Working Out the Connections

I’m currently working on integrating the work for my next collaborative effort “Terror Beneath the Frozen Gate”. It’s a tier-one D&D adventure that I’m creating with Jeff Stevens and Karl Resch. I’ve been a bit slow finishing this effort because other priorities kept getting in the way, but I think I’m finally making headway now that i’ve cleared my plate of other writing commitments.

One of the fun challenges I’m wrestling with is ensuring our individual contributions come together in a single cohesive story. Each of us have different strengths that we’ve brought to this collaboration and I want to make sure they all shine in the finished product.

Today I spent the evening working out layout challenges for a fairly complex dungeon delve. I wanted to ensure all the chambers aligned both laterally and vertically. I ended up creating a cutaway view of the complex to ensure the pieces would fit together. I’m not sure if this side-view will make it into the finished publication, but it’s helped me a lot in figuring out how all the bits fit together.

The Great Dale – Creature Codex, Land and Lore, Player Options

The Great Dale Campaign Guide has been available on the DM’s Guild for a little over a month now and I’m quite pleased by how it’s been received thus far.

We were lucky to have Brandes Stoddard of tribality.com write a balanced and comprehensive REVIEW of the production. We received a 7.9/10, with high marks for our Settting and Monsters

• “On material alone, this is a substantial work.”
• “The setting material in this book sheds a lot of the cruft and gets to the good stuff.”
• “…the setting material is strong, evocative, and feels immediately usable…”
• “…the Great Dale does have connections to other parts of the Realms, but they’re minor enough that this is a great entry point to the Forgotten Realms, especially if you love the Mirkwood. If you don’t care one way or the other about the Realms, this is still a good contained setting with a lot of conflict and room for heroics.”

One of the challenges in pulling together a book of this nature is that our content targets a variety of different D&D consumers. We have exciting character build options for players who like to experiment with new and intriguing options, we have a ton of NPCs and new monsters that DM’s can drop into their home games, plus we have a comprehensive description of the lands and lore of the Great Dale region.

But does everyone want all of this content? What if a DM is only interested in reading about the lands and lore of the region and has no interest in new Player Options? Are they willing to pay the full price for the complete campaign guide when they are only interested in 1/3 of its content?

As such, I’ve decided to offer extracts of the Great Dale Campaign Guide that are focused on these different aspects of the game. You can now purchase Great Dale content focused on specific content at a more affordable price point.

Now available for purchase are:

The Great Dale – Lands and Lore: An extract of chapters 6,7,8,9, and 11, all of which are focused on describing the region and the lore surrounding it.

 

 

The Great Dale – Creature Codex: An extract of chapter 10, showcasing a collection of new NPC’s and Creatures from the Great Dale.

 

 

 

The Great Dale – Character Options:  An extract of chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, offering a wealth of new character options for players to experiment with in their home games.

Interview by Under the Wing Gaming

Yesterday I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Dave Knighton for the 2D4 Damage podcast by Under the Wing Gaming. We talked a little about my recent Great Dale production.  I still find it weird being called a writer.

If you haven’t had a chance to pickup my Great Dale campaign guide, now’s a great time. We’ve setup a special 20% off discount link available from the podcast page. It’s good till the end of this year. Check it out!

https://www.underthewinggaming.com/2d4damage-4

The Campaign Guide to the Great Dale is now available for purchase on the DM’s Guild. It is now available for purchase in .pdf and hard cover formats.

My thanks to the many folks who helped bring this effort to completion!

Campaign Guide to the Great Dale

At long last, my collaborative effort, the Campaign Guide to the Great Dale, will be available for purchase on the DM’s Guild this coming Friday (Oct 11th) in .pdf or print-on-demand formats.

The Great Dale lies in the Unapproachable East region of the Forgotten Realms. It is a long journey from the Sword Coast and it is filled with ancient and terrible secrets awaiting to be discovered. Here, powerful druids clash with the fiendish taint of a long vanished empire.  Opportunity and intrigue await any who join the rush of factions seeking to control the rejuvenated city of Uthmere. Above all, the Great Dale is a land of adventure.

The Great Dale Campaign Guide is filled with exciting new ideas for Dungeon Master’s and
players to add to their home games. Inside you’ll discover:

• An overview of Dunwood, the Dale, the Forest of Lethyr and surrounding lands
• A history of the Great Dale and the factions that influence the region.
• A new player character race – the Volodni
• 11 class archetypes such as the Nar Demonbinder, the Nentyar Hunter and Rauthmari Battle Mage
• 3 new character backgrounds customized for the Great Dale
• 6 feats including cooperative Circle Magic
• 18 spells wielded by the Great Dale’s mystics and learned wizards
• 13 magic items used to tame a war-torn land
• 15 unique NPCs waiting to help – or betray – adventurers
• 13 new monsters to challenge players, including the Demon Lord Eltab
• A collection of adventure ideas to create your own campaigns in the Great Dale.

 

Uthmere Rejuvenated

In my upcoming campaign guide to the Great Dale, we’ve included two pages of lore describing the current state of the city of Uthmere.

In the 1300’s FR, prior to the events of the Spell Plague, Uthmere was a small but thriving city of nearly 9,000 souls. In my take on the regions history, the Year of Blue Flame (1385 DR) had the city rocked by a series of earthquakes. The damage devastated many buildings and took the life of its ruler Lord Uthlain. Then when the Easting Reach receded during the Year of the Halfling’s Lament (1386 DR), the economy fell apart as ships could no longer dock at the city’s ports.

For the next century, the city withered to a fraction of its former glory. It became nothing more than a glorified trading village of a little over 400 inhabitants.

With the Great Rains that ended in the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR), the waters of the Easting Reach returned making Uthmere’s port a viable option again. Unfortunately, these rains brought added pain to the city as the Dalestream broke it’s banks damaging many of the structures near the river.

In the current year of the Forgotten Realms (1492 DR), the city is booming. It’s population now surpasses 1,000 individuals, and grows daily as people arrive to seek their fortune in the growing city. Traders are returning and factions rush to build a power base in the frontier town, making it an exciting and dangerous place for adventurer’s to visit.

Here’s a map of Uthmere updated to the current year by the talented Daniel Walthall,

 

Mistkickers Sidekicks

The D&D 5E’s Essentials Kit released this summer. It introduced “sidekicks”, simple characters that can join an adventuring party and help make small groups, or even 1-on-1 games that much easier to run. For more details on sidekicks, check out this article from comicbook.com from earlier in the summer.

The three simple sidekick archetypes presented in the Essentials Kit just call out for creative individuals to expand upon. One of the talented creators who stepped up to the plate was Oliver Clegg. He marshaled a group of talented DM’s Guild writers to create a collection of sidekicks all themed to fit within a Ravenloft campaign, many with a decidedly irreverent flair. Ravenloft is a Gothic setting where dark powers have trapped tragically evil beings within domains of dread. Mistkickers: Ravenloft Sidekicks is now available on the DM’s Guild.

I was lucky to have my “Toybound Avenger” included with Oliver’s compilation. My concept was to twist the idea of a Revenant, an undead creature that the D&D Monster Manual describes as forming “from the soul of a mortal who met a cruel and undeserving fate”. It has one year to enact its revenge. If its current form is destroyed, it will returned to pursue its quest for revenge by reanimating another corpse. I thought it might be interesting to have such a vengeful spirit awakened within the shell of children’s toy instead.