Let me add my two cents by saying Ravenloft is the best campaign setting.
Signal boosting Ravenloft. I'm a sucker for gothic horror and dark fantasy, so the instant I learned about Van Richten's Guide, I snapped that book up quick. By far my favorite content for the moody atmosphere, subtlety, and multifaceted nature of the setting.
Love me some Dark Domains
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Recently I changed jobs to a temporary position that said it would probably, but not necessarily, evolve into a long-term position. Well, I'm at the end of the temporary period now and not getting any more hours. Nobody's said anything to me though.
I told myself I was gonna keep sending out applications while employed here, but I got complacent I guess. Wouldn't be so bad if I had been making good money, but these last couple of weeks I've barely worked at all.
Someone's leaving the company soon, though, so idk if maybe some hours are going to open up or what. Of my previous salvo of applications, one reached out to me but then wanted to last minute reschedule my interview, and I just didn't because I was already in training. So that's probably not a great look for me. I don't know, I'm quietly stressing out.
-
Been trying to put together a D&D group at my LGS but barely any responses. I told them I intend to launch soon but I mean, one and a half players isn't enough. I do think it's better to kick it off early though, people are more likely to join a running group than one that hasn't started yet. Some quirk of psychology.
The more I pay attention to media the more I realize how totally inept my world-building skills are. I think as a DM, I need setting guides.
Setting books are great! Even if you don't use the setting they can provide really great ideas to build your own setting! The ones I've found most interesting have been Ebberon and Wildemount, Ebberon for more steampunk and techno, whereas Wildemount is not traditional fantasy.
Recently I changed jobs to a temporary position that said it would probably, but not necessarily, evolve into a long-term position. Well, I'm at the end of the temporary period now and not getting any more hours. Nobody's said anything to me though.
I told myself I was gonna keep sending out applications while employed here, but I got complacent I guess. Wouldn't be so bad if I had been making good money, but these last couple of weeks I've barely worked at all.
Someone's leaving the company soon, though, so idk if maybe some hours are going to open up or what. Of my previous salvo of applications, one reached out to me but then wanted to last minute reschedule my interview, and I just didn't because I was already in training. So that's probably not a great look for me. I don't know, I'm quietly stressing out.
-
Been trying to put together a D&D group at my LGS but barely any responses. I told them I intend to launch soon but I mean, one and a half players isn't enough. I do think it's better to kick it off early though, people are more likely to join a running group than one that hasn't started yet. Some quirk of psychology.
The more I pay attention to media the more I realize how totally inept my world-building skills are. I think as a DM, I need setting guides.
That really sucks about the job, Choir, I know what that can be like and it’s never fun. I hope that situation resolves itself for you fairly soon..
Hopefully your player and a half enjoy the experience and end up recruiting for you. But even if the party stays small, as long as you all have fun that’s the important thing.
Why do you say that your world-building skills are inept? Just like DMing, world-building is one of those things we get better at the more we do it. I’m sure if you just get building you’ll notice your world-building improves by leaps and bounds.
It's not so much a loony toon as Lloyd Bridge's character Steve McCroskey, with a heavy meta device built into his back story. At least that's what I'm thinking at the moment to deny any Deadpool stanning.
I'm in the PbP game with Wyspera, Sposta, and Yurei. I've been Zoom to in person DMing a regular group about every other week for about three years. In the near future I'll be DM/GMing at my FLGS fairly regularly, four sessions a month, half will be D&D, half will be my choice, maybe more if I develop some evergreen material that I'd enjoy recycling for more players. I'm told one shots and short campaigns/adventures of no more than 5 sessions are what works best there, so I'm hoping to use that space to try to stretch out / grow my DM/GM capabilities. Maybe if the right player mix is interested I may do another standing campaign. Also hoping to "play" at some of the store's other tables too. Haven't talked to the store scheduler since "recent events we won't discuss" but the general recruiting line was "you can run whatever you want, but we really need people willing to run D&D as its what folks tend to ask for."
Regular game is a sort of planar hoping game centered around a homebrew dragon cosmology that takes some riffs from Planescape, Fizban's and even Spelljammer's bestiary, but is more just stuff I thought would be cool. I've done one shots in the same "world" to introduce new players because it's frankly easy to improvise, and usually some of my regular players are at the table too so the game world gets fleshed out more. The regular game characters spent two whole days in a Kobold cistern with either Jareth the Goblin King or David Bowie, ti wasn't entirely clear. Most players really never want to see that guy again, some players do, so maybe we'll branch out a one shot with some folks who want to play and let the players help Jareth or Bowie "resolve" both Archeron and the whole Fey / not Fey Goblin riff.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Let me add my two cents by saying Ravenloft is the best campaign setting.
Signal boosting Ravenloft. I'm a sucker for gothic horror and dark fantasy, so the instant I learned about Van Richten's Guide, I snapped that book up quick. By far my favorite content for the moody atmosphere, subtlety, and multifaceted nature of the setting.
Let me add my two cents by saying Ravenloft is the best campaign setting.
Signal boosting Ravenloft. I'm a sucker for gothic horror and dark fantasy, so the instant I learned about Van Richten's Guide, I snapped that book up quick. By far my favorite content for the moody atmosphere, subtlety, and multifaceted nature of the setting.
Love me some Dark Domains
Right??? It’s also so fun converting all of the old 2e domains to 5e. There’s so much not in the new book but it’s so easy to tell stories in older domains thanks to how VRGTR laid them out. Thanks, WOTC! 🥰
I skimmed DMsGuild for the old 2e stuff that got ported over for Souragne when I was coming up with the backstory on my CoS character, but ended up mostly just inventing my own stuff. It's basically D&D Louisiana, so hard to go too wrong so long as it was appropriately swampy and spooky
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I skimmed DMsGuild for the old 2e stuff that got ported over for Souragne when I was coming up with the backstory on my CoS character, but ended up mostly just inventing my own stuff. It's basically D&D Louisiana, so hard to go too wrong so long as it was appropriately swampy and spooky
As a Louisianan, real Louisiana isn’t too far off from Souragne anyway. 😂
I'm running a pretty decent campaign as well tho the work of creating a consistent homebtew world is hard, it's worth it to see the smiles on my players faces or see them be badasses
Has anyone ever thought about characters becoming liches or angelic beings or fiends as part of being a cleric. or other class that deals with those energies produced from the outer planes.
In the game I am writing as a channeler of divine energy grows in power they slowly morph from their original race into either an undead, abyssal being, or celestial being depending on their alignment, so that by the time their character has reached the really high levels they have fully transformed. And yes they acquire all of the associated powers as the morph into the new form.
How about casters needing to roll above a certain score using percentage dice to cast a spell. Fail twice and you trigger an explosion of magical energy. The higher level the spell, the bigger the boom.
Or maybe you want to increase your racial abilities, sure i stole this one from the 3e game except you don't need to waste class levels to do this just a little of your experience points. race levels only ever increase race abilities.
The topic asked for something else to talk about well maybe this will help.
Take a look at 4th Edition Epic Destines--these were essentially an additional set of feats and abilities you could take at 21st level (4e capped at 30) which were designed to reflect choices you made during the campaign. They gave some feats at various levels, giving an extra set of rewards for progression that reflected roleplay choices beyond just your starting class (there was also a level 11-19 equivalent called Paragon Paths which served the same purpose).
Archlich, for example, was one of the choices available to any arcane class. You got some feats that worked to prevent you from dying, some additional increases to modifiers, some resistances, some special abilities, etc., unlocking more and more powerful feats as you levelled. Exalted Angel was another, giving you wings, some radiant abilities, etc.
They were a really neat part of the game that I was sad went away with 5e--it was pretty cool that there were options which allowed you to customize your character's ability to directly reflect your character's development during the campaign, something which the rather linear progression of 5e is lacking.
Has anyone ever thought about characters becoming liches or angelic beings or fiends as part of being a cleric. or other class that deals with those energies produced from the outer planes.
Lol, one of my players is obsessed with turning into a lich, and another actually narrated his wizard's epilogue at the end of our campaign as his lifelong search to become one.
My cleric became the avatar of her deity in the epilogue of our campaign, and I later got to play a one-shot with her in this elevated form, which was an absolute delight. I also got to do some social encounters as Kelemvor's avatar and loved them. The RP possibilities of becoming a divine/fiendish being or lich would be amazing with the right group of players. I definitely wouldn't trust the mechanics of this in 5e unless it was carefully designed or accessible only in higher tiers of play, though.
How about casters needing to roll above a certain score using percentage dice to cast a spell. Fail twice and you trigger an explosion of magical energy. The higher level the spell, the bigger the boom.
A more unpredictable magic mechanic would definitely appeal to some players. I've known chaos goblins who have homebrewed their own wild magic table expansions just to add more challenge and craziness into spellcasting.
Personally, I'm not super keen on a permanent spellcaster tax that makes using class features harder, but introducing this as an environmental effect in a mysterious jungle or as part of a wizard tower's security system? Yeah, sign me up.
The issue I've seen with a number of different systems designed to make spellcasting more volatile and less reliable is that the spellcasting classes in this game don't generally have any recourse but spells. A wizard or a sorcerer that cannot reliably cast spells can't decide "well this ain't working, time to use my other class features instead" because they don't have any. Bards aren't generally all that much better off. Clerics and druids are somewhat better, but still don't really work well if they can't cast. These classes would have to be at least moderately functional without spellcasting if someone wanted to make their spellcasting volatile. 5e-the-system just isn't really designed for it, even if I've seen a couple of honestly clever hacks for it.
one reached out to me but then wanted to last minute reschedule my interview, and I just didn't because I was already in training. So that's probably not a great look for me
I am long out of the job-hunting game, so take this for what it's worth, but to me that's not a good look for them
The more hoops a company tries to make prospective employees jump through before even hiring them, the less likely they'll be worth working for in the first place
I'll 3rd this one. Take all the things you encounter (good & bad) during hiring, set them to 11, and that's your work environment. If they have hoops now, working there will be a admin nightmare, creativity will be seen as a character flaw, and promotions will either be based on time with the company, or whoever the boss personally likes most, IMO.
---
I'm a big fan of Eberron, because RAW, it has most everything somewhere on / near Khorvaire. All the levels of civilization, environments, legality, combat and so on that you tweak for different campaigns, from one extreme to the other, all within a reasonable distance of each other. So if you want a change of scenery, it's a day's travel that way. You want to play a outsider to the general feel of the campaign, you're from a week's ride past the mountains or river or whatever feature defines the edge of familiar territory for the rest of the group. And you can do whatever in the next campaign, but everyone starts with a decent foundational understanding of the overall setting.
Anybody got any neat ideas for a Modern/Urban Fantasy game? My table's been looking at trying a Savage Worlds game - not strictly because of The Thing, but because most of us have never played anything but 5e and we've been thinking of diversifying for a while now. I'm on the hook for running the thing because I'm the only one with SW experience, but heck if I can think of any good plot seeds for a short game run.
I don't really need advice on the ruleset or anything, this is a D&D forum, but a lot of people run Not-High-Fantasy in D&D already. Curious if anybody has any possible suggestions for a relatively short, two to five-ish game run of something Modern Fantasy I can try and give my table.
I’m currently in three campaigns. In one I’m playing a pretty straightforward character, Champion Fighter 3/ Berserker Barbarian 3 just for the fun of it. Sometimes it’s the simple characters that are the most fun, and “Grognak hit things with axe. Lots.” Lol. In the second campaign I’m playing Ryn'a'raith, a level 5 Githyanki Bladesinger Wizard who used to be a member of the aristocracy, but now slays monsters and villains with his green-flame whip (my DM approved it). And I just started a new campaign with Griznuts The Wizard, a 1st level Orcish Wizard.
Anybody got any neat ideas for a Modern/Urban Fantasy game? My table's been looking at trying a Savage Worlds game - not strictly because of The Thing, but because most of us have never played anything but 5e and we've been thinking of diversifying for a while now. I'm on the hook for running the thing because I'm the only one with SW experience, but heck if I can think of any good plot seeds for a short game run.
I don't really need advice on the ruleset or anything, this is a D&D forum, but a lot of people run Not-High-Fantasy in D&D already. Curious if anybody has any possible suggestions for a relatively short, two to five-ish game run of something Modern Fantasy I can try and give my table.
If you have ever seen Kurosawa’s outstanding film The Hidden Fortress, I think that plot would lend itself very well to a short form adventure. It already feels a lot like a TTRPG - a group of four adventurers (some with secrets from the rest) get thrown together by circumstance and have to go through a series of different encounters in order to cross the border from hostile territory into friendly territory.
The story itself is fairly simple, but there is a lot of complexity you can add. You have stealth components of sneaking past enemy groups too powerful to fight, “face” components of trying to get folks in enemy territory to shelter you, survival components, particularly if the landscape itself is hostile, combat, etc. Whatever your group wants, the underlying basic “escape from hostile land” story can provide.
I haven't seen that movie, sadly. But I could absolutely look it up. Thanks for the pointer, Caerwyn.
And that explains why I was having so much trouble finding it. Fortress, not Temple. Heh, the old Nickelodeon show is everywhere it seems. Not that Legend of the Hidden Temple was bad.
Anybody got any neat ideas for a Modern/Urban Fantasy game? My table's been looking at trying a Savage Worlds game - not strictly because of The Thing, but because most of us have never played anything but 5e and we've been thinking of diversifying for a while now. I'm on the hook for running the thing because I'm the only one with SW experience, but heck if I can think of any good plot seeds for a short game run.
I don't really need advice on the ruleset or anything, this is a D&D forum, but a lot of people run Not-High-Fantasy in D&D already. Curious if anybody has any possible suggestions for a relatively short, two to five-ish game run of something Modern Fantasy I can try and give my table.
The Ravnica book gives you a lot of good city material to work with. It's not totally modern but it's pretty modern, they have factories and elevators and electric lights but not cars, idk.
My DM set up a situation like this: A crime boss had been accused of the murder of a judge who was going to preside over a trial soon. I think the trial involved the mafioso's business so the motive was clear. The party needed something from this boss though, so we went and spoke to him in his luxury prison cell, and he recruited us to prove his innocence, giving us some kind of convincing but non-admissable evidence to get us on his side. We then spent some time investigating the courthouse where the murder happened, and eventually, because we were basically all evil bastards, decided just to fabricate evidence and frame someone using an elaborate magic trick or something.
We didn't have jurisdiction to be there but the cops were done investigating pretty quick, assuming it was an open and shut case. The game ended before we got to the murder trial but I think we were supposed to give what we found to the defendant's legal team or something, idk.
Maybe that'll help lol. You could probably use rival gangsters for combat along the way, and maybe at the end during the murder trial, there could be someone trying to assassinate either the new judge, the defendant, an attorney, or a witness and the party needs to stop them with violence.
I haven't seen that movie, sadly. But I could absolutely look it up. Thanks for the pointer, Caerwyn.
And that explains why I was having so much trouble finding it. Fortress, not Temple. Heh, the old Nickelodeon show is everywhere it seems. Not that Legend of the Hidden Temple was bad.
I realised I made that mistake moments after posting—clearly my subconscious is yearning for the 90s. Oops!
Kurosawa has a few great films that would make fun adventures in D&D. Seven Samurai is a classic subject of adaptation (group of heroes band together to protect a town), but it has been a bit overplayed. Yojimbo would work well also (party finds itself in the middle of two gangs and plays both sides against one another).
Outside of 50s samurai movies, a heist is always a good option - they’re fun, they involve setup, planning, and the heist, and getaway, so cover a lot of different playstyles. Plus, at least in my experience, every TTRPG party I’ve played with absolutely loves to go rip off some rich jerk—I think it’s one of the few things that unite players across the entire spectrum.
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Love me some Dark Domains
Active characters:
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Setting books are great! Even if you don't use the setting they can provide really great ideas to build your own setting! The ones I've found most interesting have been Ebberon and Wildemount, Ebberon for more steampunk and techno, whereas Wildemount is not traditional fantasy.
That really sucks about the job, Choir, I know what that can be like and it’s never fun. I hope that situation resolves itself for you fairly soon..
Hopefully your player and a half enjoy the experience and end up recruiting for you. But even if the party stays small, as long as you all have fun that’s the important thing.
Why do you say that your world-building skills are inept? Just like DMing, world-building is one of those things we get better at the more we do it. I’m sure if you just get building you’ll notice your world-building improves by leaps and bounds.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
It's not so much a loony toon as Lloyd Bridge's character Steve McCroskey, with a heavy meta device built into his back story. At least that's what I'm thinking at the moment to deny any Deadpool stanning.
I'm in the PbP game with Wyspera, Sposta, and Yurei. I've been Zoom to in person DMing a regular group about every other week for about three years. In the near future I'll be DM/GMing at my FLGS fairly regularly, four sessions a month, half will be D&D, half will be my choice, maybe more if I develop some evergreen material that I'd enjoy recycling for more players. I'm told one shots and short campaigns/adventures of no more than 5 sessions are what works best there, so I'm hoping to use that space to try to stretch out / grow my DM/GM capabilities. Maybe if the right player mix is interested I may do another standing campaign. Also hoping to "play" at some of the store's other tables too. Haven't talked to the store scheduler since "recent events we won't discuss" but the general recruiting line was "you can run whatever you want, but we really need people willing to run D&D as its what folks tend to ask for."
Regular game is a sort of planar hoping game centered around a homebrew dragon cosmology that takes some riffs from Planescape, Fizban's and even Spelljammer's bestiary, but is more just stuff I thought would be cool. I've done one shots in the same "world" to introduce new players because it's frankly easy to improvise, and usually some of my regular players are at the table too so the game world gets fleshed out more. The regular game characters spent two whole days in a Kobold cistern with either Jareth the Goblin King or David Bowie, ti wasn't entirely clear. Most players really never want to see that guy again, some players do, so maybe we'll branch out a one shot with some folks who want to play and let the players help Jareth or Bowie "resolve" both Archeron and the whole Fey / not Fey Goblin riff.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Picked up D&D 'Spelljammer: Adventures In Space' a few months ago.
This set reminds me of 'Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings' by Square Enix on Nintendo DS.
Waiting patiently for Spelljammer ship & class miniatures to appear in retail stores around my location.
Right??? It’s also so fun converting all of the old 2e domains to 5e. There’s so much not in the new book but it’s so easy to tell stories in older domains thanks to how VRGTR laid them out. Thanks, WOTC! 🥰
I skimmed DMsGuild for the old 2e stuff that got ported over for Souragne when I was coming up with the backstory on my CoS character, but ended up mostly just inventing my own stuff. It's basically D&D Louisiana, so hard to go too wrong so long as it was appropriately swampy and spooky
Active characters:
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As a Louisianan, real Louisiana isn’t too far off from Souragne anyway. 😂
I'm running a pretty decent campaign as well tho the work of creating a consistent homebtew world is hard, it's worth it to see the smiles on my players faces or see them be badasses
Take a look at 4th Edition Epic Destines--these were essentially an additional set of feats and abilities you could take at 21st level (4e capped at 30) which were designed to reflect choices you made during the campaign. They gave some feats at various levels, giving an extra set of rewards for progression that reflected roleplay choices beyond just your starting class (there was also a level 11-19 equivalent called Paragon Paths which served the same purpose).
Archlich, for example, was one of the choices available to any arcane class. You got some feats that worked to prevent you from dying, some additional increases to modifiers, some resistances, some special abilities, etc., unlocking more and more powerful feats as you levelled. Exalted Angel was another, giving you wings, some radiant abilities, etc.
They were a really neat part of the game that I was sad went away with 5e--it was pretty cool that there were options which allowed you to customize your character's ability to directly reflect your character's development during the campaign, something which the rather linear progression of 5e is lacking.
Lol, one of my players is obsessed with turning into a lich, and another actually narrated his wizard's epilogue at the end of our campaign as his lifelong search to become one.
My cleric became the avatar of her deity in the epilogue of our campaign, and I later got to play a one-shot with her in this elevated form, which was an absolute delight. I also got to do some social encounters as Kelemvor's avatar and loved them. The RP possibilities of becoming a divine/fiendish being or lich would be amazing with the right group of players. I definitely wouldn't trust the mechanics of this in 5e unless it was carefully designed or accessible only in higher tiers of play, though.
A more unpredictable magic mechanic would definitely appeal to some players. I've known chaos goblins who have homebrewed their own wild magic table expansions just to add more challenge and craziness into spellcasting.
Personally, I'm not super keen on a permanent spellcaster tax that makes using class features harder, but introducing this as an environmental effect in a mysterious jungle or as part of a wizard tower's security system? Yeah, sign me up.
The issue I've seen with a number of different systems designed to make spellcasting more volatile and less reliable is that the spellcasting classes in this game don't generally have any recourse but spells. A wizard or a sorcerer that cannot reliably cast spells can't decide "well this ain't working, time to use my other class features instead" because they don't have any. Bards aren't generally all that much better off. Clerics and druids are somewhat better, but still don't really work well if they can't cast. These classes would have to be at least moderately functional without spellcasting if someone wanted to make their spellcasting volatile. 5e-the-system just isn't really designed for it, even if I've seen a couple of honestly clever hacks for it.
Please do not contact or message me.
I'll 3rd this one. Take all the things you encounter (good & bad) during hiring, set them to 11, and that's your work environment. If they have hoops now, working there will be a admin nightmare, creativity will be seen as a character flaw, and promotions will either be based on time with the company, or whoever the boss personally likes most, IMO.
---
I'm a big fan of Eberron, because RAW, it has most everything somewhere on / near Khorvaire. All the levels of civilization, environments, legality, combat and so on that you tweak for different campaigns, from one extreme to the other, all within a reasonable distance of each other. So if you want a change of scenery, it's a day's travel that way. You want to play a outsider to the general feel of the campaign, you're from a week's ride past the mountains or river or whatever feature defines the edge of familiar territory for the rest of the group. And you can do whatever in the next campaign, but everyone starts with a decent foundational understanding of the overall setting.
This has been a nice diversion, I wonder what interesting things people will post today, if any.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Anybody got any neat ideas for a Modern/Urban Fantasy game? My table's been looking at trying a Savage Worlds game - not strictly because of The Thing, but because most of us have never played anything but 5e and we've been thinking of diversifying for a while now. I'm on the hook for running the thing because I'm the only one with SW experience, but heck if I can think of any good plot seeds for a short game run.
I don't really need advice on the ruleset or anything, this is a D&D forum, but a lot of people run Not-High-Fantasy in D&D already. Curious if anybody has any possible suggestions for a relatively short, two to five-ish game run of something Modern Fantasy I can try and give my table.
Please do not contact or message me.
I’m currently in three campaigns. In one I’m playing a pretty straightforward character, Champion Fighter 3/ Berserker Barbarian 3 just for the fun of it. Sometimes it’s the simple characters that are the most fun, and “Grognak hit things with axe. Lots.” Lol. In the second campaign I’m playing Ryn'a'raith, a level 5 Githyanki Bladesinger Wizard who used to be a member of the aristocracy, but now slays monsters and villains with his green-flame whip (my DM approved it). And I just started a new campaign with Griznuts The Wizard, a 1st level Orcish Wizard.
If you have ever seen Kurosawa’s outstanding film The Hidden Fortress, I think that plot would lend itself very well to a short form adventure. It already feels a lot like a TTRPG - a group of four adventurers (some with secrets from the rest) get thrown together by circumstance and have to go through a series of different encounters in order to cross the border from hostile territory into friendly territory.
The story itself is fairly simple, but there is a lot of complexity you can add. You have stealth components of sneaking past enemy groups too powerful to fight, “face” components of trying to get folks in enemy territory to shelter you, survival components, particularly if the landscape itself is hostile, combat, etc. Whatever your group wants, the underlying basic “escape from hostile land” story can provide.
I haven't seen that movie, sadly. But I could absolutely look it up. Thanks for the pointer, Caerwyn.
And that explains why I was having so much trouble finding it. Fortress, not Temple. Heh, the old Nickelodeon show is everywhere it seems. Not that Legend of the Hidden Temple was bad.
Please do not contact or message me.
The Ravnica book gives you a lot of good city material to work with. It's not totally modern but it's pretty modern, they have factories and elevators and electric lights but not cars, idk.
My DM set up a situation like this: A crime boss had been accused of the murder of a judge who was going to preside over a trial soon. I think the trial involved the mafioso's business so the motive was clear. The party needed something from this boss though, so we went and spoke to him in his luxury prison cell, and he recruited us to prove his innocence, giving us some kind of convincing but non-admissable evidence to get us on his side. We then spent some time investigating the courthouse where the murder happened, and eventually, because we were basically all evil bastards, decided just to fabricate evidence and frame someone using an elaborate magic trick or something.
We didn't have jurisdiction to be there but the cops were done investigating pretty quick, assuming it was an open and shut case. The game ended before we got to the murder trial but I think we were supposed to give what we found to the defendant's legal team or something, idk.
Maybe that'll help lol. You could probably use rival gangsters for combat along the way, and maybe at the end during the murder trial, there could be someone trying to assassinate either the new judge, the defendant, an attorney, or a witness and the party needs to stop them with violence.
I realised I made that mistake moments after posting—clearly my subconscious is yearning for the 90s. Oops!
Kurosawa has a few great films that would make fun adventures in D&D. Seven Samurai is a classic subject of adaptation (group of heroes band together to protect a town), but it has been a bit overplayed. Yojimbo would work well also (party finds itself in the middle of two gangs and plays both sides against one another).
Outside of 50s samurai movies, a heist is always a good option - they’re fun, they involve setup, planning, and the heist, and getaway, so cover a lot of different playstyles. Plus, at least in my experience, every TTRPG party I’ve played with absolutely loves to go rip off some rich jerk—I think it’s one of the few things that unite players across the entire spectrum.