Dead Gods maps and battle maps

Cultists have taken over a townhouse and repurposed it. Now it is a heaving warren of evil and intrigue as they try to bring their dead gods back to terrorise the world.

Dead Gods map 1 created in ANAmap. This is the ground floor.

This is what it actually looks like as a battle map, ready to be loaded in to Fantasy Grounds. Battle map designed in Dungeon Painter Online.

The 2nd floor of the townhouse has balconies overlooking the garden and lots of beds - this means lots of cultists. 

D&D 5E Character Sheet

None of the editable PDF character sheets I could find worked well - the font sizes were too big, or too small, or not consistent. So one of the first things I set about doing was creating my own character sheet in Word 2016. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. It isn't perfect; it doesn't have space for spells for example. It will do as a starting sheet.

Of course, about 3 picoseconds after doing it, I found the wonderful character sheet builder at OrcPub. Oh well!

D&D 5E Character Sheet

Bargulg's Lair map

This map is from the Bargulg's Lair adventure I created for my children's campaign using ANAmap.

The Greenslade family have lived in Dire Keep for many generations, and the top left corner of this map their cellar area.

The rest of the map is of a long-forgotten abandoned underground temple belonging to some ancient sect. It has been taken over by a gang of goblins and hobgoblins commanded by an orc chieftain known as Bargulg. After making the lair safe for himself and his band, the orc has had the goblins digging tunnels to add to the original rooms of the sect. One of the tunnels dug out in this way backed on to the treasury of Dire Keep. Using some explosives found on a previous raid, the goblins blew a massive hole in the stone walls and poured in. 

Bargulg's Lair adventure

All the files required to run Bargulg's Lair.

Bargulg's Lair maps produced using ANAmap.
Dire Keep map produced using Dungeon Painter.
PDF and letter produced using Microsoft Word 2016 :)

Bargulg's Lair PDF
DM map Bargulg's Lair
Player map of Bargulg's Lair
Player map of Dire Keep
Player letter

The aftermath

This session started with a bit of a quandary - Ciarda and Dion realised they were badly beat up and out of spells and needed to rest, but they were (correctly) nervous about camping in a massive hall with several entrances. They eventually decided to try to camp in Bargulg's private quarters.

This was a good choice, especially with the door locked behind them - as they'd find out in the morning. One long rest later, they were good to go. Walking out of the locked door, they realised the remains of the goblin band had staked out the hall. An angry hobgoblin and 4 scared goblins rushed them while they were startled!

Ciarda's magic mace and Azrael's Burning Hands felled the goblins, and Dion's new arnour saved him from a blow or two, meaning excitement levels were high again right away. Finding a their first secret door hidden in the fireplace after the fight helped stoke it further.

Two guardian skeletons later, they were stuffing their backpacks with silver, trinkets to sell, and a couple of potions. Two treasure chests clearly marked as the Greenslades' offered my children a moral dilemma:

"can we not just take some of the gold, daddy?"
"How will anyone know if we take some?"

They made the right choice (for the story!) & returned the chests. This triggered more rewards from the Greenslades, and enough experience to hit level 3. Gaining more hit points and some new abilities on top of the magical toys has made them keen for more!

They've had a think about the various little adventure hooks I left lying around, and have decided on the path that'll take them to The Lost Mines of Phandelver (via some one shot adventures to make the journey interesting, and to link the two areas).

Bargulg's Lair has been declared a success. I'm really happy with it, and had a lot of fun designing it and writing it up. I'll not pretend that it's anything other than hackneyed and amateurish, but for a target audience of 7 & 8 it seemed to work. If the adventure invokes fear, excitement, real tears and a sense of achievement, it has done its job, hasn't it?

Bargulg's Lair

A search of the barracks had turned up nothing of note except a bunch of keys. The sort of keys that just cry out for a row of cells to make a story complete. Thankfully, the party chose to investigate the correct door immediately after and so found a prison block.

They found and rescued Lord Greenslade and his son, and also a badly injured man-at-arms (healed by Ciarda). In escorting the prisoners out, the party gained rewards of both experience and gold from the Greenslades. This pushed them well over the experience needed to reach level 2, and so the kids got their first taste of levelling in D&D.

 The Greenslade girl stayed behind at this point, leaving the core party to re-enter the lair and continue their search for Bargulg. They swept through the goblin quarters, winning an easy battle in the mess room, before stumbling into Bargulg's hall quite unprepared for what lay ahead.

This caused incredible excitement - screams of fear and hoots of "OHMIGOD!" and running around. Kids really seem to express their excitement physically, don't they? Eventually they settled enough to face some onrushing goblins, a hobgoblin overseer, and from the far end of the room, Bargulg the Orc. The goblins were dealt with by a Burning Hands spell from Azrael, but the hobgoblin made it to Dion and landed a vicious blow. Dion hit his mark in return, and Ciarda fired off a healing spell.

Unfortunately, though, Bargulg arrived with his clearly magical armour and mace and proceeded to beat Ciarda to within an inch of her life (1 hit point). At this point, Ciarda burst into sobs - I had no idea she was feeling so in-character, and we had to pause the game for a few seconds for cuddles!

She recovered to fire off some healing just as the other two characters finished off the orc and hobgoblin. All the characters were a bit beat up at this point, but the clearly magical equipment was driving everything! I know, I shouldn't be handing out magical goodies this early, but I'm their dad! I'm allowed to give them stuff!

Ciarda picked up a lovely +1 mace called Bonecrusher, and Dion managed to fit himself into the orc's +1 splintmail. Both were mightily happy with their new toys, and we called it a night here.

Dire Keep

A mysterious elf spoke to Dion and Ciarda the next day. Azrael the wizard rounds out the party, adds some area-of-effect and burst damage, and allows me to feed information to the kids without breaking immersion.

Adventure came calling as they all sat there discussing the mutual benefit of exploring together. It came calling in the form of a letter from Lady Greenslade at Dire Keep telling a tale of woe, goblin infestation and captured family.

Of course, I couldn't resist the lure of some physical props, so I printed out the letter and a map of the keep, folded them up, and handed them over. The kids seem to love this sort of interaction with the game world.

The promise of a rich reward wasn't the main lure (although it helped); the thought of a family ripped apart tugged on the kids' heartstrings and they were marching within minutes. Another goblin ambush sharpened their sense of impending danger, and this one was dispatched just as easily as the previous one. They were developing a swagger after these early encounters!

They both role-played admirably in the meeting with Lady Greenslade - Ciarda seems to have a natural ability to be in character, and Dion is full of ideas. They were joined by another NPC for the first part of this adventure as I wasn't sure how difficult they'd find it. I needn't have worried - the NPC hardly got a look-in!

The children quickly realised that the map they had matched with the rooms that they were exploring, and after a couple of minor skirmishes with wandering goblins in the Keep's cellars, they pushed into goblin territory. The map they had talked of a character called Bargulg, and they rightly assumed that he was the leader in these parts and would know where the prisoners were. These ideas were cemented when they decided (with no prompting from me) to capture rather than kill a lone goblin and question him. Luckily Ciarda could speak the goblin tongue. It took a wee reminder about their 'good' alignment to stop torture taking place, but they eventually put away the thumbscrews. Even better, they jailed the goblin in a locked room rather than killing it!

They pushed onwards, and met one of the hobgoblin overseers in a guard room. This was a trickier fight and it required some healing afterwards. Ciarda had discovered her command spell and had a little fun with it towards the end of the fight.

This evening's fun ended in what could have been an epic battle in the barracks, but a combination of sleeping enemies and another critical hit meant it was actually quite a minor fight. The tension of the exploration meant that two tired kids put away their character sheets that night.

First steps in a strange new world...

After eventually getting the character generation done, we settled on a backstory that had Dion and Ciarda as brother and sister - work with what you know! Each has some character elements to roleplay, and they both seem keen to be part of the story. I was keen to get them into some combat as early as possible to whet their appetite, so I organised a small ambush as they travelled to a village where I'd determined their adventure was about to begin.

There was tremendous excitement and a little actual fear when some bushes rustled and three goblins leapt out at them. Ciarda, with the imagination of a 7-year old, wanted to climb a tree, crawl along a branch and drop down behind the goblins to surprise them. I had to point out that (a) they could see her and (b) they were charging at her. Full marks for playing the story, though!

And so it was time to break out the dice and the dice trays and the combat rules. I had visions of my own first character in D&D - aimlessly swiping at fresh air whilst monsters sliced me up, hitting once every 1,000 swings... This might put them off for life, I worried.

No need to fear! Each of them rolled a natural 20, scored a critical hit, and felled their opponent on their first roll. What are the odds? (1 in 400, actually, and I'm still gobsmacked!)

The third goblin looked scared at this point, and both Dion and Ciarda said that they felt sorry for it because its friends were dead. Not too sorry, though, because they happily brained it when it jumped at them! After the fight they were both jumping around the room, as pumped up with adrenalin as if they'd actually been waving weapons at monsters!

As total novices, I had to remind them to search the bodies. They found a map, clearly of the goblin lair, but they had no idea how to get there, so they continued to the town for a night's rest.

Both declared D&D as "the best game EVER!" I count that as a success.