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Update Time!

My buddy has been kind enough to also post the VODs of the game on Youtube so far.

Bullywug's Gambit ended pretty abruptly. I figured the time spent out at night for their newly risen as a Paladin meant that the tide sorta ran its course. SO, I had Harliss track them into the jungles bloodsoaked and PISSED. It's then they found out about her first mate and the threat to Lavinia's life so they rushed back!

I abbreviated the whole manor crawl as they've been to the place many a time and know the secret ways around (hell a PC recently stealthed into the manor anyways so I let it ride they knew how to do it with another proper stealth). They saved Lavinia, but ultimately from everyone's ordeals, their relationship with their employer has never been lower.

Now as DM here, I was sorta sweating bullets because now I'm gonna have to come up with some faction system & hooks to some other adventures in the city as I figure out how we get into Sea Wyverns Wake given how things are going with Lavinia.

We had some downtime, found out more about this pearl, but most importantly confronted Rowyn at their own celebration during the Dawn Council! Rowyn can dodge zone of truth with the best of them answering questions as best she could, but her real ace in the hole was her new husband, the scion of the Islarn family! He protected her through most of the delgations saying how she was working undercover helping to bring Vanthus to justice because Vanthus slew her husband's father. (That part was True).

Anyways I was prepping to run The Stink, The Styes, the Stye's sequel (the weaver?) and even that eberron adventure with the investigator that I'm failing to remember. I was foreshadowing all those sorts of stuffs for the party but NOPE! We're going to on our boat, now named The Black Storm.

Next post I'll explain a little bit of my process for The Sea Wyvern's Wake, because the Party has split up from Lavinia and going freebooter in the waters between here and the Isle of Dread. They're still ABSOLUTELY interested in finding out more about the Pearl and how to stop them and at least Bajko is on a family vendetta to slay Vanthus, so the idea here is to have an open sea sandbox that culminates in the Isle of Dread.

I've been drawing from Stormwrack, Stars Without Number, Strongholds and Followers, and The Ultraviolet Grasslands for ideas on how to upgrade the ship, engage in speculative commodities trading, piracy, both, and more!

A very interesting thing happened in our session today. Our party had to make a very tough choice in Kraken’s Cove. One of the party members got infected and they were out of lesser restorations. They had to decide to press onward into the caves and find a lesser restoration potion or retreat, rest, and let the disease take its course.. Holding on hope that the fighter makes it through.

Having fought their way into the caves and killing Ripclaw, they had to make the choice. Their fighter’s intelligence was a solid 2… they won’t make it the next day’s int damage kicks in unless I roll a 1 and our cleric is out of lesser restoration having used it in the fight before. Since our fighter is rather selfless, our party took the less risky option and retreated to rest, potentially dooming them.

Our sorcerer and cleric assessed the situation and gave him a 50/50 shot of making it, even if they lesser restore him at this point.

Late at night our cleric casted Augury wondering about the fate of their friend. She called out to the god of fate, Istus, for an answer and got a Weal! Trying to heal him is a good idea. The god of fate intervened as the disease took his last 2 intelligence.

I decided that our fighter is in a liminal state of succumbing to the disease but not losing their sanity. Saved by the goddess of Fate and her servant, he is alive, but his personality has been changed by a brutal bloodlust. Twisted, stronger, deformed, but alive. Using the out of the abyss madness rules, I had them roll a madness check and take a new flaw from Demogorgon’s domain.

I’m excited to see if our fighter takes this change as a personal vendetta against their foe who they’re learning more and more about (identify spell on the shadow pearl), if they seek a cure and continue as-is, thank Istus and become a paladin, or maybe embrace their rage and become maybe an anti-paladin or Warlock or something else!

Because they rested, I think Harliss has cleared the rest of the cove and has tracked them to their camp. I'll probably start there and continue through Bullywug.

We're 8 sessions in now and about to come into Kraken's Cove. I took a page from Annihilation and describing the jungle and cove area all covered in a faint pinkish bubble and the party walking into it.

Our latest session took us on a side-trek from Dungeon Magazine called "Salvage Operation". I switched the demon lord mentioned in that adventure with the greyhawk name for Demogorgon, Amon Ibhor. The demon lord is about poison and stuff so it still fit. more or less.

Beneath parrot island I did something similar. I had a few nods, but we never saw how I made the smuggler huecuva and the perverse altar to serve "Amon Ibhor" as well. That didn't really get on screen for this game, so I re-used that little pinch for this side trek.

The Greyhawk Channel presents: The Savage Tide
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Good day everyone!

My friends and I have gotten together to stream a new campaign and I decided to bust out and convert my favorite Paizo campaign, The Savage Tide, to 5e D&D in good ol' Greyhawk.

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In the link above will take you to the twitch collection of VoDs of this campaign so far. We're four sessions into it, but it's a ton of fun. Perhaps one of the best D&D campaigns I've run in years.

I've ran the Savage Tide up to book 4 a few times in my life, but this is the first time running it online on Roll20.net.

Currently, were at the end of Book 1 about to assault the Lotus Dragons.

Hello! So at least once a week I come across the same question on various RPG forums:

How do I get started building a Sandbox/West Marches campaign?

This video is my answer to that question. It is a step-by-step walk through on how to begin the campaign design journey and build an adventuring region for a fantasy campaign.

I know it's a long video (90 minutes) and I'm a nobody, but if you give it a look, you'll see how I demonstrate:

• how to start populating a map with terrain
• How to create dynamic conflicts
• How to use conflicts as ideas for adventures, towns, ruins, and other locales.

This video's finished files are here:

• Google Sheets Toolkit With Locations
• Hexographer Map File

• Hexographer tool
• Regional Hexmap File for Hexographer (Courtesy Welsh Piper Blog)
  
• Google Sheets Blank Fantasy Sandbox Toolkit

Thank you very much for reading and viewing and I'd love to hear if this process worked for you!