Fey Day

The Feywild is a dangerous place for adventurers. Luckily it's another plane, so it generally come up as an issue unless something goes seriously wrong.

Unfortunately, the usual went out the window 100 years ago when the Spellplague began. The veils separating the material plane from the Feywild grew even thinner, and holes were torn. There are more portals to the Feywild, and it is easier to open new ones.

As such, the annual holiday of Fey day has become wildly more dangerous. It is the day when the 2 planes are at their absolute closest, so anywhere that the veil between is particularly weak is liable to become a portal for the day. City dwellers treat it as a sort of Faewild themed Halloween, while in more rural communities do their best to avoid wild areas and leave small offerings to whatever fey creatures may appear.

On The Road

My adventurers are finally growing up and leaving town. They're planning a trip that will take them over a month if nothing bad happens, but it's Dungeons and Dragons, so something bad will happen to them.

However, this is still a new situation for me, what do I do? How do they travel? If I let them buy a flock of pegasi, is that actually faster?

Next session is really just going to be a couple weeks of travel. They might get as far as Boarskyr Bridge, depending on what they want to do about the events of Fey Day. My favorite Faerûnian holiday.

Intrigue

Intrigue is hard.

I have a deposed noble, and he is on his way to take back his title.

Pretty sure there's supposed to be heaps of intrigue and talking to people.

But he's been a deposed noble for the past 8 years, the person who deposed him was looking forward to a confrontation that never happened. I'm struggling with what to do when he slides in pretending to be someone else. Especially since the person currently in control of his lands is his identical twin brother. I suspect he will just be recognized even when he puts on his terrible mask.

Magic Items: The Golden Skins of the World Serpent part 2: The Chapters

There are 5 chapters.

1. Foundations of Magic
2. Spells of Creation
3. Major Creation
4. Planar Studies
5. Creating Artifacts

Each chapter is ten pages long, and when a player completes a chapter they get a special bonus, related to the title.

1. Foundations of Magic: grants a plus 2 bonus to arcane spellcasting bonuses, and through that to the arcane spell save DC.
2. Spells of Creation: Halves the cost of magic item creation.
3. Major Creation: The player can craft any construct with a DC under half their total arcane caster levels, costs determined by DM.
4. Planar Studies: Plane Shift can be cast once per day without using a spell slot, the caster is immune to negative effects of planar travel. Grants advantage on knowledge checks relating to other planes.
5. Creating Artifacts: A sacrifice is necessary to truly understand the teachings of this chapter. After which the reader can create Artifact level items for the cost of Legendary ones.

Most of this information will not come up until a lot of scrolls have been found and read. The magic is too much to get information from a base level casting of Identify.

Dungeoneering

My characters have already met 2 dragons, and they haven't been anywhere near a dungeon yet. So I'm setting up a cool dungeon where some of the Golden Skins of the World Serpent can be found.

I have been reading too much of the forgotten realms wiki. As such I now have some place names that already exist on my map to work with. Ss'thar'tiss'ssun was founded by the same race that created the Skins and was famous for its powerful magic before the city was destroyed by the Netherese, many thousands of years after the city's founders vanished.

And a little over a thousand years before the events of our current story.

After making decisions, I found some more information that says that my plan is not possible, but my plan is cooler and involves a legendary fountain. Supposedly, all that should be left of the temple at this point is the basement, but the rest of it is cooler.

It's a three story temple a little ways underground. There were once more floors, but they were destroyed in the Netherese attack 1400 years ago.

I don't know what goes in all of the rooms yet, other than cool magic stuff, but there is a fountain that existed in previous editions that would be in this temple. I have made it a central feature. It is absurdly magical, and still working thousands of years later.

Timekeeping

The Faerûnian calendar is extremely elaborate. I've been trying to keep track of when things are for my adventurers, and it's really hard!

It doesn't line up very well with our calendar and I can't figure out when the seasons should start to change.

The months are:

• Hammer
• Alturiak
• Ches
• Tarsakh
• Mirtul
• Kythorn
• Flamerule
• Eleasis
• Eleint
• Marpenoth
• Uktar
• Nightal

Great fantasy names. However, the solstices and equinoxes don't line up, they're all a month later than I want them to be. If Nightal is December, then the winter solstice should go between Nightal and Hammer, but it's between Hammer and Alturiak instead.
So, when does spring start? March is the third month, but it also has the vernal equinox in it. And the spring equinox is between Tarsakh and Mirtul.

It's annoying.

My players are in Ches now, I think I'm going to declare that spring is starting anyway though.

The Curse of Distraction

I've had a lot on my mind this week, so I forgot that I was supposed to run a session until about 3 hours before our usual start time. Luckily this is a filler session, but I still need to have more things ready for a filler session than I have right now.

Post-Session
 I really didn't need all that much after all. All my goals were achieved, and everyone joked around about how they're going to leave town. The Stone of Golorr has been taken, all the seeds have been planted for future fun stuff, they asked Zelifarn to come along, and let all their allies know where they were going.

Magic Items: The Golden Skins of the World Serpent part 1

There are 50 pages of these in a complete set, and the sets have been scattered across Faerûn for some time. I want to put them in my game even though the last edition with any statistical information about them is either Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or 3E. So, I need to work out what they do.

Of course, once you've read one of the 10 page chapters of the Golden Skins, you get an associated bonus, but since the pages are scattered, it will be a long time before that happens.

Pages Read:	Bonuses:
1	Proficiency in Arcana
2	1 gestalt* level in Wizard, no INT requirement
3	3 Wizard Spells
4	2nd gestalt* level in Wizard (Lore School is heavily suggested)
5	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
6	3rd gestalt* level in Wizard
7	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
8	4th gestalt* level in Wizard
9	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
10	5th gestalt* level in Wizard
11	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
12	6th gestalt* level in Wizard
13	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
14	7th gestalt* level in Wizard
15	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
16	8th gestalt* level in Wizard
17	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
18	9th gestalt* level in Wizard
19	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
20	10th gestalt* level in Wizard
21	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
22	11th gestalt* level in Wizard
23	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
24	12th gestalt* level in Wizard
25	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
26	13th gestalt* level in Wizard
27	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
28	14th gestalt* level in Wizard
29	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
30	15th gestalt* level in Wizard
31	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
32	16th gestalt* level in Wizard
33	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
34	17th gestalt* level in Wizard
35	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
36	18th gestalt* level in Wizard
37	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
38	19th gestalt* level in Wizard
39	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
40	20th gestalt* level in Wizard
41	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
42	21st gestalt* level in Wizard
43	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
44	22nd gestalt* level in Wizard
45	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
46	23rd gestalt* level in Wizard
47	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
48	24th gestalt* level in Wizard
49	3 Wizard Spells or one class feature from another school of wizardry
50	25th gestalt* level in Wizard

*I understand gestalt to mean without an increase in proficiency, HP, or the other things that would improve if your character were to multiclass in a normal and traditional way.

This table obviously takes you well past officially supported content, which means I will need to create five levels worth of unofficial content later. I only have a couple of things figured out for those extra levels so far. Most notably level 21 wizards are going to get 10th level spells, and at 25, they'll get 11th level spells.

And once your character has read 50 different pages, they will have also finished reading all 5 chapters and receive some fun other bonuses from that, which I will figure out in one of the later parts of this Item.

Clink Manor

This is my first custom map. I tried using some software to make a digital one, but everything I tried is really clunky...
Frankly, including this.

Even if it is still a little weird and unwieldy, this map at least looks prettier than what I could get otherwise, and it's ready for a few sessions from now, when we finally need to get here.

Scheduling fun!

I have been focusing solely on Dungeons and Dragons for the past few weeks. Finally getting a job is great, except for insofar as it means I will need to figure out how to have a job and run my campaign.
The timing is also not great for the campaign. We just finished the Dragon Heist module, and are entering the wilds of homebrew.

The character who was supposed to be the center of the next story arc has now revealed that he won't be available for the next two sessions either, so the next one is going to be everyone preparing to leave the city, arranging who is going to take care of their bar and saying goodbye to all of their friends. 

Then we will skip the session after that.

We have already moved from Wednesdays to Tuesdays, but I think that we may scale it down to every other week.

Magic Items: Barbricent's Magnificent Mansion

This item is a tiny model house, the size of your thumbnail. The house, despite its small size, is quite extravagant. If you set it down and recite the command phrase "Come on Barbie let's go party," it creates a portal into a Magnificent Mansion, the interior of which is out of your control.

The Mansion contains 8 bedrooms, a library, a workshop, a kitchen, several bathrooms, and a comfortable lounge.

All of it is decorated in hot pink and a vibrant teal and made of materials unheard of in the material plane, such as plastic. All foods served by the 100 spectral servants appear cartoonish in nature.

To deactivate the item, someone outside the mansion must say "Come on Barbie, let's go party." Ending the spell as described for Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, and leaving the model sitting in the space where the portal once was.

Magic Items: Bracelet of the Brachial Bow

I've seen the vague idea for this magic item floating around online, but to put it in a game, I need specific stats.

This silver bangle bracelet has the image of a shortbow imprinted in it. This item requires attunement, and should be worn on the non-dominant arm.

When used as an action, this bracelet forms a spectral bow in the hand wearing it. The wearer then draws the bowstring back as if it were a normal shortbow. This bow fires two arrows, which will hit the target(s) of the wielder's choice. Each arrow deals 5d6 piercing and 2d8 necrotic damage.

This function can only be used once every d4 days.

This is because the two arrows are made of the wielder's radius and ulna bones. After firing, the arm with the bracelet on it becomes floppy and uncontrollable, giving disadvantage on any dexterity checks that would necessitate 2 hands, and on charisma checks because of how gross and freaky it looks.
The bones grow back after 1d4 days, at which point the bracelet can be used again.

Uncertainty in Dungeonmastering

I don't like combat in rpgs.

I know it's supposed to be fun strategizing, and blowing things up, but I do not want to spend anywhere near that much time on stuff that doesn't move the plot forward.

So, in my last session, I asked the party if fighting was deeply important for them, after setting up a fight where I would need to play 12 characters, one of them being an ancient dragon, on the side of the party.

They said no.

So we skipped the fight and let them take all their stuff. Everybody won.

The Ancient Lore of Faerun

I've been reading too much of the forgotten realms wiki this weekend. Everyone is leaving Waterdeep soon, so I need to actually have some cool places for them to go and some really cool stuff to find.

While trying to figure out where Tavin's from I wound up reading a lot about the Netheril Empire. A fascinating use of a couple of hours.

Our game is set in 1495DR, so the Empire is falling to ruins again, 100 years ago the final floating city returned from the Shadowfell and started conquering stuff. They went in there about 2000 years ago to avoid the literal, physical collapse of their civilization. Before their flying cities crashed down from the skies and killed nearly all their inhabitants, the people of Netheril made a number of fantastic inventions and created modern magic as everyone but the elves know it.

Of course they found the magical documents it's based on in the ruins of another, more ancient civilization. They were found by a man named the Finder, read and explained by the great Arcanist, Nether.

Pages of the scrolls are scattered all across the world, and grant the reader amazing magical powers. Zavidua Pabrovund happens to have a single scroll hidden away in her tower, a page of the final chapter, Ars Factum, or Of the Creation of Artifacts. It's a page from the middle of the chapter outlining all of the worst ways of making magical artifacts, like turning Aberrations into small rocks.

So You Want To Build A Wizard?

• Who is the crazy wizard who made the door into the vault at the end of Dragon Heist?
• What madman decided to turn an aboleth into a rock that can tell you where you left your keys? 
• Who decided that to open the door you needed bagpipe music and part of a bugbear?

 Well, they're all the same person, and probably a good person to have a huge stash of weird magic stuff. I want a reason to give my players a huge pile of weird magic stuff. So, he or she has a castle or tower or workshop that the players can hit up later for cool loot.

 Possible names for this crazy wizard: Zurusorn, Xobothung, Pabrovund, Zaviduas

Zaviduas Pabrovund, Administrator of Orogoth. Orogoth seems like a good place, I know nothing about it, but it has a good wizardly sort of a name. Administrator is a strange title, but I've already demonstrated how weird this wizard is. 

Ah, I've accidentally hit on an actual title, currently Orogoth is a wizard college, they probably have administrators...

Zaviduas Pabrovund should not be one of those.

Zaviduas Pabrovund, Wizard of the Northdark Woods. It's a nice small forest near the ancestral home of one of the players, so he will be more likely to deal with his many family problems that I've been planning.

Unfortunately, Zaviduas sounds like a male name to me and all of the other villains I have planned are men. Zavidua Pabrovund sounds much more feminine though.

Zavidua Pabrovund, Wizard of the Northdark Woods is going to leave some advertising on the back of the doors in to the vault. She's not dumb, she knows adventurers are going to end up inside of the vault, but adventurers appreciate a good and tricky magic door. Maybe they will want her services.

Fool's Errands

One of my players couldn't make the last session of our game, meaning a further delay of the dungeon and the dragon waiting at the end of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

So, while everyone else went on all these fun little sidequests, Niv-Mizzet went after his idea of the third vault key, which he decided to needlessly over-complicate. The party needs a beardless dwarf to open the vault; Niv has decided that rather than getting a dwarf to shave or hiring a female dwarf to come with them, what he really needs is the skeleton of a dwarf.

If he had actually been there for the session, getting a dwarven skeleton would have been quite simple, but instead Niv now has a "skeleton guy" whom he contacted many times over the course of the five days that happened during the session.

Luckily for me, the first bit of filler was a female dwarf asking to stay with the party. For most of the time that Niv has been looking for a beardless dwarf, there has been one staying in his house.

Thank goodness for the Zhentarim.

What is the Opposite of a Murder-Hobo?

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is very well written to prevent that unfortunate playstyle known as the Murder-hobo. It is generally safe to assume that any party may devolve into running around killing anyone they meet. The best solutions are for the cities to contain effective police forces, and to be willing to stop the party.

In any town based circumstances, it's safe to assume that the party is going to break into someplace late at night to try and solve their problems. Maybe murder someone, maybe just take all their valuables, but problem solving through crime is a grand Dungeons and Dragons tradition.

My party, on the other hand, has decided to do their best to break no laws, kill no one, not even upset any law abiding people, and they're doing a remarkably good job. Wonderful though this is, the entire module assumes that the party is breaking in everywhere in the middle of the night. Instead, they walk up around noon and politely ask a few simple questions.

I appreciate the fact that they haven't killed anyone important yet, and practically haven't killed anyone. However, it is a little frustrating that they won't be able to meet the people who would only show up if they broke into people's homes and businesses.

The Life and Crimes of Pulvi Lutum

(From the Notes of Barnibus Blastwind, Criminal Investigator for the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors)

The morning after the Feast of the Moon (Nightal 1), Clerebold Biznorel found the body of his master, Lammakh Heirlarpost, in a cupboard in their shared residence after searching for the man for over an hour to serve him his breakfast.

Experienced healers estimate that Mr. Heirlarpost had been dead for three days at the time of his discovery. Unfortunately, he had also been seen by not only his staff, but by many other acquaintances during this period. Most notable is the speech he presented at the Cassalanter Estate during their gala celebrating the Feast of the Moon the night before. It is currently uncertain whether or not he was alive during any of these events, or if some sort of inter-planar effect may have altered the flow of time in this circumstance.

Unfortunately, by the time this discrepancy was noticed the body had already had Gentle Repose cast upon it, outshining any other spells that may have been cast upon it. Our attempts to interrogate Mr. Heirlarpost were not particularly productive, demonstrating only three things: he had indeed been dead during those three days, he had been thoroughly interrogated, and that the man responsible for his death was an Earth Genasi by the name of Pulvi Lutum.

We attempted several methods of divination to locate this Pulvi Lutum, none of them successful, eventually leading to the conclusion that he had acquired an Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection. The case has been passed to the talents of bounty hunters.

Inspiration

I've been collating a Pinterest board with exciting magic items, monsters, maps, and the occasional architectural diagram. You can view it here.

 I am definitely not using everything in this campaign, and other people definitely created all of the magic items. I have already given the party the Boots Made for Walking, which were promptly given to Elephant Joe, who is now very speedy.

Welcome to the Party: Zelifarn

So, the party had a really nice chat with Zelifarn the bronze dragon, and suggested to the dragon that she should try adventuring.

She has taken their advice, and is getting ready to start adventuring, either with them or by herself. Zelifarn is going to show up, even if the party doesn't want her to join them, because she is too cool to leave behind.

I like working on paper, even though our entire campaign is going on online. I gave Zelifarn one trait for Adult Dragons so that she can be a more effective adventurer.

A Large sized creature would have some serious trouble getting into most dungeons with enough treasure that she would like to explore them.

The Next Challenger 1

This is the official nemesis of Tavin. When the party gets out of the module, one of their first stops is going to be his ancestral homeland, and eventually they will fight this person.

There are some story details that I still need to figure out about him, but he has a still-secret name.

After the Dragon Heist

Once I finish running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I plan to keep running this game. However, I don't really like running dungeons, so the official follow-up, Waterdeep: Dungeons of the Mad Mage, is not really an option.

Dungeons are fun to play through, but a huge hassle to run in my very limited experience, and this campaign is still sort of an experiment for me so I don't want to trap the party underground from level 5 through level 20. I want to take them through a world, so I am planning some custom adventures for my players.

After the party leaves Waterdeep, we will go overland to Tavin's ancestral barony, where he will attempt to reclaim it and take vengeance on those who framed him for tax fraud. This will be a ridiculously melodramatic, Arthurian situation. I don't have a lot of details for this section of adventuring yet, although I have a large pile of strange and exotic bears to throw at them to cover for any lack of preparation.

Once they finish there, Pearl has a massive bounty in Calimshan that is only going to become more valuable as time goes by. The City of Waterdeep is extremely serious about getting Pulvi Lutum brought back to them, either to interrogate, or to at least confirm that he isn't causing them any more trouble. This sounds like it should be pretty easy, but Pulvi is a spellcaster and he has an Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection, stolen from a Closed Lord of Waterdeep, so he cannot be found through magical means.

By the time they finish there, I should have everyone up to level 10, and so I will bring in the Big Bad.

Since the end of the Spellplague about ten years ago, the Blackstaff has been working on a method to distance the world from the Feywild and close the portals that can currently been found throughout the world. She has a lot going on, and it's really hard, but she has just made a major breakthrough and started recruiting more capable spellcasters to help with her research. Unfortunately, certain occupants of the Feywild have heard of her new efforts, and so are forming a powerful rebellion, led by a talented and crudely drawn druid.

So they will be facing as many unhappy fey creatures as possible.