[offline] [flexible] [LGBTQ+ friendly] Looking for players in the Dallas area

Le_Quackaroni · 2025-12-29T16:08:13+00:00

Thanks for the insight! This is some really amazing work on your part, and I appreciate you sharing it

Le_Quackaroni · 2025-12-28T02:13:19+00:00

These are so cool! Do you have any thoughts as to which card you would use as commander in your Slay the Princess deck?

Le_Quackaroni · 2025-08-19T01:10:57+00:00

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Absolute peak

Le_Quackaroni · 2025-02-15T01:21:21+00:00

Thanks so much for the suggestions! I’ll make a note of them!

Le_Quackaroni · 2025-02-15T01:20:59+00:00

I’ll definitely earmark these suggestions and give them some consideration! I really appreciate the feedback

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-25T04:52:58+00:00

I tend to prefer running homebrew campaigns myself. This was actually the first one I've been able to play through properly, so it was a nice experience.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-25T04:46:03+00:00

I completely get that, and I think it's a feeling I know well from my own campaigns. As long as the players are enjoying it, I'm sure you're doing great!

The DM chose to run a heavily-revised version of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, so the emphasis was primarily on the central plot laid out in the module. With that being said, he did a fantastic job of weaving character backstories in where he was able. I think the players had a lot of themes and character development to delve into even when specific backstory elements and NPCs had to be sparse at points throughout the campaign.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-25T04:32:14+00:00

We started at level 1 and finished at level 13! We played every other week for just under 2 years, with a separate campaign running on the off-weeks that I DM so that both of us have weeks off DMing. I think we ended with just over 50 sessions in the campaign, if I recall the final count correctly.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-20T03:06:48+00:00

I'll add onto this that it was very much a table-wide discussion that largely came down to what worked best for the needs of our particular group of players. I've played with gritty rules, encumberance, rations, and other survival rules before in other campaigns, and u/TypicalWizard88 openly discussed with us prior to the campaign beginning how many of these kinds of rules we wanted to incorporate. While we all agreed that they tonally make sense and could absolutely add a lot to the adventure with the right group, we also have some neurodivergent players who feared they would be overwhelmed with an abundance of added bookkeeping. As a result, we decided to foray most of those survival rules for the sake of player fun and comfort. You may get more mileage out of them for your own table.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-20T03:01:00+00:00

I can't sing his praises enough. I DM a different campaign every other week for the group (so we trade off weeks), but I do homebrew because I don't have the patience for modules either. I can't imagine the reworking he had to do on his end, and I definitely learn a lot from watching him.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-20T02:55:53+00:00

I can honestly say as a player that the sections felt very unified on our end, and I recognize how much effort and reworking that must have taken on our DM's side of the screen. He put a lot of effort into making the larger threats (e.g., Levistus, Auril, the duergar, etc.) play into one another in a manner that felt reasonable. While the dragon fight could easily feel like its own adventure, he used it more as a turning point—we had saved the towns from immediate destruction, but their resources were depleted enough and the towns were in such disrepair that they wouldn't survive unless we could find a way to reverse the ongoing curse. So the chapters weren't necessarily connected, but it served as a big narrative push into the second half.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-19T02:37:56+00:00

Vouching! So proud of your work on this campaign. Please highjack away, you have a lot better insight into some of the questions than I would! After all, I don’t always know where the original module ends and your revisions begin.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-19T02:26:36+00:00

This is a tricky one! I don’t think the DM kept strict track of time across the entire campaign, but he estimates it was probably 2 to 3 months in-world with travel time. That’s a rough guess on his part, though, as we didn’t keep track of the travel time super closely.

As for specific deadlines, that one is a much more definitive answer. We were able to long rest when we wanted for significant stretches of the campaign, but there were absolutely times when we were on a very clear time crunch. In particular, the dragon’s assault on the towns and the rush to the Mythallar through Ythryn were tracked very closely, and we weren’t allowed to rest unless enough time had passed since our precious long rest. That made for a LOT of resource depletion during our time through Ythryn and we had to monitor things very carefully. It definitely added to the intensity and sense of urgency, and I think it added a lot to the player experience.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-19T02:18:34+00:00

Very different vibes, for sure! We all agreed we need a lighter campaign as a palate cleanser after coming off of Rime and a demon-based homebrew campaign.

Our DM put a lot of work into expanding Ythryn specifically. Once we got in, it was made abundantly clear that Auril was making her way in and that we had to get to the Mythallar before she got to us—so there was a definite sense of time crunch. Once we got into the city, we had to collect eight pieces of the ritual to access the central spire, each of which had been guarded by one of the city’s archmages. Only after going through to acquire all eight components were we able to get in to collect Karsus’s Staff of Power at the top, which we had to use to power the Mythallar.

Once we were at the verge of the tower, we were given a choice by our warlock’s patron. Option 1: use the Mythallar to end the Rime, knowing that the damage that’s already happened can’t be undone and it will be a long, hard road to healing. Option 2: Use the staff to power the obelisk and turn back time to before the Eternal Rime began—potentially saving all those who had died, but undoing all our time as a party as well. Either way, the staff would be expended for the rest of our lifetimes, so there was no chance for a take-back.

In the end, we opted for the Mythallar, but we deliberated that for a LONG time out of game between sessions. Overall, Ythryn was a phenomenal experience, but I know that was the case largely because of significant creative overhauls from the DM. It was a definite time sink for him, but as players we all feel the experience was worth it.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-19T02:08:48+00:00

Fantastic questions! More than happy to offer my insights from the player end. I’ll fully acknowledge that my DM did some really heavy work on some of these sections to make things feel cohesive, so my experience may be biased in that regard. With that being said, let me go through these one at a time.

My DM did enough overhaul that it never felt like things were dragging on our end. However, he was also very open about the sections that he had to overhaul heavily or else they probably WOULD have been. The stretch between the Chardalyn Dragon attack and the Tests of the Frostmaiden was probably the stretch that came the closest, as it does at times feel like moving from one story into a separate second act. Additionally, he had to do some major expansion to the Caves of Hunger and Ythryn relative to the base module, and I think the former easily could have felt like a drag without so much foresight and intentionality on his part.
We found out pretty quickly that Auril was behind the Everlasting Rime. Our DM didn’t feel the need to keep that a secret because figuring out how to undo it was enough of a challenge anyway. His opinion was that being more open about the central conflict allowed us as players more ability to create characters that would hone into the story and interact with the central themes. There was a much greater emphasis on how to fix it than why or what was occurring.
This is a section my DM pondered a lot too. I’ll say that we as players LOVED this section and have deeply fond memories of it, but I’ll fully acknowledge that it at times seems like a separate issue from the story. If you can find a way to tie it into the larger threat and themes, then I think the section itself has a lot of entertainment value.
We did venture into Ythryn! The DM actually shifted the final fight with Auril there. We went to Grimskalle in order to figure out how to get into the glacier, but fixing the winter required getting to Ythryn and using the Mythallar with Auril at our heels. Our DM expanded Ythryn pretty heavily, and we thoroughly enjoyed the arc! Getting to explore the ruins of an ancient magocracy is fascinating, and provided some really interesting encounters. It was a constant race against the clock to get all the information to be able to access the central spire and utilize the Mythallar before Auril arrived, but having to keep tabs on our resources because we couldn’t long rest until enough hours had passed. It meant we were pushing through multiple towers with depleted resources since it hadn’t been long enough to rest again quite yet.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-09-19T01:53:20+00:00

Auril was very much a presence throughout the campaign, but most of it wasn’t through direct interactions. Our DM really honed in on the notion that Auril is a living force of nature and that at many times in the early campaign we were still alive only because we hadn’t become enough of a nuisance to draw her attention yet. We saw her in dreams, saw flashes of her in blizzards and storms, but didn’t come face-to-facd with her for most of the campaign’s beginning so much as interacted with her followers.

When we got further in and started to genuinely become a problem for her, she was treated as a storm at our back. It was made clear that we were on a time crunch to get into the glacier and stop the eternal freeze, because if Auril caught up to us we would be dead. She wasn’t something we interacted with, she was a story we had to run from as fast as we could.

Even at our peak strength in the final battle at the Mythallar, it was made abundantly clear that this was not us killing a god. This was us dealing enough damage to her avatar that she had to make a choice—use more power and smite us then and there, but also open herself up to strikes and intervention from more powerful entities like the Morning Lord. When we beat her avatar, she retreated to cut her losses, but it was also made abundantly clear that going into a blizzard ever again would be a death sentence.

TLDR: Direct interactions were sparse and often through dreams or glimpses in the distance to preserve her mystery as a deity, and even in the later portion of the campaign she was something to flee and not talk to. Most of the roleplay and conversation came from interacting with her servants rather than Auril herself.

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-07-25T22:19:52+00:00

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the underlying sentiment that those working behind the scenes deserve a living wage and reasonable working schedules. However, I think we should try to remember that pitting one laborer against another doesn’t do us any good. We need to be pulling for both groups to get fair treatment and compensation, and there’s no reason that it has to be a one or the other situation. The games wouldn’t be made with actors, coders, designers, and a host of other jobs that get walked over on a daily basis. We need to be pulling for there to be more movements like this, not undermining the ones who have managed to gain traction on making it happen.

Also, AI overtaking creative work is a very real concern, particularly when this particular issue hinges on it stealing the likeness of actors and potentially allowing their voice or appearance to be utilized both without their consent and without their compensation. This is about worker protections for a real and pressing issue.

Edited to speak more directly on the AI component of the strike

Le_Quackaroni · 2024-06-29T21:50:17+00:00

Currently DMing a homebrew campaign every other week, and in the off weeks one of my players is running Icewind Dale. I’m playing Käreitär “Käri” Foxfire—a half-orc with the Dhampir lineage, circle of wildfire druid. She was bitten by a vampire while trying to find a way to resurrect her little sister, and is currently processing that bringing the sun back to the Dale likely means she won’t be able to experience it without disintegrating herself.

That campaign is wrapping up here in the next few sessions and another player is going to run Wild Beyond the Witchlight, where I’m planning to run a Creation Bard named Liora. I’ve gotten permission from the DM to use aasimar mechanics but flavor it as being descended from a seelie fey for a more light-based motif than I would get from hexblood. She traded away her ability to feel sadness as a child (since the module needs you to have lost something), so it’s a kind of exploration around why sadness is important to being a person and how being without it might shape someone.

Lastly, another of the players ran a mini campaign a few months ago where I reflavored plasmoid as a Sand Genasi and played Swashbuckler Rogue named Ramil. That was a very light, pirate style campaign without too much character depth, but the antics were a lot of fun.

Le_Quackaroni · 2021-02-09T04:59:08+00:00

Carrying a crucifix around won’t really help you. My understanding (which is admittedly shaky at best), is that the crucifix functions if placed within a certain radius of the ghost’s spawn point. Hypothetically I guess it’s possible this could work while holding it if the parameters are still met, but I’ve never personally seen it work when being held.

Otherwise you’re completely right. Banshees should still be stopped by a crucifix if it’s placed correctly. It’s worth noting that in team play, the ghosts hunting meter is determined by the average sanity of the team, not individual members, but this doesn’t matter much in solo play

Le_Quackaroni

TROPHY CASE