<![CDATA[A-to-J Connections - Drink Talk Roll]]>

<![CDATA[A-to-J Connections - Drink Talk Roll]]>Fri, 03 May 2024 09:09:44 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[A Beautiful Mindwitness | Drink Talk Roll #57 (Arretin Campaign #11)]]>Fri, 19 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/a-beautiful-mindwitness-drink-talk-roll-57-arretin-campaign-11

This is the eleventh session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! We went into a cave, beat up some cultists, fought what we think might be a beholder, and didn't pee in any pools. We promise! No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Fighter)
Hao (Ulrich The Warlock)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Fighter)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 4/12 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #11: A Beautiful Mindwitness]]>Fri, 19 Apr 2024 06:11:38 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-11-a-beautiful-mindwitness

Session Recap

The party entered the cave that Tonlifter seemed to be drawn towards while under the control of the cursed headband. Talliyah was also there. She was just off-screen taking care of all the ninjas sneaking up on the party. The interior was dark with few if any sources of light putting Khorr the Halfling at a disadvantage.

As Amra and Jedah scouted further in, they heard chanting in a strangely familiar language that neither of them could understand. Despite this, the chanting gave Amra a flashback to memories he had thought long forgotten: He was chained somewhere in a different dimly lit room. A figure cloaked in shifting shadows spoke that language to a white-haired human with a long sword across his back. They had come to see him for some reason but now they were leaving.

Snap back to reality. Amra and Jedah moved further in and find cultists in a large room. They motion the party forward and prepare for an ambush. Thanks to some lucky crits, the fight is over pretty quickly. After taking everyone out, they decided to check the giant hole in the room and find a magic circle on the floor beneath them. The piece of magical lapis lazuli Ulrich took from the Masked Man all those sessions ago seems to react to the circle glowing brightly and pulling him towards it the closer he gets.

The party continues moving around the cave finding different rooms and even a little mud golem that posed no real threat to them on its own. Despite the size, the place doesn’t seem to have much interesting in the way of items. The only interesting they find is a set of communications noting that some higher up stationed them here to await a person who never showed up so plans are moving on without him. Judging by the dates, the party theorizes that it was the still unidentified Masked Man.

Eventually, the party finds a set of stairs down and once they reach the bottom, they hear even more chanting in that strange language. Sadly, they lose the element of surprise after one of them steps on a very loud piece of wood that snaps beneath his feet. Despite this, no one seems to come out of the room with the chanting so the party has to take it upon themselves to open the door.

After opening it, they find it now occupied by more cultists with a statue that Jedah recognizes as the one he saw in the cargo hold of the Emperor’s Breath where he found his guns. Their chanting seems to cause the circle to glow more intensely. The increased number make this fight harder for the party but they are still able to take them down until there is only one remaining. The last living cultist decides to stab himself spilling his blood across the circle to complete the ritual.

The statue disappears from the circle and in its place, a creature with a round, purple body and multiple eyes: one in its chest area and multiple on stalks extended from its core. In other words, a mindwitness. It uses its various eye beams on the party but they are able to avoid it more often than not and slay it soon after. Amra attempts to cut out its eyes and is successful at removing three of them without any damage.

It was about this time that Talliyah finished fighting all those invisible ninjas. More on that later. Ulrich was inspired by the intense glow of the crystal around his neck that he spoke the command words: Klaatu barada nikto. With that, every party member had their vision go black and it won’t be until next session that they figure out what happened.

The DM Kinda Forgot

So yeah, I kinda forgot about Talliyah this session and Pleiades forgot about the optional Rogue feature that allows for them to get advantage on ranged attacks if they don’t move that turn. Manuel blamed me for that second one but I think it’s the player’s responsibilities to remember their character’s features. I know they get progressively drunker as the stream goes on but I think it’s the least they could do when I have to play a dozen characters / monsters, remember what’s going on both in front of them and behind the scenes and tie that all together in a way that makes sense.

Moving on to the part that is my fault: Forgetting about plot points, characters, etc. I have this bad habit in both of my campaigns especially when it comes to tagalong characters like Talliyah and a character in my other campaign named Snake. There’s even a running gag that Snake is the ultimate sneak that even the gods can’t see and he’s the source of my “fighting ninjas off-screen” excuse which I use whenever a minor character who should have been there wasn’t. It occurs most often between sessions when I forget who’s there and focus on the players at the start that I forget the NPCs not needed for the setup. It’s doubly so if the plot of the session is a direct continuation of the last one but the NPC isn’t a direct quest giver.

You might have also noted that in combat last session, Talliyah didn’t really do much beyond creating a wall and occasionally firing rocks that did a small amount of damage. DM Confession Time: I don’t have a character sheet for her or most NPCs that don’t use a stat block that’s either straight from a book or slightly modified. I just chose a small but still significant number for damage and anything else she does is more utility based around her earth powers like creating stone walls. I know there are rules for companions/sidekicks in both first- and third-party sources but it’s just the easiest way for me to run them.

Sometimes, I forget a plot point because I thought I’d remember it and didn’t jot it down. This happened with the location of plot important items in my other campaign and luckily, one of my players had written it down. Obviously, this has the easiest solution of just making sure you note things you’ll need to remember somewhere whether it’s on a piece of paper, a text file or even a voice note. If that fails, I hope you have a player that takes good notes. With a crew that gets drunk playing, I don’t have high ups for that happening in this campaign. If you’re in the same boat, then you’ll fall back on the next easiest solution: Change it and pretend it’s always been the new thing. If you or someone suddenly remembers what it was supposed to be, you can roll back to that or just have a character suggest it was the old thing and get told they’re experiencing the Mandela Effect.

That’s it for this week. We should be back next week with session twelve without Manuel. What happened to the party? Are they still in that cave? Will we finally make it through a session without someone thinking they’re going to die after taking all of 1 damage? Find out next time! Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[Ignite Your Wagon | Drink Talk Roll #56 (Arretin Campaign #10)]]>Fri, 29 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/ignite-your-wagon-drink-talk-roll-56-arretin-campaign-10

This is the tenth session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! When talking gets you nowhere, you just have to set stuff on fire! Nevermind that there might be some rather tough opponents if you do that without thinking! No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Fighter)
Hao (Ulrich The Warlock)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Fighter)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 3/15 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #10: Ignite Your Wagon]]>Thu, 28 Mar 2024 07:40:03 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-10-ignite-your-wagon

Session Recap

After meeting up with the Tonlifter Goliath tribe, the party was given an ultimatum: “Surrender or die in obscurity.” Clearly, a lot had changed in the week or so they’d been away from the group. The party debated surrendering, fighting and running before deciding to surrender and play along until they could figure out a better course of action. Their hands were bound and their weapons taken except for Jedah’s guns because he was able to convince the guards they were harmless. (Oh, the joys of being in a world that is only just beginning to understand guns!)

The party was marched westward across the Axida Plains towards an unknown destination. One day, after their march was done, the party was approached by former tribe leader Nallah who did her best to explain the situation: After the tribe parted ways with the tribe, Tonlifter revealed he acquired the Gnoll bandit leader’s headband. After putting it on, he experienced a sudden shift in personality and challenged and defeated Nallah for leadership of the tribe. Nallah herself was torn between her duty to serve the leader of the tribe and doing good for the world at large. The party tried to convince her to follow her heart and help them but failed.

The party went back to planning on what to do. Breaking out of the ropes binding their hands was fairly easy for Khorr and he went around scouting the camp finding the weapons and discovering a few new magic items in a wagon. Then, Amra came into the picture. He somehow got the bright idea to set a wagon on fire. Seeing that, the guards patrolling the camp assumed it was a bandit raid and immediately sounded the alarm waking up the entire camp including Tonlifter and Nallah. Seeing the commotion the party had caused, Nallah decided to stick by her tribe in the attack.

While the rest of the party dealt with the guards and Nallah, Amra continued to Amra and teleported himself straight towards Tonlifter grappling him by holding onto his back. He then began a contest of strength to remove the headband from Tonlifter’s head. He struggled for multiple rounds taking multiple attacks and a back slam from Tonlifter but with some help from Ulrich, Amra was able to finally remove the headband. With his mind his own again, Tonlifter immediately collapsed and seeing their leader defeated, the Goliaths yielded declaring Amra their new leader.

At the tribe meeting the next morning, a few members objected to an Elf being the leader of a Goliath tribe and while thanking him for his help in saving Tonlifter, Nallah challenged him for leadership of the tribe. Amra conceded defeat in the duel after one hit reverting leadership of the tribe back to Nallah. With all of that taken care of, the session ended as the party began venturing towards the cave Tonlifter had taken the tribe to after putting on the headband.

Fired Up Beyond All Recognition

Writing this, I’m reminded of a piece of writing advice from Raymond Chandler, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” (Depending on your campaign world’s technology level, "gun" might be replaced by "sword" or "dagger".) I think it’s good advice for a game master looking to stall for time. Especially in games like Dungeons & Dragons, combat can take up a lot of time and gives the players a short-term goal and a feeling of progress as they eliminate the enemies.

This piece of advice was useful for me as I dealt with a party who decided to zag where I thought they were going to zig. I had planned for them surrendering and reaching the cave before attempting to escape and at least had an idea of what to do had they just decided to run. Their deciding to end things before reaching the cave was not on my list of things they would do. Never underestimate a drunk party.

Obviously, in this case, it was fairly easy for me. The party was already in the middle of a warrior camp. Any of the Goliaths could have started a rebellion against Tonlifter; another tribe of Goliaths or some angry Gnolls could have attacked. These might have been random but they still would have felt right in the world the players are in. That they were the ones who gave me an easy reason to start combat was just the cherry on top.

If you’re looking for ideas, sourcebooks and the internet are full of lists of random encounters you can use to fill combats as you figure out the reason for the attack. Here are some quick ideas just from me:

Did assassins show up? Maybe one of them accidentally stole an item that had been marked by a thieves’ guild or maybe your horny bard (or any other class) unknowingly slept with a vengeful noble’s spouse who hired them. These might introduce new complications into the plot like that guild or the noble or it could reinforce or reintroduce the other faction.

Have you already established a BBEG at least vaguely? Maybe they sent some minions down like Rita sending in the Putties and a monster in Power Rangers. People still know that, right? This is good if you don’t need much added to the narrative but need time to think of your next steps.

Sorry, if this week seems a bit light on info. I’m in the middle of two weekends of conventions but I still wanted to get this out on our usual skip week schedule. I hope I’ll have something from Tora-Con and/or Anime Boston to show you in the near future to make up for it. I’ll see you in the next column. Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe Malfunction | Drink Talk Roll #55 (Arretin Campaign #9)]]>Fri, 08 Mar 2024 09:13:46 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-malfunction-drink-talk-roll-55-arretin-campaign-9

This is the ninth session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! We fight a Naga, Amra loses his book, hilarity ensues! No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Fighter)
Hao (Ulrich The Warlock)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Fighter)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 3/1 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #9: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe Malfunction]]>Thu, 07 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-9-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-malfunction

(I thought I wouldn’t be able to top the last but I think I did it with this one)

Session Recap

Picking up where we left off last session, the party talks with Baizhu (I misspelled it on air) the giant snake who does his best to convince him that he can be trusted with the Earth Topaz. The party very quickly showed that they didn’t trust him and after a few failed attempts at diplomacy, combat finally started. Baizhu chased Khorr across the map trying to get the topaz from him smashing through the rest of the party and nearly taking a few out. Thankfully, Jedah was able to score the killing blow with a little assistance.

As he took his last shot, a roar let out and a glowing lion’s claw slashed through Baizhu’s body where the bullet hit. The party looked up to see where that came from and found a giant, glowing white lion descending from the starry sky seemingly projected on the ceiling. Introducing himself as Ishim, the Guardian Beast of Earth, he blessed the gun Jedah used to kill Baizhu granting it a fraction of his power and explained a bit about the party’s mission. They are opening perpendicularities to the Elemental Planes and undoing an ancient seal.

When asked where the other three towers are, he noted that he had not been in the Material Plane for millennia and the layout of the world had probably changed. He did however give them three clues: The Air Tower lies in a city of splendor along the coast. The Fire Tower lies in a pit as hot as the infernos of the Underworld. The Water Tower sits in the eye of a raging storm.

He also had some unkind things to say about the god Favel but that’s probably just because Favel’s a wind god and he’s an earth beast. With all of his info disclosed and the perpendicularity opened, Ishim wished them luck and departed.

Leaving the Earth Tower, the party returned to the library to find Talliyah still guarding the door and learning two things: That she’s an earth mage and that the opening of the Earth Seal had caused her powers to go temporarily out of whack. The party helped undo the damage she’d done to the library and got out. On the way out, Amra stole a book but learned that the library’s antitheft magic had turned all its pages black.

Regrouping at a bar, they explained their mission and what had happened to Talliyah. They asked her for advice and she put up a few ideas listing of coastal cities that could be considered a “city of splendor”, places that might be “hot as the infernos of the Underworld” and that somewhere in the center of the Sea of Storms was probably the location of the Water Temple.

Here, the party became divided. Khorr thought the best idea would be to follow Talliyah’s pet project of looking into Khanya, the mythical city of lights said to be on the edge of the Menagi Wastes as a possible location for the Fire Temple. Amra thought the best way forward would be sailing into the Sea of Storms looking for the eye of the storm and thus, the Water Temple. He dragged them down to the docks to find a ship willing to take them there. The dockmaster laughed at his idea calling it basically a suicide mission and it seems everyone else who heard him say it agreed. After wasting too much time, Khorr finally put his foot down and got the rest of the party to agree with him. They would set off the next day.

Before that, however, Ulrich had something to take care of. His patron had sent him a letter with the name “Lady Mei Bairen” and the name of a high-end tailor’s shop in Shunil along with a bottle of dye. When he showed the dye to the tailor, she said it was too garish and that none of her clients would be caught dead in it. After hearing those words, Ulrich understood what he had to do. While the tailor was distracted talking to Lord and Lady Bairen, he snuck into the back of the shop where Lady Bairen’s dress was still being dyed and poured the entire bottle in. Fey always have the weirdest of requests.

The next morning, the departed back the way they came across the Axida Plains towards To’anata and from there, maybe Khanya if it actually exists. After about a day of travelling, they hear the familiar rumble of feet as they meet back up with the herd of Goliaths they had met before coming to Shunil but there’s something off. It’s only been a few days but Nallah’s no longer in charge. Tonlifter, one of the younger members the party met, is now leading the newly renamed tribe and is wearing the same headband the gnoll leader had been wearing. What in the world is going on? Find out next time on DTR.

Choo-Choo

Honestly, the biggest gripe I’m probably getting from Manuel is that I railroaded him out of sailing the Sea of Storms. You know what? I did.

For those that don’t know, in gaming, “railroading” means “forcing the players down one path on which they have no choice”. It is the opposite of “sandboxing” where players can basically go anywhere and do whatever they want. Obviously, it’s almost never an absolute railroad or an absolute sandbox. 99.9% of campaigns are a mixture of the two. I try to keep this campaign as open as possible but this was one point where I really decided to put my foot down.

Does it make sense in the world? Yes. Shunil formed the way it did, carved out of the rockface because it is dealing with constant powerful storms and I think only a fool would want to sail that for days on end especially without a fixed destination. I tried to soften this blow by ging them an alternate route suggesting that it would be easier to go through the sea from the west starting in the Rotti Islands or Hozumi. It will take much longer but it’s a safer route and there’s the opportunity for multiple adventures along the way. Maybe, they’ll follow up on that after they finish up this mission.

Did I do it to prevent a TPK? Also, yes. I know what lives out there and it would eat them for breakfast if they could. In addition, I’ve already planted a hit of what they’ll need to do to safely cross the storm but the bad part about having a drunk audience is that they can’t also be counted on to remember everything. Hopefully, a few more hints will pop up soon enough.

My first time running this campaign was also the first time I seriously ran a campaign for a group. In a similar situation, I think it was also just after finishing up the first tower and leaving the party wondering what to do, I ended a session super early because I had planned for one option and they took another. One of my players told me that it might have been better to have only presented them the one option rather than trying to be open. Sometimes, a fun railroad ride is better than an empty sandbox. Ultimately, don’t be afraid to railroad once in a while. If your players complain, tell them I said you could have a little railroad as a treat. If that doesn’t work, blame the dice. Dice are always responsible when something bad happens in a ttrpg.

Well, that’s my thoughts for this week. Until next time, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[Snakes On A Demiplane | Drink Talk Roll #54 (Arretin Campaign #8)]]>Fri, 23 Feb 2024 18:12:14 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/snakes-on-a-demiplane-drink-talk-roll-54-arretin-campaign-8

This is the eighth session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! We arrive at the very first tower but we have to fight snakes! Why'd it have to be snakes?!? We find some treasure, barely survive a Medusa encounter, and then... What's next? Well... No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Fighter)
Hao (Ulrich The Warlock)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Fighter)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 2/16 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #8: Snakes On A Demiplane]]>Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-8-snakes-on-a-demiplane

Session Recap

After Khorr discovered the entrance to the dungeon in the last session, the party ventured inside. They walked up a long staircase in the darkness dimly lit by glowing crystal embedded in the walls. At the top of the staircase, they found a rundown living area patrolled by humanoids that seemed more snake than human. They quickly attacked the creatures and despite taking some serious blows, they managed to come out victorious. Deciding not to rest, they explored a little more of the area and found another two creatures, these more human in appearance and another battle ended just as quickly as it started.

The continued exploring the rest of the floor, discovering a small treasure hoard containing magic boots, a special lockpick and a gem that radiates light along with a mountain of coins and nonmagical gems. In other rooms, they discovered the remains of the people who so old that even touching them would cause them to become dust in the nonexistent wind. Some seemed to be in the middle of dinner. Others seemed to have suffered in their chambers but across all these inhabited rooms, they found various paintings depicting a king and queen. In various drawings scrawled across the walls, this queen was also depicted with a giant snake and going through a transformation into a snake person not unlike the ones they had seen before. The last thing they found was a locked door that couldn’t be opened by conventional means.

And in the final room they explored, they found the Stone Queen herself still sitting atop her throne with her petrified king in the one next to her. Despite the thousand-year language barrier, the party did their best to communicate with her via gesture but somewhere along the line, they made her angry and battle started. She attacked with a combination of the snakes that made up her hair and her own petrifying gaze. Over the course of the battle, she managed to petrify both Jedah and Khorr and nearly finished off Amra and Ulrich. However, Ulrich’s cool head was able to keep Amra from fleeing and the two were able to finish her.

Luckily, the Stone Queen had a vial of liquid that could fix the petrification. Why did she have that? I like to think that she hoped one day she might a change of heart and want to restore her late husband and face the consequences of her dealings with the snake. They used the liquid to restore their petrified friends and decided to take a rest before venturing upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, they found a very small floor with another room that seemed tailormade for resting and another with an altar lit by a shaft of light. The Earth Topaz around Khorr’s neck seemed to tug him towards it like a child towards a candy shop. As he approached, a giant snake descended from the ceiling…And that’s where this week’s session ended.

Wow! Let’s Do That Again.

I think I’ve mentioned it a few times before both on stream and in this column that I’ve run this campaign once before for my other D&D group and am using that to inform a lot of my prep work. For example, the things with the kids being experimented on by the School of Continued Progress and the people behind it were basically made up as the campaign went along as many great plotlines are. Here, I’ve been able to more properly lay down the beginnings of the subplot and I hope we can still see it to its conclusion.

On the other hand, it’s always very interesting to see how things go differently in this version of the campaign compared to the other one. I noted on stream that because we didn’t have a party member drop out between sessions one and two, I just skipped over the entire events of the second session of the last campaign which was just explaining what happened to that player’s character. Those events really only came up once later so I don’t expect that to snowball into anything.

However, in a recent session, I won’t say which, there was a minor deviation that is going to snowball pretty quickly and I’m very excited for it. The plotline I have in the back of my head is a big what if that the party avoided in the last session. Depending on how long it takes them to finish off the temple boss, it could very well be the next episode.

I really bring this up because the last session was one that varied greatly between the two campaigns both because of what I did but also how the party went about it. The set up was the same. I even used the same maps for both floors of the dungeons and the fight with the Stone Queen was in both though I used different stat blocks of similar creatures with similar CRs. However, in the first campaign, I played the Stone Queen in a more comedic manner. She was able to speak modern Common and was devastated that a wish she had made was corrupted to turning people into stone. I’ll leave that as a though experiment to you as to what that wish was.

As I described in the first section, I went with a more serious tone and added in the two earlier fights to make this a bit more difficult. I didn’t expect the party to charge in as recklessly as they did. I’m still in the process of refining my DMing style for this campaign as I have to manage players at various levels of intoxication. It’s going to be a long and complicated process but I think I’ll come out a better DM in the process. Maybe through reading this, you will as well.

Well, that’s the end of today’s Drink Talk Roll Extended. We’ll be back next time with the tower boss fight and we’ll see what happens afterward. Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[Raiders of the Lost Archives | Drink Talk Roll #53 (Arretin Campaign #7)]]>Fri, 09 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/raiders-of-the-lost-archives-drink-talk-roll-53-arretin-campaign-7

This is the seventh session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! We arrived at Shanile, but no one wants to let Amra take the lead anymore. Well, at least we're on the right course of investigation... What's next? Well... No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Fighter)
Hao (Ulrich The Warlock)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Fighter)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 2/2 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #7: Raiders of the Lost Archives]]>Fri, 09 Feb 2024 05:40:09 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-7-raiders-of-the-lost-archives

Session Recap

After defeating the gnolls with the help of Nallah “Skybreaker” and the rest of the Skybreaker Tribe (They’re named after her not the other way around) and negotiating for better pay, the party rested up and kept on going to Shunil. Jedah spent some time among the tribe sampling their foods for his own inspiration and Khorr won some respect by being able to stomach oosquai. They parted ways with the tribe not long before entering Shunil and then moved on to looking for a way to enter the archives.

After trying to walk in, they learned they would need sponsorship from a high-ranking merchant, noble or government official. Amra tried strongarming a shop owner into sponsoring them, but Ulrich, and surprisingly Jedah, realized that might not be the best idea in an upscale neighborhood. It was actually Khorr who through his own means managed to find someone who could get them in: A woman named Talliyah. She and Khorr are affiliated somehow and after listening to his request, she was able to get him in the door. According to the guards at the front of the archives, she seems to be an agent of some state but the party never asked too many questions.

Once inside, the party started researching. Khorr found a librarian to help him find books on gemology and found some interesting historical bits relating to the Gaiun Empire and how its sacred crown supposedly had four similar looking gems that were lost after a battle that precipitated the end of the empire. Jedah, continuing his newfound streak of sensibility, decided to look up Orcish cooking methods and started reading a book detailing the cuisine of the Menagi Desert all while keeping Amra from causing too much trouble with a literal gun to his head.

Ulrich probably would have studied something, but his patron called him into a meeting with another one of her agents. His patron was wondering why Ulrich was hanging around with two creations of the Winter Lady Mab’s creations and a halfling that seemed to have blurred the line between life and death one too many times. With a few smooth words, Ulrich was able to convince the other agent that he was being proactive and keeping an eye on them. She told him to keep doing that but that their patron would be contacting him again in the near future with new orders.

While taking a break from his research, Khorr notices that the Earth Topaz he was wearing had started to glow and as he moved around the library, the brightness changed. He quickly determined that the closer he go to the top of the stairs, the brighter it glowed and decided to climb up to the second floor. At the top of the staircase, the gem seemed to reach full brightness revealing a door hidden in the wall. He quickly gathered his fellow party members and showed them this and together they headed toward the other side.

Have they entered the temple of doom? Is this their last crusade? Find out next time on Drink Talk Roll!

It’s (Third) Party Time!

So, let’s say you decided to run a D&D campaign for your friends and/or acquaintances. Maybe it’s a biweekly streamed game for a small internet channel. Maybe that feels like you need to have maps and stuff ready for each session but first party products don’t have everything to need. What is this hypothetical DM to do?

Okay, it’s me. I’m that DM. You knew that already. I’m talking third party supplements this week. The easiest one for me to recommend is maps. The internet is filled with thousands upon thousands of maps people have made and shared for you to use. Sometimes, I even plan adventures based on a basic idea and whatever map I can find that kind of fits it. Whenever I do something like this, I do my best to leave the creator’s mark visible at least on Roll20. I’m not sure how much it will be visible on stream because I don’t control that window but the big one to check out is Czpeku. Cze and Peku make amazing maps and I’ve used them multiple times in past campaigns. Other places to check out would be r/battlemaps and similar subreddits.

Other times, I’ll just take the best fitting map I can find from my collection of maps from adventures and random books I’ve gotten over the course of oh so many Humble Bundles. The Archives from this episode are actually one of those maps that looked sufficiently library-like. Sometimes, like with the Temple of the Sun and Moon from session 1, I also make small changes to make the maps fit what’s happening in the session. In that case, it was hiding the cave in the back behind a fake grid so I could reveal it on stream.

If you’re playing in person and have the PDFs for those books/adventures, you might just be able to print those maps out and place them on whatever surface you use for your games. If you’re on a VTT like we do, some packages come with separate maps files but if they don’t, you can try opening the PDF in your viewer of choice and see if you can copy the image and save it to its own file or screenshot it. Worse comes to worst, you can use it as reference and just draw it in your VTT of choice.

And that’s just maps. There are third party options galore for magic items, character options and monsters and just about every other aspect of your favorite TTRPG. Some of my favorites are the character options and monsters from Kobold Press and MCDM Productions. Both of those studios are also working on their own TTRPGs and I’m looking forward to those. Jedah is also using the Gunslinger archetype from Matt Mercer for Critical Role fame. I have so much third-party stuff that I wish the players would look into more. Maybe in the future.

Speaking of future, that’s my time for this week. Maybe some time in the future, I’ll dive deeper into some of my favorite third-party projects. Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]>