During the pandemic many people are turning to role-playing games. D&D is regularly appearing in the 100 Best Sellers on Amazon. With their deep discounts versus physical locations that makes sense. The same holds true for digital outlets like DnDBeyond, Roll20, and Fantasy Grounds.
Dungeons & Dragons is simultaneously about the game with its stories of heroism in a world of magic and it is about community the group of players who gather regularly to tell those stories together.
Community is hard to come by during the pandemic. Most who read this blog are people who are distancing. Which has slowed the spread of the disease, but it also harms our local small businesses. Things are pretty dire for the friendly local gaming stores out there.
They couldn’t compete on price with online shops prior to the pandemic. Now, they no longer have the ability to safely host events on premise that gave them a unique life and place in our cities.
Here’s my favorites FLGS in Renton, Tacoma, Bellevue, and a few others as well.
Wizard’s Keep Games
I discovered The Keep back when I was selling beer. The old owner and I would talk Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, craft beer, and Tacoma every other week or so.
Wizard’s Keep Games hosted several of my D&D campaign sessions back in the Before Times when there wasn’t a global pandemic. They have a large selection of used D&D books if you’re looking for older materials.
Shane’s Cards
Down near the Uwajimaya, Shane’s leans heavy into collectible card games. They have a few more minis and dice than the Keep, but their RPG corner is a bit cramped.
Their frequent buyer program is helpful if you buy D&D and other stuff, but the pace of releases make it unlikely you’ll hit the significant discounts on D&D alone. Shane’s is a Renton classic.
Tacoma Games
Open and spacious the 6th Ave shop has a ton of miniatures and a wide selection of board games. They were doing curbside pickup during the height of the lockdown. Hit up Tacoma Games.
Terra Crux
Downtown Tacoma’s Terra Crux has a huge selection that reminds me of the days of old going to Book World in Kent. Great spot for paints and minis.
Mox Boarding House – Bellevue
While it isn’t in my dual homes of Renton-Tacoma, I would be failing if I left off the only other physical store I’ve purchased from. Mox Boarding House – Bellevue hosted some of my D&D campaigns, is where I met the Beedle & Grimm’s team, had many a beer in the restaurant, and while I was selling them kegs I would always take a long look at D&D products. They’re big enough you can find third-party books there too.
Others
In Walla Walla I’ve shopped at Books & Games as well as Western Paladin Games. Friends swear by Meeples and Zulu and TeKu and Arcane Comics in the Greater Seattle area.
Support them now, so that when we roll dice together we have a place to gather.
In the Before Times there was a mighty group of heroes in the South Sound. These women and men put on shows, entertained the masses, and just maybe won a few battles for the hearts and minds of the people of the Near Cliff, Tahoma, and all that call the region home.
We were a tight group of specialists who when combined were a powerful faction of spellslingers, story weavers, and travellers who loved the region and would defend it.
These are the Heroes of Castle Cheney.
Delaney Saul, illustrator, created the group to celebrate my 45th birthday.
Delaney and I had conversations about what race and class each of the heroic representations of the group would be. While creating my friends, and Before Times coworkers, as playable characters (3rd level, Adventurers League rules, Players Handbook only, no stat below 10) I was able to add in a few more details about them.
Casey is the leader of the group – the Director, if you must. A few things were required when creating him. Without any doubt he is a Bard. The man is a natural performer, whether on a mic, dancing on a dugout, or spinning records. He puts himself in front of people. His knowledge of Tacoma, Puget Sound, and so much more made the College of Lore an obvious choice.
When deciding on his race, his natural charisma had to be emphasized. Leaning into the trope that half-elves can be accepted by both of their communities seemed obvious as Casey is beloved in Rainiers and Defiance circles.
Slapping expertise onto Performance and Insight was so obvious a choice, I’m not explaining it. The Background of Entertainer was also an easy choice. I needed to get Casey a Disguise Kit for all of those costume changes we know and love.j
Spell choices leaned into charming types, with Longstrider added because if you’ve ever seen him move around the stadium you know there is magic behind it.
Delaney is an extraordinary illustrator. Capturing her level of talent in D&D meant more than a Background, but instead the magic of images. Locked into the PHB for cost reasons (maybe one of my friends eventually plays themselves) that meant the Illusionist.
Her past as an athlete was captured in two ways. First up, that meant the Gladiator Background. Second it was why I went Wood Elf for race. The increased speed combined with Athletics felt like the perfect way to capture her love and career in basketball.
Witch Bolt became the attack cantrip of choice, because I felt like that one would give Delaney the most joy when she used it. I can just see her eyes light up while going all Palpatine on someone.
Adam is a videographer I’ve worked with and around for nearly a decade now. Between our time together with Sounder at Heart and on Tacoma Defiance broadcasts we probably know each other better than I know anyone else in the Cheney creative team. He is a man with believes in faith, equity, and generosity. A noble Paladin seemed an obvious start.
In order to best represent his excellent eye for what’s going on around him, he had to have the Feat Observant. That meant going with Variant Human. Adam’s cameras capture the life in any game inside Cheney’s walls and the vibrant community that is Tacoma.
For his background I wanted to capture to personality traits.
I can find common ground between the fiercest enemies, empathizing with them and always working toward peace. I am tolerant of other faiths and respect the worship of other gods.
“Acolyte”
If you’ve met Adam you know that every fiber of who he is consists in those traits.
Phinney the Wild is the technical genius behind all of the light, sound, and video at Cheney Stadium. I started working with him on the broadcasts, but really got to know him through a project that started early in the pandemic when I asked each employee about what they were doing. That’s when I learned that Phinney loves the mountains and forests of Washington.
That made it obvious he needed to be a Druid or Ranger. Since he’s the lord of sound, I needed to give him the thunder spells – Druid it is. If I hadn’t chosen to lock myself into PHB or free content, I would have gone Firbolg, but instead he’s a goliath.
Phinney consumes books. That’s where the Sage comes in. He’s also well connected at local colleges, which is a doubly important reason for that nod.
Erin is the other artist at Cheney Castle. Every party can have a duplication in role, but cannot have duplication in identity. To me, the other way to emulate the power of drawing/painting arts is Enchantment. The close choice was simple after thinking through that.
The high elf made sense after that, as I wanted a small boost to illusion magic. Also, Erin is fashionable, which fits the high elf tropes. Her fine precision in her artwork and design is captured in the Guild Artisan Background.
Erin and I worked together on the Defiance season ticket renewal magazine and several other projects. To recognize that her class skills are History and Investigation. No offense to Casey, but Erin spent as much time copy editing my writing for print as anyone.
Reema was my manager for Reign related projects in 2019. Through that time, when the team’s biggest star got in a Twitter war with the President and won every award available to a soccer player while winning The Best and a World Cup, we were in constant communication. Her leadership and belief in me was strong. Her charisma was readily apparent in discussions with ownership, or the brilliant talents that wore the crest – it came naturally to her. In D&D natural power such as hers often is displayed as a Sorcerer.
While the Noble Background is often about being born into high society, I chose that for Reema because she so seamlessly fits into the group. Between her sense of fashion, her wine and cocktail knowledge, and her will she belongs in those situations. The following trait and ideal also pushed that decision over the edge into a big “yep.”
Despite my noble birth, I do not place myself above other folk. We all have the same blood.
It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Noble
To represent her ability to make friends simply and easily I gave her the Friends cantrip, while ignoring the part about people knowing magic was used against the new friend.
Maddie is so multi-faceted. To the fans in the stands she’s just part of the entertainment crew. To those of us behind the scenes she’s a manager of mascots, planner of schedules, and keen executor of fun. She’s part mage, that’s obvious. She also slips in and out of spaces, everywhere at once. The Arcane Trickster’s magic of entertainment was an obvious choice.
In her past our favorite Trickster was an elite tumbler. That meant expertise in Acrobatics and Performance, as well as the Entertainer background. Maddie always finds a way to share the fun with an audience.
Picking a race started with a look at which ones offered bonuses to Charisma. This quickly became a choice between lightfoot halfling and half-elf. There was a need to capture Maddie’s bravery in stepping into a role at the last minute, accepting all those challenges without any fear – halfling it is.
AJ, unlike the rest of the group, came to the Sound from elsewhere. He rapidly became a sounder, as in a person of the Sound, even if not a soccer fan. For his build I started with that Outlander background. His tales and stories from his youth, schooling, and previous jobs were foreign to us. The Outlander made so much sense.
The way AJ relaxes is to travel the new lands. He’s an expert on the parks around Pierce County and beyond. The Ranger embraces that. His willingness to support cross-functionally meant I went for the Hunter, as he knocks out small tasks frequently.
He’s good at so much – he can be a radio pbp voice, a video host, a writer, a social media expert, and more. There’s only one race that embraces the ability to do anything – the traditional human. Sorry, AJ, but little fantasy in that one. Bonuses to every single attribute will come in handy no matter what you do.
Throughout the design process every choice came back to how do I make the most heroic version of my friends and coworkers. Which skills, spells, and features made sense to show that these fantasy heroes are based in the real heroics during our year (or more, or less). Together, we overcame obstacles and used our various strengths to destroy the monsters that got in the way.
These are the heroes of Castle Cheney. I miss them, but that when a banner is raised asking for help they will answer, rally, and wave the Flag of Defiance for each other and our city.
One thing that I’ve found as a middle-age man with other hobbies and real-life concerns is that finding a regular group to play every single week is much more difficult than it was in my heyday of 1st edition AD&D during high school, college and the Army. The path I’ve chosen instead is an epic multi-path sandbox inspired campaign. There are multiple storylines being chased, characters that drop in and out of sessions and off-table action run via email, chat and twitter.
Altogether this results in a campaign that is similar to epic fiction (Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings). The party forms, breaks apart, reforms, expands, contracts as they attempt to make friends, make enemies, solve problems and help to create the world and story in which they play.
A selection of the characters participating in the Everflow campaign.
This is the tracking chart that I use to help track the various PCs. Experience points and gold are tracked by me until they are on the player’s own sheet. Once that happens I make the column blank, because I will not need that information while I create the next encounters and new paths for them to follow.
As I stated when first discussing this large group, episodic campaign, calendaring is also important. The group of three that are in Sheljar are two weeks “ahead” of the group that is at the caravansaray. Maurice is 3 days “behind” the group at the caravansaray. Mansaray and Shonie are semi-retired for real-life reasons. Shonie is now an NPC that group can use to help get intel, etc from Telse. Mansaray will either re-enter the campaign as a PC or an NPC reconnecting a current plot line that’s been abandoned.
Doing something like this creates more off-table work. Not only does the DM/GM need to create encounters, adventures and campaigns they need to use some kind of tracking sheet and calendar, and understand that the non-linear nature of the campaign means that players will forget things. Reminding them should be a bit more involved than a typical 5-10 minutes “in last session” verbal recap.
Provide the players with a digital recap, maps, images and other things that maintain a connection to the story that you are all telling together. Recognize that not every PC will be involved in every plot line. Maybe the hook doesn’t catch with them for either player or character reasons. Allow those players to know what plot line will be the focus of a session and they can either show or not. If they don’t show for story reasons (I haven’t encountered this yet) help them advance the plot hooks that they do like.
Don’t try to run a table session with more than 5 or 6 PCs. All the standard concerns about table time and organization return with that. Feel free to run a mini-session with just 2-3 PCs. They could be scouting an area, or doing a social tier with a local authority. These advance the story, but more importantly let your players know that you value their time. Those characters get rewarded with xp, gp, treasure. The players get rewarded with the entertainment of role-playing.
Be prepared for variable level encounters. With bounded accuracy this should not be as much of an issue as it would be in earlier editions of the game. Establish from the outset what the rules are about death, drop-in character creation, etc and work with your players to make certain that they are having fun with the system as it exists at your table both real-life and via digital communications. Feel free to grant xp for actions taken when the character acts in off-table activities.
By combining story xp and encounter xp you increase the level advancement as well as help social and exploration tier PCs advance. The more players that you include, the more likely you are to interact with PCs that emphasize the different tiers.
Finally, you should probably already understand this, such a campaign requires more organization and isn’t right for casual play. But the payoff is the creation of a story that mimics multi-novel stories, and that’s a lot of fun.
I’ve had the great pleasure of playing with the alpha test of Fantastic Maps#HexAllTheThings. If you want to break the tool sign up here. The first thing I did to break it was make a larger than expected map of the Western Wildes, or those cities and towns that are primarily influenced by The Everflow.
Telse, Mira, Qin and the other cities near the Everflow and its two rivers.
This image doesn’t include the Fog of War functions, nor the ability to see descriptions as part of the labels as the web version does. Thankfully for me, the region is temperate and mostly green trees. So the earliest of releases looks like what I want the area to look like.
You can see the North River and South River coming out from the Font of Two Paths. There is also the devastation at the Ruins of Sheljar. That city didn’t handle the Awakening well. Though it’s only been 21 years the influx of cantrips into this city in the swamps lead to fighting and destruction. The area has been abandoned as many of the bridges, dikes and other bulwarks were destroyed. There are also now massive waves pounding the shores of Sheljar Bay.
Those that followed the story of The Five will see the Glass Tower and the encampment where the Cult of Nak took residence. I used regional shading there to show areas that were effected by the volcano that Scholar Cortez set off. Along the road is the West Gate where Obsondites took over. There is regional shading there as well.
Mira and Qin get some attention, but since their outlying communities are not common knowledge to the people of Telse they get no labels. Three of The Five are from Telse and its environs. Shonee grew up in the town itself. Aamar spent some time in the uplands discovering his faith. Mo hails from Fort Ooshar, a former Sheljar tax collecting town that Telse now controls so that their goods can get to Mira unmolested.
Qin is defined by it’s massive harbor, the lighthouse and the Cannons of Qin. Those two towers at the mouth of the bay prevent attack from the sea. The road through the uplands is hard travel, and many will take the South River upstream on pole and paddle.
Mira has more outlying towns and towers. With it being much closer to the River Crinth it has to use more of its might to prevent invasion and refugees from the Crinth/Azsel wars. There’s also an odd peninsula that I made just to test out how the automatic shorelines worked.
These are fairly simple maps at this point. I used a scale of 24 miles across, because I wanted a moderate day of travel per hex. The scale change and actual gaming forced changes from my first hand drawn map. I’ve now started working on two other regions where other characters originate. Gate (Samul, Behn) is nearly done. The lakes along Crinth where Mansaray is from are still being developed, and may need to wait for more features.
This session was different. Up to this point there’s been some rather standard role-play. All that three tiers stuff – exploration, combat and social interaction in some balance. Each session’s balance was different, but most followed a particular pattern.
Recap
Introduce problem in the episode
Try to solve the problem
End in a place of sanctuary
That’s basic episodic style and necessary because the group of players has a core and others that drop-in for sessions when they can. Having a sanctuary enables simple entry points and doesn’t have to include a drop-in riding an axebeak from the horizon.
In session five timing prevented an adequate sanctuary. Four characters raided the village of Nak and they were still there when we ran out of time. In order to create some permanency of play and not skip three or more weeks due to soccer schedules session six took place in just 90 minutes.
And because of real-life schedules one of the four raiders was not present. One of the two more regular characters was going to be at this session. Again, the group of three-four is inside a town with multiple patrols and maybe other obstacles preventing them from leaving. We have 90 minutes of play.
Session six did not start in Nak. It starts with an out-of-game recap of situation as stands for each character after session five and then begines in the Glass Tower’s basement about 16 hours later. Cortez asks Behn how they got the Lorebook from the Cult of Nak.
Behn described the battles and conflicts of session five when Cortez interupts, “But how did you get away?”
Maurice responds that they had to sneak around the patrols that were between them. The discussion continues as Aamar describes an encounter with a bear at night. Shonie thanks them for returning and asks why Samul the Barbarian is exhausted. Another explains how fierce the barbarian fought, and Behn brings up that the two were shot with some kind of magic missile.
Cortez no longer cares for the tale of escape and asks for the Lorebook. He sees a few pages that are mere remnants of themselves. “You found Chorl?”
This ends the montage portion.
The mostly confused group say “no.”
“You said there were three patrols, but you only needed to avoid the two. Where did the other go?”
“To the North, up the mountain,” Mo answers.
The Five do not know if Chorl is present in that group, but Cortez seems confident that he was and he will be coming back to them. Chorl is a halfling and former student. He seems to have taught Anderson something as well. Anderson no longer breathes and cannot answer if this is true.
Shonie interrupts, “they are coming to us. Should we stay or attempt to get back to Telse. Kellamon never sent a receipt message back to us.”
Behn asks Aamar if he can use his Stone to talk to Telse. “The Stone does not connect to Telse. It’s messages are vague, but certainly not from Telse.”
A basic map of the small mostly wood tower.
Cortez and The Five start to discuss the options of defense in place, noting that Shonie repaired some of the damage to the observatory windows. It would be better than running, since Cortez would need help and does not want to abandon his books. As the group is discussing a trap involving a flanking operation with missile support from the observatory Aamar heads to that highest of floors. Maurice followed closely and asked the wise cleric of Quar if he could read the book that Mo took earlier. Aamar says it is “The Creation and Use of Transmutation Stones During the First Age.”
All but Samul follow. He is on the first floor in the guest room recovering from his exhaustion. From the windows on the 3rd floor of the observatory they look out at the skies. Towards Nak they see three giant eagles in the air. They seem to be circling and searching rather than heading straight to the Glass Tower. Just beyond those eagles the volcano appears more active than typical.
Aamar asks Cortez “is the volcano normal?”
“It is more active than in my lifetime.”
To the southwest past the Cliffs of Gallinor is a storm with that sickly greenish-grey. To the east is a thin trickle of smoke out over the Bay of Sheljar. Nature looks ominous and the Five, with their allies, believe that soon the rest of the Cult of Nak with their leader Chorl will be coming.
Chorl and his followers are willing to destroy the Lorebook. The group know Chorl had 10-16 people with their bonds of wolves and eagles on patrol. The Five don’t know when they are coming, just that they took the Lorebook once and will almost certainly try again.
This 90 minute or so session moved the story along while regrouping the various participants inside their “homebase.” Using a small amount of available time assured that the tale will still be told, even if in smaller chunks than are typical.
Full Moon Storytelling 