Latest Posts by bungeonsandbagons - Page 4

Deity: The Walker of the Wheel

“ Traveler! Why don’t you pull up a stone and rest your weary self, Come share a tale, join me in a song.  Between us there are as many miles to go as there are stars uncounted, but maybe we can number a few of them before we’re through”. 

Setup: There are some gods that demand the worship of all, who seek to spread their gospals to the four corners of the earth. Then there are the small gods, the humble guardians who preside over their little corner of reality and ensure those who journey through it are well taken care of. 

The Walker of the Wheel is one of the latter, a guardian god of roads, travelers, and the infinite horizon who protects those who venture far from home. Appearing as a broken down tramp, a traveling mapmaker, or an adventurous youth, the Walker eschews a concrete identity or even a name, preferring to intercede in the guise of a fellow wanderer rather than act through miracles or celestial agents. 

Holding no temples save for the small roadside shrines erected by fellow travelers, the existence of the Walker is lore held only by those who live their lives on the road, cobbled together out of scraps of road-lore and tales of secondhand encounters. 

Astral travelers are also known to draw the attention of the Walker, who holds stewardship over forgotten gateways between the realms. 

Adventure Hooks: 

Exhausted and woefully lost with darkness closing in, the party hears the plucking of an old guitar drifting across the landscape, leading them to a small campsite and the hermit who presides over it. The old codger offers them hospitality and a drag off his jug of barleywine, in exchange for their tales of adventure and woe.   When the party awakes in the morning, they’ll find the Walker gone and themselves a stonesthrow from their destination, having crossed valleys and rivers in the span of a single night. 

Those that impress the Walker are likely to be rewarded with good luck charms touched by a bit of his divine grace. Dented compasses that point the way home, guitar picks that conjure visions of the past when used to strum a nostalgic song, well worn walking sticks that allow for tireless travel over harsh terrain. These items all show evidence of having many owners in the past, as well as handetched patterns of stars and constellations. 

While generally a god of good spirits, the Walker cannot stand those who prey upon travelers, and woe to any robber or highwayman who draw his attention.  The party bears witness to this wrath when bandits attack their inn, hoping to kidnap and ransom a merchant who also happens to be staying there for the night. The Walker appears partway through this standoff, and with a strike of his stick dissolves the bandit’s leader into a pile of road dust. 

Titles: Our Old friend, Master Dust, The Starry Hermit, Wornboot Bill, The Roadwarden

Signs: Whirling Stars and Nebulas, music on the edge of exhaustion, dreamlike landscapes.  

Symbols:  Hobo Marks, Migratory birds, A long road beyond a gateway. 

do you have any resources or guides for worldbuilding and reimagining the feywild? not looking for adventure prompts or npcs just your thoughts on setting and how to make the feywild feel dangerous and mystical

Planescape: The Feywild

I won’t lie,  the introduction if the feywild is one of the best additions to the default d&d cosmology in a while, not only from a thematic perspective, but gameplay aswell, as it allows any podunk patch of land to act as a doorway to wild adventure. That said, too often this wonderland is treated as a place where things are just wacky, without real attention paid to the narrative possibilities introducing the feywild into a story can have. 

To that end, I’m going propose a few different aspects of the feywild, different visions of how things could be drawn from different mythologies and storytelling conventions:

The feywild has no geography: like the notes of a song or the lines of a play, the reality of faerie is reinterpreted with every visitation, Coloring itself based on the expectations and emotions of those exploring it. This is why a child can stumble into a mushroom ring and have themselves a whimsical romp full of talking animal friends and life lessons, whereas adults tend to find themselves ensnared by echoes of their deepest desires and why adventurers ALWAYS find something to fight.  If you want to go anywhere in the feywild you don’t need a map, you need a thematic structure that will carry you to your destination: whether that be staying on a yellow brick road through a number of distractions and tribulations, or winning a game of riddles against a talking bird who’ll swear to drop you off at your destination. 

The feywild is a place of stories:  When a peasant family leaves out milk and performs small acts of thanks for the brownie, they are unwittingly inviting the primal energies of the feywild to fill the space they have made for it, creating a creature that had always been there, looking out for them. Likewise, when folk tell of wonderous places just beyond the edge of the map, the feywild becomes those places, taking solidity from repeated tellings of the tale and incorporating different interpretations to give themselves depth. This is not to say that the translation is perfect, as one can’t simply make up a story, tell it to an audience, and expect it to suddenly become true as it takes a powerful and engrained sort of lies, embelishment, or folktales to give shape to the otherworld.  When populating your local fairy-realm or those areas near enough to it, consider what sort of stories people tell about that place, whether it be about monsters that gobble up wayward children or treasure hidden there by bandits long ago. 

The feywild responds to your emotions: When your party takes a rest, ask them how they think their characters are feeling. Consider whether they are frightened or foolheardy, adventurous or avricious, and then sketch out some random encounter to spice in along the way as the realm of whimsy responds to the vibes they’re putting out.   A party that’s feeling hungry may encounter a friendly fey teaparty or a dangerous lure disguised as a snack, a group that’s feeling pressed for time may hear the horn of a savage hunter stalking them, or a parable about stopping to help others can actually speed you along your own path.  In this way, the fairyland is in diolog with the party’s desire to press their narrative forward, and will test or reward them according to its whim. 

The feywild is everywhere: one of the underutilized aspects of having the feywild in our games is that a portal to the “shallower” areas of the otherworld can pop up anywhere overtaken by nature, allowing fey beings and other oddities to cross over in a way that creates all manner of adventure hooks. If I’m building a dungeon in the wilderness, I’m personally fond of having a mounting fey presence the deeper in you get, replacing the normal ruin dwelling hazards with troops of hobgoblins, odd enchantments, and various tricksters. For smaller dungeons, the closed off fey portal can be an adventure hook for later, encouraging them to come back when they need to delve into whimsy, whereas for the larger dungeons,  a non contiguous fey realm connecting multiple points can serve as a combination of fast travel AND bonus stage. Even for non dungeon locations, consider how much fun of an adventure it’d be if someone discovered that their cellar had been replaced with a fairy’s larder, or that the vine-covered lot where neighborhood kids play during the day transforms into a vast battlefield for sprites during the night. 

Dare: The Glittering Reef: 

“While the dragon may long be dead, there’s more than one predator in these waters. You best be quick if you wish to claim your prize.“

Setup: Generations ago the crystal clear waters of the Ildathan coast ran red with blood, as a terrible archdrake terrorized the trade routes and savaged any merchant ship it caught eyes on. Known to locals as Hullraker, this beast would use its powerful claws to crack open the body of ships to gorge itself on sailors and treasure alike. 

While its a myth that dragons eat gold, they do sometimes devour valuable objects to spit up into their hordes later. This habbit would eventually lead to the drake’s defeat, as a group of clever pirates tired of the drake’s meddling caste a series of golden cannonballs, then hollowed them out and filled them with black powder, and an alchemical compound that would ignite after being exposed to the drake’s insides for some length of time.  Loading up a dummy ship with their deadly decoys and piles of coin as bait, they watched in glee as the drake’s belly exploded mid air, showering the sea with golden shrapnel and sending Hullraker plunging into the reef below. 

The Challenge: Since the time of its death, treasure hunters have paddled out to the glimmering reef in the hopes of  reclaiming a portion of the dragons last, fatal meal. Having stripped most of the upper reef clear of coins. Now after years of plundering only the strongest of divers can make it down to the dark, shark infested shelf of the reef where the dragon’s bones and the bulk of its treasure remains. Tradition is that each diver only takes a single coin, and while one gold piece isn’t much to an adventure, a “drowned queen” (one of the particular printing of coins the pirates used for the bulk of their bait) is a mighty prize among sailors and other folk of the sea, said to confer the luck and cunning of the pirates that took Hullraker down. 

Hiya!

Im prepping a ball for my players to go to (its hosted by the mob, half of the PCs are the children of the leaders), and I'm wondering if you had any suggestions on stuff that could happen there! I have a couple of events and bits of gossip and stuff, but I'm running out of ideas (most of the ones i have are expanded on thanks to forums and friends). Thanks!

Drafting the Adventure: Throwing a Party

There comes a time in every adventuring party’s career where they must attend some kind of celebration, whether it be in their own honor or as part of a larger adventure. Ranging from peasant festivals to the indulgent fetes of the upper class, celebrations are to regular social encounters what dungeons are to a random skirmish. Just like dungeons, celebrations are at their best when the group is attempting to explore and navigate a larger structure, looking to discover a way to their goal while fighting a time pressure while fighting against the clock, all the while attempting to dodge various hazards that will slow them down or eject them from the premises. While not every bash the party attends has to be run like this, having an idea how to run a celebration-as-encounter gives you access to a framework that can support important dramatic beats for your campaign, or launch unexpected new ones. 

The Timeline

Think of your celebration as being divided up into acts or phases, depending on the general temperament/activity of the guests and the major events you’d like to see take place. When building your acts it’s important to have a goal in mind, something the celebration is building towards regardless of whether the guests or the heroes know about it. This goal often intersects or contrasts in some way with the party’s own objective, forcing them to jam themselves into the sharped toothed gears of polite society in order to get what they want. Here’s a brief example below, where the group’s goal is to ingratiate themselves with the influential duchess. 

1 The guests arrive: general meet and greet, folk are a bit tentative

Party meets their intermediary and gets introduced to a few people before getting to split off. Their quarry is nowhere in sight

2 Full Swing: guests loosened up by good drinks and good company

the Influential Duchess finishes up with social niceties and begins talking with friends, the party might have an in, but they need to figure out who the duchess will open her conversational circle for. 

The Long Awaited Viscount arrives fashionably late making a spectacular entrance, all but announcing his attempt to woo the Duchess’s daughter

3 First Dance:  The party, their new acquaintances, and the duchess are all swept up into the dance, with only the most stubborn of wallflowers being spared from participation. 

Atleast one of the party members has a chance to talk to the Duchess, but she is distracted worrying about the Viscount's intentions for her daughter. 

Briefly introduce the party to the Viscount and the Daughter, let the party know they’re on some kind of collision course. 

4 Refreshments: guests are in very good spirits but the Duchess is on war footing, walling her and her daughter off behind a circle of close acquaintances and trusted social allies. Any forays the party makes is likely to be seen as a ploy of the Viscount's to gain access to her daughter.

Cut out of the loop, the party must contend with all those who don’t pass the Duchess’s muster, but if they made friends with the shy handmaiden earlier, they have an in.  

5 Second Dance: The duchess’s wall temporarily breaks for social propriety, letting the party begin to close in once again. 

During this dance, the Viscount covertly releases a monster he had polymorphed and secreted onto his person. In the rampage, he and the daughter run off. 

The party is forced to decide between battling the monster with improvised weapons, or pursue the Viscount, trusting that the guards will take care of it. 

6 Here’s where the story turns: Do they duel the viscount and the daughter preventing them from leaving, or let them slip away? Do they battle the unleashed monster, proving their bravery before the assembled guests, or are their casualties among the attendants? 

This example celebration obviously has an unexpected and violent twist at the end, but it’s possible to run one completely straight and have just as meaningful story affecting consequences. 

Below the cut, I’m going to give a few different archetypes of the sort of encounters one can have during a celebration, and how to run them in a way that will save you time both during your planning and at the table. 

The Opportunities

Less than an encounter, an opportunity represents a narrative thread available to the party during a particular phase of the celebration’s timeline. Ideally there should be more opportunities than the party can capitalize on at once, through some may be hidden unless the party is adventurous or perceptive. Don’t feel a need to be too rigid on how an opportunity “triggers”, as you want to give the heroes an excuse to enjoy all the delightful content you’ve made for them.  Lastly, some phases are going to have less opportunities, so once these are exhausted, feel free to move ahead. 

Here’s some examples to consider: 

Fleeting: Directly related to events that are going to occur in later pheses of the celebration, these opportunities represent a way for the heroes to get ahead of the challenges to come. Think of them as keys to doors that the party have not yet encountered, with the challenge of a celebration-as-encounter being figuring out which opportunities are going to pay off in future phases. 

Reoccurring: These stick around for most of the celebration, filling out your list of available opportunities. If a party member doesn't’ know what to do in a particular phase, have one of your Reoccurring opportunities seek them out. Gossips are likely to want new people to chat to, and someone seeking aid will likely grow more bold as the situation gets worse.  

Stray threads: Unrelated to the celebration itself, a stray thread is a bit of worldbuilding, rumor, or quest hook that draws the player’s attention away from the mission at hand. These can be great ways to foreshadow upcoming events, or present options for the party for after their current adventure resolves. 

Wallflowers: If one of your players feels like they’re not the party type, don’t worry, there’s likely some NPCs that don’t want to be there either. Staying as far away from the social battlefield as decorum will allow them, they’re likely to have wound ways to amuse themselves and be glad of some company. Wallflowers might need to be generated on the fly, but try to match them to the introverted character’s interest. A groundskeeper shares a flask with the uncivil barbarian, the awkward wizard stumbles across a great aunt playing chess against herself on two different boards. The troublemaker stumbles into a couple of bastard cousins playing cards in the smoking room. 

Art