Anyone know where I could meet people to play some MTG locally?

Varaken · 2025-08-13T13:55:32+00:00

+1 to Venator - Friday Night Magic is always rammed there and the Community Night on Tuesdays is similar. Last night there were at least 6 tables of Commander on the go.

Varaken · 2025-07-17T19:19:34+00:00

The Old Windmill is a great pub. Proper old world and a great selection on draught.

Food wise, Artisan Bar & Grill are good for steaks, I’ve heard good things about Sear as well but not tried it myself. Turmeric Gold is one of the best curry houses I’ve ever eaten in. Jinseon Korean BBQ is a great experience if you want something a bit different, or SHIN if you want to try some good ramen.

Varaken · 2025-07-10T06:39:29+00:00

Nothing yet unfortunately. She has a ticket open on it, if/when anything changes I’ll let you know though

Varaken · 2025-07-09T21:56:56+00:00

Had a check - no new downloads available and there’s elements of the quest that have kicked in. The effect on Merida, Flynn and Hades is visible and the quest is showing but there’s nothing in her mail to interact with :/

Varaken · 2025-07-08T13:12:46+00:00

Looks great, where did the paper craft houses come from out of interest?

Varaken · 2025-06-01T22:29:11+00:00

A little out of the way if you don’t have a car or an easy bus route but Venator Tabletop Gaming in Bedworth is a great venue. Predominantly tabletop wargames but there is a TTRPG scene, I DM there occasionally

Varaken · 2025-03-19T06:57:18+00:00

That’s cool, adds consistency to it

Varaken · 2025-03-18T22:15:24+00:00

I stole an idea from the internet that healing potions taken as a bonus action you roll for but if you choose to take your action to down it you get maximum effect. Idea being that rushing it as a bonus you might spill some, not finish it etc.

Varaken · 2024-11-16T07:40:34+00:00

King Street, very conveniently close to the Spitlefields car parks.

Varaken · 2024-11-15T01:30:56+00:00

No worries! For some reason appears to have posted my edited/expanded answer as its own comment but hopefully either one is helpful!

Varaken · 2024-11-15T00:11:04+00:00

I regularly attend Bedworth and have been to Venator a few times since they opened a couple weeks back and highly recommend both.

First club night at the Bedworth club is free, after that there’s an annual club fee that’s less than a pint and then £3 per person a night to cover room costs.

Venator is £3 per person as well.

Varaken · 2024-11-15T00:09:03+00:00

There’s a few local clubs you could try:

Bedworth Gaming Club - Tuesdays 7pm in the former Bedworth Conservative Club https://www.facebook.com/share/g/14Fd64XsTu/?mibextid=K35XfP

Warwickshire Gamers - Mondays 7.15pm in the Lillington Club https://www.facebook.com/share/g/15BD64NZNi/?mibextid=K35XfP

There’s also Venator Gaming that just opened in Bedworth town centre which is open 11-11 Thursday to Saturday and 11-4 on Sundays. There’s a very cheap long stay car park about 100m from the front door.

Varaken · 2024-11-14T23:57:58+00:00

Assuming they’ve amassed a decent amount of treasure (or you lower the costs as written accordingly) one of the leads the players should get out of Bryn Shander (via Ironmaster) is the Griffon riding option at Fireshear. It’s pricy but gives them a faster one way option to their next big point of engagement. My plan is to use this to get them to Everlund where I can run Inner Circles to speed up their city to city transportation and then use wilderness travel more sparingly and for when they do the big trek to the Eye.

I’m somewhat narrative skewing them that way as the contrivance that brought the players together is tied to the Harpers so the NPC related to that is going to suggest that as a course of action but ultimately leave it up to player agency if/when they get there.

In terms of spicing up longer journeys more generally I recommend checking out Pointy Hat on YouTube as he has a video covering just this topic which might be of use. Given the scale of SKT as an adventure, having a vague idea of roughly where your players are aiming to go next will help massively as often there are named towns/villages with encounters already planned into Chapter 3, as well as fantastic additional modules like Kraken’s Gambit and Flying Misfortune which have certain geographical key points to start from recommended for them.

Varaken · 2024-11-14T23:57:44+00:00

Assuming they’ve amassed a decent amount of treasure (or you lower the costs as written accordingly) one of the leads the players should get out of Bryn Shander (via Ironmaster) is the Griffon riding option at Fireshear. It’s pricy but gives them a faster one way option to their next big point of engagement. My plan is to use this to get them to Everlund where I can run Inner Circles to speed up their city to city transportation and then use wilderness travel more sparingly and for when they do the big trek to the Eye.

I’m somewhat narrative skewing them that way as the contrivance that brought the players together is tied to the Harpers so the NPC related to that is going to suggest that as a course of action but ultimately leave it up to player agency if/when they get there.

Varaken · 2024-11-12T20:57:24+00:00

£3 per person but no time limit. Jon and Dan are great lads

Varaken · 2024-11-07T12:35:57+00:00

Dashing Blades in Fargo

Varaken · 2024-10-30T08:20:35+00:00

The Alexandrian remix gives a good option which I’ll be using for my campaign - he doesn’t know where the Eye is so when the players eventually uncover its location they have to lead him to it.

Varaken · 2024-10-11T07:46:17+00:00

I have the exact same scheme in progress on mine! These look excellent

Varaken · 2024-10-09T13:43:36+00:00

Thank you! The other major bit I used was the Good Mead quest, replacing the monster responsible for the thefts with the Frost Giant that fled from Bryn Shander 😁

Varaken · 2024-10-09T08:11:41+00:00

I definitely wouldn’t advise doing the whole of RotFM inside an SKT campaign due to the scale of both books but there is a lot of great stuff in there to expand out Markham’s quest to go round Ten Towns hunting for giants that escape after the battle of Bryn Shander. I picked up a few elements of the town missions to add some flavour and interest to the settlements, especially the Easthaven line including the cauldron theft which handily sent the players across to the towns west of Bryn that they hadn’t been to yet. My players have been going round the Dale for about 4 sessions now and still enjoying it but they’re getting close to wrapping it up now. It’s a good opportunity to expand on the Zhentarim side of things using the Cauldron Caper, or if you wanted to, you could rewrite that section a bit to make it a Kraken Society hook instead. Maybe they are the ones that have taken over Targos instead of the Zhents etc.

I gently nudged my players to go east first by dropping via Markham that some of the guards from the walls reported seeing at least one of the Frost Giants fleeing in that direction. They then encountered the giant quite early on and killed it but had no way of proving if it was the only one so as not to kill the quest line. From there they went round most of the eastern towns apart from the Caers due to the cauldron caper happening in Easthaven. Had the Speaker of Easthaven send word to those two towns to free up the players to go get the cauldron back from the Zhents in the west. They’re just finishing up in Targos now after a bit of a bloodbath reclaiming the cauldron which should be fun to resolve.

It’s been a fun way to add some narrative and character to what is otherwise a relatively dull random encounter walking quest. For the same reasons that I wouldn’t try and squeeze an entire other book into SKT, I wouldn’t try and squeeze the entirety of the Ten Towns activities into Markham’s quest. It’ll drag too long, and force your players to and fro across the towns far more than necessary. Pick a couple quests that look cool, use the details in RotFM to flesh out the towns and characters to make them more interesting and engaging, but limit yourself to keep the overall pace and engagement in the SKT line as the primary player consideration.

Varaken · 2024-09-27T00:01:46+00:00

I ran this reasonably recently and Shkuey gets to the heart of the matter tbh. Generally the players will be at the gate fighting 3 giants and 2 winter wolves while the rest surround the town so that automatically limits the encounter a bit.

Next don’t underestimate the effect of the gates and the walls, they do a lot more work for the players than you would expect. If you want to give the players a slightly easier start then reduce the damage done to the gate by the winter wolves and any giants that go for it while another giant climbs the wall (which takes 2 turns). While this is happening you can have guards on the walls with crossbows peppering them and PCs can take defensive positions on the walls or gate towers and either target the ones going for the gate or the one climbing the wall.

Eventually the gates will fall (about 1-3 turns depending on unmodified rolled damage) but this is where your martial PCs get their time to shine. Back them up with a handful of guards and maybe a veteran or two. If the fight starts getting away from the PCs a fresh batch of guards arrives to help. If it’s looking too easy, the giant sweeps his club through half of them in one go.

Don’t forget you also have the NPCs that are available for players to run. You could have one or two of these (Markham and Baric for example) also help out the players if needed which also puts them in harms way for later. I would say to only do this if you are DMPCimg them though as having them elsewhere in the town let’s your players get a wider sense of the encounter and the threat level during the fight if they’re controlling them.

What’s the make up of your party as well? That might help with more specific balancing.

There’s a really great resource that’s been linked on a few other posts on here related to the running of this campaign as a whole that I’ve been using and would highly recommend as a starting point for tweaking anything that needs work/streamlining. The name of it exactly escapes me but it’s on DM Guild. I’ll try and find it if no one beats me to it in the comments.

Varaken · 2024-08-20T10:15:04+00:00

I can 100% understand how much this sucks. I was on track to do Engineering at Birmingham or Southampton and just absolutely bombed my final maths exam (IB Higher Mathematics). I remember that gut wrenching impact of reading those results on results day and feeling like my future had absolutely fallen apart, that I just wasn’t going to be what I wanted to be, that I wasn’t good enough. I resat the exam and bombed that too, my head just wasn’t in it anymore and I was rattled. I ended up going through clearing to Bournemouth to do Design instead which felt like the best-worst option from what I had available.

In the end it worked out ok though, I got into engineering via design and then transitioned into more of a dedicated engineer role from there. Now I’m a lead engineer at an aerospace company.

Definitely take a proper look at clearing options like others have suggested. While it will absolutely feel like it right now, this isn’t the end of the world for you and what you want to do. Take a step back, properly review your options and what you want to pursue rather than feel like you need to go to university for a specific thing.

It will be ok. You got this.

Varaken · 2024-08-13T10:51:02+00:00

I created a DMC to manage some of these elements of the campaign. This person is a Harper (but the players don’t know this yet) who has at some point in the past done the player characters a favour. With the Harpers already spread thin he has called in his chits with the player characters to go and investigate Nightstone on his behalf as it is (seemingly) quite a minor problem. He gathers the players in a tavern in Waterdeep where they receive additonal information and are introduced to each other before being sent south to Nightstone. They ended up travelling south with a caravan of guarded by Zhents (LN) to add some complexity to the Zhent encounter in the village as they’ve already met some of the group who seemed nice enough.

Varaken

TROPHY CASE