somethingsomethingfrogs

Latest Posts by somethingsomethingfrogs

First playtest notes

The first playtest was today and it was.... something.

I already knew this group was unhinged so I expected madness, but i'm always suprised at the flavor of the madness.

Now they checked out grian's area and I thought the landmines would be a minor hazard, turns out it was more fun than i thought. The idea that not even open spaces are safe plus some funny moments (the rogue tossed the other rogue on one of the landmines and it didn't go off).

Honestly, i thought physical D&D would be more organised, but it's still chaotic.

Plenty of work left to do but assignments are first, then this passion project.

Grain's area

After some trouble, I have finished the first area of the campaign.

This is the general area, as per 3rd life events, the house is gone and there are craters everywhere (a bit non canon but it's funny with the red unactivated mines). The white square where the house used to be is a trap door to the tunnel dungeon.

The main gimmick is the next floor is determined by a d6 and has plenty of refrences to both the life series and evo (a friend suggested them), unfortunately my notes are on paper but here is the gist: First floor is a refrence to evo, with a watcher statue on 2 and a lump of stolen clay in the chest marked with 1. The second floor refrences last life with the skeleton of mumbo pst-betrayal and glowing exploding crystal. The third floor refrences double life, as it has a higher ceiling and stalagmites. The funkier numbers are the spawn points of bigb and ren, only ren's skeleton is agressive. The fourth floor is based on limited life, with refrences to the bad boys, bread bridge and the entire layer seems to be high up (like skynet). The fifth floor has a heart shaped stone in the lake and has a mini secret keeper with the warning to not disturb the cactus ring. The last floor holds the most important artifact, the enchanter. This holds the clues on how to defeat all the ghosts.

Small note: After the enchanter is picked up then Scar gets aggressive and tries to take the book in whatever way he can.

I have started to work on pearl's area, but don't really have much to share. The playtest begins this thursday and I'll see if I messed up or not.

First map for the campaign

Finished the first map of the campaign. In the 2024 rules there is a thing called bastions, so I wanted to implement something similar in the campaign.

Present on the outskirts of Monch:

The entire point is that the players return to the base and rest, possibly upgrading it to get various benefits (bastion upgrades according to level).

To note, in the 2024 rulebook bastions are, by default, individual to each player with the option of joining 2 or more bastions together.

More substatial updates are coming so stay tuned.

Quests and plot

Helloooo, so following another map remake I have figured out some of the quests and the plot.

Martyn: Once the group reaches the coast they meet Martyn, staring at a pocketwatch. Talking to him will reveal he is trying to fix it as the stopwatch is stuck on 1 hour (it actually says -8766 as in 1 year since limited life ended). Martyn's questline is focused on finding the remaining clocks for "spare parts", each present at the spot the owner died (Pearl's one will be underwater, Grian's will be on the rock he fell on, etc). Once all of them are collected the group will find Martyn at the meadow where Scott and Impluse fell, there the fight with him begins.

Grian: For the most part the quest related to grian is digging up the "monopoly" that he set up. Near the base there is a ring of saguaros that the players are informed not to enter unprepared. Anyone that picks rogue/has criminal interests will know of a artifact burried with the monopoly, of course this artifact is the enchanter.

To get to the enchanter you have to go through the schizofrenia tunnels (If you saw the tunnels of someone using xray, you know what I'm reffering to). The tunnels are a 6 layer dungeon where the mechanic is that the next level down/up is determined by a d6 to simulate the disorintating effect of xray tunnels.

That's about it for now, I will add towns and a fort to the map and post that soon, alongside more lore and quests.

Map update

So I figured out how to make the map more readable and added areas for future refrence. Feels a bit too big but once I add events and lore location it might feel less Ubisoft open world.

Part 1: the map

I had a map in mind, created by Azgaar's fantasy map generator, and i actually learned my lesson this time and restricted the map size to 4 regions. The problem while DMing is that I need to use multiple programs to make it work, so i'm centralizing it to Photoshop, since my players sometimes forget how dndbeyond works so using Roll20 or something similar is asking for more problems. Here is the world map (political and biomes):

I noticed that each edited map has a problem with scale/different cropping, here's how the map is supposed to look:

The entire idea is that the players reach specific locations on the map, with each biome corresponding to one of the winners (Grian - desert, Scott - plains, Pearl - woods, Martyn - coast, Scar - ravine/plains). The only problem is that editting the zoomed out map means the text is tiny, I'll try to fix it somehow. I have prepared map markers for events, with the only difficulty being that I need a higher resolution map to make them not pixely.

I'm surprised that there are people interested in this and if you have any suggestions then send them.

Life series themed DnD Campaign

Hello!

I am currently working on adapting the life series to a dnd campaign and perhaps consider this a announcement for help (as I do not have the time to watch the 18 hours of life series content during my first year of university)

The concept is based on the watcher lore and this video, centered around the winners. Their souls have remained restless after their victories and and haunting the places that mattered to them.

Currently I have the map ready, but it requires some polishing, so here are my ideas for each Watcher:

Grian: From my memory, in 3rd life Grian's playstyle involved a lot of traps (that rarely worked) and a lot of defensive warfare. From that I would attribute a low armor class (14/15) and reasonably high health, wielding a dagger with a ability to halve your disengage speed and place a tnt trap where you disengaged.

Scott: Last life is the season I remember the least so I'm not sure what special spell adjascent abilities Scott would have. All I can say, as of now, is high health and high armor. Anyone who knows Scott's POV better, feel free to send recomendations in the comments/tags.

Pearlie <3: From the season I remember the least to the season I remember the most of. Pearl's boss fight would be a duo of her and Tilly (as a big werewolf). Tilly's strategy would be centered on rushing, using the dog horde to pin the players (basically the entagled spell) at the cost of pearl not being able to use the dog horde as a ranged attack. Pearl in many animatics has either a scythe or axe, so she would use both weapons, the warscythe would be for crowd control and the axe would unlock a special attack after Tilly dies, dealing huge amounts of damage (around 10d8) on a single target. If someone is farther away, and TIlly is not using the dogs to pin a player down/dead, then the dog horde can be used to chase them, dealing 10d6 damage with a dex saving throw to halve it.

Martyn: I already have a Martyn monster sheet made, based on Malenia.

From there it would need some minor changes to fit the pirate fighting style.

Scar: While I did not watch Scar's POV, I still remember a lot of it. Scar's villain persona could work with some kind of taunting mechanic (though I'm not sure how to format it for a sheet) plus a ranged attack focus, perhaps with a fishing rod attack that deals more damage than the regular shot but has a lower likelyhood to land.

Feel free to add ideas or suggested changes, I will publish it as a campaign once everything has been worked out and I'll playtest it at Uni.

Thanks for reading.