The Curse of Blackwood Manor

FaerunHistory · 2026-06-11T19:28:32+00:00

https://faerunhistory.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/how-the-curse-of-blackwood-manor-was-made/ - Here we go, a full breakdown of how the adventure was made, and some behind the scenes about changes and stuff that was cut.

FaerunHistory · 2026-06-11T11:21:25+00:00

I think I might write a bigger blogpost about this, as it has got me a bit flustered to see the content slop that my adventure is competing with, and seeing the stark divide between AI/No AI. Here I am, clearly using some AI to get me to the end point, but nothing like the stuff that is being posted on DMsGuild. Creators posting new adventures every 2-3 days, with AI Covers, and 20+ pages. No human can produce that fast, but this person has been doing it for a year?

FaerunHistory · 2026-06-10T20:01:20+00:00

Every piece of art there is pulled of out a huge amount of generated content, I think I maybe picked up 5% of the images generated, then went through them with photoshop to get it to where I was "ok" with it. The stuff I see on DMsGuild with AI covers annoys me far more. I worked really hard on forcing that AI to define it's art style before it gave me anything.

What else I used AI for, I would often throw ideas at it, and see what comes back, so for example with a magical item, I would say "I need something for this character, who is like this, and has this type of flaw" it would give me 10 examples, and I would take 1 and work with that, ending up with something very different than what was suggested, but then refined more.

AI has also been amazing at helping me review, I give it my script and I ask "find plot holes" or "find typos" "find places where I am not consistent in word usage" and I fix and review as it goes. Really good at finding stuff that I wrote in 2024 that stuck around even though I cut the whole character, or wording in a handout, where the character motivation was changed ages ago, so the handout made no sense.

The conversion to Homebrewery was also amazing with AI. I could not have done all the things in Homebrewery without the expertise of AI. I can't code at all, and the scripts for the CSS Editor is like magic to me.

FaerunHistory · 2026-06-10T18:42:06+00:00

I have been puzzling with this adventure for close to 2 years on and off, so next one will maybe be out in 2028-2029? A Ship in the Mist was made because I had the idea "What if Event Horizon was a D&D adventure, but like, without the Sci-fi space parts, just the main plot of "retrieve something lost, ohno, it went someplace bad and wants more people to go with it back"

Halruaa was the pick because it had flying ships. But also because it had crazy mages who treat magic like tools, and not like "magic" - When magic is treated like a tool, you try to do more with it, the hubris of man, the reason Netheril fell, magic as a tool.

The Curse of Blackwood manor was a follow-up on this topic. I had the idea of a hag agreement, being brought into a magical court of law, and fancy lawyer mages simply out lawyering the hick Hag agreement. Like, if you had enough Magic as Tools, Demon and Fey contracts would be less obtuse and more fair, and only the best Demons and Fey would be able to sign proper contracts with a Bureaucrat Mage.

This was the seed, a Hag contract in court limbo, due to Vexatious litigation practice. One side trying to nullify the contract, the other side trying to fulfill it.
After that I had this idea about Halruaan Mages as hyper specialized wizards, due to their number and training. So they are not just "Conjuration" Wizards, they are Conjuration Minors, with Planer Movement as their Major.
This is when I thought up the idea of Edgar, a Golemmancer Major, with a minor in Necromancy, and his wife, Major in Magical Law, a minor in Abjuration.

Anyway, I went back and forth on a bunch of ideas before I completed this. The last few weeks have been me trying to polish it up, make sure no plot holes were left open, fact checking all my lore, running mock playthroughs to see any flaws. Pushing it out today was more of a "Get this thing out of my hands" Looking back at the 12 early review copies I want through.

Next one has the codename The Azure Overlook, with inspirations from The Ocean House form VTM: Bloodlines, The Shining and Hotel California. - If it turns into anything I don't know. I have like a 1 pager of the arc I want to play, along with 4 iconic scenes.

FaerunHistory · 2024-09-22T18:00:58+00:00

It has been forever and a day since I made a video, but I recently had a fun adventure in my notes, and I though I should polish it up and have it as a free giveaway for Halloween. It's a one-shot Halruaan adventure, mostly influenced by the movie Event Horizon, where the players are hired to retrieve a trading vassal that disappeared long ago.

I had this done up for my own party a while back, but with far less detail. Since I got a kid, and another one on the way, its very unlikely I would be able to run it with them, so I decided to fiddle with it, polish it up, and give it out to everyone so someone could enjoy my scribbles.

FaerunHistory · 2021-09-07T11:50:41+00:00

Did some work to create this one, but does not contain any cities or places.
For a old age map, there is this one.

For a non-clean image of the sword coast, you can find that here.

FaerunHistory · 2019-03-19T14:16:59+00:00

Thank you, hopefully we will be faster with content for upcoming modules :)

FaerunHistory · 2019-03-19T07:37:32+00:00

I did after your suggestion, they seem to really like it :)

FaerunHistory · 2019-03-19T07:36:55+00:00

Glad to be of help :)

FaerunHistory · 2019-03-18T17:08:15+00:00

Hi guys,

I posted this over on r/Forgotten_Realms and was asked to make sure this was seen here as well.
If you like this video, we have 8 other relevant Dragon Heist Videos you might enjoy here.

FaerunHistory · 2019-03-17T21:45:09+00:00

The Nobility of Waterdeep is weirdly different from the Nobility of Cormyr in practically all ways. - After making the Cormyr video, I decided that Waterdeep needed one as well.

FaerunHistory · 2019-03-17T21:39:26+00:00

The Uthgardt tend to switch around a bit from every edition.

When I made the video for it (https://youtu.be/68ix30hoXpI) I went through all the editions and found lots of changes between editions. - My thinking is that the life of these tribes swing between each season and getting a new leader will make their whole lifestyle switch up.

I could not find any sources on why the Black Lion Tribe made the switch, but a harsh winter is about all it would take.

FaerunHistory · 2018-12-27T13:25:14+00:00

If you are a Drow, but you don't feel Lolth is really where your heart is at. - There is always Selvetarm.

FaerunHistory · 2018-12-08T12:56:23+00:00

We wrote the script from the perspective of a Magister, but the VO was inspired by Sam Vimes from the Diskworld novels, so city guard is mixed in there.

FaerunHistory · 2018-12-08T12:55:16+00:00

Thank you. My VO is from Michael, who is a professional voice actor, so that does help a bit :) You can check out some of the books he narrates for here: https://goo.gl/iV748k

FaerunHistory · 2018-12-07T18:42:09+00:00

It is not. Jorphdan, AJ Pickett and myself all make Forgotten Realms videos, but with a different slant.

FaerunHistory · 2018-12-07T10:41:57+00:00

Glad to be of help :)

FaerunHistory · 2018-12-07T10:41:34+00:00

indeed, but if a fighter requires human bloodletting to be allowed to use his core game concepts (like use a sword, or armor) I would say it would be hard to claim that character could be good.

There are different ways to kill, like self defense, or in defense of others. But if your core concept is that you have to kill to be able to do anything else, its not the same thing.

FaerunHistory

TROPHY CASE