New Release: Class Catalog

I've just released the Class Catalog for B/X Essentials! 

The Class Catalog brings you the Aasimar, Dragonborn, Dwarven Priest, Dwarven Thief, Elven Rogue, Gnome, Halfling Burglar, Half-Orc, Pixie, and Tiefling Classes to your B/X esssentials game. 

You can buy it here! 

Additionally, if you are an existing Cross Planes Game Studio customer, look for an e-mail for $1 off until the end of January. If you didn't get the e-mail, contact me at mark at crossplanes dot come and I can provide you the code.

Worldbuilding: Stone Bear Clan

The Stone Bears are a clan of orcs close to 100 strong. They currently lair in a series of ancient caverns in the Red Hills. The caverns, unknown to most of the clan, were burial chambers for ancient elves that once ruled the Silver Forest to the East. The elves moved on due to the arrival of humans in the towns of Fairview to the Southeast and Riverridge to the Northeast.

The clan often raids caravans heading to both towns and gets many of its best resources from this activity.

The Stone Bears settled the Black Halls, as they call their cavern home, about three years ago, after Ugurda Bonebreaker, the Bear's chieftain, challenged Hurm Stormslayer, her father, for the right to rule the Iron Wolves. Ugurda lost to her father, but was spared if she would choose exile over death. She and her followers gladly chose exile and they made their way to the Black Halls over the next several months.

Ugurda is nearly 7' tall and massively muscled. She is excellent with sword and shield is a deadly tactician who is renown for her raid plans.

Her uncle, Grom Stormslayer, chose to back her over his brother, after Hurm took Grom's mate as his own. Grom is a wily veteran and devastating with a great axe.

Ugurda is also advised by Turn Flamespeaker, a half-orc sorcerer with a penchant for fire. His magic has been very useful since the clan's founding.

Her mentor is Lera Stonedeath, a shaman of Luthic. Lera taught Ugurda the ways of Luthic, even after she was forbidden to do so by Chief Hurm. Much of Ugurda's dissatisfaction began to grow watching those who worshiped Gruumsh as an Iron Wolf. Lera, of course, saw this in the young female and exploited, she knew that her worship of Lera would never allow her to rise to prominence as an Iron Wolf and she gambled Ugurda's life because she believed that Hurm would spare her.

The Stone Bear clan is disciplined for an orc clan and on raids attacks with superior tactics. Ugurda has a level of respect for the loyalty her people showed her and sees no reason to waste lives unnecessarily. 

Clan is comprised of 80 warriors and 19 caretakers and children.

New Tech at my Table

I used my Christmas money to buy an iPad Pro (2017) model and got to test it out while DMing this past session.

It worked great. Since it's 12.9" its pretty easy to see and simply loaded up DnDBeyond and didn't need any books at the table.

I even loaded up a dice roller and experimented with using it, however, I found it faster to simply roll a d20, d6, or d10 when I needed it.

I don't regret spending for the Pro, I'm getting old and the larger screen size allows me to see things pretty well and it makes very large PDFs to read on. I haven't had a iPad since Gen 1 and this is a huge upgrade over it in terms of speed, HD, and processing power.

I'm a pretty happy DM, right now :)

Undermountain: Revenants and Mezzoloths

This week's session of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage found our cast of characters helping the revenant Helleth, a priest who was murdered by his own adventuring party, tracking them down for vengeance. Helleth was a priest of Waukeen and our deep gnome wizard quickly befriend him and rescued him from the pit he was in on level 1.

Our human cleric was a bit uncertain about the revenant's presence, but her knowledge of such creatures combined with what was assumed Waukeen's mission, let her tolerate his presence.

The group confronted Xanathar guild ettins and bugears as they headed for level 2, but some quick thinking form the tiefling bard allowed her to charm them, not only avoiding a full fight, but getting them to follow them.

As they ventured into level 2, they came into the domain of Yek the Tall and the goblins he rules with an iron fist. Using the Xanthar guild cover and kissing major ass, they were allowed passage through his domain, access to the goblin bazarr and found the first of Helleth's companions who met his end on Helleth's mace. He then desecrated the body searching for a map of level 3, which he promised to the group as payment.

After some shopping and major haggling with a goblin named Bulwark, the group was able to identify a trail for more of Helleth's killers.

They had a hard fight with gibbering mouthers and encountered the Priestess of Shar who had the idea for killing Helleth. She was even wearing his holy symbol. Worried that she would simply turn Helleth, our wizard assumed his form and headed into her lair. She was sitting in a room with a table filled with food and drink, sitting in one of several overstuffed chairs listening to Pentevores 7th Sympthony through a magic device. At first glance she warned "Helleth" away, threatening him with turning and her invisible servants. A fight started, as our wizard was looking for blood and she and her servants were dispatched. Helleth, finding his holy symbol thanked them and crumbled to dust.

After some more exploring they encountered a red brick altar and found somewhere safe to rest. With some creative ideas, they determined that the altar was used to summon a yugoloth.

They also encountered strange murals of wizards turning into nothics and gibbering mouthers and a portrait of Halaster, himself.

Not far from there four nothics rushed them screaming "Intruders! There are intruders, Master". After joining in battle with the nothics, the yugoloth, a mezzoloth, teleported in. Unfortunately, the group had already killed 3 of the nothics and soon the mezzolith decided to retreat.

And that's where that session ended.

More soon.

Curating Undermountain

I'm currently running Dungeon of the Mad Mage for DnD 5E. Its a good module and a great version of Undermountain. However, I find myself allowing my group to focus on the parts they want and ignore much of the rest. I appreciate 23 levels of dungeon and all of the material, but I'd rather pursue particular quests and storylines than have my group knock down every door and fight every monster.

This isn't a criticism of mega-dungeons, just where we are right now. I won't lie that it wasn't an easy decision moving away from whole swaths of the map for the group to pursue a mask, but everyone had fun and thats what I'm really going for as a DM.

Has anyone else made similar decisions or am I merely a heathen?

2019 Resolutions

A brand new year dawns for all of us and with it a blank slate to start things off.

Here are my resolutions for this year:

1) Focus on improving my DMing. I'd like to challenge myself more by pushing my techniques and getting more prep time in. 

2) Write more. I'd like to write one quality blog post a week. At the moment, I do a lot of monsters. I like making monsters, but I'd like to push my writing skills.

3) Publish more. I have the Class Catalog for B/X Essentials going to layout and am developing DewomerPunk (Shadowrun for the OSR). 

4) Worry less about mechanics and system. I'm currently running DnD 5E and I'd love to be running Shadow of the Demon Lord. I need to stop worrying about that and just enjoy my group and the game we have. With our group, I truly believe the session is more important than the system driving it.

5) Be honest about what I want to run. If I'd been honest with myself and my group, I wouldn't be in the above situation. System doesn't really matter, but I do have preferences and its best to be forthright about them.

Weird West: Dzoavits for Shadow of the Demon Lord

An ogre who tormented the Shawsook people by kidnapping their children. He is currently trapped within the Devil's Square in Enoch.
Dzoavits          DIFFICULTY 100
Size 2 ogre
Perception  10 (+0)
Defense 16; Health 75
Strength 17 (+7)    Agility 10 (+0) 
Intellect   9 (-1)    Will       13 (+3)
Speed 12

Immune gaining insanity

ATTACK OPTIONS

Bite (melee) +7 with 1 boon (3d6)

SPECIAL ACTIONS

Devour Dzoavits eats one target defenseless or dead creature that is Size 1 or smaller and within its reach. A living creature dies instantly on being eaten.

Vomit When dzoavits takes damage, it can use a triggered action to vomit semidigested food from both mouths, spraying everything within a 5-yard radius around it.

   

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