Tim Bannock

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Adventures in Dalentown for 5th Edition v2
Adventures in Dalentown for 5th Edition v2

Adventures in Dalentown for 5th Edition is now revised and expanded

04/28/2020 / / 0 Comments

Opportunity. Intrigue. Welcome to Dalentown…revised and expanded!

We’ve just updated the DriveThruRPG and itch.io files for Adventures in Dalentown for 5th Edition (pick it up in the shop if you don’t already have it). The additions to this release include improved layout and bookmarking, but it’s not just a facelift: we’ve added dozens of new adventure seeds, encounter tables, and a lot more setting information that you can use as-is or make your own.

What’s Inside?

Here are some of the improvements:

  • About a dozen new monster and NPC stat blocks.
  • An NPC Index organizing the named characters by location or alternatively by name.
  • New NPC movers-and-shakers that open tons of adventures in politics, or in the literal underworld beneath Dalentown.
  • New encounter tables that take into account different adventuring tiers: tailor this campaign setting to any level!
  • Dozens of new and expanded adventure seeds, including pre-made encounter groups.

We didn’t forget about players! In addition to the 5 new Backgrounds and 3 new Factions that were available from the beginning in this book, we’ve added a series of tables for generating or inspiring character backstory tied to the setting. Who is your character, and who do they know? What big problem has motivated them to go adventuring, or has plagued them since they’ve become an adventurer? Find out using the all new backstory generator!

Get the Updates

If you already picked up Adventures in Dalentown for 5th Edition previously, the updates are free. Just check your DriveThruRPG or itch.io Library and download the new files (conveniently named with “v2” in there so you know what’s what!). If you haven’t checked out this setting, now’s the time! It’s got the perfect homebase for your adventuring campaign, filled with intrigue and opportunity (Dalentown), tales of pastoral fantasy (Rock Down), or arcane mysteries and infernal machinations (The Wizard’s Enclave)! Get it in our shop.

Out Now and Coming Soon

Don’t forget you can expand your campaign with the FREE Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition. It’s a short supplement with a neat campaign setting skeleton you can mold however you want. We even released several versions of the map alongside the Worldographer files in this post, so you can truly modify it to your heart’s content!

Players and GMs should look out for our next release, Folk of Dalentown Volume 1, featuring three new playable ancestries (“races”), each with specialized feats, NPC and monster stat blocks, and a fully developed settlement in the Western Frontier hex map!

Welcome to Dalentown!

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer Western Frontier Hex Maps

04/15/2020 / / 0 Comments

Want some different versions of the Western Frontier map from Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition? Here ya go!

These maps are great for building your own hexcrawl campaign. We’ve got labeled and unlabeled versions, and we’ve also provided the raw Worldographer (AKA ‘Hexographer II’) file for you to manipulate to your heart’s content. You can pick up Worldographer here from Inkwell Ideas.

Get all these maps and the Worldographer file from this Google Drive folder. Check out the maps below:

Labeled map:

The Western Frontier hex map

The Western Frontier hex map

Labeled map with light grid:

The Western Frontier hex map (light grid)

The Western Frontier hex map (light grid)

Unlabeled map with light grid:

The Western Frontier unlabeled hex map with grid

The Western Frontier unlabeled hex map with grid

Pick up Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition free or PWYW at DriveThruRPG or itch.io today!

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of MYST and Beyond
Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of MYST and Beyond

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond: Age Creation Checklist

04/13/2020 / / 0 Comments

The following post has been ported over by my now-defunct site neuronphaser.com. It was originally posted November 19, 2015.

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond features a fantastic set of tools for creating Ages: alternate realities and worlds featuring unique natural resources, a single altered physical law of reality, or some ingenious, steampunk-inspired piece of esoteric machinery worth exploring. Like so many Fate-based games, there’s a great discussion of creating these sorts of worlds and translating them into location Aspects.

What follows is a stab at expanding the Age creation system, with an aim at providing more specific locations and conflicts to be explored. Additionally, there is a simplified framework from which improv-lovers can develop semi-randomized Ages. Players get a chance to really shine in defining Aspects of an Age, or using the Deduction rules to add details and variety to an existing Age.

Read on for the guide, or go here for this entire guide in a Google Doc for viewing/downloading.

Continue reading

Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition
Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition

The Tales from Dalentown Series Launches with a Free Gazetteer

04/10/2020 / / 1 Comment

Today we launched a spin-off of our popular Dalentown series, expanding the world and adding new opportunities for adventure. Say hello to Tales from Dalentown! This series boasts new adventures, adventure sites, and lots of material to help a GM get up and running quickly. In fact, it’s geared towards populating a hexcrawl-style campaign. So first thing’s first: the inaugural release is a hex map and gazetteer, and it’s FREE!

What Do You Get?

Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition is packed with content even at a “mere” 9 pages. You’ll get:

  • The Western Frontier map, built in Worldographer (by Inkwell Ideas). It uses 6-mile hexes, perfect for dropping into any campaign setting.
  • A brief overview of the three settlements from Adventures in Dalentown. Check em’ out if you haven’t already!
  • A two-page campaign setting history. Read this simple but effective backstory, and use it or ignore it. It’s perfect if you want to drop it in other worlds, or if you hate reading 150-page encyclopedias in order to run a campaign setting “right.”
  • An unlabeled map of Dalentown by Elven Tower Cartography.
  • Standard and 6×9 layout versions for optimization on multiple devices.

What the Future Holds

We’ve jammed it full of additional world context for the Dalentown setting. Plus, every location gets info on possible encounters, adventure scenarios, and even player options. Best of all, discover hints about some of our new and upcoming releases, like Folk of Dalentown Volume 1, featuring new playable ancestries complete with Feats, NPC stats, and fully detailed versions of the settlements mentioned in the gazetteer!

The continuation of the Tales from Dalentown series includes a compilation of one-shots. Check back soon!

Get It for Free Now!

Pick up Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 5th Edition at itch.io or DriveThruRPG for FREE today.

(Oh, and it’s worth saying that this gazetteer will be incorporated into our revision of Adventures in Dalentown for 5th Edition, which should be dropping really soon!)

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

Uncaged Volume I
Uncaged Volume I

Uncaged Volume I – Part Two Addendum of a Dungeon Masters Guild Review

04/01/2020 / / 0 Comments

I accidentally deleted a couple adventures off of my last review; I blame my laptop’s trackpad for over-highlighting! Anyway, here are the missing adventures, and they have been added to the original review as well for completeness, which you can find here: Uncaged Volume I – Part Two of a Dungeon Masters Guild Review.

Shadows and Talons

By Melanie Black; levels 5-6

A harpy attack convinces the town of Cragwatch to hire outside aid against the menace. But the truth of the harpy’s origins may prove the enmity to be a simple misunderstanding.

While the challenges presented in this adventure don’t really suggest levels 5-6, the roleplaying opportunities afforded in this adventure definitely require experienced players and a DM who’s ready for some delicate scenes. And I mean that in the best way possible: the simple roster of characters in this adventure leads to a very satisfying tale of misunderstood origins and motives. Every step of the party’s actions are accounted for in case they uncover a lie or ulterior motive, which is no small feat in an adventure like this. But in so doing, author Melanie Black creates a story that runs smoothly despite not being focused on mechanics and combat strategies. It’s a great, focused one-shot that will make harpies a lot more interesting than they are as presented in the Monster Manual.

The Guardian of the Forest

By Awkward Bard; levels 5-8

The ancient Guardian of the Forest has been captured by the black dragon Murgyss. The Guardian’s heir, a medusa named Petra, leads the party on a quest to save her patron before its lifeforce is drained!

This is a picture-perfect, straightforward dragon-slaying quest, something you see way less in Dungeons & Dragons than you should. Especially executed as a great one-shot, as is the case here. Despite not having a map, the set-piece battle at the end is awesome. The Guardian is hooked up to life-draining crystals…

…that the dragon can activate to heal itself. Or, the party can target them to save the Guardian, which is a fun-as-hell skill challenge-like scenario! The final fight is deadly, but with two possible NPC allies (the medusa and an ogre), it’s much more doable for the party’s expected levels. Petra’s gaze attack is going to be a major component if she is positioned right, as it will force disadvantage on enemies who don’t meet her gaze…and therefore the PCs can really exploit that with sneak attacks and similar tactics. That’s partly why I’d argue harder for a map, but in theater of the mind this will still create an exciting, strategic battle.

The rest of the adventure ain’t no slouch either: there’s a great mix of encounters. There’s a puzzle, a potentially friendly ogre named Fiona(!), and a reasonable dragon’s hoard that won’t break game balance while still feeling like a major haul.

A Family Reunion

By Jessica Marcrum; level 7

A yuan-ti queen foresees the deaths of her monstress children and has the party track them down and bring them to her. If they succeed, they’re invited to a celebration feast and richly rewarded. If they fail, they are in for a fight!

This adventure straight up feels like a play, or a live action scenario. Which is funny because there’s a theater scene in it. But seriously: it’s got ton of character agency and roleplay opportunity, yet the resolution of each scene is (by design and logic) very specific; i.e. attending the play in one scene. The adventure relies heavily on skill checks for resolution, and gives some advice for modifying things based on approaches. This gets things right by utilizing skill checks in place of combat, but I take an issue with these not being a bit more complex, such as in the form of skill challenges, or leveraging more of the complexities found in the Social Interaction rules (Dungeon Master’s Guide, Chapter 8). Some of the DCs are necessarily high (more than one starting DC 25!), so that’s something I have trouble with. But in the form of a one shot, and in the theme of keeping things simple for such an adventure, it does all work. And remember, the resolution of each scene is spelled out, so if you pass or fail, you’ve got the results clearly detailed. It’s not like an investigative scenario where a fail halts the adventure; quite the opposite here! It could mean the difference between a wonderful reward and a pitched battle!

Conclusion

Those are three of the great adventures that launch the Tier 2+ section of Uncaged Volume 1. Read my full review here.

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

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