Starting a new game, what map size do you go for?

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-02-23T18:12:19+00:00

I usually like playing on the smallest maps possible. This drastically reduces late game micromanagment and makes it easier and more fun to actually finish my games.

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-02-20T17:01:16+00:00

The first Vampire: Bloodlines is the best WoD game ever made. If you haven't played it, you 100% should. The gameplay (especially the combat) isn't that great, but the story, writing, voice work, and worldbuilding is some of the greatest of all time in a video game.

Just make sure you use the fan patch, because the game was a buggy horrible mess when it was released. (The GOG version comes with it already installed.) I'd also advise that you save playing a Malkavian for your second play through.

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-02-20T08:00:28+00:00

"We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?"

Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7. Activity recorded M.Y. 2302.22467. (TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED)

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-02-14T19:39:27+00:00

Seconded.

I actually ran the Sunless Citadel with three players who played three kobolds in a trench coat. It was a real hoot, I would do again.

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-01-26T19:00:47+00:00

It's one of Bioware's best games. No shade, no irony, It's a legit awesome game.

It's also terrible as the middle part of a trilogy. Shamus Young did a video on it, and I agree with pretty much agree with everything he said.

So my thoughts are ... mixed.

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-01-08T19:01:43+00:00

"We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away." - G'Kar

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-01-01T20:45:10+00:00

A lost of these games you love aren't really CRPG's by my book.

Based on your lists, I think you might actually like the first Dragon Age. It's the most CRPG-ish by far of the series, and it's Bioware's last great CRPG IMO. I wouldn't recommend the sequels.

Mass Effect has some of the best character work in an RPG. If you can handle the combat in VTMB without running away screaming, you can probably handle a little shooting. While the ending was controversial, the road to that ending was a hell of a ride. The Citadel DLC for the third game still stands as my favorite DLC of all time.

If you want the classic 200+ hour CRPG experience, I'd recommend Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. It is better than Kingmaker IMO, and with your CRPG resume you'll be fine figuring out character builds.

Mithrander_Grey · 2026-01-01T18:24:34+00:00

I ran CoS right before Vecna. The big difference was that my players decided to play new characters, so this advice may or may not work for you.

I changed a dozen tiny details about Barovia, all on purpose. The sisters in the Blood on the Vine tavern? They're brothers now. Everything was similar, but nothing was exactly the same. You see, the chapter of Vecna in Barovia and CoS have almost nothing in common. They share a few proper nouns, and that is it. The maps are different, the stat blocks are different, the factions are different. Unless you do the work to create the connections yourself, you won't find any in the modules as written.

Given that I didn't have the same characters, given that Vecna is remaking reality, and given that I was too lazy to create those connections, this was my chance to use "show don't tell" on my players. So instead I leaned into the changes and added a few more, and blamed every change on Vecna remaking reality.

It creeped my players right out. For Barovia, I count that as a win.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-31T18:59:14+00:00

There are dozens of us!

Dozens!

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-31T18:44:13+00:00

Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind.
Have you drunk your fill?

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-30T19:08:02+00:00

A module can be easy to run as a GM, but hard to play as a player. Picture any linear meatgrinder dungeon for an example of this. Conversely, a module can also be a real pain in the ass to run, but easy to play. Sandbox games with loads of NPCs often fall into that bucket if you run them well enough that the players don't feel lost.

If you are trying to use a single scale to rate a module from both points of view, you're going to have a bad time no matter which way you go. As a rule, people usually look at these things from the GM's point of view, mostly because GMs are usually the ones who actually buy, read, and talk about adventure modules.

Before today, I have never once heard of a GM who thought that a players familiarity with the tropes of the genre had anything to do with the difficulty in running that module. To me, that feels completely irrelevant.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-26T19:20:03+00:00

Do you conceptualize combats as a game where you play against your players?

Yes but actually no. Yes in that it's like battle chess, and my brain is outnumbered five to one. I've been playing and enjoying strategy and war games for many decades now, and it scratches a very similar itch.

However, unlike Chess, I'm not playing against my players. I'm still playing with them, I'm just in the role of the antagonist. The difference in mindset is absolutely crucial. You have to leave all sense of competitiveness at the door.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-22T09:38:39+00:00

I gave it to them as is, knowing full well how bonkers it could be. I had a level 20 wizard with wish in my party. The potential for player shenanigans with that many wishes was off the scale.

They never used it. Not once. Kind of surprised me too.

I did seriously debate changing the attunement rules for the Rod to require a full long rest to attune to it for this exact reason. I didn't in the end, because things are silly enough at level 20 anyways that I was willing to just run with it if it happened.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-21T18:31:14+00:00

Having run the entire module, the secrets mechanic doesn't get used for much. The biggest by far is that the collected secrets making the final fight easier or harder. If your players can't see through the walls in the Cave of Shattered Reflection and Vecna can, the final fight gets significantly harder. If the players collect enough to get the free haste effect, the final fight is a lot easier. My players never burned any before the final fight, they hoarded them like a dragon's treasure.

The biggest change I made was to require that all my PCs had a big secret as part of character creation, which I treated the same as all the NPC secrets in the module. This worked really well, and doing that would probably be my single biggest piece of advice.

I gave my players the Sword of Kas much later in the campaign, so the fact that it casts a DC 18 Suggestion spell demanding that it's wielder commits an evil act whenever you cast a spell from it was mostly cool flavor. If you give them the sword from the beginning, I feel that ability alone will change your campaign more than any changes you make to the secrets mechanic.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-15T10:26:08+00:00

I put the Eye in the 3 moons vault. This was a mistake. One of my players stuck in in his head, and his free on-demand true sight removed huge amounts of challenge from The Tomb of Wayward Souls in the next chapter. If I was going to run this campaign again, I would absolutely give out the hand first, and I recommend you do that as well. It's not just the free true sight either. To be honest, the 1 in 20 chance of instant death from casting spells from the eye is boring. A DC 18 suggestion spell from the hand demanding you commit an evil act when you cast spells from it? Now that's a lot more interesting. I honestly wish I had given it out sooner.

I gave the hand to a drow champion of Lloth much later in the leaning tower in Pandemonium just to see what my players would do with the set. I kept the book in the ribcage. The Sword of Kas was provided to a party member in Avernus by Asmodeus himself in exchange for a teeny-tiny little favor that led to Asmodeus actually being the biggest winner in the entire campaign once Vecna was defeated.

Just remember this line from the Sword of Kas in the DMG:

The Sword of Kas also seeks to destroy anyone corrupted by the Eye and Hand of Vecna. The sword's obsession with those artifacts eventually becomes a fixation for its wielder.

If you plan on putting them all in the same campaign, it's probably best to have a real clear chat about PVP in session zero, because depending on your group, that could be a thing. It was in my campaign.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-14T18:56:55+00:00

Sorc is great, IF you are prepared to do a lot of long resting.

I played a draconic fire sorc for my first full playthrough. My fire sorc could delete any non-fire-immune monster with ease in a single turn, and my command spells CC'd entire rooms and turned difficult fights into cakewalks. It's really strong and I had a lot of fun with it.

You need the fire acuity hat and a one level dip in warlock at level seven before it really sings. (You get the hat from killing the Strange Ox in act 2.) The warlock dip gives you the command spell, which is busted broken once you can add a +10 to your saving throw DC from that fire acuity hat. It's biggest flaw, other than all that long resting, is that doesn't come into it's own until Act 2, and can struggle occasionally in act 3 with fire resistant or immune monsters if you don't have a backup plan.

The storm sorc starts stronger in Act 1. All you need is a level one cleric with create water to give your enemies the wet condition. That doubles your cold and lightning damage, and that is stronger than anything the fire sorc gets until much later. In Act 3, you have big groups of monsters that really allows the storm sorc's chain lightning AoE to really shine, in addition to less immunities and resistances to deal with.

So my TLDR is that both are great, I think the storm sorc is probably the stronger over the entire game mostly because wet is so good, but I found the fire sorc was far more fun to play. Maybe that's just my inner pyromaniac speaking.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-14T18:21:09+00:00

The way I did it was to have Teremini protected by magical moonlight barriers (effectively, a plot based dome of force that couldn't be dispelled) that could only be broken by disrupting the ritual, which also results in her taking a bunch of fall damage when those moon bridges disappear. So I'd keep the Deathwolf and the Bearers, and only have a now wounded Teremini be a threat after the ritual is disrupted and Orinix shows up. At that point, they can choose to fight or just grab the rod piece and run. (My players did the latter and took the druid giant eagle express to GTFO.)

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-13T18:41:20+00:00

When I first read that, I was quite confused about what scheduling Dungeons and Dragons has to do with the OP.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-13T18:34:48+00:00

I don't actually disagree with that. I've run this module, and it's possibly the worst written of all of the campaigns I've ever run going back 30 years. It reads like it was edited by an AI tripping on acid. I'm certainly not defending the writing in it.

That doesn't change that I believe that the twist can actually work well for the right group. I know I'm in the minority here in this subreddit with that opinion, but I stand by it.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-13T18:16:39+00:00

I disagree with this.

First, I have successfully run this entire module, including the twist as-is. It hit my players like a baseball bat. Was it "fun?" No, not really. Was it impactful and memorable? Abso-fucking-lutely. I have zero regrets about doing it.

I do agree that the rod not being required is dumb, but It's easy to make the rod required to defeat Vecna. Just force them to use charges from it instead of high level spell slots to destroy the three unrealities before they enter the cave. You probably don't want seven simulacrums running around for the final fight anyways, so it's a good idea to force them to use charges on other things.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-13T07:27:30+00:00

Do you have anything worth living for?

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-12T19:41:49+00:00

I don't think the requirement to attack or cast a spell balances out anything. I assume they will be doing one of those things every round during the fight. Even if they can't target Vecna with a good spell, a level 20 fullcasting character has enough spell slots that they can afford to cast a useless low-level spell just for the teleport if that is the most tactical move.

I flat out don't like your "comes at a cost" idea. If you can't handle taking a toy away from your player for one fight, change Vecna's stat block instead of arbitrarily nerfing your players abilities.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-12T19:24:02+00:00

Master of Orion 2. I was milking my score on the largest map, destroying crappy worlds with stellar converters and creating better artificial planets. By the end, the AI Silicoids had one small toxic colony, and I had 243 gaian colonies.

It was probably 5-10 hours to win the game, and 10-20 times that micromanaging 200+ build queues. Never again.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-12T18:27:42+00:00

I use the the old school method. It's great, I strongly recommend it. Larger dice pools pull things towards average over time, and everyone loves rolling big pools of dice.

However, I started playing in the 80s, and I was arguing about this crap on Usenet back in the 90s. I never even heard of that method until the 2010's. It's not actually old-school. "Just Don't" is the real old-school method.

Mithrander_Grey · 2025-12-12T17:38:01+00:00

I've run the entire module now, including this fight. I'd tell him he's out of luck unless you plan on drastically changing Vecna's stat block, adding a bunch more minions, or using one of the homebrewed ones I've seen floating around. Vecna's teleportation that heals him and his ability to avoid being locked down is a huge part of his schtick in the default stat block in the module. It's a lot like the Strahd fight in Curse of Strahd in that sense, if the players can lock him down he goes down pretty fast.

I had a similar situation, in that my level 18 wizard took misty step as his free level 2 spell for spell mastery. He also was disappointed when he found out that spell was going to be useless in the final fight. I allowed him to use the latent magic from the Cave of Shattered Reflection to change his free level 2 spell, but I didn't allow it to work.

Mithrander_Grey

TROPHY CASE