This post is my submission for the #archdruidcontest inspired by @enjar. Within this post, I'll be sharing snippets of my past memories playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends.

Umbarth

A dwarven Cleric of Moradin, always ready to lend a helping hand or finish the rest of your ale. Untrusting by nature, he is suspicious of everyone without a beard. Coming from a far away land, he bears his warhammer and shield like they were extensions of his own body.

Fusky Silverhand

The Morning Star, a golden knight of justice and honor. He is a Human Dragon Shaman, and a faithful servant of St. Cuthbert aiming to be a shining light in a world of darkness. His favored weapon is the morning star, though he will later on become a master of the exotic spiked chain.

Cinnily Von Darkmoore

Clad in mere red silk kimono with a golden dragon embroidery pattern is the slightly too sexy half-elf Rogue. Nothing is stealthy about her as she is always the center of attention and causing a ruckus with the men she teases. She wields a composite bow and a pair of short swords. Many contradictions loom about this one, including certain weaknesses that you would not expect to defy the the laws of physics so easily. This young lass has an air of playful mischievousness about her.

Lionello

A simple man dressed like a Jedi monk in brown robes is introduced to the party by a member of St. Cuthbert. He is very resolute and calculated in his resolve to eliminate chaos in the land and restore balance to the universe. This lends well to his wizardry arts, in which he relies on certain chains of balanced events to trigger mighty split second spells that could offer sudden protections or doom.

Alyssa

Another late addition to the party, this woman's silk ninja attire and crooked smile quickly makes even her closest friends suspicious of her true intentions. Known as a Duskblade, she has a greatsword on her back that glows with dark energy and reeks of death. She speaks very little and often disappears from detection when not actively watched.

Together they become known as...

The Black Sheep

of Cauldron

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How I Got Started

My fondest nostalgia gaming memories are often brought back to this rag-tag band of online players. We met almost every Sunday evening, logging into a platform called Fantasy Grounds to play a unique Dungeon's & Dragon's campaign known as The Shackled City.

The Shackled City, Published by Paizo. Image from JoeDodgy.com where this game book is available for purchase.

Becoming a Dungeon Master

After being a new player of table-top Dungeons & Dragons for a few years, I had learned enough about the mechanics and the social dynamics of dealing with geeky players, that I had a good idea of what made the game fun and not fun.

Take for example, my last experience playing D&D before becoming a Dungeon Master. As a player it left me extremely unsatisfied. My game character was a Dwarven Barbarian whose primary job in game was to charge attack the nearest opponent and deal damage. Unfortunately, the other players were ALL min-maxers, using every rule allowed to make their characters as close to overpowered as possible. The two players (one was the DM) who did this most effectively were always arguing with me when I wanted to take actions in game that were not 100% advantageous to the other party members. Roleplaying a character flaw, or even making naive player choices were frowned upon. Even little things like choosing my own tactical opponent, I was not allowed to choose without first consulting the psionic party member about where he needed me (to not be) on the battlefield to avoid blocking line of sight for his obliterating crystal shard attacks. Eventually, the game stopped being fun because they would never let me choose my own actions. All I was allowed to do was level up and roll dice.

My first dungeon master looked a lot like this guy. I never trusted him. Image from The Shackled City campaign book.

So I began this epic quest of becoming a Dungeon Master, enlisting new players online, to help me to practice my abilities as a game moderator. I promised to never subjugate my players to the same torturous treatments I had to endure. I would put the role-play back into the RPG.

My greatest talents would be my ability to pass clear judgement and keep the game moving along quickly so that all players can have many opportunities to choose actions and play out their character's personality. My weaknesses were my poor memory of and knowledge of specific character class specific rules and spells, but that was easy to solve as I made that the responsibility of each player to advocate for their own abilities. I never liked wasting time arguing over rules and OOC content that has nothing to do with the moment in the game, so I soon found my groove as a Dungeon Master was best served in my colorfully creative NPC's and monster interactions with the players. In this way I could influence players towards their ideal plot goals, and get them to showcase a bit of their own personalities.

Online Gameplay Features

Using Fantasy Grounds as our preferred platform, I was able to open a server for players to log into. Logging in was always a bear, and players were often dropped because of their poor internet connections. I had to call my internet company multiple times to allow certain connection protocols to bypass their secure routers. I had players from Sweden, Western USA, the Midwest, and Italy. Our Italian player claimed he was a local celebrity, because he was a television news journalist. The opportunity to be anonymously playing Dungeons & Dragons online, to get his geek on once a week, was a welcomed reprieve from some of the social/political unrest happening in his country at the time.

Actual gameplay screenshot of us playing on Fantasy Grounds.

We used Ventrillo to speak with each other while gaming. It was really fun to hear everyone's different accents. Some players were able to participate without voice chat, and simply had to learn how to type very quickly keep up with the action. Say this in character, do that as a player, ask this Out Of Character.

Even though I wasn't super tech savvy, one of my players turned out to be a wiz, not only in character, but in real life with the capabilities of Fantasy Grounds, which was still in beta. He showed me how to include all kinds of features from custom rulesets, so we could literally look at the game rules of dozens of Wizards of the Coast game books, shared through Fantasy grounds. That proved to be much easier for players to reference rules by opening a tome of linked rules, than having to flip through pages of the actual books (I did that often, and it slowed down the pace of the game).

Basic features allowed me to share maps, tokens, notes, and draw paths and spell effects on the screen for all players to see. I could also mask and unmask areas of the map, so they could only see the areas they have explored. Every player had a character sheet form that was viewable to share between players. One of the most fun features was the ability to upload photos from the campaign book, to give players a visual of NPC's they are interacting with, as well as hidden clues such as a riddle written on a stone tablet. Being able to look at a collage of photos, instead of having to only read text on a chat page, gave this game a lot of life.

A collage of the various images I used in the game. From the campaign book, D&D source books, token artists, and from my own design.

The various types of dice could be clicked on with the mouse, and by shaking the mouse, they actually shake on the screen until you release them for the roll. This was actually one of the funnest parts of Fantasy Grounds, and it made the experience feel like the real table top game. We could also click on various attacks, skills checks, and weapons to automatically make die rolls with the appropriate modifiers applied. I had a panel for quickly viewing player and monster turns, and it would apply initiative rolls automatically, and help us to monitor damage and hit points easily.

Using my photoshop talents, I was also able to stitch together pieces of various dungeon tiles to make my own maps, to use in game. It is really fun to look back at the dungeon, inns, towers, and cave maps that we designed custom for our various encounters along the story. The Shackled City campaign included dozens of custom maps and illustration as well, so often time I was able to scan them, and made a few tweaks to the resolution and file size so it could be used on our digital game screen.

Later on I found out that it was better to make separate map file to conceal areas I did not want players to see. It was pretty easy for players to open the downloaded image to look ahead into rooms, to find secret doorways. Making incomplete maps made it harder for players to sneak a peak of things they weren't meant to see.

Custom Tokens

One my favorite perks to our campaign setting were the custom tokens. An artist had digitally hand painted hundreds of monster and player tokens, so they would resemble cartoon style top-town viewed tokens. They were all in fun action poses that made it even better. Since the artist was selling his work, he was also willing to make custom tokens all the way down to race, armor, weapon, tile size, and various other details. I paid him a few dollars, he made me ALL of the final boss tokens, unique to The Shackled City campaign.

These tokens were purchased. I can't remember the name of the artist, so I apologize. Years later, he offered his token sets to be available for free download.

Adimarchus the duel-form imprisoned fallen angel of madness, Nidarama the blue-skinned angel-winged Erynes, Marilith snake bodied six-armed weapons master, and the pale-skinned rogue Skulks with the power to vanish and reappear between attacks. We had to re-use many of the same monster tokens over and over, sometimes even using the dull ABC letter tokens to represent foes. Being able to introduce these new opponents with custom tokens on the battlefield gave players a deeper sense of reality, striking wonder and fear into every moment of action.

Evolution

Now that I had earned my chops as a DM, and we finished the entire Shackled City campaign, I really wanted to build a campaign of my own to try with this awesome group of players. This campaign I called Buried Myths, and I ran it as a split campaign, with the players controlling two different parties, each never knowing anything about the other, and would eventually find themselves on quests that would pit them at odds with eachother. What would they do? Team up, avoid conflict, or fight to the bitter end? I had a lot of fun making maps, cultures, storylines, and unique foes. With a whole world to explore, characters were free to set forth and explore a multitude of cities, whereas in the Shackled City they were mostly limited to one central location.

My custom map of Ibaia. Some inspiration from ancient Iberia, with the Visigoths, the Moors, and The Crusades.

The world of Ibaia was a broken land separated by mountains and rivers, much like Middle Earth. To the west were the civilized kingdoms and united protectors of the great wall, aiming to ward off invaders and ruthless barbarian hordes. Beyond the wild eastern wastes was Scay, the open lawless territorial realm of various forgotten races and cultures that wanted nothing to do with the corruption that they knew existed under the rulership of the western lands. Beyond Scay, the unchallenged hordes of Orcs mere making new alliances with powerful evil forces and were preparing for revenge and conquest.

This is the map I made for my custom campaign. It shows Mepos, the starting town for the players. Based on the weird backwards, and often comical cultures with all kinds of strange festivals and social norms (inspired by Balkey from the 80's hit sitcom Perfect Strangers).

The Gods were alive and well, and were actively meddling in the fates of mankind. One such god was seeking to bring about dominion over the world by awaking the god of constructs, believed to be buried deep beneath a sealed chamber in the bowels of the planet. Millions of constructs litter the world, like ancient statues in slumber. Due to their artificial intelligence, and non-living properties, all they needed was one with the ability to re-awaken them, and bind the army of all constructs and automatons to fulfill the will of its sole master without question.

Meanwhile the 12 Archmages are searching for the missing artifacts that would rebuild the staff of ultimate power. If any of them succeed, they would have unlimited access to all forms of magic, but at what cost? Long in the past this artifact was destroyed because it tore the fabric of time and space, unleashing Arch Demons that would gladly battle for dominance and the chance to reshape the world into their own vile dream. The last time the staff was active, this event was known as The Great Commotion, where a mistakenly released beast of limitless power and hunger was believed to have devoured most of the world. The beast was banished to a prison plane of existence by godly interference, and the staff was destroyed in the process, allowing humanity a second chance for redemption.

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Conclusion

Hope you enjoyed this post. It is really fun to think about the fun times we had together, exploring an alternate universe and becoming heroes in our own right.

It would be a blast if I could find a way to start up Dungeons & Dragons again. I get so busy though, I would never be able to set aside a weekly meeting time reliably like I did before. On steemit, it seems like a good platform for turn-based action that people could take their time responding to with well-thought out actions and dialog. Probably not ideal for combat, which normally happens in real-time, so a loose narrative roleplay style would work better, with less play-by-play rules.

The Archdruid Gaming community seems like a friendly group of gamers active here on Steemit and elsewhere. They have a discord server, so I'll have to stop in and say hi sometime. Thank you for hosting this contest: Archdruid Gaming: Gaming Nostalgia Contest

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Bonus

Recently I uncovered the original chatlogs. I have edited them to share for your pleasure.

In an effort to keep this below below the 2500 word count threshold, I am including some of our sample encounters below in the comments below. These are a real joy to re-read after all of the years. Feel free to upvote or comment back with your impressions. I love swapping tales across the D&D table about hilarious past encounters.

Bonsai!

Saturday, July 21, 2018

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