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Rise of Drekis: Chapter 4

I've been kicking around ideas for RoD chapter 4, but before we get into it, let's first do a summary of chapters 1-3

Chapter 1: How does the new empire deal with internal problems? What is life like on the ground for the lowest of the units? What is the interplay of duty, honor, and personal opinion?

Chapter 2: How does the empire reclaim lost territory? How does conflicting claims on territory with rival empires play out? How do we treat those who have coll...

Ending: Rise of Drekis Chapter III

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the end of Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3. </3

There are 3 big questions to answer about this

• Why is it ending?
• What does this mean for the story?
• What is coming next?

Why is it ending?

The factors that lead into ending the campaign are as follows. 

This campaign, from its inception, had a very tight time table. It was known that somewhere at the start of the new year one...

Hardly Heroes and the greater picture

Taking place in 1518, Hardly Heroes is a campaign about the small people of the world. Our campaign doesn't touch on the bigger picture of Arcadia or the growing empire of Drekis. Today's post will talk about the zoomed out view of Stromheim and its place in the new empire. 

Eridon before the war
Stromheim was the capital of the largest kingdom of Arcadia, encompassing the eastern third of the continent. It had the largest metropolitan area, the most concentrate...

Being pulled in two directions as a DM

The Clerics are dead, and our party needs a healer. What are we going to do?

In a recent session of Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3 our party lost their NPC healer that they desperately need. The nature of the campaign means that without some level of assisted healing, the party isn't going to last long.

The Problem
Bravo is a hell hole. The damage output of enemies is very high, the availability of rest is very low, and the party has no innate healing powers. This i...

Mapping the marsh

I've been working on the big map for the Devouring Marsh during my off time while binging Celebrity Family Feud, which somehow doesn't get old even though it's the same thing each and every time, and thought I would share some of the details / struggles. 

We have 4 images here, each numbered so we can be sure what we're talking about, and we'll talk a little about what's happening in each of these.

#1 - Swampside
Here we have the town of Swampside and the ...

Upcoming Game: Hardly Heroes

As part of the SaveOrDie group, there's a new campaign coming up called Hardly Heroes. It will feature, primarily, MrMouton and GreenZerg as our players, but the other cast members may make an appearance. Let's talk the big strokes.

Core Concept
Our heroes will be playing a pair of AD&D 2e thieves in the squalor of Stromheim - that heavily damaged, depopulated, partially ruined, gang ridden capital city of Eridon. They're gonna get up to some thiefy stuf...

Ethos / Outpost Santa Barbara setting problems

It's no secret that the first campaign set in Santa Barbara got weird and ended abruptly. We could ignore it, we could call it non-cannon, or we could find a way to roll with it and let it contribute to the greater story. If you've been following along with Rise of Drekis: Chapter 2, you'll see that last option cropping up.

To recap, the original campaign set in this region leaned into "let's be wild and evil" too hard, and the game quickly disbanded. Which is a shame for many reasons, ...

Save or Die: Outcasts - NPC Spoilers

If you are a player in Outcasts, read no further!

Hello dear patrons!

In this post, we're gonna talk about some of the NPCs we've met in Outcasts, where they come from, what I intend for them, and how they reflect on our characters, story, or nature.

Before we go any further, first we have to talk about the ephemeral world of "DM's intent". This is very much a "If a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?" concept. I may h...

Patreon Perk Updates

Hello there dear Patrons! We've made some updates to the Patreon perks, and in this post we're going to go tier by tier talking about all the benefits and where to find them. 

First, a small personal note. I spent most of September out sick, and have been playing catch up ever since. Thank you to everyone who sent kind words and support, and for being patient as the machine spins back up.

Community Members - $7
We're adding credits to live streams, and soo...

Critical Feedback perks and where to find them

This post is simply a reference post to help you find your perks! I'll edit this post going forward as perks are updated, moved, or whatever. I'll also link to this post in future posts whenever it is relevant.

Critical Feedback Timeslot
Thursdays at 2:00pm Pacific / 5:00pm Eastern / 11:00pm Central Europe

Critical Feedback Questions
Normally one must show up to our Open Office Hour to ask questions of Critical Feedback. But not you. You can...

Why does Bravo look the way it does?

Hey there Patrons!

Bravo is one of the main 3 Arcadian Islands (Arcadia, Bravo, and Caldonia). A core part of Arcadian lore is that the gods remade parts of the world at the end of the last age, and so all the land masses should have a "before" and "after" map. Which is a terrible idea if you're running a long D&D campaign, because you'll need twice as many map and you'll need to think about their before and after state when designing world lore, and it's just unnecessarily complica...

Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3 - Echoes of the Ancients

Hello Patrons!

It's been a hot minute. Before we delve into information about Chapter 3 of Rise of Drekis, I have a short personal note. I've been down and out with the plague that goes away and comes back, and so I'm behind on all the work and all the things. One of the first things to suffer was Patreon posts since, while they are the best form of community out reach, I was concentrating all my available spoons on getting campaigns into launch format. The "Director's Commentary" episo...

Fall Campaign Load

Hey there Patrons! 

This update is going to be a bit short. I was out at MrMouton's wedding last week (of Tombs of Scoria, The Lazarus Expedition, Desperate Measures, and so much more), and came home having contracted some plague that has laryngitis as a component, so I'm trying to take it easy. So without further ado, let's talk about what we'll be seeing in the fall quarter!

Rise of Drekis x2
We've just talked about 2023-09-09 19:07:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Rise of Drekis: Chapter 2 - Outpost on the Frontier

Hello there Patrons! Let's talk about what's coming up next and take a behind the scenes look at how the sausage gets made.

Mandatory caveats: While things are still in the planning stages, anything can change. I'm going to paint you a picture of where I expect to be, but expectations may not match reality.

The Idea
Assuming Feyama's character, Elaine Pentalin, survives and is received back home with honors, she will be setting out on another voyage to another ...

Updated Roll20 Tokens Status Effects

Hey there Patrons

Many moons ago I made a post talking about the Roll20 Token Status Effects, saying something about "I will make changes to these in the future and provide you with the updated one". Well, that's what we're doing today.

Attached, and linked here for redundancy, are the TSE icons I've made and am using. Let's talk about changes! 

AC
Changed the...

Rise of Drekis: Final assets and developments

Rise of Drekis starts next week, and it sure has been a nail biter to get everything done in time.

Above you'll find the intro video, which I'm super psyched about. You'll see at the end it has a "Chapter I" segment, which will be swapped out for "Chapter II" etc. as we go through the campaign. We'll also have unique overlays for each chapter, but first let's talk about the intro video.

Intro Video

This is the story of the Rise of Drekis, as told from the PO...

Koibu's Corner: Throwing away work

I was just working on our next session of Cosmo's Kitchen and struggling to flesh out this idea. You see, I wanted to do something about harvesting this psychic fungus so that Cosmo could make a soup that would be fed to an NPC in the following Cosmo's Kitchen episode and start loosely linking together these one shots. It's a good idea, and I stand by it, but I was really stuck on how to make getting ...

Rise of Drekis - 1st character creation

Hey Patrons, here's some more information about the upcoming Rise of Drekis campaign!

We've got our first character created today! I'm trying to get this launched asap, so we did character creation offline instead of waiting for overlays so the show can come out faster, and so we could incorporate the character's appearance into the overlays. 

Speaking of overlays, I want to use that screen space more effectively. Since we've only got 1 character for this segment, I'm thinkin...

Arcadia Map Progress + New Map incoming

Hey there Patrons, lets talk maps!

Arcadia OG
I've been working on the original map for Arcadia (pre cataclysmic events) for some time now, and it's just about done. All the major land masses are done, but there are still some things to name, maybe some islands to add, and then possibly multiple versions to reflect the change in settlements over the ages. 

The first version posted here was a basic conceptual layout with some rough borders for different bio...

Divine Domains

Gods are gods of stuff. 

Malkis is the god of Chaos, Nadinis is the goddess of Nature, and Martha is the goddess of Life and Creation. But if I'm in a foot race, who do I pray to for fleetness of foot? There's no god of Running Fast.

Also, what is Chaos? That's a pretty abstract term. It's pretty broad. Is a 3 year old a force of Chaos? Is Malkis the god of 3 year olds? What about storms? What about political assemblies? Language is hard and often ambiguous. One word could me...

Rise of Drekis - More details

Hey there Patrons! First off, thank you for your continued support, it really is what makes all these wonderful, exciting, and deeply disturbing campaigns possible. We wouldn't be here without you. ♥

It's time to dump some details for Rise of Drekis. Here we go! 

Chapter 1
The campaign is going to be broken up into discrete chapters that deal with the Rise of Drekis in different ways. Chapter 1: The Talons and The Deserters, deals with, you'll never gues...

The Rise of Drekkis [Working Title]

A new campaign! 

This game, still in pre-production, will feature discrete chapters telling the story of what happens after the events of The War for Arcadia [the events of Tombs of Scoria, Akuban Knights, Frozen Frontier, and Desperate Measures]. We know Drekkis becomes a power house, but that's just the big picture. What is happening on the level of individuals? Is this a great benevolence that spreads? Is it a brutal regime? 

The images above are part of the storyboar...

Disease in D&D

Diseases suck. Both in life and in D&D. It's not an enemy one gets to fight traditionally, so sickness comes down to a save or be gimped for a period of time. This is why we don't see a lot of disease in RPGs, it's just not a fun mechanic most of the time.

But what if it was important for story/lore reasons to have disease? What if it was a facet of the campaign, and there was the expectation that people would be sick sometimes, or that the party might have to slow down and rest, or...

Latest Lazarus Expedition Director's Commentary

The Lazarus Expedition is continuing, and it's picking up steam. Our party has hit a pretty major milestone, and the latest episodes of the Director's Commentary delve into what it was like on the back end of all that. 

All the VODs are listed below, but numbers 7-9 are the ones being released now. 

The first 3 VODs have been hard released to the public (tweeted about with a link), the next 3 VODs have been soft released to the public (the other Patreon post with links h...

Fatal One: 2 aka Two Fatal

This dungeon is killing me.

I was visiting my family back in March when I hit upon a great idea for 2 Fatal. I sketched out a few sections of dungeon, wrote down some ideas, and came back from the trip with a lot of enthusiasm and energy to build out the successor to the smash hit: Fatal One.

You see, I wanted to improve upon the dungeon design such that we'd never have a situation where it felt like the run was a total loss if something went poorly early on. If a party member die...

Behind the Screen: Building a Subclass - Familiar Wizard

In The Lazarus Expedition, one of our characters has been trying to use a familiar as a weapon by casting spells through it. It's a fun idea, but familiars are weak, quickly killed, and their timing of movement is awkward. To make this a more viable build, I've created the Familiar Wizard subclass. No longer specializing in a school of magic, our wizard improves their familiar over time. The familiar must still abide by all the rules in the spell Find Familiar, unless they are specif...

Travel Rules for Deserts

While these rules are designed for 5th edition, they could be ported to another system with some small adjustments. These are the rules I am using for The Lazarus Expedition

Technically, a desert is a place that receives very little rainfall. In theory, a desert could have any range of temperature, humidity, or water availability. You could have a massively wide crater with sides that form tremendous mountain ranges that cause clouds to drop their rain on the outside or at the peaks, an...

Director's Commentary: The Lazarus Expedition

From time to time, I like to do some Director's Commentary on D&D sessions. It's a nice way for me to review where we are in a campaign, and it's a nice tool to help other people see what the back end of running a D&D game is like. It also gives some easter eggs, to a game, and provides some extra perspective. Honestly, I don't have to tell you why it's useful, it's such a common thing to have in film media these days, you know what it's about and what's going on.

The thing is t...

Ages of Arcadia

With a campaign structure defined by the premise that one campaign is set in the aftermath of the last, are the ages of the world predefined? Is the history of the world set in stone before the first die is rolled? Do our players have an impact in the great shape?

Thus far, the ages of the world have been defined more by the relationship between mortals and the divine, and it has been the amount of influence the gods have exerted upon the land and its inhabitants that have given form to...

Useful Tools for Running Games on Roll20

Here is the quick and dirty list of tools I use for running games on roll20. These are so ingrained into my DMing experience that they've become second nature. They won't make you a good DM, but they will make it less burdensome to execute your vision for your campaign.

VTT Enhancement Suite is a browser extension / addon that smooths over some flaws in roll20 and gives you some nice options. At...