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Rise of Drekis: Chapter 4

I've been kicking around ideas for RoD chapter 4, but before we get into it, let's first do a summary of chapters 1-3Chapter 1: How does the new empire deal with internal problems? What is life like on the ground for the lowest of the units? What is the interplay of duty, honor, and personal...

Ending: Rise of Drekis Chapter III

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the end of Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3. </3There are 3 big questions to answer about this Why is it ending? What does this mean for the story? What is coming next?Why is it ending?The factors that lead into ending the campaign are as follows.This campaign, from...

Hardly Heroes and the greater picture

Taking place in 1518, Hardly Heroes is a campaign about the small people of the world. Our campaign doesn't touch on the bigger picture of Arcadia or the growing empire of Drekis. Today's post will talk about the zoomed out view of Stromheim and its place in the new empire.Eridon before the ...

Being pulled in two directions as a DM

The Clerics are dead, and our party needs a healer. What are we going to do?In a recent session of Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3 our party lost their NPC healer that they desperately need. The nature of the campaign means that without some level of assisted healing, the party isn't going to last lon...

Mapping the marsh

I've been working on the big map for the Devouring Marsh during my off time while binging Celebrity Family Feud, which somehow doesn't get old even though it's the same thing each and every time, and thought I would share some of the details / struggles.We have 4 images here, each number...

Upcoming Game: Hardly Heroes

As part of the SaveOrDie group, there's a new campaign coming up called Hardly Heroes. It will feature, primarily, MrMouton and GreenZerg as our players, but the other cast members may make an appearance. Let's talk the big strokes.Core ConceptOur heroes will be playing a pair of AD&D 2e thi...

Ethos / Outpost Santa Barbara setting problems

It's no secret that the first campaign set in Santa Barbara got weird and ended abruptly. We could ignore it, we could call it non-cannon, or we could find a way to roll with it and let it contribute to the greater story. If you've been following along with Rise of Drekis: Chapter 2, you&#39...

Save or Die: Outcasts - NPC Spoilers

If you are a player in Outcasts, read no further!Hello dear patrons!In this post, we're gonna talk about some of the NPCs we've met in Outcasts, where they come from, what I intend for them, and how they reflect on our characters, story, or nature.Before we go any further, first we have to t...

Patreon Perk Updates

Hello there dear Patrons! We've made some updates to the Patreon perks, and in this post we're going to go tier by tier talking about all the benefits and where to find them.First, a small personal note. I spent most of September out sick, and have been playing catch up ever since. Thank you...

Critical Feedback perks and where to find them

This post is simply a reference post to help you find your perks! I'll edit this post going forward as perks are updated, moved, or whatever. I'll also link to this post in future posts whenever it is relevant.Critical Feedback TimeslotThursdays at 2:00pm Pacific / 5:00pm Eastern / 11:00pm C...

Why does Bravo look the way it does?

Hey there Patrons!Bravo is one of the main 3 Arcadian Islands (Arcadia, Bravo, and Caldonia). A core part of Arcadian lore is that the gods remade parts of the world at the end of the last age, and so all the land masses should have a "before" and "after" map. Which is a terrible ide...

Rise of Drekis: Chapter 3 - Echoes of the Ancients

Hello Patrons!It's been a hot minute. Before we delve into information about Chapter 3 of Rise of Drekis, I have a short personal note. I've been down and out with the plague that goes away and comes back, and so I'm behind on all the work and all the things. One of the first things to s...

Fall Campaign Load

Hey there Patrons!This update is going to be a bit short. I was out at MrMouton's wedding last week (of Tombs of Scoria, The Lazarus Expedition, Desperate Measures, and so much more), and came home having contracted some plague that has laryngitis as a component, so I'm trying to take it eas...

Rise of Drekis: Chapter 2 - Outpost on the Frontier

Hello there Patrons! Let's talk about what's coming up next and take a behind the scenes look at how the sausage gets made.Mandatory caveats: While things are still in the planning stages, anything can change. I'm going to paint you a picture of where I expect to be, but expectations may...

Updated Roll20 Tokens Status Effects

Hey there PatronsMany moons ago I made a post talking about the Roll20 Token Status Effects, saying something about "I will make changes to these in the future and provide you with the updated one". Well, that's what we're doing today.Attached, and linked here for redundancy, are the...

Rise of Drekis: Final assets and developments

Rise of Drekis starts next week, and it sure has been a nail biter to get everything done in time.Above you'll find the intro video, which I'm super psyched about. You'll see at the end it has a "Chapter I" segment, which will be swapped out for "Chapter II" etc. as we go...

Koibu's Corner: Throwing away work

I was just working on our next session of Cosmo's Kitchen and struggling to flesh out this idea. You see, I wanted to do something about harvesting this psychic fungus so that Cosmo could make a soup that would be fed to an NPC in the following Cosmo's Kitchen episode and start loosely linki...

Rise of Drekis - 1st character creation

Hey Patrons, here's some more information about the upcoming Rise of Drekis campaign!We've got our first character created today! I'm trying to get this launched asap, so we did character creation offline instead of waiting for overlays so the show can come out faster, and so we could in...

Arcadia Map Progress + New Map incoming

Hey there Patrons, lets talk maps!Arcadia OGI've been working on the original map for Arcadia (pre cataclysmic events) for some time now, and it's just about done. All the major land masses are done, but there are still some things to name, maybe some islands to add, and then possibly multip...

Divine Domains

Gods are gods of stuff.Malkis is the god of Chaos, Nadinis is the goddess of Nature, and Martha is the goddess of Life and Creation. But if I'm in a foot race, who do I pray to for fleetness of foot? There's no god of Running Fast.Also, what is Chaos? That's a pretty abstract term. It&#3...

Rise of Drekis - More details

Hey there Patrons! First off, thank you for your continued support, it really is what makes all these wonderful, exciting, and deeply disturbing campaigns possible. We wouldn't be here without you. ♥It's time to dump some details for Rise of Drekis. Here we go!Chapter 1The campaign is goin...

The Rise of Drekkis [Working Title]

A new campaign!This game, still in pre-production, will feature discrete chapters telling the story of what happens after the events of The War for Arcadia [the events of Tombs of Scoria, Akuban Knights, Frozen Frontier, and Desperate Measures]. We know Drekkis becomes a power house, but that's ...

Disease in D&D

Diseases suck. Both in life and in D&D. It's not an enemy one gets to fight traditionally, so sickness comes down to a save or be gimped for a period of time. This is why we don't see a lot of disease in RPGs, it's just not a fun mechanic most of the time.But what if it was important for...

Latest Lazarus Expedition Director's Commentary

The Lazarus Expedition is continuing, and it's picking up steam. Our party has hit a pretty major milestone, and the latest episodes of the Director's Commentary delve into what it was like on the back end of all that.All the VODs are listed below, but numbers 7-9 are the ones being released...

Fatal One: 2 aka Two Fatal

This dungeon is killing me.I was visiting my family back in March when I hit upon a great idea for 2 Fatal. I sketched out a few sections of dungeon, wrote down some ideas, and came back from the trip with a lot of enthusiasm and energy to build out the successor to the smash hit: Fatal One.You see,...

Behind the Screen: Building a Subclass - Familiar Wizard

In The Lazarus Expedition, one of our characters has been trying to use a familiar as a weapon by casting spells through it. It's a fun idea, but familiars are weak, quickly killed, and their timing of movement is awkward. To make this a more viable build, I've created the Familiar Wizard su...

Travel Rules for Deserts

While these rules are designed for 5th edition, they could be ported to another system with some small adjustments. These are the rules I am using for The Lazarus ExpeditionTechnically, a desert is a place that receives very little rainfall. In theory, a desert could have any range of temperature, h...

Director's Commentary: The Lazarus Expedition

From time to time, I like to do some Director's Commentary on D&D sessions. It's a nice way for me to review where we are in a campaign, and it's a nice tool to help other people see what the back end of running a D&D game is like. It also gives some easter eggs, to a game, and provides ...

Ages of Arcadia

With a campaign structure defined by the premise that one campaign is set in the aftermath of the last, are the ages of the world predefined? Is the history of the world set in stone before the first die is rolled? Do our players have an impact in the great shape?Thus far, the ages of the world have...

Useful Tools for Running Games on Roll20

Here is the quick and dirty list of tools I use for running games on roll20. These are so ingrained into my DMing experience that they've become second nature. They won't make you a good DM, but they will make it less burdensome to execute your vision for your campaign.VTT Enhancement Suite ...