Adventure: Bad Moon Rising

Bad Moon Rising was the first adventure I was able to drop players into after they graduated out of the Starter Set box. It places them in the town of Triboar, at the peak of a rash of killings at the hands of a werewolf who's identity is a mystery. This adventure is designed for parties of 3-5 characters, averaging levels 4-5.

The goal with this adventure was to emphasize role-playing and problem solving so the players could get a better feel for who their characters are as people, and give story driven players a break from the hack and slash dominated dungeons of Wave Echo Cave and Cragmaw Castle. Accomplishing this meant fleshing out Triboar as best as I could with lots of locations, NPCs, and opportunities.

When I design adventures, especially in the open world (as opposed to a dungeon), I try to build as detailed a world as possible, and have certain events taking place in that world, but avoid a specific point by point story line as much as possible (as players will always find a way to do something you didn't anticipate and screw up your plans).

When we started this game, I gave the players a little "OK, we're out of the Starter Set; you're big boys and girls now, and you shouldn't expect content to be spoon fed to you" speech to encourage them to think about problems from multiple angles and explore the world from their character's perspective.

A quick note on software: I know I'll catch flack for this, but I really hate Photoshop. I've spent a very significant quantity of time around Adobe products (in my day job, I do film and video production, and we do most of our post-production work in Creative Cloud), and I find their interfaces to be needlessly cumbersome and complicated, for no reason other than making designers feel good about themselves for being able to master the software. So when I don't have to use Adobe software, I prefer not to, and as such, most of my maps and graphics are laid out using Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (I'm several versions behind the current release). I've been using Paint Shop Pro for decades, and it does everything I need in a way that is vastly more intuitive than Photoshop (for less than a quarter of the price). So I'll be including my .paspimage files in these archives for anyone that can make use of them, but by and large, I expect most people will be better served by the flat jpegs I'm including.

I also bounce back and forth between MS Word and Google Docs when writing, but for these posts I'll just be providing the adventure text in PDF. If anyone needs an editable format of the document, leave me a comment and I'll be happy to work with you on providing what you need.

I'm including character sheets that I put together for notable NPCs in this adventure, but when this was written, the idea for this blog hadn't occurred to me yet, so the character sheets are hand written and scanned, and my handwriting is awful. Sorry about that. I'm working on coming up with a good way to do digital character sheets for NPCs in future releases.

One final note: this adventure was written while I was still finding my stride, so its format is a little different than future ones will be. More bullet points and less read-through content. I'm always striving to improve my format based on what worked in previous sessions, so please bear with me as things evolve.

BadMoonRising.zip
(49 MB)

Download "Bad Moon Rising", an original adventure for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, designed for a party of 3-5 players, averaging levels 4-5.

Thinking Outside the Box

If you've been reading this blog from the beginning, and you've done any 5th edition DM-ing of your own, you may have noticed that as of the last Scribe Notes post, we had transitioned from the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure in the starter set box, and into my personal version of Faerûn. So I thought now would be a nice time to stop and do a general blog post about my thoughts on Forgotten Realms and D&D 5th Edition in general (especially after just having experienced it from a DM's perspective for the first time).

Side note: I'll probably do these little general thoughts blog posts from time to time. They're mostly just a space for me to ramble, so if you're not into them, but want to follow the story of our campaign, these are safe to skip.

Anyway, I have to say, I was really impressed with the content in the starter box. I remember the 2nd edition starter box from decades ago, and it was basically a map of one dungeon, some tiny cardboard tent figures, and a thin rule book with some pre-generated characters. It was fun, but you'd play through it in an afternoon or two, and then you were done with it. There were additional adventures you could buy ("Rage of the Rakshasa" comes to mind), but they were much the same concept.

The 5th edition start set is a full campaign setting in a box, complete with towns, several dungeons (with maps), lots of NPCs (though some of them could use a bit more fleshing out), and enough adventures and side quests to get the party from level 1 to level 5, nicely packaged and ready to go. You could conceivably read the upcoming adventure the night before a game session and thoroughly entertain your players. A practiced DM could even cold read it. For $13 bucks on Amazon, it's an astonishing value, and by my count kept us playing for well over 80 hours of gameplay (granted, we play at a pretty leisurely pace). That's a lot of time to spend with a few friends, being thoroughly entertained, for relatively little money.

The story is fairly original, and the world setting is rich. Plus Forgotten Realms has so much existing content from the previous editions, that things like geography, history, and basic details are fairly easy to find online.

But the starter set isn't without it's flaws. They give you pre-made character sheets to choose from, and don't include rules on making your own character. Since the players didn't have a hand in making their character, I think some of them may have had a harder time growing to understand them, and therefore the player characters are a bit two-dimensional for the first few game sessions. I understand why they do it - in the full Player's Handbook, the complete rules for character creation cover 156 pages. If people who had never played D&D before found out they had to read that prior to their first game, they'd never start. Still, though, if I were playing Phandelver from the start, I'd do at least an hour or two pre-game session with each player, one on one, to give them time to decide who their character is. It would make playing through the stuff in the book a good bit more enjoyable.

My other beef was that they gave certain characters information on their sheet's background that was specific to the campaign setting, yet gave the DM no information on how to deal with this. For example, my party's halfing thief had a note on her sheet that said she used to be a member of the Redbrands, until they betrayed her. So of course, when the PCs are tasked with finding information about the Redbrands, my thief player says "Well, I used to work for them. Don't I already know where their hideout is, and what it's secrets are?" She had a good point, and there was nothing about it in any of the DM materials. So that was an annoying bit of improv to have to come up with on the fly.

But to DMs who have played 1st or 2nd edition, and been frustrated by the bizarre turn D&D took after WotC bought TSR, the simple act of playing D&D and having it be really fun again is enough to carry you through any tribulations in learning it. The rules are so elegant. Everything (with the one frustrating exception of spellcasting), is logical, easy to learn, and effortless enough to avoid interfering with the story, yet still structured enough to provide a rational framework for just about any situation the party finds itself in.

While we're talking about D&D products, let me just take a brief aside for a few thoughts on the Player's Handbook. Above all else, the actual content - the rules themselves - are excellent; they are the reason that 5th Edition may just be my favorite edition of D&D ever. But the way that content is organized is maddeningly frustrating. The creators seemed to favor readability over quick reference in (what I can only guess is) an attempt at making the rules volume less imposing for new players. The problem is, the function of the core handbooks is not to be read once, cover to cover, but to act as a reference book that players can turn to in game in order to quickly answer questions. Yet reference tables are kept to a bare minimum, and more often than not, the answer to a question is buried in unemphasized text in the middle of a paragraph of flowery descriptive language. Making matters worse, information is frequently cross-referenced (lots and lots of "See chapter X"). The end result of all this is that if a question about the mechanics of how something works comes up in game, and I don't know the answer off the top of my head, I have to grind play to a screeching halt while I spend upwards of five minutes digging through the book. Check the index, find the page, speed read the whole page to look for the one sentence I need, find out it's a cross-reference to another section, flip to that section, skim for the area that looks like it might be relevant, speed read that whole thing, find nothing, read it again more slowly, find another cross-reference, jump to that, read three paragraphs very carefully, and finally look up to give my PCs an answer, only to discover that half of them have gotten up to go to the bathroom, or get a snack while I searched.

As a method of workaround, I've downloaded and printed Reddit user Ozuro's excellent DM Screen cheat sheet, which contains ~75% of the useful play mechanics rules in the game in a quickly referencable format (fair warning, though: it's HUGE for a DM screen - six letter size pages). The newly released D&D 5th edition SRD compendium in Roll20 (and occasionally, Google) are also great ways to get information quickly. But if something comes up in game that I can't find an answer to in under a minute, my go to solution has become just making a ruling based on what makes sense, and frankly telling the PCs that I might have to change the way it works later, once I've had a chance to find the official rule after the game session is over. My players who have played D&D in the past are OK with this, but I have one new player for whom this game is their first real experience with tabletop RPGs, and she finds it frustrating to try to learn how the game works when the "rules" appear to keep changing on her. I suppose the wise thing to do would be to read my entire Player's Handbook, cover to cover with a highlighter in hand, and mark any passages of critical importance that might come up in game. But even if I wanted to write all over my nice new, hardcover PHB, who has that kind of time? And I don't feel like I should have to do that. In the D&D Rules 'Cyclopedia or 2nd edition PHB, I could find anything I needed in a matter of seconds (granted, I had the benefit of greater familiarity with those books). The books were definitely more intimidating to new players, but once you got used to them, quickly finding the information you needed was a breeze. It's almost as if WotC needs to release a companion Rules Encyclopedia for 5th edition, that just contains all the core mechanics information you need during actual game play.

It's not by any means a deal breaker for me with 5th edition, but it has been by far the most frustrating aspect of trying to run a 5th edition game.

Anyway, the players getting to 5th level and graduating from the Starter Set was so exciting for me, because it gave me the opportunity to take a more active role in my favorite aspects of DM-ing: world building and storytelling. Parts of the Wave Echo Cave dungeon delve intentionally left spaces for you to put hooks in to your own adventures, allowing for a smooth transition out of the box and into the game. Our last Scribe Notes post covers the players' experience of that transition, and I thought it went very well.

My plan was to get one solid adventure under their belt that involved more role playing, mystery, and problem solving than combat (as the Lost Mine of Phandelver is a bit heavy on hack and slash), before moving them into the main story line of my campaign. The thought here is to get them role playing so they can really round out their characters' personalities before unfolding the big plot hook.

That big plot hook, by the way, is called "The Eyes of Ocmalus", and I'll do a separate post about it soon. But it's designed to be an overarching story line that takes the characters from level 5 to 15 over about 18 months of short weekly game play sessions. I only bring it up here because I just yesterday learned about Princes of the Apocalypse - a 256 page off the shelf play supplement book that happens to be pretty much exactly what I've been writing for the last two months with the Eyes of Ocmalus. The story is completely different, but the concept is exactly the same - a rich set of adventures, NPCs, lore, and puzzles that provide enough content to allow a DM to run an entire campaign from start to finish. Unfortunately, I learned about it after I already sent players down my own custom rabbit hole, and the information in PofA directly conflicts with information I've already given them, so I can't use it (though I desperately wish I could, as just casually flipping through the book in a store gave me direct answers to several extremely specific questions that I'd been unable to find elsewhere). And even if I had known about it in time, I don't know that I would have gone that route for the full campaign, as it cuts out the world creation and writing piece of DM-ing that I enjoy so much. But the trade off is that I spend a LOT of time preparing for game sessions. For every hour we spend in play, I probably invest four hours in design and preparation. Running the PotA campaign instead would save me literally thousands of hours over the course of our campaign, as one can run it much like Phandelver - just read the adventure details over a few days before the game, and you're ready to go. My intent is to have this blog serve that same function for DMs who don't want to run the canned Adventurer's League games, but also don't want to invest all their free time into designing something of their own (or just need some quick filler for a game session). But for $50 MSRP (or $30 on Amazon), you could bypass a tremendous amount of effort and still create a very, very rich and enjoyable campaign for your players. So if you haven't played out of the Starter Set yet, or even if you're looking to tie in a longer running campaign story, I'd strongly recommend looking into it. They even make a special introductory edition of the adventure available online, for free, which contains some very useful information about Red Larch and the Dessarin Valley. Coincidentally, the first adventure in Eyes of Ocmalus takes place in this exact area, so that information alone is going to be a huge time saver for me (my players happen to be in the middle of the first dungeon in that series right now, and Red Larch is their next stop).

So, there you have it: that's my review of the Starter Set, 5th edition in general, and the things I wish I'd have done a little differently with the benefit of hindsight. Moving forward, my intention is for this blog to become a lot more structured. After each adventure the players finish, I'll post the source materials for the adventure that I created (look for post titles prefixed with "Campaign", "Adventure", or "Side Quest") followed by the Scribe Notes on the adventure for the players' perspective, and finally my DM Notes on how things went and what I would have done differently. It generally takes us 2-4 sessions to get through a single adventure, so don't be surprised if you see posting frequency on this blog drop to once or twice per month; it doesn't mean I've stopped posting, only that I'm waiting on the game to advance. But I'd love to hear your questions, comments, and thoughts along the way, so please feel free to make use of the comments section of each blog post.

Happy Adventuring,
Talis

Scribe Notes: Vol. 11 - A Trip to Triboar

If you haven't already done so, be sure to read the previous posts in the Scribe Notes series for the complete back story!

We decided to investigate the structure to the south and found a room scorched by a fiery blast. A wraith rose from the ashes and made threats. I tried ordering it to stand down, but it insisted on being a nuisance. After launching a bevvy of attacks, Thaelin snuffed it out with an impressive Thunderwave. Trym saw to the chest of coins while I looked around the book shelves. Mostly old history books, but one in particular contained a map eluding to some hidden treasure located in a cave near Shadowdale. It looks to be written in the language of the Underdark.

Another bit of useful information found among the books were old contracts and a log book. It appears this was a guest quarters for visiting wizards. The last visitor in the log was a wizard named "Mormesk".

We moved down some stairs toward the sound of waves. A large cavern with crashing waves in the dark. We carefully circumvented the water and moved down a western corridor to find ourselves circled around to where we battled the shapeshifter. Having finally cleared Wave Echo Cave, we hauled our booty to our cart and made for Phandalin.

Gundren and Nundro were beside themselves when we returned with the news. We ate, we sang, we rested. Sister Garale was kind enough to identify all the artifacts we had collected while we rested.

The note she deciphered revealed that the Black Spider has been taking orders from one named Imbross A'Daragon, hiding in Shadowdale with something called "The Eye". If we want to keep Wave Echo Cave operational, we'll need to deal with this "Imbross". Shadowdale, however, is a very long way away.

Luckily, Ava's order has business south of Triboar, so we'll be able to do a bit of good along the way.  Some business about bandits robbing people using magic. After finalizing our provisions, we left for Triboar.

Our first evening proved quite comfortable thanks to Leomond's spells for shelter. It would have been restful for everyone, had an Ogre not wandered into camp. He had a hungry eye for our horses. But mastication of our equine would prove disasterous to our endeavours, so drastic actions had to be employted. My ever courageous companions made short work of the beast while Thalin swallowed it in the earth. A typical morning on the trail.

A platoon of goblins attempted an ambush from the tall grass. My comrades picked off a few and a well placed fireball finished the lot. A long day's ride and then a good night's rest awaited us that night. Travel has been smooth and enjoyable.

Wolves gathered in the night. Thaelin tried to reason with the alpha. Negotiations failed. The beast mauled him to the ground, but he cleverly conjured a poison mist to gag the beast. Trym and I attacked with all of our power, but the Dire wolf refused to release Thaelin.

Thaelin eventually threw the beast off of himself and slew it with a mighty blow of his staff. Trym pulled a bear from her bag, which tore into the closest wolf. After throwing a bit of fire, the rest fled into the wilderness. We finished our rest and started late the next morning.

Our final push to Triboar went without event. The town looks like it's seen it's fair share of death, lately. Ava suggested meeting with her contact to get more details...

I went to the local trader to inquire about maps. I purchased a map covering the area from the Sword Coast to the great desert. I also managed to haggle a profitable trade, swapping my spider staff for some magical protection items. Afterwards, I met my companions at the inn.

Trym brought sad tales of werewolves and hangings. Ava adopted a bard, and a hysterical woman accuses a noble of lycanthropy. Clearly, I'm in my cups.

Scribe Notes - Vol. 10: The Forge of Spells

If you haven't already done so, be sure to read the previous posts in the Scribe Notes series for the complete back story!

After a long rest we decided the best course of action was to get Nundro to safety. Three ghouls ascended from the darkness to block our path. We made short work of them and continued through to the exit. Stirges descended upon us in the grotto. They barely slowed us as we continued to move. Past another ghoul, and we finally reunited Gundren with his brother. The dwarves were eternally grateful. We bade them make hast to Phandalin while we finished clearing out the cave.

We cleared a nest of stirges east of the entry cavern, followed by a room of skeletons. They took a bit longer to clear, but they gave us little trouble overall. A storeroom across the hall gave us little information, but Trym managed to pilfer the cash box.

Ghouls seem to infest every room of this mine. Ava had taken a few scrapes but insisted on carrying on. A cave of poisonous mushrooms was around the corner. Trym insisted on harvesting some of the dangerous fungus for her poison making kit. Being so toxic, the rest of us waited at the entrance. She deftly harvested a large cap in one breath. The entire room released spores in response to the disturbance. Best to be away from this toxic miasma.

We moved further through the ruins and found a secure room for us to take a short rest. Afterward, we came upon the ghoul infested banquet hall. I opened with a barrage of fire attacks, killing half of the horde. My allies made short work of the remainder. We found ourselves once again in the forge room, with a familiar green glow emanating from around the corner. A chill ran down my spine. I remember my last encounter.

I steel myself for a battle without my spells. Trym's arrow snapped, but she had pulled a board from her bag of tricks, which bashed the abomination to the ground. The flaming skull turned its wrath upon the beast, setting it aflame with a ball of fire. It would have nearly turned us all to ash, had it not been for Ava blocking it with her shield. We beat the thing with physical damage and it succumbed quickly. Our experience has served us all well.

We moved east of the flaming skull's room, and the sound of waves became noticeably louder. The iridescent ceilings remind me of stars. A workshop was emanating a green light, and we went to investigate. Inside we found a brazier glowing with green flame. A creature made of a mass of eyes spoke in our heads. It said it existed to guard the forge of spells from undead. We tried to reason with the creature, but it insisted we leave.

One of it's eyes looked at me and filled me with terror so intense I fled the room in a most embarrassing manner. As I ran down the hall, I heard fighting break out behind me. I found myself in the banquet hall when the fear subsided. I immediately turned to check on my companions. Thaelin was roving mad in the hallways. Trym was being terrorized by the creature when Ava plunged her axe into it. Her constitution and strength continue to impress me.

I tried to detect magic in the room and was nearly blinded by the magical aura of the green brazier. This must be the "Forge of Spells".

Scribe Notes - Vol. 9: The Black Spider

If you haven't already done so, be sure to read the previous posts in the Scribe Notes series for the complete back story!

We rode back to Wave Echo Cave in the morning. It was much how we left it: dark, ominous, and full of all manner of monsters.

Another of those jellies descended from the ceiling. Despite our best efforts to freeze the thing it still managed to clobber poor Ava. Figuring fire might be a better approach, I launched a firebolt at it. Poor Thaelin attempted to follow suit, but only burned himself in the process. A frustrated Ava hacked the thing to pieces.

Our old hiding hole was patched up. Voices on the other side. I used a series of cantrips to lure them out and away from us. We split a group of four and flanked them. Trym assassinated one with an arrow before anyone even heard a whisper. We made short work of the beasts, even when reinforcements arrived. It seems everyone's experience has served them well.

We approached a set of double doors. On the other side, we finally found Nundro. Ava saw to his health while I examined the documents on the table. My curiosity let the drow get the drop on me. Learning from my previous lesson, I managed to cast shield to block his magic missile. But he called a group of spiders to his aide, and our wizards' duel began.

We engaged in magical combat while my friends attempted to manage the spiders. The coward blinded me and fled into the darkness. Trym and Thaelin both summoned animal companions to deal with the arachnids. When the drow reappeared, I hurled a fireball over his shoulder. In his arrogance, he had believed I missed with a firebolt. When the flames exploded outward they took him entirely by surprise, fully engulfing him in the flames. We dispatched the spiders and three bugbears burst into the room...

Thaelin convinced them they had little worth fighting for and healed Nundro. His peculiar staff of black metal confirmed our suspicions as to his identity, by way of it's ornamentation - a large, Black Spider. We set the it aside for further inspection later, and upon deciding a rest was in order, secured ourselves in the room that had (until we dispatched his jailers) been Nundro's cell; an opportunity I used to review the documents we had claimed from Nezznar, The Black Spider's desk.

Scribe Notes - Vol. 8: Smoke, Fire, and a Hasty Escape!

If you haven't already done so, be sure to read the previous posts in the Scribe Notes series for the complete back story!

During our rest the bugbears attempted entry. After they eventually busted the door down, Thaelin set the bodies of the previous bugbears aflame. They now had a wall of fire to fight through. Cunning beasts hurled javelins through the flames, both of which struck Ava. My firebolt was lost in the fire, and the bugbears fled while I struggled to put out the flames. The smoke was so think we had to flee the cave.

A tickle on the back of my neck warned me of an incoming javelin. This time, I did not forget my shield, and fended off the attack. The bugbears had returned. One of them almost clobbered Trym, and grazed me with a blow as well. I sent a fan of flame at them, but my magic felt weak after the exertion of my shield. Ava cleaved into one of the beasts, breaking wide it's armor. Thaelin nearly froze the other. The wand was useful in dispatching one bugbear, but the other gave me a fierce look; fortunately, it finally succumbed to Thaelin's frost, and we one the day.

During our escape we ran into four ghouls (quite literally). Ava smashed into them with her shield, knocking them back. I laid burning hands on the beasts whilst Thaelin rend the ground beneath their feet. Clearly, we are all hasty to leave this place.

Gundren had clearly removed himself and his deceased brother. While looking about, 3 more bugbears advanced from the shadows, catching Ava by surprise with a Javelin. I used the last of my prepared spells to set flame to the lot. Ava nearly severed the closest one's arm. Thaelin summoned a whirling dust devil, battering them while we bled them down. He followed with a powerful Thunderclap that slew his second bugbear. The last one clearly saw Thaelin as his biggest threat and attempted a clumsy attack, allowing Trym to deliver a death blow.

We escaped the cave to find Gundren at the entrance. He inquired about his brother, Nundro. We swore a promise to go back for him, but rest is necessary, lest we all die in that cave. We made for Phandalin.

Trym's aunt was a most gracious host once again. Trym regaled her with stories of our adventures while the rest of us got some much needed rest.

Scribe Notes - Vol. 7: The Flaming Skull

If you haven't already done so, be sure to read the previous posts in the Scribe Notes series for the complete back story!

After a short rest everyone was ready to proceed. We thought it best to investigate the door the bugbears had barricaded. Listening at the door hinted only at the sound of distant crashing waves.

Actually on the other side... a zombie. Trym knocked half the creature's head off before any of us knew it was there. I don't know how it kept walking. Thaelin froze the undead monstrosity solid with an expertly executed spell. One is lucky to have such exceptional travel companions!

Past the zombie was some wooden machinery. The room was scorched. Blast marks on the wall. A great magical battle happened here. Corpses of all races litter the floor. A flaming skull rounded the blast furnace and screamed most hideously at us. Trym's arrow skipped off it's crown and both Thaelin and I struggled to come up with an appropriate spell to handle the abomination. Ava, spryly in her panic, downed the white potion we had found in the previous room. She described the results to me later. Sounds like a Vitality Potion.

We lobbed all manner of attack at the skull but it merely shrugged off our attacks. In fact, Thaelin's ice attack reflected back into poor Ava, damaging her further. I hurled a bevy of magic bolts into the skull, only to have them bounce back at me... I was knocked unconscious. In a haze I recall Ava drinking potions... many of them. Trym... dashing forward... Thaelin prodding me... he looked confused... the skull... blurry... Ava unleashes a mighty ax blow... the skull... shatters. Trym's pouring a potion down my throat to awaken me. Thaelin lays a healing touch upon me to get me on my feet. I took my last potion to regain my senses, only to see Ava holding two zombies at bay. Exceptional travel companions indeed. My lapse in judgement for not casting shield nearly cost me my life...

The wand luckily still had charges and I used it to launch a counter attack. We dispatched the remaining zombies and investigated the room. A stair case led to ghouls. We marked the area and had Trym scout further. The cave looked complicated and we decided to back track a bit. Trym most stealthily scouted several passages, spotting a drow in a room ahead. We thought this to be the Black Spider and decided to take the drow captive.

We sneaked in on it, and I hurled a brilliant acid arrow. Ava tackled him with such force I thought she might tear him in half. I warned him to yield but he spat in my face, so I delivered a shock, coupled with a wallop to his face, courtesy of Ava. Thaelin dealt with the drow's bugbear companions with a wall of thick fog, and quickly thinking to pull up the ropes. We subdued the bugbears. The "drow" was another doppelganger. No shortage of frustration in this cave...