I'm curious what automation you mean? thanks,
D&D General Actual Play: Heroes of the Borderlands Starter Set
- Thread starter THEMNGMNT
- Start date
With the D&D Beyond homebrew tool, you can code your monsters to automate all of their rolls. The markup language takes getting used to, but it means that all of the die rolls are in the game log. I can use the encounter manager and the digital dice with NPCs, homebrew monsters, etc.
So for today's session I adapted the first adventure from MCDM's Where Evil Lives. I used custom-made goblins, hobgoblins, and spiders. For those, I create a homebrew version by starting with the baseline monster and modifying it. For instance, I can take the goblin stat block and change its numbers to work with my in-progress 5e monster system.
That means my prep took about 15 minutes - add the encounter map to Maps, turn on fog of war, add homebrew monsters to the map, and voila!
Even better, for playtest I have a complete log of all die rolls so I can see how well the encounter maps to my projection.
The starter set really captures the ease of expansion from the original Keep. I've dropped in a few different published adventures as points of interest along with the box's contents.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Just ran my first session of this today. I feel like it was 99% a success.
We had three players, all of whom had at least played Baldur's Gate 3, two of whom had played D&D more than a half dozen times, and one who had never played pen and paper but was excited to do so, including bringing his own dice.
I ran the abandoned cart scene first, and then gave them the choice of where to go, showing them the wilderness map. They chose to go to the keep, where they threw themselves into picking up all the quests (they were computer players, remember), and solved a number of problems (taking care of Elandra's meta-quest), busting the would-be inside job bank robber, and breaking into the inner bailey at night to test the guards. They seemed to have a great time interacting with all the various NPCs they met.
Then, wanting to both level up and solve the scribe's quest, they headed out into the wilderness, having successfully gotten help from the keep, with keep tabards and a +1 shortsword to show for all of their work, along with enough gold to get nicely geared up to the extent possible in the game. (The limited number of equipment cards do a nice job of modeling scarcity, although it's hilarious the wizard can't get even a dagger or quarterstaff in the Borderlands.)
They watched the cult pray to Baphomet (the only demon prince name-checked in the adventure and his anti-civilization desires fit in well with the Cult of Chaos' whole ethos, although them ultimately just worshiping a janky demon's head is also pretty great). They chose not to jump the cultists and get their robes, as it didn't occur to them that would be valuable. They did see the cultists depart toward the caves, so they may think of it for next time.
I knew I wanted them to meet Pral, Bandit King of the Borderlands, whom I roleplayed like the obnoxious ranger from the 1 For All web series, with the same sort of smarmy voice. They haaaaaated this guy and successfully intimidated him into backing down, with the group's fighter promising to kill Pral the next time they met, and Pral telling him to give his love to the captain of the guard, whom the party likes.
In the fens, they encountered the sword ferns (I had them roll a d4 to determine what they encountered) and while the wizard got cut up some, he was the only one.
And then, finally, in the Tamarack Stand, they rolled the giant spider encounter. I should have cut the two giant spiders down to one, because this was a mess. The wizard was the only one to get caught in the web, but the relatively inexperienced adventurers split their fire up between the two spiders. I chose to roll morale for the spider who lost most of its hit points and that spider fled, although it had already sent the party's fighter into death saves territory.
The remaining spider knocked the party rogue down into death saves territory as the wizard kept using Thunderwave to attack it, but excluding party members from the area of effect. I also ruled that the spell was sufficient to tear through the web holding him.
But one level 1 wizard against a giant spider isn't much of a battle at all.
RAW, this should have been a TPK, through no real fault of their own, which offends my OSR sensibilities (characters should die when players make dumb decisions, but they were ambushed and made only one tactical mistake against a very hard encounter at level 1, when most characters will be running around in the wilderness portion of the module).
So I had them drift in and out of consciousness, being aware they were being trussed up in webs for later a la the Hobbit, and then drift in and out while some humans attacked the spiders. Finally, they woke up, with all of their gear gone, with a note left behind by Pral, Bandit King of the Borderlands, thanking them for their donations and taunting them.
The good news is that when we start next time, they'll be level 2 for having visited all four quadrants of the wilderness and the sage will give them a 100g gem as the reward for helping him map the Borderlands better. I'll also let the people they helped in the keep give them loaner equipment until they catch up to Pral and get their gear back.
I think the spider encounter is too tough as written -- the entire party could potentially find themselves stuck in webs at level 1 against a pair of giant spiders, which feels like a probable TPK -- but otherwise, I found the adventure excellent as written. Over the course of traveling around the map and visiting with various NPCs, they know that goblins, bandits and hobgoblins are a problem, cakes being brought in from elsewhere in the kingdom keep getting stolen by goblins, that there are lizardfolk in the fens and that the cultists appear to be operating out of the area of the map where they know the caves are.
The setting is lightly sketched (although much less so than B2, which I ran a ton back in the day) but has enough connective tissue to make it work.
I really like the components. The NPC cards work great and the players enjoyed seeing everyone. The spell and equipment cards are likewise a hit. I do wish the handouts and the class cards were sturdier, but it's not a major issue.
Once players have everything their characters need, though, it takes up a lot of real estate in front of them, and I think some of them may move their characters into D&D Beyond before our next game (I am sending them the invite code for my in-person play campaigns) partly to save on real estate at the table.
Likewise, at my end of the table, there's a lot of stacks of cards, not all of which fit neatly into the organizer in the box, lots of little tokens (which I'd separated into their own sandwich bags), four booklets and a bunch of maps.
Ideally, you'd play Heroes of the Borderlands on a big table.
I'm also going to spend a little time fleshing out Pral's band of bandits before next time, since it seems likely that they will be gunning for him. The module doesn't even appear to have a bounty on his head, so I will need to come up with one that matches the other major rewards, but also give them the problem of bringing him home alive. I'm thinking 100g -- the same reward as mapping the whole map -- is a sufficiently impressive amount for this stage in their careers, and it'll force them to figure out a way to not just murder the guy. And that, of course, will set up him teaming up with the bank burglar in the next cell and the bandit king's brother, whom I made sure to mention is off on bandit R&R. (The module mentions they live high on the hog off their stolen proceeds, but they obviously can't do it at the keep, which doesn't even have any real amenities to speak of anyway.)
As an introductory product, I feel like this is a very strong success. A new DM could 100% pick this up and play it, although I think the spiders and probably several of the caves need tweaking. I know the layout of the caves is mostly historical, but I don't think the easiest caves to get to (the bottom layer) should include the owlbear and the ogre, which will each 100% one shot a level 1 party if they encounter them. I would put them up in the higher strata and also include more clues outside the cave mouths as to the danger levels, which the module flirts with, but doesn't really pull off. And there are no NPCs, in the module as written, who can tell them about the layout of the caves, at least not until you rescue the captive adventurer in one of them. I think in future years, we will hear a lot about TPKs from these pain points. Ideally, there will be a revised edition one day that tones these things down.
Also, while the D&D Beyond version has a random magic items roll table -- magic items are given out a lot in this adventure, although they are almost all common quality, so rarely a big deal -- the physical box just instructs the DM to just pull out a random card, although info about the items is on both sides of the cards, so there's no way to cleanly do it randomly. There's enough white space in the booklets that the roll table could have been included, and I wish it was. But this is a very minor point. (And in my case, I just pulled up D&D Beyond on my phone and had the players roll a random magic item off of it.)
Very happy I got this and I think it worked better for this crew than the Stranger Things version would have. The players left the table talking about when we were going to play next, which is always a good sign.
We had three players, all of whom had at least played Baldur's Gate 3, two of whom had played D&D more than a half dozen times, and one who had never played pen and paper but was excited to do so, including bringing his own dice.
I ran the abandoned cart scene first, and then gave them the choice of where to go, showing them the wilderness map. They chose to go to the keep, where they threw themselves into picking up all the quests (they were computer players, remember), and solved a number of problems (taking care of Elandra's meta-quest), busting the would-be inside job bank robber, and breaking into the inner bailey at night to test the guards. They seemed to have a great time interacting with all the various NPCs they met.
Then, wanting to both level up and solve the scribe's quest, they headed out into the wilderness, having successfully gotten help from the keep, with keep tabards and a +1 shortsword to show for all of their work, along with enough gold to get nicely geared up to the extent possible in the game. (The limited number of equipment cards do a nice job of modeling scarcity, although it's hilarious the wizard can't get even a dagger or quarterstaff in the Borderlands.)
They watched the cult pray to Baphomet (the only demon prince name-checked in the adventure and his anti-civilization desires fit in well with the Cult of Chaos' whole ethos, although them ultimately just worshiping a janky demon's head is also pretty great). They chose not to jump the cultists and get their robes, as it didn't occur to them that would be valuable. They did see the cultists depart toward the caves, so they may think of it for next time.
I knew I wanted them to meet Pral, Bandit King of the Borderlands, whom I roleplayed like the obnoxious ranger from the 1 For All web series, with the same sort of smarmy voice. They haaaaaated this guy and successfully intimidated him into backing down, with the group's fighter promising to kill Pral the next time they met, and Pral telling him to give his love to the captain of the guard, whom the party likes.
In the fens, they encountered the sword ferns (I had them roll a d4 to determine what they encountered) and while the wizard got cut up some, he was the only one.
And then, finally, in the Tamarack Stand, they rolled the giant spider encounter. I should have cut the two giant spiders down to one, because this was a mess. The wizard was the only one to get caught in the web, but the relatively inexperienced adventurers split their fire up between the two spiders. I chose to roll morale for the spider who lost most of its hit points and that spider fled, although it had already sent the party's fighter into death saves territory.
The remaining spider knocked the party rogue down into death saves territory as the wizard kept using Thunderwave to attack it, but excluding party members from the area of effect. I also ruled that the spell was sufficient to tear through the web holding him.
But one level 1 wizard against a giant spider isn't much of a battle at all.
RAW, this should have been a TPK, through no real fault of their own, which offends my OSR sensibilities (characters should die when players make dumb decisions, but they were ambushed and made only one tactical mistake against a very hard encounter at level 1, when most characters will be running around in the wilderness portion of the module).
So I had them drift in and out of consciousness, being aware they were being trussed up in webs for later a la the Hobbit, and then drift in and out while some humans attacked the spiders. Finally, they woke up, with all of their gear gone, with a note left behind by Pral, Bandit King of the Borderlands, thanking them for their donations and taunting them.
The good news is that when we start next time, they'll be level 2 for having visited all four quadrants of the wilderness and the sage will give them a 100g gem as the reward for helping him map the Borderlands better. I'll also let the people they helped in the keep give them loaner equipment until they catch up to Pral and get their gear back.
I think the spider encounter is too tough as written -- the entire party could potentially find themselves stuck in webs at level 1 against a pair of giant spiders, which feels like a probable TPK -- but otherwise, I found the adventure excellent as written. Over the course of traveling around the map and visiting with various NPCs, they know that goblins, bandits and hobgoblins are a problem, cakes being brought in from elsewhere in the kingdom keep getting stolen by goblins, that there are lizardfolk in the fens and that the cultists appear to be operating out of the area of the map where they know the caves are.
The setting is lightly sketched (although much less so than B2, which I ran a ton back in the day) but has enough connective tissue to make it work.
I really like the components. The NPC cards work great and the players enjoyed seeing everyone. The spell and equipment cards are likewise a hit. I do wish the handouts and the class cards were sturdier, but it's not a major issue.
Once players have everything their characters need, though, it takes up a lot of real estate in front of them, and I think some of them may move their characters into D&D Beyond before our next game (I am sending them the invite code for my in-person play campaigns) partly to save on real estate at the table.
Likewise, at my end of the table, there's a lot of stacks of cards, not all of which fit neatly into the organizer in the box, lots of little tokens (which I'd separated into their own sandwich bags), four booklets and a bunch of maps.
Ideally, you'd play Heroes of the Borderlands on a big table.
I'm also going to spend a little time fleshing out Pral's band of bandits before next time, since it seems likely that they will be gunning for him. The module doesn't even appear to have a bounty on his head, so I will need to come up with one that matches the other major rewards, but also give them the problem of bringing him home alive. I'm thinking 100g -- the same reward as mapping the whole map -- is a sufficiently impressive amount for this stage in their careers, and it'll force them to figure out a way to not just murder the guy. And that, of course, will set up him teaming up with the bank burglar in the next cell and the bandit king's brother, whom I made sure to mention is off on bandit R&R. (The module mentions they live high on the hog off their stolen proceeds, but they obviously can't do it at the keep, which doesn't even have any real amenities to speak of anyway.)
As an introductory product, I feel like this is a very strong success. A new DM could 100% pick this up and play it, although I think the spiders and probably several of the caves need tweaking. I know the layout of the caves is mostly historical, but I don't think the easiest caves to get to (the bottom layer) should include the owlbear and the ogre, which will each 100% one shot a level 1 party if they encounter them. I would put them up in the higher strata and also include more clues outside the cave mouths as to the danger levels, which the module flirts with, but doesn't really pull off. And there are no NPCs, in the module as written, who can tell them about the layout of the caves, at least not until you rescue the captive adventurer in one of them. I think in future years, we will hear a lot about TPKs from these pain points. Ideally, there will be a revised edition one day that tones these things down.
Also, while the D&D Beyond version has a random magic items roll table -- magic items are given out a lot in this adventure, although they are almost all common quality, so rarely a big deal -- the physical box just instructs the DM to just pull out a random card, although info about the items is on both sides of the cards, so there's no way to cleanly do it randomly. There's enough white space in the booklets that the roll table could have been included, and I wish it was. But this is a very minor point. (And in my case, I just pulled up D&D Beyond on my phone and had the players roll a random magic item off of it.)
Very happy I got this and I think it worked better for this crew than the Stranger Things version would have. The players left the table talking about when we were going to play next, which is always a good sign.
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