Dungeons and Dankness Part 16: Before the End

I think that some of my best content work has come out of this class.  I was given the opportunity to go pretty wild with the stories I wanted to tell, even if we didn't have time to play them.  Perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned for writing interesting content is look for inspiration outside of D&D.  If we emulated standard D&D tropes and cliches, our mod would have been the most derivative thing ever.  Luckily we had the Inner World as a jumping off point, because it is such a weird and fantastic place.  

I started off wanting to emulate middle and far eastern cultures, but I think I tried to be too close reality.  I'm glad that we instead with something a lot more creatively stimulating.  Below is my original map for my mod idea.

Dungeons and Dankness Part 15: The Big Finish

Because of the length of the campaign, we had to skip over a fair amount of the story in order to finish on time.  Adventures that could've been include:  Hojo's Matinee, the party is captured by an insane playwright who forces them to kill each other in his demented plays.  Moonshine Massacre, a potion's lab explodes, leading to a confrontation between two feuding families.  The Lord's Last Dinner, when the players are invited to a Lord's dinner, but a sudden murder stops the meal, dead.  But there's more to this mystery than meets the eyes.  Although it's sad that these quests where sacrificed for time, I understand why they had to be cut.

We had to skip a lot of fun adventures in order to finish, but our DM gave us a synopsis of what happens in between.  We arrive at the final dungeon to face the Entropy, who I imagined as a living galaxy, constantly be born, living, and dying in the span of moments.   Our party ended up taking on Droge instead and got the bad ending.

Dungeons and Dankness Part 14: What killed the dinosaurs?

We started playing our mod this week, with me playing as our Wizardess, which I was happy with.  I wanted to avoid combat as much as possible because it tends to really drag in D&D sessions.  I'm a bigger fan of socializing and puzzle solving than combat, so I actively tried to use my spells in more creative ways.
My biggest moment was when our party washed up on beach and were attacked by a t-rex.  Realizing that I couldn't do a whole lot of damage on my own, I thought of a plan.  I lured the t-rex into the sea with a mesmerizing spell, then as soon as he was neck deep, I froze the water around him.  With the dinosaur frozen, our Witch doctor (played by Emil Harmsen) set upon him with vengeance.  Upon freezing the t-rex I shouted this:

It was my best moment in Dungeons and Dragons ever.

Dungeons and Dankness Part 13: The Forest Giant

I'm a big fan of semi-human monsters.  Not necessarily monsters who are part human and part something else, but monsters and characters who have similar anatomical features.  A method of creating striking character design is to take normal human anatomy, and push it.  

When I had the opportunity to create a new monster for our DnD campaign, I leapt at the chance to design something new. 

The Forest Giant is semi-human looking boulder supported by long limbs.  I wanted to create something otherworldly, something ancient, something that might rise out of the forest floor.

“Forest giants wander in the deep forests of hills and mountain slopes, usually alone.  Resembling more like giant boulders with gnarled roots rather than large humans, forest giants are more different from normal giants than they are alike.  It’s postulated that Forest Giants are actually a speciation of treants, but with rocks incorporated into their body.”