@@HouseDM well a) he's not doing it anymore, and b) in his last stream he said he'd welcome someone else doing it. In all honesty why don't you contact him if you're worried you're reading on his toes. You've got a cool channel style, good set-up and a ton of terrain so I'd love to see your take on room designs!
@@Smittumi not worried about it. I follow his streams and heard him share that. Hence this video. This is more-so me “testing the waters” to see if people are even interested. Thanks for sharing that you are!
The Adventure Hook: (For a party of four 5th-7th level characters). A group of mountain and hill dwarves ask the party to help them recover the Diamond of Hearth and Kin and bring it back to the dwarves of Split Rock Keep. The Diamond is a powerful symbol of the town and is said to protect dwarfkind from harm. It also serves as a special gate; anyone that knows how to activate the Diamond can use it to cast a Teleportation Circle to the town’s center. Without the Diamond, the town is in grave danger.
The Villains: A duergar wizard, Najim Gloomcandle, who has a large force of bandits, goblins, and trolls, as well as a bulette named Chompers (who Najim controls with Dominate Monster).
What happened: Over one hundred years ago, Split Rock Keep was a small fortified trading hub that allowed all dwarves to gather, including duergar. At some point, several shipments went missing from the trading hub and the duergar were blamed. They were quickly exiled. Najim’s parents were two of the duergar that were exiled, and they passed away recently. In their passing, they told Najim that the duergar were framed at Split Rock Keep and someone else was really to blame. On their deathbed, Najim swore to avenge them. So, about a month ago, Najim ordered her hirelings to secretly raid Split Rock Keep and steal the Diamond. With the Diamond in hand, Najim can now plan a full-scale assault.
Bandit Keep (encounter 1): The party learns that the Diamond is being held nearby in a rundown keep. Najim’s bandits are there, waiting for her to return. The party can attempt to negotiate with the bandits, or break into the keep and recover the Diamond. The bandits have a series of poorly crafted platforms outside the keep for lookouts, and there are arrow slits in the walls protecting the main doorway. The bandit captain, a half-elf named Sebastian, will attempt to stop the party from entering, but if more than half the bandits are downed, he retreats to the lower levels of the keep, where the Diamond is being held.
Bulette Bedlam (encounter 2): Resistance from the bandits breaks when the party enters the keep. If Sebastian is alive, the party sees him run down a long stone spiral staircase. Najim created a wand of Dominate Monsters to protect Sebastian from the bulette, which he uses to order the bulette to attack the party. If the party is on the steps, they hear Sebastian give the order; otherwise, all they hear is a loud crash and rumbling as the bulette burrows into the side of the basement. Sebastian will then continue into the next room, where the Diamond is located. He will grab it from a chest and run out of the subterranean passageway. When the party reaches the bottom of the steps, the rumbling stops. The bulette is hunting the party. When they enter the room with the Diamond, it burrows back toward them and attacks (if the party has a lot of resources and they haven’t paid much attention to the rumbling, let the Bulette have a surprise round; otherwise, roll initiative as normal). After the party defeats the Bulette, the ground begins to shake again and the steps up to the keep are buried in the rubble. The ceiling continues to crumble and chunks fall. The party must escape before they are buried alive! If at any point the party defeats Sebastian before he gets the Diamond, the party can clearly see a necklace with a key on it; the key is to the chest with the Diamond.
Escape the Bandit Keep (encounter 3): Through a series of checks, the party must traverse about 500 feet of twisting, crumbling, passageway to escape to the surface. Sebastian begins about 100 feet ahead of the party. Sebastian has a burglar’s pack and will use items from the pack to slow the party, including throwing the ball bearings and lighting flasks of oil on fire, and tossing them onto any flammable objects (like a wooden bridge). Every 1d4 rounds, characters must make a Dexterity saving throw (DC: 10), on a failure that character takes 2d6 bludgeoning damage from falling rocks and debris. After 12 rounds, the cave system collapses entirely, and anyone still inside automatically takes 4d12 bludgeoning damage and is trapped underground. If Sebastian escapes before the party does, he leaves a clear trail of blood and footprints, having been wounded from the cave-in. He does not put up a fight when the party catches up to him. He hands over the Diamond in exchange for his life.
Defend and Escape (encounter 4): Diamond in hand, the party must return to the dwarves, who are hiding out in an abandoned fort in the wilderness. Just as they make it, Najim and a huge group of goblins catch up to the party. There are too many for the party to defeat, so the party must defend the fort for 10 rounds while one of the dwarves uses the Diamond to cast Teleportation Circle. The fort is open on one side but has walls on the other three that provide cover. There is a ballista on the second floor of the fort (action to shoot, action to reload, uses attack bonus of the character operating the weapon, deals 6d6+6 piercing damage), and there are four dwarves (three Scouts and one Veteran who will use the Diamond, see Monster Manual pg. 349-350). When the trolls become visible, the veteran hands one of the characters his giant Slayer sword. There are 6d4 goblins, a troll, and Najim in the first wave, and 3d4 reinforcement goblins appear at the end of every even-numbered round. At the end of the third round, two more Trolls appear. Najim takes cover and casts Fireball at first, but then uses spells to bolster the goblins, herself, or the Troll. If Najim is close to death, she attempts to flee, either by teleporting or casting fly on herself. Conclusion: The party returns the Diamond to Split Rock Keep. The dwarves insist they keep the Giant Slayer, and further reward the party with some of the following: a pair of sending stones, an all-purpose tool, a bag of holding, a belt of dwarvenkind, glamoured studded leather, a wand of wonder, and 1,000gp.
Awesome content and creativity here. If this is your definition of lazy dm's, there should be more of those around ! Seriously the rules for ruling lord of the rings-esque moria escape kind of encounters is simple, straightforward and fun. I'm looking forward for more content like this keep going 😁❤️🎲
Hey Raptors thanks for saying this! I love getting comments like yours so appreciate you stopping by anytime. Also, escape from Moria type encounters are my bread&butter&beer. So much fun to play and run. Cheers mate!
Aquí tienes mi suscripción. Todo el segundo encuentro me recordó a la escena del escape de la ciudad enana abandonada que se estaba derrumbando de la película Fellowship of the Ring, muy similar pero tu cambiaste las flechas que constantemente les disparaban por rocas cayendo. Bastante tensa situación, muere Gandalf para que los demás puedan escapar, muy como en tu versión en que puede morir todo el grupo en cualquier momento por el daño/ataques que reciben en cada turno.
21:05 Alright you bastard, take it. Really love how much stuff you can do with 4 foam stone blocks on encounter 2. Also demonstrates how teleportation spells like thunderous step, misty step, dimension door can make cool stuff completely irrelevant. Makes a lot of sense doing an encounter like that shortly after a battle. Really reminds me of the Paths of the Dead from LOTR movies. Also breaking up line of sight makes things like dimension door extremely dangerous since the caster won't know if they're teleporting TO anything.
UA-cam hath blessed meh with a recommendation of yur channel! I hath liked it so much, that I in turn hath blessed ye with my subscription, good piratey sir! Those were masterfully done and very well presented and explained. Thank you for sharing with us!
I actually really enjoy these long form videos. Less editing for me, more casual, and more fun. If you all like them and want to watch them, I’ll keep making them!
My players would be terrified if I did something like this. They know they're safe if I've made set pieces. When I get inventive.... The old stone hut is surrounded by an herb garden gone wild and a long neglected orchard. A small, collapsed barn appears to contain the remains of rabbit hutches, and the rabbits, plus a pile of firewood that might have some unrotted pieces in it. There is a stream near by, with a privy away from it and the hut. Inside, you find broken furniture, what looks like the lower leg of a halfling skeleton, and among broken pottery, there is a tarnished copper tea kettle. What they don't know... The outhouse is a mimic.
Really good stuff! You have a very natural and down-to-earth feel in your presentation that makes it fun and easy to watch, and I'm super glad to have stumbled onto your channel. Subbed and hope others discover you as well! As an aside, what black and gold dice are those on the left throughout the video?
could be cool with a video on ‘natural’ monster loot - dragon claws, purple worm teeth etc. I have some books on what you can loot, but how to incorporate that loot so the players know what to look for is the question. e.g. all type of claws can be arrow-heads (with ceratin benefits depending on monster type) etc. And should you just let the players find a book on ‘improvised monster resources for weapons’, to inspire players? - or how to approach this… I hope it makes sense…
Maybe meet an old retired monster hunter/craftsman who was in a town with lots of monster attacks and learned to make stuff/was in a guild like the Witchers guild/did experiments for alchemy or magic etc. He can provide advice/make stuff for them? Or find an old journal on a dead monster hunter (that would make a lot of sense) that has a decent amount of stuff in it, that gets player creative juices flowing.
I remember one evening, last century, when I was DM, the party thought they were going on a dungeon adventure and in this town, the people would create a lore to manipulate the greed of the players and pointed them to a old abandoned mine about monsters, kobold, goblins, orcs, etc with finding wealth there and was wondering about the mining gear used, needing proof and the maps of the mine. The players would find nothing but old mining gear but to the townsfolk, the scale to weigh things was the real treasure, there's broke, and since the town was poor would barter hospitality to the party, double healing point recovery, including taking care of their steeds. But, I would give the party XP points just for the mission, obtaining scrap metal and the scale, as well as the mapping of the area for the townfolks. Another task is the old cemetery in an abandoned hamlet roughly 100 years old, just approximately a days travel, whetherby foot or mount. The party would go trek to it, but have to repair a bridge, again, unknowingly for the town folks and fight giant spiders, ants, or other carnivorous wildlife at the cemetery. Maybe the giant ants will upheave the burial sites and some jewelry trinkets would be unearthed for the players. The hamlet would have been pillaged through but the real treasure would be resources for the town folks and a keen player would kinda see what the townfolks would need with interactions; coal, mirrors, scrap metal, tools, etc and get XP for that.
I recently ran an encounter similar to your wilderness example with the magic casters trying to break a magic ritual while the area was being seiged by enemies. I ran into the issue of the magic casters feeling like they couldnt participate in the fight bc their turns were being domimated by the ritual. do you have any advice on how we could fix this issue for future sessions?
Great question! Depending on the scenario, you could have the portal open/close faster with the casters help. They don’t need to participate with that and instead fight, but giving them the choice is definitely the way to go. Does the caster help open the portal faster by succeeding on a check or maybe the caster needs to succeed on multiple checks to close it but they don’t need to do one every single round. Another option is to make the caster feel lucky to focus on the magic instead of the fight. You can do this by seriously damaging your other pc’s or doing things like cause exhaustion, max hp loss, etc. your caster will be happy they aren’t on the front lines👍🏼
Hope you all enjoy this new experimental "long form" video of mine. Thought I'd try something a little different on youtube with this vid. Cheers!
Are you getting into the realm of ROOOOOM DESIIIIIGN!?
Hahaha only with Hank’s blessing would I make such a call. I wanted to so badly, ROOOOOOOOOOOM DESIIIIIIIIIIIGN! Maybe next time 🤔
@@HouseDM well a) he's not doing it anymore, and b) in his last stream he said he'd welcome someone else doing it.
In all honesty why don't you contact him if you're worried you're reading on his toes.
You've got a cool channel style, good set-up and a ton of terrain so I'd love to see your take on room designs!
@@Smittumi not worried about it. I follow his streams and heard him share that. Hence this video. This is more-so me “testing the waters” to see if people are even interested. Thanks for sharing that you are!
STRENGHT, HONOR AND ROOOOOOOM DESIIIGN!!!
The Adventure Hook: (For a party of four 5th-7th level characters). A group of mountain and hill dwarves ask the party to help them recover the Diamond of Hearth and Kin and bring it back to the dwarves of Split Rock Keep. The Diamond is a powerful symbol of the town and is said to protect dwarfkind from harm. It also serves as a special gate; anyone that knows how to activate the Diamond can use it to cast a Teleportation Circle to the town’s center. Without the Diamond, the town is in grave danger.
The Villains: A duergar wizard, Najim Gloomcandle, who has a large force of bandits, goblins, and trolls, as well as a bulette named Chompers (who Najim controls with Dominate Monster).
What happened: Over one hundred years ago, Split Rock Keep was a small fortified trading hub that allowed all dwarves to gather, including duergar. At some point, several shipments went missing from the trading hub and the duergar were blamed. They were quickly exiled. Najim’s parents were two of the duergar that were exiled, and they passed away recently. In their passing, they told Najim that the duergar were framed at Split Rock Keep and someone else was really to blame. On their deathbed, Najim swore to avenge them. So, about a month ago, Najim ordered her hirelings to secretly raid Split Rock Keep and steal the Diamond. With the Diamond in hand, Najim can now plan a full-scale assault.
Bandit Keep (encounter 1): The party learns that the Diamond is being held nearby in a rundown keep. Najim’s bandits are there, waiting for her to return. The party can attempt to negotiate with the bandits, or break into the keep and recover the Diamond. The bandits have a series of poorly crafted platforms outside the keep for lookouts, and there are arrow slits in the walls protecting the main doorway. The bandit captain, a half-elf named Sebastian, will attempt to stop the party from entering, but if more than half the bandits are downed, he retreats to the lower levels of the keep, where the Diamond is being held.
Bulette Bedlam (encounter 2): Resistance from the bandits breaks when the party enters the keep. If Sebastian is alive, the party sees him run down a long stone spiral staircase. Najim created a wand of Dominate Monsters to protect Sebastian from the bulette, which he uses to order the bulette to attack the party. If the party is on the steps, they hear Sebastian give the order; otherwise, all they hear is a loud crash and rumbling as the bulette burrows into the side of the basement. Sebastian will then continue into the next room, where the Diamond is located. He will grab it from a chest and run out of the subterranean passageway.
When the party reaches the bottom of the steps, the rumbling stops. The bulette is hunting the party. When they enter the room with the Diamond, it burrows back toward them and attacks (if the party has a lot of resources and they haven’t paid much attention to the rumbling, let the Bulette have a surprise round; otherwise, roll initiative as normal). After the party defeats the Bulette, the ground begins to shake again and the steps up to the keep are buried in the rubble. The ceiling continues to crumble and chunks fall. The party must escape before they are buried alive!
If at any point the party defeats Sebastian before he gets the Diamond, the party can clearly see a necklace with a key on it; the key is to the chest with the Diamond.
Escape the Bandit Keep (encounter 3): Through a series of checks, the party must traverse about 500 feet of twisting, crumbling, passageway to escape to the surface. Sebastian begins about 100 feet ahead of the party. Sebastian has a burglar’s pack and will use items from the pack to slow the party, including throwing the ball bearings and lighting flasks of oil on fire, and tossing them onto any flammable objects (like a wooden bridge). Every 1d4 rounds, characters must make a Dexterity saving throw (DC: 10), on a failure that character takes 2d6 bludgeoning damage from falling rocks and debris. After 12 rounds, the cave system collapses entirely, and anyone still inside automatically takes 4d12 bludgeoning damage and is trapped underground.
If Sebastian escapes before the party does, he leaves a clear trail of blood and footprints, having been wounded from the cave-in. He does not put up a fight when the party catches up to him. He hands over the Diamond in exchange for his life.
Defend and Escape (encounter 4): Diamond in hand, the party must return to the dwarves, who are hiding out in an abandoned fort in the wilderness. Just as they make it, Najim and a huge group of goblins catch up to the party. There are too many for the party to defeat, so the party must defend the fort for 10 rounds while one of the dwarves uses the Diamond to cast Teleportation Circle. The fort is open on one side but has walls on the other three that provide cover. There is a ballista on the second floor of the fort (action to shoot, action to reload, uses attack bonus of the character operating the weapon, deals 6d6+6 piercing damage), and there are four dwarves (three Scouts and one Veteran who will use the Diamond, see Monster Manual pg. 349-350). When the trolls become visible, the veteran hands one of the characters his giant Slayer sword. There are 6d4 goblins, a troll, and Najim in the first wave, and 3d4 reinforcement goblins appear at the end of every even-numbered round. At the end of the third round, two more Trolls appear. Najim takes cover and casts Fireball at first, but then uses spells to bolster the goblins, herself, or the Troll. If Najim is close to death, she attempts to flee, either by teleporting or casting fly on herself.
Conclusion: The party returns the Diamond to Split Rock Keep. The dwarves insist they keep the Giant Slayer, and further reward the party with some of the following: a pair of sending stones, an all-purpose tool, a bag of holding, a belt of dwarvenkind, glamoured studded leather, a wand of wonder, and 1,000gp.
Hey Joseph! Absolutely brilliant way to incorporate all my encounters. Love it and thanks for sharing this!
Awesome content and creativity here. If this is your definition of lazy dm's, there should be more of those around ! Seriously the rules for ruling lord of the rings-esque moria escape kind of encounters is simple, straightforward and fun. I'm looking forward for more content like this keep going 😁❤️🎲
Hey Raptors thanks for saying this! I love getting comments like yours so appreciate you stopping by anytime. Also, escape from Moria type encounters are my bread&butter&beer. So much fun to play and run. Cheers mate!
Aquí tienes mi suscripción.
Todo el segundo encuentro me recordó a la escena del escape de la ciudad enana abandonada que se estaba derrumbando de la película Fellowship of the Ring, muy similar pero tu cambiaste las flechas que constantemente les disparaban por rocas cayendo. Bastante tensa situación, muere Gandalf para que los demás puedan escapar, muy como en tu versión en que puede morir todo el grupo en cualquier momento por el daño/ataques que reciben en cada turno.
The best youtube video I've seen in a long time. thank you. Keep up the good work 🤩
Hey thanks Rasmus! I’m really glad you enjoyed it!
I'm supposed to be a franchise player and we're in here talking about practicing?! haha great video, thanks for the ideas.
Glad you like them and Ted Lasso 😆
"We ain't talking about the game, the game you live and did for every weekend. We talking about practice man"
Ted Lasso
21:05 Alright you bastard, take it.
Really love how much stuff you can do with 4 foam stone blocks on encounter 2. Also demonstrates how teleportation spells like thunderous step, misty step, dimension door can make cool stuff completely irrelevant. Makes a lot of sense doing an encounter like that shortly after a battle. Really reminds me of the Paths of the Dead from LOTR movies. Also breaking up line of sight makes things like dimension door extremely dangerous since the caster won't know if they're teleporting TO anything.
Cool, I've never seen the d4 timer before. I like it!
You’ve gotten my creative/pirate juices flowing. Glad i stumbled on this. Definitely going to take a look at your other videos
Hah, glad to hear it! Welcome to the channel!
Awesome video man! Love it! Keep up the great videos, and thank you for the inspiration, 🍺🤘🛡️
Sup Reese! Thanks for the kind words and inspiration yourself!
UA-cam hath blessed meh with a recommendation of yur channel! I hath liked it so much, that I in turn hath blessed ye with my subscription, good piratey sir! Those were masterfully done and very well presented and explained. Thank you for sharing with us!
Ahoy there! I hope to share a cup a grog with ye matey! Thanks for the sub 🙃 Glad you enjoyed this one as much as I did making it!
Dude these are awesome! You sound like a great DM. I hope I can be as creative as this some day
Will there be more of these long form encounter design vids? These were great
I actually really enjoy these long form videos. Less editing for me, more casual, and more fun. If you all like them and want to watch them, I’ll keep making them!
Nice videos! I like them a lot, bunch of chill ideas
Good stuff. I like compact encounters that use terrain.
Awesome! I’ll have to make a follow up to this one then. Glad this was helpful for you.
My players would be terrified if I did something like this. They know they're safe if I've made set pieces. When I get inventive.... The old stone hut is surrounded by an herb garden gone wild and a long neglected orchard. A small, collapsed barn appears to contain the remains of rabbit hutches, and the rabbits, plus a pile of firewood that might have some unrotted pieces in it. There is a stream near by, with a privy away from it and the hut. Inside, you find broken furniture, what looks like the lower leg of a halfling skeleton, and among broken pottery, there is a tarnished copper tea kettle. What they don't know... The outhouse is a mimic.
Shout out to the VDS shirt!
Just found your channel and subscribed! Like the content so far.
Hey thanks Jeffrey! I post at least 1 video per month so glad to have you on board.
Really good stuff! You have a very natural and down-to-earth feel in your presentation that makes it fun and easy to watch, and I'm super glad to have stumbled onto your channel. Subbed and hope others discover you as well!
As an aside, what black and gold dice are those on the left throughout the video?
Great video!
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
I recently discovered the secret to defeating the almighty door. Js
Interesting UDT, smaller than I use.
All the more portable. Don’t need too much space but I’m working on a wilderness one soon too, slightly bigger.
See Runehammer !!!! (Drunken & Dragons)
Runehammer is one of my favorite creators!
not the game, not the game, we talking about practice!
could be cool with a video on ‘natural’ monster loot - dragon claws, purple worm teeth etc.
I have some books on what you can loot, but how to incorporate that loot so the players know what to look for is the question. e.g. all type of claws can be arrow-heads (with ceratin benefits depending on monster type) etc. And should you just let the players find a book on ‘improvised monster resources for weapons’, to inspire players? - or how to approach this… I hope it makes sense…
Maybe meet an old retired monster hunter/craftsman who was in a town with lots of monster attacks and learned to make stuff/was in a guild like the Witchers guild/did experiments for alchemy or magic etc. He can provide advice/make stuff for them?
Or find an old journal on a dead monster hunter (that would make a lot of sense) that has a decent amount of stuff in it, that gets player creative juices flowing.
"those are some mighty big words for a pirate" - next sentence "Exist in the Zeitgheist" who you fooling wizard!
Hahahah you caught me.
I tried to delay combat and look what you did.....look what you did. 😂
Me too. I talked to those wasps for so long but alas 🧐
I remember one evening, last century, when I was DM, the party thought they were going on a dungeon adventure and in this town, the people would create a lore to manipulate the greed of the players and pointed them to a old abandoned mine about monsters, kobold, goblins, orcs, etc with finding wealth there and was wondering about the mining gear used, needing proof and the maps of the mine. The players would find nothing but old mining gear but to the townsfolk, the scale to weigh things was the real treasure, there's broke, and since the town was poor would barter hospitality to the party, double healing point recovery, including taking care of their steeds. But, I would give the party XP points just for the mission, obtaining scrap metal and the scale, as well as the mapping of the area for the townfolks.
Another task is the old cemetery in an abandoned hamlet roughly 100 years old, just approximately a days travel, whetherby foot or mount. The party would go trek to it, but have to repair a bridge, again, unknowingly for the town folks and fight giant spiders, ants, or other carnivorous wildlife at the cemetery. Maybe the giant ants will upheave the burial sites and some jewelry trinkets would be unearthed for the players. The hamlet would have been pillaged through but the real treasure would be resources for the town folks and a keen player would kinda see what the townfolks would need with interactions; coal, mirrors, scrap metal, tools, etc and get XP for that.
I recently ran an encounter similar to your wilderness example with the magic casters trying to break a magic ritual while the area was being seiged by enemies. I ran into the issue of the magic casters feeling like they couldnt participate in the fight bc their turns were being domimated by the ritual. do you have any advice on how we could fix this issue for future sessions?
Great question! Depending on the scenario, you could have the portal open/close faster with the casters help. They don’t need to participate with that and instead fight, but giving them the choice is definitely the way to go.
Does the caster help open the portal faster by succeeding on a check or maybe the caster needs to succeed on multiple checks to close it but they don’t need to do one every single round.
Another option is to make the caster feel lucky to focus on the magic instead of the fight. You can do this by seriously damaging your other pc’s or doing things like cause exhaustion, max hp loss, etc. your caster will be happy they aren’t on the front lines👍🏼
How do I get a seat at one of your campaigns?
Hi Matthew! You got to live near me in OR. At least until I make enough money to do this full time 😉
11.8k Sub 10 months ago trying to get 1k subs. i think you're doing a great. Good content
Thanks Ginger George!
Was aiming for 1000, now have over 1400 😎
Hah I know right? I can hardly believe it myself. Next goal: 10,000. Glad to have you with me!
@@HouseDM Thank you very much 😊
The microphone is in the way of your shirt, now I can't focus on what you're saying.
Nice lazy Susan 😊
On the fly forever rocks 👍 Count me in.
What do you mean my mic is in the way of my shirt?
@@HouseDM Visually
You don't have to react to an "event"