Moving

DM-ing - at least if you do it the way I do it - takes a lot of time. Even if nothing else were happening, I have a standing commitment to at least one night every single week, for game night. If one of my players can't make it that night, I can work something out and still move the game forward. But I can't break that appointment without ruining four other people's plans, so I take that one weekly obligation pretty seriously. But that weekly commitment is just the start. It acts as a drumbeat. Every week, I need to ensure that I have playable content ready. 

For every hour we spend in game, I approximate I invest 4-6 hours out of game into writing and preparation. Since our weekly game session is about 4 hours, that means I average roughly 20 hours of prep time outside of the game, each week. DM-ing is basically a part-time job for me. I also work a (more than) full time job, and have other hobbies, such as brewing, kayaking, art, music, etc. I love all of this - it makes me who I am, and I wouldn't change any of it. But it means that my free time is pretty much budgeted.

Enter: The Conflict.

About a month ago, my little routine got completely up-ended, when I found out unexpectedly that I had to move. In 26 days. I won't get into details, but I live in an area that has infamously difficult housing options. Finding a place to live and moving typically takes 3-4 months around here, depending on the season. Making it happen up-ended basically everything in my life; putting it all on hold. This included the weekly D&D game (and it's associated prep work, including updating this blog). 

This blog was already behind the game - I try not to post anything until after the players have gone through it, just in case they happen upon these notes; and I still had a lot of backlogged content to boot. But with the move putting the game on hold for almost a month, I was laughably behind schedule on all things D&D. At points I feared for the continued existence of the weekly game (as big up-ending life circumstances such as this have killed campaigns in the past for our group).

Yet, as I sit here updating this blog, I am now declaring victory! We have found new housing, completed the move - including even unpacking everything into a smaller space! I have even completed one group gaming session and three solo (DM & one player) gaming sessions. Better still, tonight will be our second gaming session after the move, and the party's return to their A-story with some new and improved tricks from a few side quests and clever transactions. I can feel the game's heartbeat coming back, and I'm proud to say that life has (more or less) returned to normal. I'll be taking a break next week on account of a family vacation, but after that, we'll be back on schedule.

So, stay tuned for lots more updates! We've got plenty in store: from secret bandit cults, to ancient cursed orbs of power; from warbands of murderous orcs, to talking goats, and that's just on the road to Waterdeep! All this, plus dueling assassins, treacherous succubi, vanishing demons, and a scurvy sea hag... coming soon!

Scribe Notes - An Explanation

DM-ing is a lot of work. At any given moment, the DM is expected to track combat mechanics, play the parts of multiple (often dozens of) NPCs and Monsters, translate player actions into rules, keep track of where players are within a story, make on the fly adjustments to planned events, cross-reference data across at least three rule books, read prepared descriptions, tell a story that's being made up in real time, and much more; all while keeping the atmosphere fun, engaging, and exciting for the PCs. It takes years of practice to truly master, and I've been out of the game for longer than I was in, so I'm still finding my grove again.

As part of my attempt to lighten my workload so I can focus on keeping the story going, I offer my players a small (5%) experience bonus to track some of the game mechanics for me. Specifically, I have one player track initiative, another track treasure and experience, and another keep notes on the general events of a game session, so we can refresh everyone's memory on what happened last time at the start of each new session. This last job provided me with an unexpected surprise, when I found that the player taking the role of party scribe (Val) wrote all his notes in first person perspective, the way one would write a journal.

His notes beautifully tell the story of my campaign from a character's perspective, and are infused with delightful little quips that shed light on Val's personality. I look forward to hearing these scribe notes every week, and I love the idea of doing something with them, so I've decided that I'll present them here for you to enjoy.

My general method for posting on this blog from week to week will be to wait until the PCs complete a given adventure, then post the materials I created to run it, along with my comments on what I liked, or what I would have done differently. I'll then post the Scribe Notes for the adventure. This will allow any DMs using this blog to get the core mechanics of an adventure, a DMs take on what worked and what didn't, and a player's perspective on how the story unfolded. And as an added bonus, any curious reader could start at the beginning, read only the Player Character descriptions and Scribe Notes posts, and have a solid understanding of the entire story of our campaign.

It's worth noting that these notes are written quickly, and were never designed to be proper works of fiction. And while I may do a little light copy editing (mostly to correct spellings and improve readability), these stories are not my work, and are not being submitted for creative or stylistic critique; they're just a lot of fun to read.

So with that by way of an introduction, please enjoy the backlog of Scribe Notes that we've taken so far.

Welcome to DM Notes

Greetings, adventure seeker, and welcome to my little blog!

If you're wondering what this is all about, let me give you a little background. Like a lot of people, I played Dungeons & Dragons throughout most of my adolescent and teenage years. For almost a decade, I ran an a few different AD&D 2nd Edition campaigns, and always loved it. But as adulthood crept in, friends started moving away, responsibilities started piling up, and the games fell by the wayside. I tried the new editions as they came out, but none of them pulled me back in the way 2nd Edition did, and no game ever made it past two or three sessions... until I discovered Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

I purchased the 5th Edition starter box (with the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure) because it was reasonably cheap, and I'd heard really good things about the new edition. After just a couple of sessions, I was hooked, and so were my players. To anyone who's played D&D in the past, but never gotten into any of the more recent editions, I strongly encourage you to check out 5e - Wizards really did knock it out of the park, and for the first time in almost two decades, I'm finally starting to feel like the Dungeon Master I used to be.

Our game has now been running for about four months. We play at a very leisurely pace - one night a week, typically for just a few hours per session. But we've played through the starter box, the players are past level 5, and the game has survived a fair amount of out-of-game social upheaval without falling apart, so I think we're in it for the long haul.

Which leads me to this blog.

Playing D&D in the age of the Internet is awesome. We play in Forgotten Realms, and the Forgotten Realms Wiki alone provides me with endless time-saving resources and depth (even though most of it hasn't been updated for 5th Edition yet). I also use Roll20 to build dungeon maps, track details on monster stats, and generally run the game. We may even be adding a remote player in the near future, who can connect in through the Roll20 interface just as if they were sitting at the table with us. And Deviant Art is an incredible resource for those of us who (like me) have zero innate fine art talent, yet still want to drive the vision in their head into something players can see with their own eyes. Some of the best artists in the world are on there, and they're offering up their work for free (note: specific licensing varies from image to image, and in no way am I encouraging anyone to steal artwork; these artists deserve every penny they earn, and then some, so please treat them fairly). In fact, the beautiful background image on this very blog comes courtesy of Deviant Artist Kerembeyit.

But for all the new tools and resources that are available, one thing hasn't changed - the DM still needs to come up with new and exciting adventures for his party. This has always been my favorite part of D&D - I love creating rich, living worlds, full of mystery and adventure, and then watching how players react as the story unfolds. It's basically the reason I DM.

So I've been spending a fairly large portion of my free time designing adventures for my group, often to truly unnecessary levels of detail. I like to know the complete backstory on almost every NPC the characters meet, so I can portray them in as realistic and multi-dimensional a manner as possible in game. If the PCs head into a town, I want to know the location, layout, and occupants of every inn, tavern, shoppe, temple, and stronghold they might visit while they're there. If they're going to pick up a traveling companion or square off against a villain, I don't just want a stat block, I want a full character sheet. I feel that the dungeons I create should be every bit as full and vibrant as the professionally produced dungeons that come out of a boxed adventure, complete with rich maps, graphics, and props. It's a lot of fun for me to build all of this. But I've been noticing that after spending all the effort to put this content in place, my players will typically enjoy it for a game session or two, and then it gets relegated to the dusty corners of my hard drive, never again to see the light of day. That seems like a shame to me.

So, I've decided to share all this extra content with the world, and this blog is the place where I'm going to do it.  To be fair, my intentions here aren't totally altruistic - uploading documents, notes, and character details to this blog gives me an online backup, and lets me maintain a linear timeline of events within my game. I strive to create as high-quality content as possible, and I like to think that with a little effort and polish, any of my quests could be cleaned up and sold as commercial out of the box adventures. However, these were all created specifically for my campaign, and often under time constraints that don't allow me the opportunity to go back and clean things up, fix every typo, or correct every inconsistency. A lot of times during play, things will get left out, put in, re-arranged, or just changed outright on account of player actions. Because of this, events referenced in long running campaign adventures may be inconsistent from previous sessions. And while I try not to reference specific characters too much so that the adventure can be kept generic, I won't do so at the expense of making the game enjoyable and unique for my players, so occasional references to our specific party will sometimes make it into the final product. The point is that I want to make this information available to other DMs for their players, but this blog is ultimately supposed to support my campaign, not distract from it. So expect to use this content as a "jumping off" point for customization, not necessarily a finished product. How much you need or want to customize it is up to you.

But with that caveat out of the way, I hope you'll enjoy the resources that I post here, and that they can get some extra life in your campaigns, rather than going to waste on my computer. I'll probably be in here updating this blog after every game session with game notes, NPC character sheets, in-game histories from our scribe, and occasionally maps and adventure notes.

One final VERY IMPORTANT note: this blog is very much for Dungeon Masters ONLY. If you are a player character - ESPECIALLY ONE PLAYING IN ANY OF MY CAMPAIGNS -  stop reading this blog and navigate away RIGHT NOW. Most of the stuff I write hinges on mysteries that unfold over many game sessions, or even an entire campaign. Knowing what's coming will completely spoil the game for you and the other players. If your DM is running any of my campaigns and you want to cheat by reading ahead, I can't stop you. But just like Christmas wasn't fun if you sneaked a peak at what your parents bought you before it was wrapped, knowing what's coming in any of my adventures will only remove the challenge and short-circuit the game.

So there you have it. Stay tuned for easy to implement adventures and DM resources. Every thing I post here can be considered to be under the standard Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (except for content or graphics which I did not personally create). But if you end up using anything I post here in your game, I'd love to hear about it. Please leave a comment on any post with questions, thoughts, or whatever strikes your fancy. I'd love to find out that I'm making life easier for other Dungeon Masters.

Happy Trails & Grand Adventures,
Talis