#DIY30 Day Four

Who Possesses False Chanterelle?

Today's #DIY30 project is to place the painting False Chanterelle somewhere in my campaign.  To access the Maze of the Blue Medusa, it must then be stolen by the PCs and careful instructions of it's placement followed.  Due to the Escheresque "interdimensional nonspace" of this megadungeon, the only other entry/exit point I have to place is a set of stairs on an island called Eliator.  Hooray for pocket dimensions!  So imma not even gonna worry bout Eliator for now.  In reading the chronology of MotBM, I was excited to see Lizardmen and Reptile Women featuring prominently in the history as well as a Saurid holocaust.  Coincidentally, there was a mysterious rise and fall of a Lizardman Empire in my campaign's ancient history that I've hinted at to the PCs when they were adventuring over in the capitol Chizhova.  They inadvertently assisted a Lizard Shamaness and a Talking Iguana (polymorphed wizard) in awakening an "Old Sleeper" who had been in stasis for millenia.  They (Talking Iguana, Shamaness, Old Sleeper) all buggered off to the east with an NPC cleric/scholar of Tycho who had also been searching for the Tomb of the Old Sleeper.  So Talking Iguana (I'm too lazy to go dig through my notes for his name, will update with that later) speaks telepathically and first approached the PCs in dreams.  So I think he will start contacting the PCs in dreams requesting they steal False Chanterelle for him and the Lizard Shamaness.  The painting is the newly acquired possession of Halwic Magistrate Saad Abahsh.  A month ago in the great northwestern city of Vornheim, the painting had been hanging on the wall in the home of Eshrigal, another medusae and possible sister of Psathyrella (Blue Medusa.)  It was stolen from her, eventually landing in the hands of the fence in Halwic, Niole Paliyenko.  Magistrate Abahsh is ignorant to the true nature of False Chantrerelle.  He has had it installed in his lavish home and loves showing it off to any visitors.  Eshrigal might have dispatched a retrieval team to "liberate" the painting...

#DIY30 Goals for September 2018

My #DIY30 Mission Statement:

I will be using these thirty days to create (or adapt) campaign materials for my #YearoftheGoat home campaign and my as yet unnamed online campaign that I want to run for the G+ Flailsnails community.

 #DIY30 Preparation

Yesterday I spent five or six hours organizing and re-familiarizing myself with my #YearoftheGoat campaign materials as preparation for this #DIY30 writing challenge.  At one point this stuff was organized well, but the deterioration crept in last year and I'm just now getting things back in good order.  As I sorted yesterday, I began to see what I would be tackling for #DIY30.  What will follow in this post is a rough weekly breakdown of the writing, adapting, and cartography tasks that I've identified while organizing.

Caveats

Just as my campaign is a work in progress, this post will be as well.  I'm not sure how fast I'll be working, so I'll be coming back to update Weeks Three and Four after I see how Week One rolls out. 

 

Week One- First Things First

I will be starting in the area of the map around the city of Halwic.  The PCs were camped just south of Halwic when the campaign went on hiatus last August.  They were investigating leads regarding The Mimic Crisis.  Halwic has just experienced an outbreak of plague and a fire has devastated a district in the city.  One of the PCs is hoping to have his newly crafted sword blessed (enchanted) by a prominent leader of the Church of the Covenant.  I have Halwic itself roughly mapped and some locations detailed, but not mapped.  I'm counting on Vornheim to get me through any citycrawl stuff that comes up.  Locations nearby needing more work are the estate of Lord Vortulak and the small triplet of farming communities to the southwest of the city.

     -A follower NPC is in the city scouting ahead.  Are they alive or dead?  If alive, what information did they gather?  Where will the party re-unite with them? Done
     -Create relationship map for prominent city NPCs. Done
     -Create relationship map for the Abby of St. Forsythia (Church of the Covenant) NPCs. Done
     -Set a hook to the mega-dungeon Maze of the Blue Medusa (reading to be done on this, but I think it involves placing a specific painting....) Done
     -Figure out where to locate the Maze on my campaign map. Done
     -Write a description of Lord Vortulak's estate. Done
     -Make a map of Lord Vortulak's estate. Done
     -Finish the adaptation of the small farming communities southwest of Halwic.  These are from a pre-written module, so the work is less creating and more editing or adapting. Done

Week Two- Finish Week One's Bullet Points Before Moving On 

If week one was front-loaded too heavily with pieces to work on, then I will be continuing to work on those until finished this week.  While working on my home campaign is my main goal here, some effort will be made to start preparing for my upcoming online game world.


     -Finish all of Week One's bullet points before starting anything on Week Two's list.
     -Decide on a setting for my upcoming online game.  Choices I'm deliberating are as follows:
          +The Midderlands
          +Operation Unfathomable
          +Yoon-Suin
          +Red Tide Ding, ding, ding!
          +The Dark of Hot Springs Island
     -Once a decision on which setting to run the online game in is made, determine a starting area and make sure there is a city/town and a dungeon/lair/ruins nearby. Done
     -When a setting with it's starting point is determined, schedule a start day and time.
     -Make a G+ Flailsnails post with an invite to play.

Week Three- "20 Quick Questions"

I've answered 13 out of 20 of Jeff Rients' "Twenty Quick Questions for Your Campaign Setting."  Getting a few done this week maybe?


Week Four- 

Update 9/11/18
Welp, the votes are in and the group would like me to run them through Curse of Strahd.  So looks like I'm going to need to read that and start adapting it to LotFP and the specifics of my Year of the Goat campaign.  That's going on the end of the list, though, since it's so large it might take me awhile.

     -Life During Wartime Part Two blogpost.
     -The Temple of the Fractured Snail- adventure location idea I had.
     -The Seclusium of the Orphone- I started making a seclusium from this book and it was tedious af, lol, but I want to finish it so I can drop it in my campaign somewhere.
     -Scenic Dunnsmouth- I think I got my SD local map finished, just need to figure out where to put it on my campaign map and set hooks/write a rumor table.
     -Curse of Strahd adaptation.

         

#RPGaDay2018 Day Eleven

Day 11 Question:  What is the wildest character name?

Pass.


Day 11 2015 Question:  Who is your favorite RPG writer?

Zak Smith AKA Zak Sabbath.  His book Vornheim helped pull me out of the gaming rut I was slogging through.  Reading his blog Playing DnD With Pornstars has helped me become a better DM.  Not only does he write beautiful prose, but he understands the need to craft truly useful gaming books.  I've written a two part review of Vornheim here:


http://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/02/vornheim-complete-city-kit-review-part.html

http://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/08/vornheim-complete-city-kit-review-part.html

Feast your eyes on his other books!  A Red & Pleasant Land, Frostbitten & Mutilated, and Maze of the Blue Medusa.