Tag: Dungeons & Dragons

Weekend Wrapup

General

Winding down for the evening. Don’t have any one thing in particular to write about. Just a handful of topics, things on my mind, tasks I completed and tasks I’ll complete in the coming weeks.

My Kona Smoke 2-9 bike is 16 years old this weekend. I’ve had it a long time and I have put many miles on it. Not so much lately; no, now it sits in my computer room, propped up against a table, its tires flat and its cables and gears loose and unmaintained. I bought it and rode it in the World Naked Bike Ride in 2008, and several years after that. Is that still a thing? For almost two weeks I rode it 26 miles round trip to and from my apartment in Sellwood to my call center job in Fairview, in the middle of the summer, until I was able to buy a cheap car from my cousin. And there were many many pleasant rides up and down the Springwater Corridor Trail, spring, summer, and winter.

It’s a good bike. I should definitely get back on it. They say you never forget how to ride one. That’s what they say.

This weekend I spent mostly doing chores like grocery shopping and laundry, and many hours in The Long Dark. I’m trying to get the final achievement (for me) in the game: suriving 500 days in-game on one save. I’ve done all the story bits one can do, the DLC stuff, I’ve already been to every map, so now I have to make my own goals to keep going. My plan is to stock up regional bases all over the island. That should eat up some time.

Every base will have 100 pounds of meat; 5-10 gallons of water; basic first aid – bandages, antibiotics, disinfectant; one of every kind of tool – knife, hacksaw, hatchet, prybar; matches; some crafting materials for repairs; at least one cooking pot; and some source of Vitamin C to prevent or cure scurvy. Plus whatever else I think of. I can come up with a more detailed list but that’s the basics. I’m doing this all on Voyageur because I am not a masochist. I like the chill vibes of the standard level of difficulty.

I’ve set up a base in Forsaken Airfield at the Hangar, another one at the Train Depot in the Transfer Pass; and one at the Maintenance Shed in Broken Railroad. I’m currently at the Camp Office in Mystery Lake. It’s about day 330? Future bases will be in Milton, Pleasant Valley, Timberwolf Mountain, and Coastal Highway. I’m being sadly efficient and might have to come up with another goal after I’ve done this one because it’s going faster than I expected.

Other fun stuff I did this weekend included plotting for my D&D game. I have a good plan for how to handle the next session but I have no idea where the story is going to go after that. That’s how I like it, though. I don’t plan out long arcs, I just take what the players want to do and set goals and obstacles in front of them. Works well for me.

That’s a good weekend, right? That’s enough? I sure hope so.

School’s Out

DnD, Gaming

It’s late but I’ve gotta write something. Which is weird because I’ve been writing all day. My D&D players gave me, the Dungeon Master, homework, which isn’t normally how things work.

Just joking. What happened is that a couple of my players wanted to do some research during their downtime to follow up on in-game plots and characters. They gave me a list of topics, and I told them the game mechanics of how that would work, and then I sat down and wrote out paragraphs of information, from the stuff everybody knows, to the facts that only learned scholars know after years of study. It was fun!

Mechanics-wise, the rules for downtime research in D&D 5E are pretty straightforward. Each topic takes about a work-week of time (5 days), and at least 50 GP in fees, bribes, or materials. At the end of the week the player makes an Intelligence check; the higher the result, the more information gained. Spending additional money gets a bonus to the roll; every 100 GP above and beyond gets a +1, up to a maximum of +6. And having access to a good library or knowledgable sage gets advantage on the roll.

Since it’s an Intelligence check, I also allow the players to apply the bonus for any applicable skill proficiency they may have. Researching magical items, for example, can benfit from a proficiency in Arcana.

The table in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything for downtime research shows a scale, from one piece of lore to up to three pieces of lore, which kind of breaks my brain a little. I just wrote out a bunch of stuff, getting more and more detailed as I went, for each topic. I was a little sad that the players won’t see everything I write, unless they got really lucky, so I didn’t spend a lot of time on the more esoteric stuff.

There’s also the matter of complications, which for research are pretty low. A complication comes up at a rate of 10% per week spent in research, and range from mild, to gaining a rival or finding oneself obligated to another quest or adventure. All fun stuff!

But I’m really bad at keeping secrets. I want my players to know things. I want to reward them for their curiosity and engagement with my silly secondary world. Ah well, such is the nature of games. They’ll find all this out in due time, one way or another. My philosophy as a game master is that I try to only prep stuff I’m going to actually use. Now that I’ve come up with these plot hooks and lore, I will find ways to introduce it.

This group of players I’ve found myself in are a gift. They’re mature, intelligent, thoughtful. They pay attention to my silly plots and characters, take notes, show up to nearly every session ready to play. It’s terrific and I am so glad to have this bright spot in my life right now. So when they ask me for more information about the game and the world, I am more than happy to provide it to them. Having players like that makes worldbuilding easy. It’s so much fun. Did I mention the fun? I’m having a lot of fun with this campaign and this group of folks.