Tales from the Tabletop

What's the theme of your game? Are you using an existing campaign frame, or homebrewing one?

As for myself, I'm going through the Pathfinder 1e adventure path Rise of the Runelords for a couple players to get used to the swing of it in play. I only have adversaries statted out for the first chapter of the campaign though, and need to practice with environments.

I'm going to attempt to run a homebrew adventure that I wrote. It's available for free if you're interested in checking it out:

https://heartofdaggers.com/adventure/intro-one-shot/

It's definitely very Witherwild-inspired but designed to (hopefully) last 1 or 2 sessions.

To be honest, this weekend is a birthday get-together for me and I have a 3-month-old so I doubt there will be a lot of actual playing. Most likely scenario is everyone will make characters and maybe do the opening scene in the tavern before we have to call it.

How are you finding adapting RotR? Is it difficult to create environments from source material where those aren't really a thing?

Adapting Adversaries has been easy, but I'm still getting used to making Environments in general, so I have had some difficulty in crafting them out of the existing RotR material, BUT if we make it to chapter 2, there's a house with a lot of haunts and stuff in it, so that should dovetail nicely into Environment mechanics.

Just ran the session and had a blast!! We didn't finish the adventure, by any means, but we got further than I thought we would. Everyone made characters, asked each other their connection questions, got their mission from the Healer, and got into the first battle. We had to call it before the first battle was wrapped up but still had a great time.

I did not expect how great the connection questions would be! Everyone's characters got more fleshed out and there were some really great moments. One of my players (playing a Clank Bard) asked another player (playing a Ribbet Ranger) "how did you know we were going to be friends?" He though about it for a second and answered "when I saw all the mosquitos were attracted to your lights." That got a hard laugh.

I also love how Daggerheart sort of deputizes the players to co-GM with you. I had a scene where the players were meeting a rival party before heading into the corrupted forest. I wanted to include an NPC that one of my characters made in his backstory but he told me "If that were him, I would definitely try to kill him here and now, so maybe he's not with the group right now?" I thought that was great! We're creating the story together and rather than derail the whole thing with a personal fight (which should have happened at a big climactic moment), we redirected. I just said, "you see a shadowy figure in the corner but you can't make out who it is. When you go to take a closer look, all you see is a coat rack."

I'm lucky to have a group that is made up of not only great players, but great GMs, so any time I passed the narrative torch to them, they took it with gusto! I had them create the Healer, describe the local pub, name NPCs, detail the sights, sounds, and smells of the corrupted woods, and each time there was no awkwardness or hesitancy. They just threw out ideas and we rolled with it!

And, holy shit, minions!! Minions are the best thing ever! I went and changed some enemies from the first encounter from a horde to minions and I'm sooo glad I did. It was so awesome to watch the warrior take out 8 enemies in one move (whirlwind).

The background questions are great too. One of my players, playing a sorcerer, revealed to me that his "deep fear" was ducks, because they have weird teeth. I saw that and immediately thought "my acid burrower from the first encounter is now a giant acid-spitting duck." Revealing that in the first battle was amazing and his character immediately ran away. Great moment.

Anyway, I had such a great time and I think everyone else did too. We'll definitely try to pick it up again if we're all able to carve out some time.

@Chapo the Dog Ducks have teeth?!?!?!??!?!

@Dwayne at The Tabletop Tavern technically they're "tooth-like structures" on their beaks that help filter out debris when they're eating but they still look weird. Geese even have them on their tongues! If you want some nightmare fuel, google "goose teeth."

@Chapo the Dog I'm already freaked out.....Hard Pass on the Goose Teeth

Sounds like a great session. I play a recurring game with fellow life long DM's and it's one of my favorite tables to play at.

I'm lucky to have a group that is made up of not only great players, but great GMs, so any time I passed the narrative torch to them, they took it with gusto! I had them create the Healer, describe the local pub, name NPCs, detail the sights, sounds, and smells of the corrupted woods, and each time there was no awkwardness or hesitancy. They just threw out ideas and we rolled with it!

This warmed my soul !

I'm going to be running my first full campaign of Daggerheart once my current Exalted campaign is wrapped up, and I'm gradually working on a selection of (at least) four campaign frames, and when time to run gets closer I'm going to show off the frames to my players and have them all vote.

I wanted to create a campaign frame based on the Horizon Zero Dawn video game [ Off topic but you just reminded me of it]

@Dwayne at The Tabletop Tavern Have you checked out the Motherboard campaign frame? I've heard it's pretty close to Horizon Zero Dawn.

Also, @Eris , which campaign frames are you having your players vote on? Are they ones from the Core or homebrew? Also, voting on a frame seems like a really good idea. Great way to get buy-in from the players right away. There is the potential that the players all disagree on which frame to play in but I think for most tables that's pretty rare.

@Chapo the Dog A selection of homebrew ones!
A post-apocalyptic earth where magic came back
A frame where the PCs are criminals forced to fight a greater evil to earn their freedom and maybe redemption along the way
A frame where the PCs collectively inherit a castle with a mysterious past
And one more I haven't fully worked out yet.