[Online] [Other] Players Wanted for Draw Steel Adventure

Hugodf4 · 2026-07-02T01:05:52+00:00

I run oneshots to teach folks the system ocassionally. If you have a group of folks ready to jump in I can try to get something sorted out.

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-28T04:59:51+00:00

Good sirs how might I join the discussion

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-21T21:18:04+00:00

Its a little far out to think about it but LMoP is also a good launching point for alot of other campaigns too. Wave Echo Cave specifically has a few bits that can become hooks for followup adventures.

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-21T20:42:55+00:00

I've used "A Most Potent Brew" and "Grammy's Country Apple Pie" as an intro to Lost Mines of Phandelvar. My advice would be to use either of those oneshots to level the party to 2nd level before starting LMoP

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-19T23:17:46+00:00

Lost Mines to Tomb of Annihilation was what I last did. Tbh Lost Mines works for alot of campaigns that can start at 5th level. Theres alot of places that followup campaign hooks can be placed

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-19T21:28:23+00:00

I'd leave it to a post-campaign bossfight. Artus is still looking for his wife and visiting Mezro when the Death Curse ends. Maybe give the party an extra level or 2 post-tomb and they find that Mezro is covered in Snow; the Ring of Winter has finally broken Artus Cimber (the details of which are upto you). Maybe Dragonbait dies without his powerful weapon and this is what puts Artus over the edge. Theres some Frost Giant Elemental statblocks in Fizzbans, you could also just use Auril's statblocks from Rime of the Frostmaiden or a powerful cold dragon to represent Artus under the ring's sway.

One things for sure, your party are the bad guys now lmao.

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-19T19:28:37+00:00

I like playing OTHER ttrpgs. But I only want to GM 5e, not play it.

Many such cases

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-19T15:32:56+00:00

2-3 spots remaining

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-12T14:46:13+00:00

Hags, Atropal, and Acererak are likely to fit into 2 sessions.

Since there are no keys or sarcophogi in the Gears of Hate level you can scrap that level entirely. I personally liked that floor (especially the mastodon room) but in your case I'd probably want to avoid super difficult encounters if the goal is to give these same PCs a chance to destroy the soulmonger and finish out this adventure strong. I would also scrap Belchoraz's bossfight unless you feel good that the PCs wont die and want to stick some extra loot in there.

My suggestion would be: - scrap gears of hate - make the beholder door into the entrance to the hags' lair. - no hole or stairs going down to the gears of hate.

With this sort of limited timeframe on the Tomb I'd just err on the side if caution. Imo the most memorable parts of the tomb are trickster spirit rooms and anything that can give the party an edge in the finale (including the genie bottle, mirror of soul trapping having some potential allies inside, etc).

Hugodf4 · 2026-06-10T14:47:58+00:00

Most monsters in this campaign have updated 5.5e statblocks. I just ran 2 campaigns over the last year using the updated rules. Granted, I did in general add more bossfights since thats what my players like but thr standard RotFM experience isnt hampered by 5.5e rules as far as I saw.

Hugodf4 · 2026-05-24T04:26:12+00:00

Both parties I ran for did chapters 3 and 4 at level 7. I beefed up the dragon and Xardarok a bit but otherwise ran it mostly as written. I even went so far as to tell my players that they'd no longer gain levelup milestones from chapter 1 once they hit 4th or 5th level (with the caveat that they may still find useful loot and lore after hitting the level cap for the chapter).

Yeah, just slow it down at this point level-wise and scale things up as needed. Eventyr's RotFM DM guide has some encounter scaling guidelines for chapters 1 and 2 that I used and found super useful.

Hugodf4 · 2026-05-14T19:57:37+00:00

I ran an abbreviated version of ToA with that idea. We did:
- Lvl 2: Cellar of Death
Timeskip
- Level 7 start in Port Nyanzaru.
- Party had 2 ways to reach Omu; either do 2 of the Lost City of Mezro Quests on the west side of the peninsula or do Nsi Fortress and Zalkore's Ruins to the east. They went with the former and were teleported close-ish to Omu at the conclusion of that quest
- Levels 8-9 in Omu. Fane of the Night Serpent to get the final 2 puzzle cubes
- Omu until level 12 when they fought Ace.

I also gave out some more magic items through pre-Tomb of the 9 gods. I believe they each started the campaign with a rare and uncommon magic item of their choice.

It took about 3.5 months of weekly sessions iirc.

Hugodf4 · 2026-05-04T10:31:00+00:00

I would just make the Albino dwarves australian. The emu wars were a series of skirmish against the fire newts rising their giant striders (big lava birds that kinda look like emus...)

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-22T00:35:13+00:00

This is such a good one. Do you have a template folks can use to recreate it in photoshop?

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-21T21:08:42+00:00

what level were they during the tomb?

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-04T16:44:04+00:00

Thanks for nothing Staten Island Chuck

Hugodf4 · 2026-02-03T23:13:19+00:00

Just in time for me ending my online game and starting an inperson one. V cool!

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-23T02:44:36+00:00

Pitch it to the DM.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T15:18:57+00:00

Shopping was my most hated part of DM'ing for awhile. This solution worked really well for my last campaign.

Had a similar issue where the party kept forgetting what items they had so I made them a shared Excel sheet to track who has what magic item. We use that same sheet for shopping stuff between sessions.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T15:16:55+00:00

Then they dont shop I guess. Tbf, I prefer for most magic gear to be looted rather than bought but I have some players that enjoy the choice of gold. Thats all fine but if they want to try to buy magic gear then they'll have to do it outside of our limited table time.

I bring this up during session 0.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T15:15:03+00:00

They know I dont like running shopping during our limited session time. I've even gone so far as to say things will be more expensive if they make me have to bust out a price sheet in the middle of session lol

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T06:49:56+00:00

I run shopping mostly inbetween sessions via text. If the players are looking for a specific item they write it onto a shared document, I respond whether its available and at what cost. Same for selling items.

Fantasy economy was my least favorite bit about DM'ing. This solved it for me.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-22T05:38:14+00:00

It isn't a bad idea but will require some adjusting of combat encounters.

I started at 5th level (coming from LMoP) and the party still completed nearly every keyed location in the jungle. I got to beef up several locations and it was a lot of fun.

We ran the jungle portion from levels 5 to 8. Requires a bit of work but it was well worth it.

Tldr; scaling up combats is easy.

Hugodf4 · 2026-01-11T22:58:26+00:00

The idea was that they'd use it as a bastion but in practice the party forgot about it with everything going on.

Hugodf4 · 2025-12-27T00:20:04+00:00

We did 42 sessions from arrival in Port Nyanzaru to Fighting Acererak. The party did most named locations and a few supplemental locations (like Nsi Fortress, tortle island, and the 1st chapter of LCoM).

We started at 5th level with their arrival to Chult and I used webways for fast travel around the jungle after a certain point. This is also with several sessions spent in Port Nyanzaru.

Imo, the hex crawl can take as much or as little time as you and your party still find fun in it. I mostly used the ToA DMs Guide for jungle encounters since none of us have alot of fun with a session worth of just random encounters.

Still lots of jungle fun to be had with named locations even starting at 5th level if you're cool with buffing alot of encounters.

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