Eldritch Mlems

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc., and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more, so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

Inspired by Stranger Things and written by Mike Wheeler himself, this adventure drops your players into a monster hunt like no other. Summoned by Sir Tristan, ruler of a remote mountain realm, your party is tasked with tracking down a fearsome creature known as the Thessalhydra, which has attacked his castle and terrorized the land.

In Part 1, your players will explore a mysterious forest, encounter travelers, priests, and farmers, until they uncover the entrance to the troglodyte caverns. There, they can fight or negotiate their way deeper until they reach the ever-shifting Cursed Labyrinth. Should they solve the riddles of the mysterious Lost Knight, they will be greeted with a portal...to the Upside Down.

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for Stranger Things (Part 1): DM Notes
• Link to: Stranger Things Adventure
• Link to: Stranger Things The Hunt for the Thessalhydra Playlist
• Link to: The AAA Collection

Included in The AAA Collection is:

• Downloadable copy of DM Notes, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDF for all encounters. This includes the enemy stat blocks organized neatly, along with an initiative tracker and spots to mark HP
• Custom Maps of Troglodyte Cavern

Over 7 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

@lucycorbishleyart

Heard commotion coming from the living room and found mr poopy pants here pinned down by his hammock

I haven't played dnd since the 3-3.5 transition and I just found a new group to play with. I have a few ideas for characters and was hoping for some advice on one of them. The dm says that the group is story/rp driven and not to min-max. I'm supposed to use 2024 content if it's been reprinted but can use 5th edition content that hasn't been updated to 2024.

The character is a kobold genie warlock. He was born into a cult and was physically small and weak so he was mostly relegated to menial tasks and overlooked. He is charismatic and crafty so he survived in the cult by playing into the perception that he was unimportant and harmless. Because he was so nonthreatening he was trusted and the leader chose him to do things like cleaning the inner sanctuary. While cleaning the master's quarters he met a djinni that the master had bound to a vessel and enslaved for a long time. The djinni saw him as an opportunity. He befriended my character, telling him stories of life outside of the cult and teaching him new skills and magic. Over time my character came to trust the dijinni and the dijinni offered him a deal. If my character would help the dijinni escape then the dijinni would give my character what he most desired, the power to decide his own destiny. My character helped the dijinni escape and in return the dijinni altered his appearance and bound him to the dijinni as a warlock.

I would prioritize the character's abilities as charisma-wisdom-dex-intelligence-con-strength. For his background I was thinking acolyte and taking druid spells for the magic initiate feat. I would do the pact of the book for the first level invocation. This gives me a lot of cantrips and a few free first level spells and I would eldritch blast probably one other offensive cantrip but I would try to focus on utility spells. I would take goodberry for the free first level druid spell because I think that it fits well with the minimalist survival concept from the backstory.

I'm trying to leave things open to try to give the DM as much opportunity as possible to work what she wants to into the game. It's probably a dragon cult since the character is a kobold but it doesn't have to be. The size of the cult could be whatever it needs to be, it could be stand-alone or part of a larger organization. Why did the dijinni bind the character instead of just giving him power? Does he want the character to do something specific? Does he just like him? What's the djinni's plans? Does he want revenge on the cult? Does he want to build his own cult?

To those unfamiliar, Sam attempted to create a real-time play-by-post wargame set on Mothership’s best module, but he accidentally created an enormous text-only LARP instead.

I think this blog post is among the better ones if you never heard of this before.

@themindofmary

Noki is pretty sure it's dinner time

(Just in case the original post doesn't get displayed correctly: https://i.imgur.com/HkuUr2p.mp4 )

(Just in case the original post isn't displayed properly on your instance: https://i.imgur.com/HznKMdJ.mp4 )

It's that time of year...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/58798373

Tag yourselves. Which one are you?