D&D 5E [FR] Mount Hotenow, Thundertree, and Neverwinter

[Scrivener of Doom]

Thanks for your concern, [MENTION=3547]Matrix Sorcica[/MENTION]. I've actually been trying to shake an 11-week-old dose of bronchitis and, each time I seem to beat it, I travel on business and flying seem to give me a fresh dose... as well as an ear infection that renders me deaf in one ear and with limited hearing in the other. This is not supposed to happen in a tropical country...!

But enough whingeing from me: I've actually got an update going up today or tomorrow. Surprise, surprise; I'm actually going to be running a game of 5E set in and around Phandalin and the PCs are going to be facing the Tyrant of the Twilit Land....

I'll be posting the actual play reports in due course but I will be putting up my Session 0 including my DM notes first. For those who may be interested, this is actually going to be a fairly straightforward updating of the Caves of Chaos from B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. The titular tyrant is a young beholder uniting the various humanoid tribes for nefarious ends. I'm going to lower the beholder's CR as part of my post using the guidelines in the DMG. Anyway, this new game has motivated me to finished off my last three posts in the Starter Set Sandbox series.

And I still have quite a few session reports of my 4E game to post. Ahhh, who knew blogging for a handful of people could take up so much time?

 

[Nebulous]

And I still have quite a few session reports of my 4E game to post. Ahhh, who knew blogging for a handful of people could take up so much time?

Lol. I used to put so much effort into pre-game and post-game stuff. I had to consciously scale that back because, hey, only like 5 people in the world were interested and it took so much time! Despite my enjoying it. I still do the session write-ups. I discovered a long while back that my players could remember stuff from years ago that I forgot and sometimes can't recall (you fought a beholder? REALLY?) , but if i photograph it and write a story about it, it cements in my memory forever.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Lol. I used to put so much effort into pre-game and post-game stuff. I had to consciously scale that back because, hey, only like 5 people in the world were interested and it took so much time! Despite my enjoying it. I still do the session write-ups. I discovered a long while back that my players could remember stuff from years ago that I forgot and sometimes can't recall (you fought a beholder? REALLY?) , but if i photograph it and write a story about it, it cements in my memory forever.

Hehe... so true on all points.

That said, the nature of my business means I have a fair bit of downtime - like now until Christmas thanks to the super-typhoon - and doing all these extra bits essentially represents part of my daily brain exercise during that downtime.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Lol. I used to put so much effort into pre-game and post-game stuff. I had to consciously scale that back because, hey, only like 5 people in the world were interested and it took so much time! Despite my enjoying it.

The last couple of years my prep has been minimal, and sadly my games seemed to suffer from it. Now, with Phandelver, Neverwinter CS and Scrivener's blog, I'm facing the same problems as you! There's just so much stuff I want to prepare, tinker with, include, foreshadow, map and the list goes on. I really need to cut back as there are also only 5 people in the world that (sorta) cares.

With job and family, time really is limited. So wanting to learn illustrator/photoshop just because I want to make rpg maps seems a little excessive. Having a master list of 300 adventures that I want to place sand box style in my campaign world seems a little excessive.
Oh, well.

 

[Nebulous]

The last couple of years my prep has been minimal, and sadly my games seemed to suffer from it. Now, with Phandelver, Neverwinter CS and Scrivener's blog, I'm facing the same problems as you! There's just so much stuff I want to prepare, tinker with, include, foreshadow, map and the list goes on. I really need to cut back as there are also only 5 people in the world that (sorta) cares.

And my players DID appreciate it, but they don't know how much time I put into prep work. Finding 5" scale dining room table-sized maps, printing them, cutting them, taping them. Queuing up music and crafting unique monsters from clay and epoxy putty. The most it probably came down to is "Oh, that's neat" and then it's out of their mind until the next session. So yeah, i've been there and done that, and i loved it, it's part of the hobby I enjoy, but i have to rationalize it with how much is that time investment worth overall.

If they said, "Your game yesterday changed my life," I might be more inclined to keep up the hard work

 

[Nebulous]

The last couple of years my prep has been minimal, and sadly my games seemed to suffer from it. Now, with Phandelver, Neverwinter CS and Scrivener's blog, I'm facing the same problems as you! There's just so much stuff I want to prepare, tinker with, include, foreshadow, map and the list goes on. I really need to cut back as there are also only 5 people in the world that (sorta) cares.

With job and family, time really is limited. So wanting to learn illustrator/photoshop just because I want to make rpg maps seems a little excessive. Having a master list of 300 adventures that I want to place sand box style in my campaign world seems a little excessive.
Oh, well.

I've found that there are hundreds of people that make far better maps than I ever could and they share them online. Even then, searching for the right map and constructing it takes a fair amount of time in and of itself. And i totally agree, there are SO many classic old adventures I want to run, but there's no time. You just gotta pick a few and run with it, and always lament the ones that got away.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

The last couple of years my prep has been minimal, and sadly my games seemed to suffer from it. Now, with Phandelver, Neverwinter CS and Scrivener's blog, I'm facing the same problems as you! There's just so much stuff I want to prepare, tinker with, include, foreshadow, map and the list goes on. I really need to cut back as there are also only 5 people in the world that (sorta) cares.

With job and family, time really is limited. So wanting to learn illustrator/photoshop just because I want to make rpg maps seems a little excessive. Having a master list of 300 adventures that I want to place sand box style in my campaign world seems a little excessive.
Oh, well.

Thanks for the kind words.

Frankly, the reason I started my blog was I was having more ideas that I could ever use so I thought I would dump them in a blog instead. That said, I fully expect to get around to using more of them once my son hits gaming age!

And my players DID appreciate it, but they don't know how much time I put into prep work. Finding 5" scale dining room table-sized maps, printing them, cutting them, taping them. Queuing up music and crafting unique monsters from clay and epoxy putty. The most it probably came down to is "Oh, that's neat" and then it's out of their mind until the next session. So yeah, i've been there and done that, and i loved it, it's part of the hobby I enjoy, but i have to rationalize it with how much is that time investment worth overall.

If they said, "Your game yesterday changed my life," I might be more inclined to keep up the hard work

Ahhh, players. I must admit, I got burned out on expending much effort a few years (decades?) ago. I make sure I do my prep but I have given up on all the props with the exception of art I find online. The reward:effort ratio was far too low.

I've found that there are hundreds of people that make far better maps than I ever could and they share them online. Even then, searching for the right map and constructing it takes a fair amount of time in and of itself. And i totally agree, there are SO many classic old adventures I want to run, but there's no time. You just gotta pick a few and run with it, and always lament the ones that got away.

With the way I have structured my business interests, I actually do have a fair bit of time but I lack the players to make the most of it. (Again, another reason to blog.) How I would love to find some players where I live....

 

[Nebulous]

Thanks for the kind words.

Frankly, the reason I started my blog was I was having more ideas that I could ever use so I thought I would dump them in a blog instead. That said, I fully expect to get around to using more of them once my son hits gaming age!



Ahhh, players. I must admit, I got burned out on expending much effort a few years (decades?) ago. I make sure I do my prep but I have given up on all the props with the exception of art I find online. The reward:effort ratio was far too low.



With the way I have structured my business interests, I actually do have a fair bit of time but I lack the players to make the most of it. (Again, another reason to blog.) How I would love to find some players where I live....

I'm fortunate to have 3 players currently where I live. And none have children, and they're married and around 40, which is even more rare. Same with me. So i actually DO have time to game more than i do, but it hinges on them and their schedules. To be honest, if we can play once a week for 2 hours, I'm content with that.

 

[Ahrimon]

I did a Neverwinter campaign a few years ago. I had it so that the magic that bound the primordial had been created by a wizards guild (which eventually became the waterclock guild) that set up shop in what later became Neverwinter. Turns out that the massive ritual that they used bound planar beings and energy in a certain radius around Mt Hotenow. That's why the spellplague was so prevalent in Neverwinter when it had almost completely faded everywhere else. The whole campaign was about stopping cultists and un-earthing clues that built up to them making a choice. Once they stopped the bad guy from enslaving the primordial they had to choose between keeping it asleep and keeping the spellplauge in Neverwinter or releasing the primordial which would banish it back to the elemental chaos, but it would cause a metric butload of damage first, and releasing Neverwinter from the spellplauge so it could be finally be rebuilt in safety. No easy choice.

 

[jayoungr]

How do you pronounce "Hotenow," anyway? During LMoP, my players kept pronouncing it "hot now," leading to many jokes: "What about that volcano, Mount Hotenow? Is it hot now?"