mcdm

Welcome to Capital work in progress; Performance Guilds

Hey folks! Hope you all are having a great holiday and hopefully some time off. I wanted to thank you all for your support and I figured a preview of what I'm working on right now might be fun? We'll see. :D

This is one small section from the upcoming Welcome to Capital book, this section covers some of the noteworthy Performance Guilds (aka Bard Colleges, I felt like that term was too sp...

The Downtime Script

Hey folks! Patrons get to see the script for the next Running the Game video, in this case while I am writing it, live!

Although, obviously, depending on when you're reading this, I may be done or taking a break.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yus...

Paranoia

So we played Paranoia this week!! I first played this Dystopian Sci-fi Comedy RPG in the late 80s, but it's so distinctive I never forgot it. It borrows from (and influenced) a lot, but it still looks and feels unique to me. 

The rules were simple and fun. I was confused by one part of character creation, but we figured it out. Otherwise I consider the design excellent and the sessio...

The Kingoms & Warfare Kickstarter is Live!

Hello patrons! You may recall a little while ago I posted that I’d put the Chain of Acheron campaign down so I could work on the Kingdoms & Warfare kickstarter.

Well, that kickstarter is live! :D I hope you folks like what you see, we’ve already done like 20 piece...

MCDM Update

Hey folks, just wanted to take a minute on a Sunday night and let everyone know what we're working on.

Kingdoms & Warfare

We're working hard to get the Kingdoms & Warfare kickstarter launched. Mostly this means doing a ton of art. We're going to include three new Courts in K&W which means 18 new monsters and for reasons that will become clear, I had to sit down and act...

The Chain Will Return

I dunno how long we're going to be on this hiatus. It's however long it takes me to get the Kickstarter Campaign ready for launch, but I want everyone to know; the Chain of Acheron will return.

Even as I work on the Kingdoms & Warfare Kickstarter, I'm making notes about the end of Book One and I believe it will be dope. :D

So even though it's radio silence on the D&D Stream ...

Episode 27: The Book of Judge

Here are my notes for tonight's session!

Postmortem 01: The S&F Kickstarter Campaign

This is the script for the video we hope to get uploaded Friday afternoon. It's gonna be LOOONG so you might find it easier to just wait and watch the video, but I like sharing content like this with patrons early.

Postmortem on the Autophage Battle

I was pretty happy with how last night's battle went, I wanted to challenge the Chain, I didn't want it to feel like an 'Epic Boss Battle' with creatures that have legendary actions. I just wanted to pick a relatively-low CR monster that had maybe one cool special ability, and challenge the heroes by just outnumbering them. 

It worked well I thought without me having to do any tweaki...

Notes for Episode 25: The Great Game

Lotta lore! :D  This is the beginning of the setup for the Battle of Ringwell. Who's going to be on which side? What's going to be the spark that ignites everything? I have no idea, but we haven't yet seen ALL the players.  It may be one of the factions we meet tonight, or from before, or it may be someone we've yet to meet.

Lady Orozivaar

What happens when the Chain of Acheron deliver their unconscious prisoner to the Sapphire Sky?

I originally thought the Sapphire Sky would just cast modify memory or maybe geas on Lady Orozivaar, but as I was writing this I discovered...they wouldn't. They're the good guys. They're not going to do something like that, even if it costs them.

I didn't know t...

Notes on Episode 24: The Devil's Work

Tonight the heroes start by attempting to murder Lady Orozivaar before she can alert the Church of Saint Ysabella to the location of Ringwell.

They have other tools at their disposal, the Rod of Count Rhodar von Glauer might be of use, but who knows? I don't think this is something they can talk themselves out of. 

They'll probably talk about subduing her? But they have a poor ...

Notes For Episode 22: The Daughter of Time

There is some DEEP lore in here! Tons of prep, no idea how long it will last. If the players avaunt to the surface, I'm gonna have to do some fast thinking, but I think I basically know what will happen? I can prep that before next week.

Player Collaboration Script

Hey folks! Here's the script for the video we're uploading right now. It took a little longer to get this live because we actually made a real End Screen for the first time. Not a huge deal, but something that was made easier by having a full time artist. 

There's a lot of stuff, a lot of little things, that are easy for an artist, but that we have constantly put off because it would...

Notes for Episode 21: "Ballisantirax dreams..."

I'm never as prepared as I want to be for big battles like this. I've definitely had epic battles recently where I felt like...I was prepared, and I remembered everything. That seems to happen more often as I get older, but right now I feel like...I could have done a better job designing these bad guys. We'll see.

I brought their damage down in line with the kinds of damage a PC could do,...

The Campaign Sheet

Jason and I went back and forth on whether the header at the top should read "My Campaign" or "My World" or "The Local Area." Jason preferred the more jargony "My Campaign" because if you were searching for it, "my world" would probably kick back tons of useless results. 

Hopefully this makes getting started making your own world a little easier.

The Earliest Ringwell Document

At least, the earliest one I got. I was never a "write it down on paper" dude. This probably started as a document on my Apple IIgs. There's a lot more outline work done after this that describes the different sections and levels but don't think there's some huge dungeon with tons of maps. I've designed a couple of levels, but mostly I just grabbed existing dungeons and monkeyed with them and c...

Episode 20: Ringwell Awaits

Here are my notes for tonight's episode. Trying out some new ideas in here, like the Command roll and the idea of the team leaders having this cinematic face-off, we'll see how it goes. 

My expectation is that the arrival of the Blackiron Pact will signal the end of this episode. Boots will face off against the Master of Jackals, and then we'll see you next week!

But who knows,...

Notes for Episode 16

The Library Job isn't meant to be a serious dungeoncrawl, so a handful of encounters ought to do it. There's a big dungeoncrawl coming up.

Shit is about to get real.

"Hey do we know anything about the Order of Twelve Dragons?"

“What?”

‘Twelve Dragons, have we heard of...them? What? Why you giving me that look?”

“You’re new here, so I’m gonna cut you some slack. But it’s a good thing you asked me instead of Halisaar because if you’d asked the dragonman, he wouldn’t cut you slack, he’d cut your pay. To zero probably, because he’d figure you’re too dumb to work here.”...

Notes for Episode 15: The Library Job

This isn't really done, I've got about another hour or so of prep to do, but it's mostly going to be prepping the Mausoleum, which is a different third-party product.

In truth, the players don't have to take the Library Job now, they can do something else, but that just means they have to wait until next week for me to prep whatever it is they want to do!

This is about a day's work ...

14. Angel's Report

This is one of those in-between sessions where I don't think they're going to get to the next adventure tonight? But they might? And if they do, we're gonna have to stop, because I don't have that prepped. 

At the same time, I doubt the Incident at the Footstool plus Angel's Report plus visiting the Curator is one night's content. Although who knows what happens once the players go s...

Notes For The Underdark Job

Now that the adventure is over and the Chain have returned to Capital, it's safe to put these notes up for everyone!

Patrons got to see these each week before the session, but in each case the notes only covered the content I had prepped for that night. This is the first time they've all been collected in one post.

I normally buy an adventure and spend my time adapting it for my wor...

13. The Lord of Madness and Angel's Report

This is one of those sessions where the players are going to wrap up the last adventure pretty quick, but they may not jump into the next adventure right away so pacing might be weird. I'm gonna try and funnel the PCs into taking the job for the Herald because that will unleash some major political events. But I also don't want them to start the next adventure tonight, because I don't have it p...

Notes for Episode 12

Minor tweaks to some of the language from last week. I've made cards for the Derro encounter with abilities not listed here, you'll see them live in battle. Just to make the encounter interesting.

Then we're in for something of a funhouse dungeon! Although ideally contextualized in a way that doesn't make it feel dumb and random. We'll see.

The adventure now has an ending! :D The pl...

Notes for Episode 11: The Temple of Antisanity

Here are my notes for tonight's session. Basically just me filling out everything missing from last week's notes. When the adventure is over, I'll post all the notes publicly. Note that this doesn't get us to the end! 

Figure they'll get through to some of the puzzles tonight, we'll see. I wanted to really sell the idea of "The Insane Old One" and fell back on puzzles to rep...

Notes For Session 10

Link to the PDF of the session notes can be found at the bottom of this post.

I did not originally imagine the players would arrive in Capital with their own trans-dimensional squid ship, but now that they have, I thought it would be cool to offer them jobs you can ONLY TAKE if you can traverse the timescape. Really make it feel like the world was responding to their unique exper...

Notes For The Last Two Sessions + Commentary

Patrons already saw most of these, but here's all of them, available for everyone!

My commentary;

The Spring

I invented the Balance Spring and the idea of someone trying to steal the Chronicle for two reasons.

1: I wanted to reinforce "The City of the Great Game" notion. The idea that Capital is a city of action and intrigue.

2: I wanted to make ...

Tonight's Notes

Hello Patrons!

Considering how unusual this session is, I thought it would be cool and possibly useful to share my notes. 

This session, the heroes arrive in Capital! But they don't yet have the run of the city, they're mostly confined to the Stays (aka the Docks) where they will take contracts for different groups, none of whom are what they seem, and try to earn the knighthoo...

Chain Reaction: Post your questions for Tom and Töm

Hello, dear Patrons, Anna here! :)

Now that schedules have lined up and a particular arc in The Chain has resolved, we're going to record our second episode of Chain Reaction this Friday night and upload the prerecorded video later. But before we do that, we need your help!

Our host, O'D, will be relaying your questions to Tom and Töm this wee...