Hatred In Strale

One of the great things available to current D&D players is a wealth of campaign world in which they can run their games. Late last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Travis Legge, who shared with me a love for the Scarred Lands setting.

This well-detailed campaign world was first published using the d20 System by White Wolf Publishing starting in 2000. During the early 2000s a flurry of material detailing this campaign world was released. In 2013, Nocturnal Media and Onyx Path Publishing picked up the rights to the fantasy setting and a few years later released their 5th Edition remastering of the material.

What are the Scarred Lands?

The Scared Land setting is a world that reels from the effects of a war between the gods and titans. 150 years have passed since the gods won this war, but the lands still bear witness to the horrors unleashed by this conflict. You can grab the 5th edition version of the Scarred Lands sourcebook on DriveThruRPG.

Slarecian Vault

The Slarecian Vault is Onyx Path’s community content publication platform offered through DriveThruRPG. Much like the DM’s Guild, the Slarecian Vault allows individuals to create and sell new Scarred Lands content.

Hatred in Strale

In speaking with Travis last year, he encouraged me to try my hand at creating material for this setting. Though it took longer than I’d like, I’ve finally finished my first publication for this setting.

I’m pleased to present Hatred in Strale. It’s intended to be a two to four-hour adventure to challenge 4-5 characters of 1st level.

The characters stumble upon the survivors of a doomed expedition and learn of a shipwreck that may still hold items of great value. Can they overcome an abomination that now claims the vessel, or will they fall victim to the Hatred in Strale.

Although it was designed for the Scarred Lands adventure setting, the adventure is easily adaptable for most fantasy settings.

Please take a look!

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Here are a few sample pages from the production:

Jasper’s Game Week Discount

This year, Jasper’s Game Week starts May 2nd and runs until Thursday, May 7th. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons community charity event raising money to support suicide prevention in the United States.

I’m very pleased to participate this year, as I’ve donated money for a chance to play on a streamed D&D game run by Shawn Merwin Tuesday May 5th at 5pm eastern. If you’d like to see me fumble through playing my human wizard Vanor Longsleeve, please tune in and watch.

Better yet, if you’re able, please consider donating to the event here. DONATE.

For those interested in helping Canadian organizations, here are a few that could use your help:

• Crisis Services Canada
• Kid’s Help Phone

In addition, between May 1st and May 7th, 2020, I will donate to this charity event my commissions from Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate. It’s my collaborative D&D adventure available on the DM’s Guild that I co-wrote with Jeff Stevens and Karl Resch. Please consider picking up a copy. You can even use this special discount link to grab the .pdf  at 1/2 its regular price.

 

Circle Initiate

One of the fun D&D innovations released in the last year were the official sidekick characters in the D&D Essentials Kit. In my gaming experience, all too often it’s been difficult to pull together 4 or 5 folks for a D&D game. Historically, playing D&D with just a DM and a single player was unwieldy, usually forcing the player to juggle managing two or more characters. Certainly can be done, but it does add a lot of thinking overhead to remember all the different abilities of each character.

Sidekicks remind me of 1st editions henchmen, hired non-player characters brought with adventurers to tackle difficult adventures. Henchmen were usually one-dimensions figures used by players to beef up their group, to help their main characters survive.

5E’s sidekicks present simplified characters whose abilities nicely fit into a single stat block. With a streamlined set of skills, these characters easily augment a small group of characters, making even the DM and single-player a viable option.

Earlier this year I released Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate, a tier-one adventure I wrote with Jeff Stevens and Karl Resch. We designed it to be an adventure that could take new players from level 1 to level 5. My intention was to provide a full set of pre-gens to make it a quick, ready-to-run adventure, but as often happens, there never seems to be enough time to do everything I’d hoped to do.

However, I thought it might be fun to add a set of side-kicks that a small group could use to help run this or any other adventure based in the Great Dale. So this week I released the Circle Initiate, the first of a series of Great Dale themed sidekick characters. Over the coming months, I intend to publish four or five more and finally bundle them into a single collection.

The Circle Initiate took inspiration from the Circle of Leth, a druid order that watches over the vast forests surrounding the Great Dale. These characters bring a host of nature-themed abilities to support player characters, including the ability to augment berries created by the goodberry spell to make them viable healing support as the group advances in level. Cover art for the Circle Initiate by the talented stock art artist Daniel Comerci.

If you have a chance, pick up a copy. I’ve also included it in my Great Dale Campaign bundle allowing you to get it along with my Great Dale Campaign Guide, and a few adventures including  Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate.

 

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Interested in finding some other articles on Sidekicks check out the following links:

• Down With DnD Episode #174 – Merwin and Sniezek looked at the sidekicks when they were still in development as an Unearthed Arcana consideration.
• DM David  – a post back in 2017 by David Hartlage describing the benefits of augmenting an adventuring party with NPC support, which for me foreshadows the arrival of sidekicks nicesly.
• RPG Bot – an overview of sidekicks, how to use ’em and make your own.
• DnD Duet – a nice overview of using Sidekicks in your games

Great Dale Bundle

I’ve just created a bundle to help start campaigns in the Great Dale region of the Forgotten Realms.

This bundle contains the Great Dale Campaign Guide and a few adventures to get ya going – A Fey’s Anger, A Fey’s Evil, A Fey’s Lair and The Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate.

Remember, bundles reduce pricing for any products you’ve already purchased. Please take a look!

Chris Perkin’s Birthday Discount

Today is one of my favorite WOTC designer’s birthdays as Chris Perkins finally turns 13!

In celebration of Chris becoming a teenager this year, for the next 13 days, I will offer two of my most recent DM’s Guild publications for 50% off.

Hurry, the deals expire on March 13, 2020.

Terror Beneath The Frozen Gate – $4.95 US

The Great Dale – $9.95 US

 

Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate

At long last the adventure Jeff, Karl and I worked on is uploaded and available for purchase on the DM’s Guild. You can find it HERE.

A lot of hard work went into this effort by all three of us. I’m extremely pleased at how it all came together. Every chapter, every portion of the story has all of our fingerprints marking the work.

 

Here’s a few sample pages from the production:

Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate – sample art

I’m just a few days away from releasing my latest collaboration, Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate. In my last blog post I wrote a little about crafting this adventure with Jeff Stevens and Karl Resch. For this post, I thought write about the art I selected for our publication.

My first exposure to D&D was in the early 80’s. Outside of the wondrous coloured covers of most D&D books at the time the interior illustrations were all black and white. I still vividly recall flipping pages of the 1st edition Player’s handbook and staring at each picture and creating a story about each one. Today I feel spoiled looking at all the glorious full-coloured art of the current 5e publications. Oh how my 10-year-old self would have drooled over my 5e D&D bookd!

So as Karl, Jeff and I were throwing around ideas for this adventure, I had a desire to pay homage to the old 1e black and white printings. When I started planning the layout and choosing the art, I wanted our adventure have a little of the feel of those old adventures.

So the art in our production is mostly black and while line art. Thankfully, DriveThruRPG.com is filled with oodles of stock art that fit the bill. Just a few of the talented publishers I’ve purchased stock art from for this book include Daniel Comerci, Dean Spencer, Fat Goblin Games, and Outland Arts. We’ve used one of Dyson Logos‘ wonderful maps to illustrate our Village of Joarl.

Additionally, I commissioned a few new pieces from John Latta and Petar Penev. Here’s a couple pieces you’ll find inside.

First off is a mystical tower beautifully illustrated by John. No tower stands above the village of Joarl, so what could this building have to do with our adventure?

Second is a drawing by Petar of one of the creatures  gracing our cover. What are they and what threat do they pose?

 

 

 

That’s all I’ll share for now, but stay tuned! It won’t be long until our adventure is available on the DM’s Guild!