This past week, my table and I decided to get back into the swing of playing D&D. Given how life has been the past few months, and the perhaps overall grim outlook (even without politics being brought up) – we wanted to play a little fantasy game where we roll some magic math click-clacks and roleplay a little.
Given that I’m currently working 50+ hours a week and don’t have time to do my normal build a whole new world from scratch or take an existing world and create a new adventure (which isn’t to say that I’m not also currently doing that in my free time!), I decided to do something abnormal for me – that being running a preconstructed module. After some debate with the table, we ultimately narrowed down the selection to Descent into Avernus (we are big Baldur’s Gate 3 fans), the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, and Storm King’s Thunder. The only real restrictions that we had on which module we chose was that there needed to be an overarching plot with very apparent evil to oppose, and that they didn’t want to play a straight-up sandbox module (which ruled out Curse of Strahd). We did also say that we were going to run some of these other modules in the future, if everything goes well.
I plan on taking some time between each session to talk about the prep work I do for each session, as well as document the sessions and just have some place that I can begin talking about Dungeons & Dragons-related content at.
In the first Chapter, the party is traveling to the town of Nightstone. I’ve revamped the prompt that the Adventure hands me, as it doesn’t really give a reasoning for how the party would have met.
Renown for its food and cozy guest rooms, the Nightstone Inn (ran by Morak Ur’gray) is known to have a fondness for adventurers and a nose for lucrative adventuring opportunities. In addition, you each have heard rumors that there are a number of wealthy nobles who are looking for skilled mediators, guards, and the High Steward of Nightstone, Lady Velrosa Nandar, who is looking for anyone willing and able to deal with some goblins
My players promptly pulled together some characters using the 5.5e/2024 Edition rules. I also allowed them to use options available in 5e/2014 Edition (I will refer to each as 5e/5.5e from here on out, accordingly). After much internal deliberation, Trever decided on a Firbolg Artificer named Persea. Dain quickly decided on playing a Shield/Mountain Dwarf Cleric named Grom Firebeard. And, finally Jimmy decided on playing a Wood Elf Bard named Sweet Jack. My players used AI to generate the pictures for their characters, so I won’t be posting any pictures of the characters.
In addition to this, the players are also creating an additional character that will fill the fourth slot for the adventure. We did this for a couple reasons, primarily because it’s easier for me to balance encounters around a party of 4 – but also so that I could play an NPC that in the event of an untimely demise (I definitely have not critically hit Trever’s character and either one shot his character or nearly one shot his character in every campaign we’ve run this far) – we have a character they can instantly take over for me, so they don’t just instantly check out and start scrolling TikTok 
. It also means that I get to make a character using the new rules, so I decided on a Fire Ancestry Goliath Barbarian named Nazak. Trever made a Water Genasi Ranger named Rayne, that will be utilizing two weapon fighting. The other two haven’t made their characters yet, so I will probably make an update for what they decide to create later.
Regarding prep work, I was able to import the entire adventure into FoundryVTT – which included the module’s maps. I will say that it’s a very nice change from having to look or make maps for adventures. That being said, I will probably be finishing my homebrewed “module” using the Tal’Dorei Reborn campaign setting book, so that I have just other content to run for different tables over time. Perhaps I’ll post that here as well.
Since I didn’t have to worry about too much prep, basically just pulling some encounters together and having a plan the first session – I focused on reading the module in it’s entirety. Okay, I lied – I skimmed it. But, I at least have a general idea of the direction that the adventure will be going and have mentally started planning out future sessions. I will be able to prepare future sessions more specifically once I get an idea of how quickly the party wants to fly through the adventure.