Funhouse Dungeons | Running the Game
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ต.ค. 2024
- Episode 36: Dungeons can be fun! Well "wacky" would be a better word for these....
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I love Castle Greyhawk so much. I never realized that I really enjoy the Funhouse Dungeon "genre" until now. Thanks, Matt!
Which castle greyhawk?
In my game I want to say "There is a 5% chance you get turned into a gnome" In the same way he does
Matt, this is a long time coming. Thank you.
I have been playing D&D nearly as long as you, but as I confessed to my wife tonight, NEVER actually DM'ed a game for my group (the core of which hasn't really changed in all that time). After adopting a couple of kids who turned out to be as weird and geeky as my wife and I, it came time to take up the mantle. I scoured the Interwebs and found your videos. You were speaking my language and the message was clear JUST DO IT! So we started with your goblin infested Tomb of the Delian order. We then moved on to the Hoard of the Dragon Queen and are currently saving Greenest (who comes up with these town names?) from the Cult of the Dragon. My 13 year old daughter's 1/2 Human (and half Elven) Druid and my 17 year old's Dragonborn Sorcerer have been joined by Magda the Odd (a halfling "witch doctor" warlock) and one of my longest gaming buddy's Tiefling Bard. They've saved many villagers, decimated the raiders, and are STILL freaking out every time I have the dragon fly overhead. :) I've learned many lessons from your videos that have made this experience better for my entire family and in the last session I came to one very clear realization.
This is a horribly boring adventure WotC has prepared. I mean, it's kept them on their toes when it comes to resource management since it's one very, busy night. I've picked and chosen encounters and modified where I've needed to with much credit to your tips. But with the last couple of videos, Sandboxing especially, I've decided that it'll just be best if I put in a little more of my own work and follow your lead yet again. I'm delving into all the old books and adventures I've got stored away, hitting the resources on the DM's Guild, and rewriting the end of this part of the campaign to allow them to escape to a very special path. I'm redirecting them back to that first tomb, which they will (hopefully, you know players) discover that there's a LOT more to it than what they originally found. (they actually didn't go into the last room, convincing the dragonborn that since he took the Oath, he probably shouldn't loot the Tomb of his new Order). Now, though, undead have been exiting the Tomb, more than just a couple, and the villagers would like their "heroes" to return and fix whatever thing they obviously broke. I have mapped out a complete underground complex, one of many the Delian Order kept as secret meeting halls in their day. They'll have to find their way in and deal with whatever has decided to unleash undeath on the countryside!!!
Or maybe they'll just take the adventure hooks leading them to B1, B2, B3, or something else entirely. Personally, I can't wait. No really, I CAN'T wait, so I'm now working on a one-shot Funhouse adventure (I happen to have S2 sitting right here) they can take on over the next few evenings. I know you've heard it plenty of times in the last few months, but you really have made a difference in my house. From one player, DM, storyteller to another, thank you, sir.
Has anyone suggested doing a video on converting content between editions? If no, I would like to put forth the idea for consideration. :)
This is most definitely off topic, but I saw that Evolve shut down a while back. Loved the lore, and wish it could've been more developed. Good luck to you, and Turtle Rock in your future endeavors.
I cannot freakin wait for Matt's Stronghold rules.
Agreed! I can't wait for Matt to finish these so I can make them available as a future goal for my players. They're all brand new to D&D and I think they're going to flip out at the opportunity to have their own stronghold(s).
Jacob McEwen Yes, they sound cool.
I know they're going to be immensely helpful for me. Really glad to hear Matt is working on them.
Funny that you would be talking about this, my campaign is using a tweaked version of this adventure. In my campaign, the dungeon is a vault of sorts created by wizards to protect a dangerous but powerful item.
Same, it'll be fun to straight up rip him off while my players have no idea.
"You can be a murder hobo if that's what you're into."
-Matt Colville 2017
Definitely. That is what guards are for.
Every TH-camr I follow starts with 'this is a short video' and talks for an hour. It's cool! I listen to these things because I like to hear you talk about your subjects.
"gyno-shep" almost made me spit out my coffee
I finished drawing my map for White Plume Mountain literally minutes before I got the notification for this video... #spoopy
White Plume Mountain birthed one of my favorite characters of all time. I was running the 3.5 adaptation as a New Year's Eve party when I was a beginner GM and my friends had all rolled very squishy rogues and spellcasters. I decided they needed some sort of front line party member but I didn't want a GMPC who could give away the answers to the riddles and puzzles, so enter Freelm Silverforge. Freelm was a Dwarven paladin with as many defensive options I could give him and low intelligence and wisdom. He was loyal to a fault but due to the low wisdom incredibly easily persuaded by the rest of the party. Because of his heavy armor and defensive bonuses he rarely took damage from the traps and puzzles but often the rest of the party would be rooms ahead while he fumbled his way past frictionless floors and spinning corridors. Through either slapstick or a well timed lay-on-hands everyone in the party grew to love Freelm, and he's become an NPC in many of my campaigns since.
I love it when I pickup a new word, specifically because it happens rarely with my vocabulary.
Thank you for that and doing what you do Matt.
ex·tem·po·ra·ne·ous
adjective
spoken or done without preparation.
"an extemporaneous speech"
Yes! I would love to get my hands on that stronghold stuff! Only 3 more levels for my players to start getting that. Thankyou Matt, for all your content, helping me with being a first time DM. Keep it up!
I think the biggest reason that being a murder hobo/dungeon crawler is less common now with DnD 5e is because there are so many other board games that get this fix nowadays. Essentially, running a purely kick the door down and kill people method of play is fine for DnD, but so much of DnD's mechanics are going to waste, you might as well just play a game designed from the ground up to let people be murder hobos. just my thoughts though.
D&D IS the game designed about being a murderhobo. It always has been. As has been stated, most of the earliest modules just plopped you somewhere near a dungeon and expected you to go loot it because that's what the game was about. There are other systems much more suited to freeform and narrative RP than D&D, but because D&D is the most well known pen and paper game, people try to use it for that, and it's slowly moving to include some of those elements in recent editions.
CaptainBrawnson You're right, and I totally agree with that, but I was talking about Matt saying "nowadays people don't want to be murderhobos in DnD" and... he's right, but that's because of the surge in other tabeltop games that fulfill the need of being a murderhobo or being dungeon crawlers. I'm not talking about other fully fleshed out RPGs, i'm talking about games that are JUST about being monster slayers and whatnot. And thus, we move to RPGs in general to not be all about the mechanics, the combat, and the dungeons but instead to tell a story.
But a few years ago, you're totally right, and I'm not denying that's where DnD came from. I am also using DnD as a blanket term for ALL tabletop RPGs, not just specifically DnD (which is a really bad thing to do, and i'm sorry about that).
As a newcomer to the game, I agree. If I wanted to murder things and get loot I'd just play a video game. The great thing about D&D, to me, is the option for social encounters and other things that can't just be simulated by a computer program.
I have 3 sets of dice that I've always enjoyed pulling out. #1 Dungeon Dice: A 12 sided dice with 12 different room designs, which is rolled with a D6. #2: Encounter Dice: a D4 & a set of D%, which are used along side of various charts. #3 Treasure Dice: A special 4 sided dice which offers armor, equipment, weapon, or magic item, that is rolled along with D%. I love using these dice for as a "Funhouse Dungeon", for those days when my players just want to kill something.
Are these tables you mentioned available somewhere on the internet?
I like to say that casting a high-level spell has a chance of causing the caster to lose a point of wisdom, making some high-level wizards more and more eccentric and explaining fun-house dungeons, cursed magic items, etc. That makes crazy puzzle rooms make sense and fun to me, because I used to hate them.
I've run a twice-weekly funhouse 5e dungeon for murder hobos in the grand '70s tradition for my FLGS for the past two years now and it keeps expanding -- we've added two additional DMs because it's proved to be extremely popular.
Oh man, Can you tell me about how you feel running a game with multiple DMs? What challenges popped up that you did not expect?
I've been having a blast, and so far we haven't had too many challenges between us as DMs! -- It's an everchanging labyrinth created by a mad wizard, and the game shop asked for quests to be single-session adventures, so we each prepare an adventure within the Labyrinth for that week, "advertise" each quest as if they were help wanted ads ("Undead Wranglers Needed --
I require existing undead beings for research purposes, and offer a bounty for any and all 'live' specimens provided. Go to the Dog and Pony Inn and ask for Hexen. Only serious applicants need apply."), generate a number of encounters ending usually in a boss-level fight (often with a twist) and use the random dungeon tables in the DMG for the layout.
Then we meet for brunch before the run to discuss what we've planned, and when it's two o'clock we read off the quests, divide up the groups evenly, and focus on our own
Since we never know which players will show up or how many, we make sure our encounters are challenging and scaled to groups of 3-6 players based on the proficiency bonus tiers ("This quest is for 1-4 level characters, this one is for 5-9 level, etc.")
About the only challenge we've dealt with is that we often have players that no one wants in their groups show up, so we try to make sure players mix and match the parties and make sure no one stays with one DM for more than two weeks in a row.
(I've even created gravestones in Adobe Illustrator based on character level and class, so we have a graveyard graphic up for PCs that have died in the dungeon. Lots of first level gravestones...)
Haha, glorious. I printed off some gravestones on 80 weight paper. I write character names on them when PCs die. I then affix them to my DM screen for an unspecified period of time to remind people I WILL kill their characters.
I think a Birthright video would be cool
Upvote on the Birthright video, only ever heard Matt talk about so I'm keen to learn more.
I bought the PDFs a few months ago, pretty much entirely on Matt's recommendation. Haven't gotten to read through it yet; a video on it would be a good thing to play while virtually unboxing.
Upvote Birthright
I said on Twitter that I was excited to comment on this video. Now I don't have anything to comment, except for: "Great video! Keep it up!"
I had totally forgotten about this style of adventure, and now that my memory has been jogged, I can't wait to run one for my players!
You forgot to add this one to the playlist for Running the Game. Great stuff, as always.
I started running white plume mountain this week with my group and they are thoroughly enjoying it. We didn't manage to finish it as they spent a long time trying to save "9" the flesh golem from the mud pit below. Thanks for recommending it.
what do you think of... THE ADVENTURE ZONE?
I second this question.
Bobo The Talking Clown do do dooooo, do do doo do do doo do do do do doo!
*cue theme song*
*Mort Garson's deja vu intensifies*
The Scary Door
More please, love these old school adventure reviews and explanations. Actually setting up an end of the year event for my D&D group using a fun-house dungeon one-shot, survivors get prizes, should be a good time!
Our DM once did a funhouse-dungeon and we spent the entire session figuring out these
crazy contraptions the guy who build this dungeon into the basement of his castle had
come up with to protect his treasure.
The conclusion could not have been better. The big treasure was literally in the bedroom
of the castle in a simple chest protected by almost nothing and the guy had build this
entire dungeon to protect and hide a few kegs of beer from his wife, who was notoriouly
against the consumption of alcohol in any way.
He gave us what we wanted (some treasure but primarily information) if we didn't tell
his wife about this.
I can't wait for the Campaign Setting video! So entertaining to watch you deliver this content.
Is the answer to the riddle the moon?
I've checked the module, yes that's the right answer
You made me realize that something that I've never even thought about is adding puzzles to campaigns; the DM in my very first D&D group peppered his campaigns with puzzles but I've not actually had much experience with them since then. I'd love to see a video on constructing puzzles that will sufficiently bend players' minds without making them (completely) miserable.
I'm running White Plum Mountain tomorrow as part of Tales of Yawning Portal Adventure League program. It has always been a favorite as just a wacky adventure. It'll be interesting to see how well the players adapt to the "fun house" format versus the standard adventure path. Thanks for the post.
Hey! So glad you did this video in this particular day! I was looking for a dungeon just like that and this popped up in my feed and saved my weekend game! Keep up the great work!
I usually just say "shepard" regardless of what gender I was playing. I would clarified once that "I was playing as female shepard" and thereon referred to her as shepard. If I was talking about a playthrough where I was male shepard I would clarify "this was when I was playing male shepard" and then otherwise refer to my character as shepard.
EX1: "Dungeonland" (1983) by Gygax and EX2: "The Land Beyond the
Magic Mirror" are what I always remember from the old days when I think
funhouse dungeon. They were crazy!
I've run White Plume Mountain and also Return to White Plume Mountain and the characters always keep the items!
Looking forward to eventually seeing these stronghold rules!
I love the Robo Rally in the background. I was just playing that this weekend with my daughter.
Birthright is hands down my favorite D&D setting.
Tales of the Yawning Portal includes WPM. Theres a story on the DM guild which (at least for me) is so far doing a great job of integrating WPM into the series of more regular modules to make one good long adventure. Basically they take the idea of Keraptis and rewrite him so that he needs true heroes and the 3 divine imbedded weapons (the ones you mention actually) to free him from a greater evil that imprisoned him and WPM is the prison. I really encourage any DMs here to check out both. Im running TYP for my first time DMing along with the DMGuild story (ESBraun I think is the writer) and so far its well received
this is so cool, i did this almost accidently last week for my level 4 players. they cleared this wacky dungeoun and then turned it into a secret lair!
This video isn't included in the Running the game playlist. Love the videos! I can't wait for the stronghold rules as well.
Nice fun, short video. I have read more fun house adventures than I have played (or run), but I think the idea of highlighting them is another great move by Matt.
I guess I am more interested in hearing about Birthright next (it is from a period when I was not playing much D&D, so I totally missed it). I would be happy with the 4e video too, though.
Philippe A. Ménard (@ChattyDM) the Chatty DM (from over at Critical Hits) who now works for Ubisoft, has tweeted about running a version of White Plume Mountain where the PCs get hired to do quality assurance testing a a "family dungeon ride" (a literal fun house) by "Dalt Wisney" a Faerie Dragon entrepreneur. His hack of this particular module definitely made it his own, in the way we should all make off the shelf products work for ourselves and our players.
Keep up the good work Matt!
Loving this playlist so much! “Running the Game” is 🔥
Thanks so much Matt. I've been looking for an idea to run for my friends at my bachelor party, and this is perfect. Looks like they are going to be visiting White Plume Mountain.
Two adventure tie ins could be a magic induced fever dream or some like spirit quest for a bard
I had to stop this one. We just did this one during our last session, and I knew the answer to the first riddle!!! It was the DM first attempt at being DM. It was super fun. I look forward to continuing playing it, so I'll have to come back to this one when we're done to let you know how I did.
Matt I got both your books on Kindle, great stuff man. The way you depict orcs is how I've drawn them for years. I really like the "retired" adventurers concept. Glad to have read your work!
A nice follow up on this would be how Colville would handle player characters and their intelligent weapons/relics/artifacts like Blackrazor in regard to when, and how they get into "conflict" with said intelligent item.
As for funhouse dungeons, the entire AD&D 'S' Series (Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Baba Yaga's Hut, and Labyrinth of Madness) are all funhouse style, and I would recommend all of them except S3 (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks). Expedition is perhaps the most 'random' of them all, but to such an extreme that there is no 'endgame'. The others have some goal: Acererak's crypt, the three artifacts, Iggwilv's treasure hoard, control of the hut, and reviving Sorril.
Enjoyed this video. After this and the Jim video, I may have to build a fun(ish) house dungeon as the former abode and not-so-final resting place of Rantang the Mad, who is now a lich.
I would love to hear about Birthright
Love your content Matt. Cannot wait for your Stronghold rules.
We just started doing White Plume Mountain yesterday, first time running through it so we're going in blind, and just got through that funky tiered ziggurat that I'm pretty sure is Karaptus' zoo (you know the one). I'm adoring this dungeon so far, it feels very fair if the player is willing to stop and really ask about your environment. Also, 10ft ladder is worth its weight in gold in there so far.
I wrote up and ran a "funhouse dungeon" run by a mad Illithid where the characters were locked into a mind-link, and "spawned" into the maze of traps and puzzles as a random denizen of the Underdark (Deep Gnome, Drow, Duergar, etc.) If they died, their character would take 1 psychic damage and then they "respawned" as another random creature. Slowly they discovered they were spawning into slaves of the Illithid master, so while death wasn't a huge problem for their characters, there was a moral question to sacrificing someone else's life. In the end, they could break free of the mind-link, fight the Illithid master, and be able to free the slaves. It was well received and I think works well as both a one-shot or part of a campaign.
Amazing video, Matt! I'm so so happy to get your recommendation for White Plume Mountain. Just got it there mid-video because it sounds so good. Our party are only level four right now and oh boy I'm so hyped to level up now to give this a go!
I adapted a Side Trek from a Dungeon magazine to get the PCs into White Plume Mountain. A Topaz Dragon laid her eggs in a cave in the side of a volcano and it erupted shortly afterwards. Some mephits stole the eggs and the Dragon was unable to retrieve them. So she coerced the PCs to get them for her. I combined elements of the original module and the Return to White Plume Mountain. They got the eggs as well as Blackrazor, a hammer named Frostwhelm, and a Shortsword named Raptor. By the way, I would really like to see the third of "Politics 101", please. Thanks for your great videos. And yes, I have just subscribed.
I've heard Matt talk about his Stronghold rules, and when he introduces them in his campaign... but it only just now occurred to me that my players aren't getting a new stronghold, they're fortifying the walls of the starting town, and teaching some of the adolescent townspeople how to defend it.
One way to get the players to want to enter White Plume Mountain is by making one of the NPCs relevant to their story flee to it. The character ran off and ensconced themself in this fortress, using the traps and monsters put in by this insane wizard as a pre-generated gauntlet for protection. So if the PCs want this NPC for whatever reason, they have to enter this funhouse and get to the end without dying.
You can even potentially seed this eventually in your game world, by having White Plume Mountain be an actual mountain somewhere nearby to the main setting of the game. Have the mountain be a regular feature of the landscape, that is alluded to or mentioned in passing. The PCs may even pass or travel around White Plume Mountain a couple times. And when they get a high enough level to handle the dungeon, have an NPC they need to find be staying in this fortress that, to the surprise of the PCs, was always on this mountain.
Wouldn't gynoshep be the same as femshep with the only difference being that fem is a latin route and gyno is greek?
Adventuring Wolf Obviously Matt prefers the Eastern Roman Empire.
He just wanted to virtue signal. It's all arbitrary rulings.
Birthright is my favorite campaign setting and 4th is my favorite edition, so I feel like I'll enjoy hearing you wax poetic about either of them.
Temple of the Lava bears by LRR on youtube is a good example of a more grounded funhouse dungeon.
"working on my stronghold rules" oh matt..
Thank you for making this! Very encouraging! I’m still a very green DM trying to get the hang of it and picked up Tales of Yawning Portal to run. Looking forward to going with the weird
Ran WPM, Barrier Peaks and Tower Of Inverness (itself for the umpteenth time) this year. My current group are relatively new players; not so jaded to the old tropes of D&D . They really seemed to enjoy these funhouse one-offs, as a bit of a respite from the ongoing sandbox adventure we've been playing since 2014. I am thinking of utilizing the "Return To White Plume Mountain" as interesting follow up.
Looking forward to the Stronghold rules. Was mentioning recentishly that it's one of the handful of aspects of 1e that I really miss.
Damn I finally found something I disagree with you on.
Femshep isn't sexist.
I don't think it was serious.
No, he was serious, he posted the snippet of that part to twitter then wrote a few tweets explaining what makes the term sexist.
Yeah and people are entitled to disagree with that. Femshep isn't sexist. I'm sorry we'll never have androgynous angst gender confused shep, fucking absurd.
It's not sexist... it's just fucking stupid.
No it's stupid.
Hi, I just recently found your videos (a friend posted one on our D&D Facebook page and I've watched maybe 35+ of your videos in the last 3 days) and I wanted to ask: are the stronghold rules (as mentioned in this video) based on anything, or did you just completely make them up on your own? Additionally, will you be making them available in the Doobly Doo of a future video?
Also, I'd be really excited about a 4E episode. I've only been introduced to TTRPGs about a year and a half ago, and I've only been a part of Pathfinder (both player and GM) but really want to get into 4E, just a bit confused on how to start. My friend introduced me to Pathfinder, so my lesson on how to play was more hands-on, but I don't have that advantage for 4E...
Really enjoy the videos, keep it up! :)
There is a very awesome funhouse Dungeon by Adventures Await Studios,
it's called The Dueling Knight's Fungeon Dungeon. It has lots of over-the-top traps but more modern than the modules in the video. Big recommendation from me!
Funny that you would be talking about this, my campaign is using a tweaked version of this adventure. In my campaign, the dungeon is a vault of sorts created by wizards to protect a dangerous but powerful item.
I would love a series about the various campaign settings. If not, at least give us a video on Birthright. Your enthusiasm for it intrigued me enough to buy the PDF and I have since used a lot of it's materials to inspire my own campaign setting.
I absolutely, positively, most definitely LOVE the videos Matt. I'm looking forward to the stronghold rules.
I've always been a huge fan of White Plume Mountain :) Silly, crazy and a lot of fun.
Got here from Lawrence Schick Facebook :)
Great video. I love old school D&D modules, and hope you can do more videos like that. Cheers!
I appreciate your fun over form approach Matt. I'm currently eunning a Cypher System game where one character ended up with the clumsy descriptor, and one character (my sisters, lol) is literally crazy (the mad descriptor). My PCs have had a blast with the occasional randomness. Fun over form, couldn't agree more.
That Stronghold book is a supplement I would happily pay for.
Funny, I came here for a D&D video and got inspiration for a villain stronghold for my Mutants and Masterminds campaign. My players are officially about to have to track a villain through White Plume Mountain Amusement Park.
Everyone says femshep and it's for identification not sexism, it's the agreed upon name.
ParadiseMantis i think the idea is in comparison to calling male shepherd just shepherd, and giving female shepherd a prefix, although I'm not certain
According to the explanation presented gyno Shepard is just as sexist as fem Shepard. Gyno and female are synonymous.
Female -> Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning "woman"
Gyno -> From Ancient Greek γυνή (gunḗ, “woman”)
Rylan Joran some people find the words female and woman sexist because of the male suffix, kinda a stupid reason to get upset if you ask me. Also I rarely remember bringing up the gender of my shepherd when talking about the game and when I did I would say maleshep or femaleshep.
As you say the problem isn't the qualifier itself. The problem is that it is assumed that you would not use a qualifier while referring to a male person. In whose head does this notion emerge? Unless you talk about both, a female and a male character, and demonstrate that you don't treat them equally, the accusation is clearly a "false true". And it's actually predicated on the accuser's mindset, not yours.
that's exactly the idea. Matt went into more detail on the idea on twitter.
When you went through Castle Greyhawk did you veer off into Dungeonland and Land Beyond the Magic Mirror? (EX1 and 2) Two of my favorite adventures, but completely fun house.
Great video as always. I'm always looking forward to your uploads and now you've got me back on Twitter for even more Matthew Colville madness!
just found your channel, Love the advice and format. Thank you
I disagree with "femshep is sexist." Here is why:
When discussing femshep, everyone I know says "femshep." When talking about the other shep- OH WAIT NO ONE EVER TALKS ABOUT OTHER SHEP.
I'm not sure how that changes anything? Just because (for whatever reason) peoples preferences lean towards "femshep" doesn't mean they are sexist against the other Shepard. Preferences don't equate to bigotry. However, using sexist words, does equate to bigotry no matter what your (or others) preferences are.
@@Warrior_Culture you have a fembrain
@@All4Tanuki Thank you.
@@Warrior_Culture And how is FemShep sexist?
I'll wait a million years for a satisfactory answer because there isn't one. Words are not inherently sexist; it is their use that makes it so! "FemShep" isn't derogatory to her OR women in general, in fact she is often given a great deal of respect amongst all gamers of every gender.
Tldr: How I treat women should be the issue, not the words used to refer to them. If I treat FemShep no differently that MaleShep then is should not matter if I refer to them by those designations because I am respecting both equally.
Hear hear. "Fem" is short for "female". Or maybe Feminine. Either way, it's the same frakking word as "gyno-".
Birthright sounds awesome! It's my favorite setting out there!
I buy everything Douglas Sun kickstarts. It's been a couple of years since you posted this, but there are always two or three kickstarter projects featuring short adventures like this.
Want (in order): Stronghold rules!!!, Fourth Edition, Birthrite, Politics, thoughts on other campaign settings
I gotta say, I think the murder-hobo gameplay style is returning to prominence lately, all through the 80s to the early 2000s I would have agreed that most people were expecting an epic fantasy out of D&D but lately I've been introducing young adults who've never particularly immersed themselves into fantasy universes ( I guess the trend never reached their social groups? ) and they have no expectations of having any great effect on the universe or of going on any grande journeys of personnal growth, they mostly seem motivated by fighting things, getting gold and being badasses... It's pretty fun and refreshing to be honest, and it's letting me run a lot of classic scenarios without my players being too savvy to find them challenging, highly recommended.
Misheard 7:00 as androSHEMP and gynoSHEMP, was listening while cooking. As I beelined for my phone I almost convinced myself I could’ve heard correctly. “Wow, this IS a funhouse dungeon!”
O..my...God....
So THIS was the thinking behind "The Happy Fun ball"---
I would love to hear about 4e, I know a lot of people love to hate on it but I really don't think it is that bad.
Would love to see you run a game or see your prep process. Like ingame note taking, building encounters, prep notes, reference materials, etc. A video of what Matt brings with him to run a game.
I like these short videos on old school modules!
This is long after you have posted this, but white plume mountain is now in tales from the yawning portal.
This was one of the first modules I ran because normally I ran serially rather than episodic. I like the module but it said to me that there were rules that I need to change, especially Vancian Magic (having just found where the game got its magic system.)
There is a Stronghold Builder's Guide for 3e D&D. It is pretty good and can be used for any edition with little or no tweaking. Just spend the money and build stuff, and hire hirelings of course. But I'm sure Matt's tables will be cool too.
We did one of these a while ago. We played lamenations of the flame princess as a three day long gameathon.
Would love to see the Birthright video next. My group played a variant of Birthright for 3rd edition D&D way back in 2000. Semi-recent Kickstarters I have participated in and produced great content were Green Ronin's Freeport: City of Adventure setting for Pathfinder, and Frog God Games Razor Coast.
I ran a fun house dungeon Level 1 one shot for my birthday last year: everyone makes three 1st Level characters and, each time one gets killed, the next one subs in. Three strikes and you’re out. It was just meant to be fun and stupid, with lots of weak characters being splattered.
Griffin managed to make one of these and 100% integrate one of these into the story... I'm so proud of my sweet ol' boy
Great video, I love to play in these kinds of games and I really love to run these games. I do wish for more of these type of adventures for 5th edition.
I'm using funhouse-ish dungeons in Desert of Desolation. It's become evident that the reason they were built was as vaults for the Star-Gems. I've downplayed the funhouse aspects somewhat, but they still are difficult puzzle dungeons put in place by the machinations of a long-dead wizard.
A friend of mine made Keraptis the main villain of a long-running campaign set in Greyhawk. He became a really tragic figure.
Me and my players always have a lot of difficulty with puzzles and riddles. I mean, for some unknown reason, it increases my anxiety and isn't fun. I can't explain it, but it sucks. Sooo, what we decided to do was play a game-within-a-game. If you ever played a MS-DOS game called Hero's Quest, the wizard npc had a Wizard's Game that you could play against him. Your character was actually teleported into the game and could die there. Something like Mousetrap is interesting for this, or chutes and ladders. Anything that doesn't take a long time. One of our favorite additions was making the world's popular gambling game Dominoes - fives. It's easy, and quick.
excited for the stronghold rules! and thanks for doing a video this week!
I definitely want to see Birthright and your take on it.
Stoked about the Birthright video! I bought the campaign setting years ago at the tail end of my 90s D&D career and never got a chance to run it!