My N1 Campaign Prep

[Beoric]

Ok, here are a couple of links that I think are the correct application (I will have a harder look when I get a minute).

Masterplan - RPGnet

GitHub - andyaiken/masterplan: Masterplan is an application that helps you to build D&D 4E campaigns.

Masterplan is an application that helps you to build D&D 4E campaigns. - andyaiken/masterplan

github.com

 

[Beoric]

Oh, wow. Masterplan died a couple of years after 5e came out. I think there was a notice on the site that he wouldn't be updating it, and eventually the site itself disappeared. Now it's back and a new version with new goodies. @grodog this was a very fruitful exchange.

Oh, even better! You used to be able to share libraries, but WotC leaned on Masterplan to put restrictions on importing libraries to prevent sharing of WotC's IP. The end result of this was, any time you installed it on a new computer, you could no longer access the libraries you had built. Adventures could be shared, though, so I spend days manually putting every library item into a series of adventures (there is not theoritical limit to the data you can add AFAIK, but there were UI problems navigating adventures with too many entries). It looks like that limition has been removed, and I can access all my old libraries again (because inevitably stuff was lost in the transtion). AND it comes pre-loaded with libraries containing all of the information from the sourcebooks! This is so sweet!

 

[Beoric]

Area 15 is another treasure room. Like area 5, it is mostly emptied out. I may move to here some of the treasure from area 29 (the third and last treasure room), because area 29 is difficult to find, and I want to make sure there is enough treasure readily available to level.

To get to area 15, you have to go through area 16, which is adjacent to area 14 (the flame burst trap. Unlike most of the dungeon, area 16 is paved with flagstones, which is the players' first hint that there are a number of traps here. There are a number of pressure plates which, when stepped on, cause spears to thrust out of the floor. The pressure plates are easy to identify once you know they are there, but testing each flagstone is time consuming and carries the risk of wandering monsters, which makes the encounter that much more interesting.

Here is the map. The star token north of area 16 has the macro to make spear trap attacks. The red squares are where the traps are located.



I'm tempted to put a monster(s) in here, which would appear when the party is in the middle of the room. I would want something that is harder to fight if the PCs stay in one place, and that maybe can push the PCs around a bit. Maybe I need to find a way to discourage missile fire.

Hmm, I could make the room really windy, making arrows useless and imposing stiff penalties on crossbows. And then give team monster a ranged attack that is not affected by the wind, which would force the PCs to chase them in order to engage in melee.

Ok, here is a new map with some changes.



As the PCs approach the area, they can hear the whistling of wind. Unlike the rest of the dungeon, the floor here is paved with flagstones, and covered with a scattering of dust, rock chips and gravel. When a PC enters either of the blue zones, the wind picks up to a strong gale, and the dirt and gravel swirls up to form dust devils, a type of elemental. The nice thing about dust devils is they are an appropriate level, they are highly mobile, and they already have an attack that pushes PCs around, possibly onto traps. All I need to do is add a ranged attack where they fling stones at the PCs.

Incidentally, I chose the dust devils by searching my monster database using the keywords "elemental" "earth" and "skirmisher." I was looking for earth elementals because I had an idea that they might appear from the floor, but the dust devils work just a bit better.

 

[grodog]

Oh, wow. Masterplan died a couple of years after 5e came out. I think there was a notice on the site that he wouldn't be updating it, and eventually the site itself disappeared. Now it's back and a new version with new goodies. @grodog this was a very fruitful exchange.

I’m glad I asked!—and I will definitely check out Masterplan, because I'm very curious about this mapping/dungeon penetration map generator (in particular to compare it to Melan’s mapping analysis approach).

Allan.

 

[Beoric]

Back to the task at hand, the next areas are 17 & 18, both of which are in the same room, which also includes a pit. My stocking roll for 17 indicated an empty room, and my stocking roll for 18 indicated a trap with (hidden) treasure and, well, there is already a pit there, so I stuck the treasure in a niche that can only bee seen from inside the trapdoor pit with the doors closed, or outside the pit by looking through the crack beside the hinges when the door is open.

This makes 14, 15, and 17-18 a bit of a cluster of traps. Moreover, 17-18 in particular isn't very interesting, and unlike 14 & 15 they don't guard a treasure room, like there is no reason they would be there. Looking for inspiration, I rolled on the table for former uses of the space, and came up with "observatory". I searched a bit online for an observatory battle map, and drew a blank (google is increasingly useless). I did a search of my map archive (which is probably where I should have started), and came up with an observatory that fit nicely in the southern part of the room. I have no idea where I lifted that map from.

So I put the observatory map in the southern part of the room, effectively creating two rooms, the north being 17 and the south (observatory) being 18. I moved the pit to be in front of the stairs to the observatory, and added a winch (to retract the observatory doors) and a control panel (which, among other things, locks/unlocks the pit doors) to area 17. I'm now stocking the mostly picked-over observatory with a handful of valuable books (written in Old Sarlonan, which none of the PCs are likely to know), a few ritual/spell books dealing with divination (written in draconic, which some party members are likely to know), and a few potions that haven't evaporated (and some that have decayed and are now toxic). Here is the DM map:



The observatory doors are covered in soil and inoperable unless someone wants to clear it. This meant the observatory is closer to the surface than other parts of the dungeon, so I added a few stairways in the corridors leading to this area.

I now have a backstory for this monastery. It is pre-Galifaran (meaning it is more than 1,000 years old), built by a sect of monks and clerics who were the predecessors to the modern "Restful Watch" sect of the dominant religion in the area, known as the Sovereign Host. The Restful Watch reveres Aureon, the Sovereign god of law and knowledge, but also one of the outcast and presumably evil gods, The Keeper, who is the god of greed, death, and undeath. Despite being heretical in theory, the Restful Watch is accepted in most areas, and commonly used to perform funeral rites which prevent the departed from rising as undead. They frequently have their temples in or near graveyards, and have assumed the task of protecting communities from the undead that often arise in such places.

The southern part of the dungeon is built on a manifest zone, where the walls are thin between the material world and the plane of Mabar, the Endless Night. Undead tends to rise spontaneously here, and wraiths and shadows often cross over from Mabar in order to prey on the living. The monks built the abbey here in order to create and maintain seals that reduce Mabar's influence. However, in the centuries since the abbey was abandoned, the seals have weakened. Cultists of the Radiant Idol have set up a base in the southern part of the dungeon, because it is easier to animate zombies and skeletons here, where Mabar's influence is strong.

 

[Beoric]

Area 19, which is adjacent to the flame jets at area 14, is a basic temptation scenario: Lemures are bound in a magic circle, with a pile of treasure in the middle of the circle:



Area 20 is a trick. The prompts I rolled for the trick were "transformation", "statue", and one other thing I can't remember. Anyone entering the area is struck by a bolt of energy, emanating from the statue. If it hits, they (and their gear) are transformed into an arthropod (one of the seven tokens to the right of the room) until they have completed a night's rest. What kind of arthropod depends on the PC's abilities and role in the party; for instance, fighter/tank types will be transformed into a chuul. None of the arthropods are able to speak.

 

[Beoric]

South of area 20 is area 21. Area 21 contains a group of goblins and kobolds who are part of the same group as those in 7 & 8. They are unaware that the goblins in 7 & 8 are under attack by zombies. They are in a good mood, laughing and joking around. They will be friendly to any non-threatening PCs, and will laugh at and mock any characters that were transformed in area 20.

The goblins and kobolds generally know their way around the north part of the dungeon. They are aware of, but have not taken the time to solve, the traps in areas 14 & 16, and they know nothing about areas 15, 17 or 18. They are also not aware of the bandits in area 4, or the existence of area 5.

The goblins and kobolds belong to a larger group some distance to the west. They were exploring, and entered the dungeon through area 30. They got as far as area 27, and were attacked by cultists and undead, whom they escaped by running north through the secret door to area 3. The spiders were not a particular issue, as they are skilled at training similar animals, and carry a repellent salve that discourages the beasts from attacking.

The current jocularity is in part a way to cope with the stress of their situation. They desperately want to get back home, and will trade information for an escort to area 30. They have not seen Tommy, but are pretty sure he isn't in the north part of the dungeon, at least not the parts they are familiar with.

The map isn't super interesting, but it gave me a chance to develop a curtain token that I have been thinking about. Here is the basic map:



See that curtain partitioning the two sides of area 21? I have been trying to figure out a way to make them function like the doors. Unlike the doors, the curtains block vision but not movement, that part is easy. What I wanted was to be able to open them and remove part of the vision blocking when doing so. I am sure there are more elegant ways of doing it, but what I ended up with was creating two curtain objects nearby, one open and one closed, with difference vision blocking profiles. The curtain object in the room has an "open" and "close" macro, and copies the appropriate "profile" curtain objects. Here is what the curtains look like when open:



All in all I'm pretty pleased, and will be using this trick again and again. I also took an hour or two a couple of days ago to figure out how to open and close doors with the push of a button, since manually opening them is a bit fiddly. All of these automations are designed to give me less to think about and do when it comes time to run the game.

EDIT: One other thing. I also gave torch sconces, such as the two in this room, an "on" and "off" button in case players ever want to put torches in them.

 

[Beoric]

Areas 22 & 23 are empty, which pretty much finishes the north side of the dungeon. This is a view of area 3, which contains the secret door to the south. Notice I have added Tommy's muddy footprints going back and forth between areas A & B, which contain clues as to the fact there is a secret door; and there are a lot of footprints under the secret door. As written in the DMG, this secret door is pretty hard to find. The secret door is raised because there used to be a wooden platform here. Your clues are that there are holes in the wall at A & B where beams were inserted into it. You are supposed to infer from this that there is a platform, and then look around at platform height to notice a series of protrusions 10' off the floor, and push one of them to open the door. Clearly Gygax was ok with players not finding this part of the dungeon, or maybe the south entrance was easier to find.



Since I have placed Tommy in the south dungeon, I would like to have him found, and I have made the south entrance difficult to find (I mean, they probably won't even look for it), I needed to make finding the secret door much easier. Ergo Tommy's footprints coming to this room, not leaving, and marking the significant places to look for clues, plus the goblins knowing about the secret door. If the players still manage to not find him, I expect that there will be a surge of undead attacks on the village, and maybe they will do a little more investigating to deal with the threat.

Once the secret door is open, they will immediately see a little scurrying thing run away from them; the keen-eyed might notice that it is not a rat, but a disembodied hand. The hand will disappear into a wall of inky darkness.



In the first pic, this shows the extent of the torchlight if a creature with low-light vision is viewing it. However, our intrepid hero does not have low-light vision, so if I select his token the distance is half of that. You can see this from the second pic; since I am hovering a mouse over the token, it also shows the extent of his vision using a white line. You can also notice that the PC's torch is "brighter" in the centre and fades out further from the light source.

The hallway is filled with an unnatural darkness, as the influence of Mabar seeps into the world. Within these areas of darkness, healing effects are at half strength (i.e. you get half of whatever you would normally gain form healing). You can see in the third pic how the dim light at the edge of the torch's illumination is not enough to penetrate the unnatural darkness. In the fourth pic you can see how the brighter light closer to the torch does penetrate the darkness, but the net result is that vision is now restricted to 15 feet instead of the normal 25. If you look closely, you can also see the cracks in the ground, which the darkness is seeping out of.

When the PC exits the hallway, he will find a spent torch on the ground; the wick on the torch unravelled, causing it to cease functioning long before it should have. A table has been set up as a small shrine. The table includes an ivory statue of an angel holding a sheaf of grain. Before the angel is a decorative bowl filled with (holy) water, and two smudges of wax (where candles used to stand before Tommy commandeered them).



Fortunately for Tommy, the candles are "ghoul candles" which shed light that is invisible to undead.

 

[Beoric]

One of the things I really like about a VTT is the way you can visually affect the mood of a dungeon. I haven't been showing the views with fog of war turned on; when it is, you get a glimpse of how little the PCs can see. They are a small point of light in a sea of darkness.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

You are supposed to infer from this that there is a platform, and then look around at platform height to notice a series of protrusions 10' off the floor, and push one of them to open the door. Clearly Gygax was ok with players not finding this part of the dungeon

That part of the sample dungeon always bugged me too. Not that it exists, but just the way the example players "figured out" the door effortlessly. Seemed like something that's really only inferable if you somehow already know about it (the way a DM does), and definitely violates the whole "don't gate critical adventure areas behind secret doors" adage (which it's design admittedly predates, but still...).

 

[Beoric]

Something I find interesting in the sample of play is how easily the DM gives up information. For instance, I would not have thought that a garnet stuffed inside a skull would be something you would find without looking inside the skull, but the DM coughs it up after a relatively cursory examination. Yes, the players have to engage with the environment, but not in a particularly detailed way.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Something I find interesting in the sample of play is how easily the DM gives up information. For instance, I would not have thought that a garnet stuffed inside a skull would be something you would find without looking inside the skull, but the DM coughs it up after a relatively cursory examination. Yes, the players have to engage with the environment, but not in a particularly detailed way.

That, plus the whole "I throw the giant spider to the ground and step on it - it's dead now" combat abbreviation also seemed a bit jank. Same with the ghouls just outright abducting the gnome with basically minimal input from the players. Normally, I'm all for waiving quick, boring, skill-less encounters, but still... as an example of play, the combat really should have been showcased more.

Now that I consider it more, I realize the AD&D example of play is kinda crap. The most damning of evidence to this effect is that it basically taught nobody how to actually play the game (the fact that no two people can agree on how should suffice as evidence that this is still the case), and rather only served to demonstrate what a roleplaying game conceptually sounds like (but showing people talking at a table in prescriptive, almost scientific vacuum-like conditions).

 

[DangerousPuhson]

On that note, I think it'd be a fun exercise to re-write a new example of actual play, adjusted for realism:

DM: "The four of you stand before a squat stone moathouse... 'moathouse'? Yeah, 'moathouse' that's what it says here I guess. So it's a house with a moat, I think. Oh there's a picture - yeah it looks basically like this, see with a moat and whatnot" *shows picture*

Player 1: "How many spells do I get to cast in a day again? I keep having to look it up..."

Player 2: "Did anyone see the article about Matt Damon yesterday? Crazy right?"

Player 1: "I knoooooow! So crazy, right?"

DM: "Uhh, what do people want to do - you're just standing there right now in the grass and-"

Player 3: "Can I cast Detect Magic? Does that let me see any magic around here? Is anything magical?"

DM: "Wait wait, hold on, first things first I should mention that you see figures on the ramparts of the moathouse - humanoids, by the looks of it. Let's see, there's uhhh.... four-no, five... no four of them..."

Player 2: *on phone* "I found another article about Matt Damon, it says he's fine now but still in treatment... so crazy!"

Player 1: "Yeah crazy! Oh hey by the way, my character is going to sneak up to the walls of the moathouse. So I rolled a 19, do I make it undetected or what?"

DM: "Wait, hold on... so Player 1 is going to be sneaking to the walls I guess. What is everyone else doing in the meantime?"

Player 4: *looks up from phone* "Huh? Oh, uhhh, are we fighting these guys now?"

DM: "What? No they don't know you're there yet. You haven't actually-"

Player 1: "I rolled a 19 on my Stealth, don't forget! They probably can't see me."

DM: "I know but I didn't acutally call for-"

Player 3: "Do I detect magic on the guards? I cast that, so I should know if they have any magic items or not!"

DM: "You can't tell from here, you're really far from the walls and the range is-"

Player 2: *looks up from phone* "Oh my god, you guys will not believe what Matt Damon just wrote on Twitter!"

 

[Beoric]

That isn't my players to date, but I guess we will see what happens with this new group.

 

[squeen]

Now that I consider it more, I realize the AD&D example of play is kinda crap. The most damning of evidence to this effect is that it basically taught nobody how to actually play the game (the fact that no two people can agree on how should suffice as evidence that this is still the case), and rather only served to demonstrate what a roleplaying game conceptually sounds like (but showing people talking at a table in prescriptive, almost scientific vacuum-like conditions).

Perhaps outdated is more accurate. It's was not far off from how most adults approached the game in the 70s. Kids, especially the younger ones, played more like the example you posted---only no phones and a longer attention span. Also, the DM usually controlled the dice.

Loss/normalization of nerd culture explains most the difference (e.g. nerds didn't follow celebrity gossip, would know the meaning of arcane terms, tend to be task focused, etc.).

Of course there will always side chatter, but you'd be a fool to put that into an example text.

Four of us on the CAG Discord have been test-playing Hawk's OSRIC Kickstarter dungeon with EOTB the past few months. Everyone is one is focused and sensible. It's just table-manners.

 

[The1True]

Hey @Beoric , do you let your players see the room numbers on the VTT map? (I do)

 

[The1True]

On that note, I think it'd be a fun exercise to re-write a new example of actual play, adjusted for realism:

This is actually a pretty solid example of play. Constructively showing the DM wrangling this introductory situation, and/or a post mortem discussion of anything he/she/it fails to corral would be extremely helpful in this day and age, I suspect! I mean, it was a funny example, but there was nothing about it that I have not encountered at one time or another. My nephew has been complaining about exactly this bullshit at his high school D&D club. Instead of searching for influencers' hot take advice on YouTube, this should be what you find in the DMG.

There's so much crap on the craft of mastering the dungeon and not enough on the social engineering necessary to keep irl human beings committed and focused. And no, being just the bestest designer/story-teller is not enough.

 

[Beoric]

Hey @Beoric , do you let your players see the room numbers on the VTT map? (I do)

I don't, but I don't have strong feelings about it. I personally find the numbers distracting, and don't like to see them when I am a player, I guess I assumed the same would be true of my players? But I am open to any reasoned suggestion as to why you would make them visible.

Mind you, sometimes numbering can be a giveaway as to the presence of a game element that players should be figuring out on their own (like the A & B in area three of the Abbey Dungeon). So if showing numbers is the default, there would have to be exceptions.

There's so much crap on the craft of mastering the dungeon and not enough on the social engineering necessary to keep irl human beings committed and focused. And no, being just the bestest designer/story-teller is not enough.

I'm not sure that this is something that the gaming division of a toy company has the expertise to do. If they tried, I expect the advice would be (a) superficial, (b) wrong, at least in many circumstances, or (c) both.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

This is actually a pretty solid example of play. Constructively showing the DM wrangling this introductory situation, and/or a post mortem discussion of anything he/she/it fails to corral would be extremely helpful in this day and age, I suspect! I mean, it was a funny example, but there was nothing about it that I have not encountered at one time or another. My nephew has been complaining about exactly this bullshit at his high school D&D club. Instead of searching for influencers' hot take advice on YouTube, this should be what you find in the DMG.

Heh, I was aiming for a Dead Alewives-esque spoof, but I do agree that there's something to be gained from more realistic demo play. The D&D subreddit (which mostly sucks, but is the best example microcosm for the hobby at large) has more questions about how to handle player issues than they do about rule clarifications.

 

[Beoric]

So, circling back to the point of this thread, I thought I would talk about how the framework I use functions in MapTools. I'm going to use this post to go through the controls; if you don't care abut this you can skip to the next post which will be about token building. Here is the (more-or-less) default layout of the MT screen:



The top ribbon has various tools: select, drawing, AoE templates, fog of war and vision/movement blocking. Immediately to the left of that are buttons for options depending on which tool you use. At the far right of the ribbon is volume; a series of buttons that let you select what kind of tokens you are viewing, and the select map menu which includes all of the maps in this campaign. A "campaign" is the file that contains all of the maps, tables, campaign preferences, etc.

You can see there are windows to the right, left, and bottom. All windows can be docked or undocked, and moved into various configurations. You can also dock a number of windows in the same place - that is, all covering each other - in which case the docked window shows tabs for all the windows in that location. For instance, if you look at the bottom of the left window, there are tabs for the Library (displayed), Map Explorer and Initiative order. I have chosen those particular windows, but they could be replaced with any other window. Note you can add resources to the library by mapping it to folders on your computer containing anything you want to be able to access from within MapTools.

The bottom window is the chat window. On the right is where I keep all the windows that have to do with macros, in this case, "Campaign Macros", which are saved with the campaign; "GM Macros" which are DM-only macros that are available for every campaign; "Global Macros" which are also available with every campaign, and which the DM may or may not share with players; and "Selected" Macros, which are associated with a selected token. When I am running a game I also often add a (user created) dice rolling tool to the right side windows.

The chat window is for chatting, but you can also use it to roll dice or run various commands. If you don't choose to hide the functions in your macros, when you ran a macro all of the commands are going to display in the chat.

EDIT: Oops, I forgot, the green part in the middle is the map, and the small menu at the top right of the map lets you select layers. Sadly, you can't add layers, you are stuck with Token, Hidden, Object and Background; the lower layers are drawn first, although within a layer you can control the drawing order.