Cane of Returning (Wondrous item, uncommon, requires attunement)
This sturdy two-and-a-half foot bamboo cane can be recalled to its owner from within 1 mile as a bonus action by performing its command gesture. The recalled cane has a speed of 80′ per round. If the cane is hooked to or blocked by something heavier than its owner, the owner will instead be recalled to the cane. If neither owner nor can can move towards one another, such as if separated by a barrier, then the recall ends and the owner takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage.
This well-made and dapper complete set of clothes may have their pattern changed by the owner once per short rest. Doing so may grant the wearer advantage in certain situations, such as stealth (by matching the pattern to the surrounding area), and many forms of charisma check. While the pattern may be altered, the shape and stitching will remain the same when changing. The hat of the suit cannot be dislodged from the wearer except when deliberately removed, or if the wearer rolls under a natural 5 on any dexterity check.
Boots of the Hero (wondrous item, rare, requires attunement by a Good-aligned character)
These pale green boots have been well-loved by a goodhearted hero, and they love their owner in return. At the end of a long rest, if a character is attuned to and wearing the boots, they will awaken with exactly ten temporary HP. Additionally, the wearer has advantage on saving throws against being frightened, and may add their proficiency bonus to Animal Handling and Persuasion.
Fear Reaper (weapon (finesse), rare)
This cruel, curved black blade radiates terror from its gleaming white handle, and some say it was created from the skull of a creature made of pure malice. Three times per long rest, on a successful hit, it may be used to cast Cause Fear on the target.
These blades may be found in many forms, a clawlike dagger, a deadly scimitar, a galve or, traditionally, a scythe.
Feel free to add more? Or edit existing. I have no idea how to balance things, I just like magic items…
Finally, a 5e Astral Dragon. This is just the adult. My apologies for the gargantuan statblock (and that most of it is really similar to other dragons). Based on 3.5e stats.
Out of curiosity, how do my fellow DMs prepare their campaigns?
Do you open up a word doc at type out your story hook and make little bullet points from there?
Do you wing it completely?
What’s your notes system like?
I’m simply looking for new ways to plan for my d&d games!
The Over-Prepared GM
I can’t help myself. I love all the work that goes into prepping for a campaign, and I keep all of my crazy notes and papers, so today I’m gonna try and share with you my process for the latest DnD session I prepped for/ran!
Rough Notes
I always start by hand writing a full page or two of just random thoughts/story bits. I’m gonna give examples from the latest session I ran (BACKSTORY – this setting has frequent time travel moments and so every location I make also needs a past version and present version)
Writing Stonevale began with me rambling on about any vague ideas I had for the scene setting. I also find it’s useful to get the secrets and mysteries all clear and laid out straight away, and work backwards from them to slot in clues for players. “Stonevale Past” begins with me deciding that the ancestors of an important NPC live here – maybe the players never get far enough to discover that, but having the secrets and info at the heart of my process helps me keep things focussed, and it’s easy/fun to build walls around the secrets this way 🙂
I also generally get a feel for any creatures/NPCs that populate the area, and give them vague roles. And I try to note down key details/props/locations/events that will help the players navigate and investigate.
Session Summary
Now’s the time to check what happened last session just to make sure you know how the party characters will likely be feeling/acting at the start of the session, and to remind yourself of any items they picked up, or active statuses going on. Also a good moment to check what the party planned to do next, what their expectations could be and so on.
It’s hard to make myself fill this in at the end of every session, but the session summary page in this kit really helps me note down what’s most important.
Above are the images I used to inspire me, and below is the finished Stonevale map! It’s come out a bit rough/childlike but was definitely a fun way to explore more ways of making maps!
Later on, I realised I’d got too into making this and forgotten about some sort of depiction of the INSIDE of the manor… Since I didn’t have any time to make more maps by this point, I went to where I always go when I need a DnD map in a pinch – @2minutetabletop ! I picked up Castle Keep, which is free (like so many of his maps are!) and faffed with some colours and levels in photoshop until I was happy. Printed them out on A3 card and they were good to go! I can’t recommend this resource enough, it’s saved my GM butt a lot when I run out of time to make a map of my own!
Adding in Detail
So next I need to flesh out those vague ideas to make sure I’ve covered what’s likely to be important for the party. I love using the town builder here as it gives me a bit of mental breathing room and asks the questions for me. I find having questions ready means the answers come a lot easier than if I was trying to pluck this out of my head, if that makes sense?
It was at this point I realised I’d likely need a family tree, even just so I could keep track of the time travel/ancestral stuff. I roughed one out, then made a slightly bigger, still very rough, version that I thought might be a handy clue for players. If they make it inside the castle, they’ll notice a framed family tree on the wall, and this will be it!
NPCS
Our story involved one of the players having worked at Stonevale before the adventure, so I made a staff list for that player’s reference. This way they had some basic information on their old co-workers and the residents of the manor. I also filled in an NPC list from the people & society kit to make sure I had enough NPCs to generate about the property.
Then I used the map to mark some likely locations of the important NPCs. I made sure to spread them out so that no matter how the party approached the grounds, they’d likely hit a plot hook somehow.
Quest Hooks
Time to shove as many clues as possible in here! My experience has been that players need a lot more help picking up clues and reaching conclusions than you expect (myself included!) so I make a point of writing a bunch of quest hooks to inspire both the players and myself during play. I use the quest hooks page from the session kit to note down basically little story bites and clues that I can drop in as and when I need to. It’s a useful sheet to glance at real quick during the game!
Loot
Gotta make sure there’s some loot somewhere! There’s always at least one player who ransacks every location they visit 🙂 I hadn’t set up Stonevale to be a particularly loot-filled place but knew the manor in the centre could do with holding some of the resident’s belongings that could be steal-able. Again, I realised this quite late in my planning, and so dashed off to the @rpgtoonsPatreon to grab all the free item cards I could find! Then I picked out which ones could be appropriate for certain family members and residents, and stashed ‘em in the pile ready to hand out.
Ambience
This is one of the last things I come to, as it’s fairly easy to set up, but so important if you want your players to be focussed and engaged. Every time I use music or scents its palpable how much more invested in events players are. For ambient backgrounds, youtube is a gold mine. I like to have two playing simultaneously – one for music and one for background noise. For example:
As for scents, I use these a little more sparingly, but @cantripcandles does some exceptionally convincing aromas that really work for setting the mood, and taking your prep that lil extra step. My favourite is Goldwheat Bakery – the only way to get a more accurate smell would be to visit a bakery!
Finishing Up
At this point I’m almost good to go. I take one last look over everything I’ve prepped to see if there are any gaping plot holes or parts I’ve missed. For this particular session, it occurred to me there could be an opportunity for eavesdropping on an important conversation, so I wrote out a one page script for what the players might overhear should they choose to snoop.
Play!
I guess you wanna know how the session went down after all this prep? Did the players enjoy it, did they find what I’d laid out for them?
OF COURSE NOT! They made their very best effort to skirt the entire property, clinging to the edges of the map and hiding any time an NPC interaction looked likely. Predictably, I didn’t anticipate that they would attempt to avoid everything, but the Quest Hooks page kept things flexible. That, and the fact that one player’s rat companion decided to jump down a hole and became “irretrievable until further notice”…. ahem.
Hope you find this useful, I’ve tried to link to as many resources as possible because there are just so many good ones out there right now! Thanks to all DnD creators! I think it’s really cool everyone’s helping each others’ games become even more fun to play! 🙂
i’m playing a sailor in my new campaign and i love sailor superstitions, so i made a bunch of dnd sailor superstitions/traditions! (some might be weird/bizarre, but a lot of ours are too so i felt it fitting)
having a water genasi on board is good luck, even better if they’re higher ranked (captain, first mate). however, if they’re a prisoner, it’s extremely bad luck for the crew that has them imprisoned.
holy people of sea gods closely follow water genasi in good luck/bad luck.
sailors tend to get tattoos of a land god’s symbol in hopes that if they drown, a land god will get them back safely. however, sea gods find this extremely rude and disrespectful, so sailors have to find ways of hiding the tattoos at all times, whether with magic, clothes, or makeup.
every port city has a shrine or temple to a sea god. the very last thing sailors do before heading out on the ocean and the very first thing they do when they get back on land is pray at one of these places. bigger port cities have special roads for sailors to take.
the only time it’s okay to sing sea shanties on land is if you have a vial of seawater on you. if you don’t have any, sea gods think you’re singing for the land gods instead of themselves. and if they think that, things will turn nasty when you get back to sea.
sailors don’t talk about their families/friends/loved ones while at sea. the sea could get jealous, and try and keep the sailors all to itself–by whatever means necessary.
there are various tattoos one can get for certain accomplishments (ie. defeating a monster, sailing for a certain amount of time/for a certain distance, which port you hail from, etc)
every ship brings a small animal that’s special to a sea god on board (ie a crab). that animal has all priority–in food, in defense, in healing. it’s said that if that animal dies, the rest of the crew will soon follow.
bonus sea shanties:
dwarf and orc shanties have a very steady rhythm and often involve drums–meant to keep rowing easy and sailors focused.
tiefling and elf shanties are melodious and often eerie to hear from another ship–especially in foggy/stormy weather. they’re meant to simulate the sound of the wind, waves, and those who died at sea.
dragonborn and genasi shanties often involved overlapping lyrics and melodies, causing them to sound like the storms out at sea. they’re meant to pay tribute to and appease the gods.
halfling and gnome shanties are cheery and peppy, meant to keep things interesting after monotonous days at sea and to make sure morale is up.
human shanties are as wide and varied as the race itself. they often tell stories–of the crew, of other ships’ adventures, or of history.
Can you imagine being that bird? You see a big falling dot off in the distance, so you go to investigate. And it’s a human. Just, like, hanging out, in the middle of the sky. Plumbing toward earth at terminal velocity.
“Huh, that’s weird” you think to yourself.
You land on them. They seem nonplussed by their predicament.
But you’re a busy bird, you’ve got places to be. So you just fly off. Good luck, crazy human. Hope you make it.
For my followers who don’t follow bird things- that is not a wild bird, they’re not free falling, and if you haven’t heard of parahawking before ITS YOUR LUCKY DAY because you now have some beautiful videos in your immediate future.
The bird is a vulture (hooded vulture?) trained to fly with paragliders and occasionally fly to the glove for a food reward. Note the anklets on its legs and how it pokes at her hand looking for a reward. She doesn’t look like she’s wearing a falconry glove tho, so it could be someone else’s bird approached her, and that would be a bit of a surprise.
Numerous groups have trained up falconry birds to fly with them, and if you’re looking for good videos The Parahawking Project has a lot of them and does good work for conservation in general and vulture pr. in specific.
If you’re interested in a bird actually flying to a free falling human, falconers have tried that, too, because they’re out to do us all proud. A search on ‘peregrine skydiving’ should get you the BBC clip. I don’t think she ever actually makes it to his hand, but it definitely takes a full stoop to keep up with a skydiver.
Izzie’s tumblr archive 