it falls into the wrong hands.

Choose maps. Good locations need great maps. I'm a huge fan of Dyson Logos maps and suggest poking through his nearly 900 maps to find ones for your locations. Here are ten potential maps that work well for various locations:

Church of the Oracles in Onyx
The Lost Temple of Aphosh the Haunted
Pits of the Fallen Legion
Vault of Skushuut, the Baleblight Ravager
Bloodied Axe Shrine
Royal Catacombs of Adrih
Shrine of the Emperor of Bones
Hall of the Patrons
Red Talon's Lair
Oubliette of the Forgotten Magus

Choose monsters. There are numerous ways to choose monsters for any given adventure. Though designed for on-the-road encounters, the random encounter list in appendix B of Ruins of the Grendleroot may help you choose monsters to populate a location. You can also use the random dungeon monster tables in the Lazy DM's Workbook or the random underdark encounters from Xanathar's Guide to Everything to randomly select some monsters. You can also use the list below to choose a monster type and then fill in the details with specific monsters based on that theme:

Aberration
Beast
Celestial
Construct
Dragon
Elemental
Fey
Fiend
Giant
Humans
Elves
Dwarves
Goblinoid
Orc
Gith
Gnoll
Kobold
Monstrosity
Ooze
Undead

Select an optional boss. Your location may have an optional boss. This could be a more powerful member of a particular group of monsters or it might be a more powerful type of monster. You can use the same tables to randomly select monsters and see what inspires you if you can't easily think one up.

Add one or more NPCs. Good adventures include options for all three pillars of play: exploration, roleplaying, and combat. The locations we've built so far have good options for exploration and combat but not so much for NPC interaction. We can fix this by dropping in one or two NPCs intended more likely to be talked to than killed. Some monster groups have this built-in but in other cases we'll want to add in some NPCs. For a quick NPC, consider rolling on the Donjon NPC generator and adding them to your adventure list. Maybe they're a prisoner, maybe they're a rival, maybe they're a spy for another group. You choose how this NPC came to the location and let your players choose how to interact with them.

Consider your secrets and clues. Secrets and lore can be their own rewards in such games of exploration. Once you have an idea what your location is about and who is there you can jot down ten secrets that the characters might uncover while exploring the location. This might be further locations the characters might travel to. It might be pieces of a scavenger hunt to a powerful magic item. It might be ancient lore about the location and how it fits into the world.

Add an optional complication. Some adventures benefit from having an added complication to shake things up. You certainly don't need a complication but if any of the ideas in the following list spice things up, you may consider them. Here's a list of potential complications:

A rival adventuring group has come here.
Another monstrous band is battling the first.
The caves are soon to quake and swallow up the location.
A terrible power grows here and threatens to overtake the location.
A thief has made off with something of great value here.
The whole location is not what it seems.
A gateway or huge beast is slowly devouring the location.
The location is filled with pockets of wild magic.

Add treasure or a reward. All good locations need treasure. You may even want to telegraph this treasure to the characters (and the players) before they bother to head out to the location. The treasure itself can be the primary motivation to go to a location in the first place and this might make the strongest adventure of all. A magical sword is said to rest in the tomb of an evil dead king. That's all the adventure most characters need. Grab a map, some skeletons, specters, and a wight, and you're off to the races.

To choose treasure, you can roll on the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Tables F, G, H, and I all have powerful magic items that are sure to grab the attention of your players. You can also use the magic item and relic generation tables in the Lazy DM's Workbook to add more treasure. To roll up treasure quickly, consider the Donjon treasure generator.

Limitless Adventure in Blackclaw Mountain

Running a player-driven campaign fits perfectly well with the atmosphere of high adventure and exploration of Ruins of the Grendleroot. Blackclaw Mountain was designed to be a nearly infinite realm of chambers, tunnels, ruins, and caverns filled with ancient mystery and tales of high fantasy. Even in a story-driven campaign offering up alternative paths for such exploration can expand your campaign in new directions and give your players greater control over the types of adventures they want to have. Hopefully this article gave you the tools and inspiration you need to run your own open-ended adventures in the depths of Blackclaw Mountain.

If you enjoyed this article please support Sly Flourish on Patreon and take a look at Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the Lazy DM's Workbook, and Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

This article is copyright 2020 by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish.