Tag: D&D

Review: Storm Lord’s Wrath on Fantasy Grounds Classic

This week I will be reviewing the DnD module Storm Lord’s Wrath on Fantasy Grounds Classic. My weekly Saturday campaign started with the Lost Mines of Phandelver. After that the party wanted to make the town of Phandalin their base of operations. I was able to stretch the lore a little bit and insert a forgotten city in the Sword Mountains and ran The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan out of Tales From the Yawning Portal to level the party up to levels 6/7.

From there the adventurers passed through the town of Leilon on their way back to Phandalin. The town was previously abandoned but now that I had the Storm Lord’s Wrath module loaded we had a map of Leilon and an immediate hook for the characters. Thanks to Fantasy Grounds there is a lot of immersion as images and maps that are usually printed in a book tend to be for the DM’s eyes only.

After spending 4 or 5 weeks of dungeon crawling this module was a breath of fresh air. The adventure contained outdoor/wilderness quests that were typically finished at the end of each or our 4 hour sessions. It introduced two new enemy factions for my players; the Cult of Talos and the Cult of Myrkul. Interestingly it also created some friction for my players in the form of Lord Neverember of Neverwinter since he ordered the reconstruction of Leilon while the party was out adventuring. (They seemed to think they had the rights to the town and took issue with the Wayside Inn being built too close to their turf)

After the hook things got a little awkward for me as a DM. The module as written uses a quest board system found in the center of town and doesn’t award experience. Instead it uses a milestone system awarding a level of advancement for each quest completed. Of course that was tweaked to match my style but did require some prep work to introduce quests through existing NPC’s that the party was starting to build relationships with.

From beginning to end this was a well thought out storyline that is building up to more adventures in the series. It introduced the characters to new NPC’s that I enjoyed roleplaying and created contacts for me to use later to insert more adventures.

The conversion to Fantasy Grounds was top notch. The story was properly linked, images and maps looked great, and encounters and parcels logically placed. The module itself took about 4 sessions to complete. My guys do like to go on tangents so I think there were technically 5 sessions, but we could account about 1 day just roleplaying in the world we were creating together. If you are a DM and used either The Lost Mine of Phandalin or the intro adventure from Dungeons and Dragons Essential Kit this is a great module to incorporate into your ongoing campaign on the Sword Coast. At $4.99 you are going to be hard pressed to find a better deal with such great content.

Until next time,

DM Greg

Virtual Kobold Con 2020 DDHC-TYP The Sunless Citadel 05/01/20-05/03/20

ddhc-typ-the-sunless-citadell-session-1Download
ddhc-typ-the-sunless-citadell-session-2Download
ddhc-typ-the-sunless-citadell-session-3Download

Ever consider running the adventure The Sunless Citadel in an Adventurers League format? I had the opportunity to DM it on Fantasy Grounds as a three part session over the course of May 1st through the 3rd at Virtual Kobold Con.

First off, Virtual Kobold Con was the result of a regional convention having to cancel their whole event and go online due to COVID-19. They were recruiting GM’s to run games over any virtual tabletop (VTT) to include; Fantasy Grounds, Roll 20, Tabletop Simulator, and even Zoom.

I saw a recruitment post on the Fantasy Grounds Adventurers League Forum looking for DM’s for the event. I felt this was exciting as I would be able to run multiple AL games over the course of one weekend. Then the light bulb came on. Why not run one of the D&D campaigns as an AL legal DDHC over the the three days?

After weighing some of the pro’s and con’s I decided to go with The Sunless Citadel out of Tales From the Yawning Portal (TYP). My rational is as follows:

  • First, I only wanted to run the adventure over three sessions. A full campaign book would have had me at my computer non-stop all weekend.
  • Second, The Sunless Citadel’s adventure kept the entire party in the same Tier if I required them to start at level 1.

After skimming through the adventure I felt if my table had 7 Tier 1 players there would be no problem getting through all the content. As it turned out our Friday and Saturday session took 4 hours a piece. Sunday was wrapped up in about 2 hours, but there was a little content in the dungeon the party decided to skip. I think 6 party members would have used up the entire 12 hours I blocked out.

It was a great decision to run the the module over 3 sessions. It was an even better decision to host a game at Virtual Kobold Con as the players at my table were phenomenal. There was the risk of not keeping all 7 through all 3 days the party was able to stick together all three days. It would not have been as much fun for me without them!

I look forward to playing at this event again next year!

Cheers,

DM Greg

Virtual Kobold Con Announcement

I am happy to announce that I will be running DDHC-TYP The Sunless Citadel at Virtual Kobold Con the weekend of May 1st on Fantasy Grounds.

I have scheduled the module to run on 3 sessions, 4 hours each. This will be my first time running a hardcover adventure as an Adventurers League legal module. Please check out my calendar for more info.

Please check the convention out at https://tabletop.events/conventions/virtual-koboldcon-2020

Krogan Warbrew DDAL09-02 Stopped at the Gate

I got my second Adventurers League game on Fantasy Grounds with Krogan Warbrew last night. This time I was able to find a game through the Fantasy Grounds: Adventurer Discord server.

This adventure was run by one of the channels moderators and was mostly theater of the mind. So far the season 9 AL content has been a little slow for me as a player. I would prefer a little more combat and less “retrieval/investigation” quests. All in all I feel like the storyline is building up to something super exciting.

You can view Krogan’s AL log here: https://www.adventurersleaguelog.com/users/3670/characters/58646

Welcome to DM Greg’s Dungeons and Dragons Adventurers League Website

Are you interested in playing D&D Adventurers League games on Fantasy Grounds? I Dungeon Master at least 2 games a week and I am always looking for more players. Please check out the game calendar to the right for signup info. Also, I keep my AL Session Log’s hosted on this site if you ever need to come back for reference.

A few things for players considering playing:

  • DM Greg utilizes Fantasy Grounds Classic for hosting games and Discord for voice chat.
  • Players only need a Demo License to play.
  • DM Greg will share his Players Handbook and supplemental books in game.
  • Please show up with characters prepared. Typically the host client will be open 1 hour before sessions for character import/build. Please check out Fantasy Grounds College if you need some help.
  • At the end of the session DM Greg will export character sheets for use in other Adventurers League games.
  • Finally, I do run CCC and older AL modules. I still abide by the current AL season (Season 9) for awarding levels, downtime, gold, magic items, etc.

I look forward to meeting up and rolling some dice with your heroes!

Krogan Warbrew DDAL09-01 Escape From Elturgard

I played in my first Adventurers League game on Fantasy Grounds last night as a player. It was part of the Virtual Gary Con going on this weekend. First off it was a great time. The DM was excellent and the party worked really well with each other and were engaged in voice on Discord. We did a lot of theater of the mind utilizing Fantasy Grounds for dice rolls and a couple of tactical maps.

The adventure was DDAL09-01 Escape From Elturgard. I played as a level 1 Dwarf Cleric named Krogan Warbrew utilizing the Forge Domain from Xanathars Guide to Everything. I believe it was a 5 part module that we were able to complete right at the 4 hour mark.

The highlight of Krogann’s adventure was on the final encounter. The party was investigating a murder in the middle of the night. Krogan, who had been woken from a deep slumber, was walking around the camp with his warhammer, shield, and nothing on but his small clothes. Upon discovering the perpetrator, and walking around almost naked for an hour, Krogan had had enough. He dropped his shield to wield his warhammer in 2 hands, channeled Searing Smite into his holy weapon, and utilized his inspiration to critical hit the final boss pumping in 25 points of damage. It was the kind of dice roll every player dreams of! Upon smiting his foe Krogan stood over his vanquished enemy raising his warhammer in salute to the god Moradin and started gyrating wildly in exultation, waving his banana hammock in all its glory.

Here is link to my AL player log: https://www.adventurersleaguelog.com/users/3670/characters/58646