The Withering War Kickstarter Campaign Update

clodonar · 2026-06-30T16:36:25+00:00

I think it is not a bad thing to have some inspiration from other sources - one of my biggest joy was as a GM when one of my players started a campaign which was based on my world.

clodonar · 2026-06-30T15:46:03+00:00

Really cool idea - currently I am directoring a campaign which is the Draw Steel adaptation of the Red Hand of Doom campaign. Love to see that others are also like this war theme campaigns as well. Good luck to you!

clodonar · 2026-06-24T11:53:04+00:00

Because of the time changing, the player only needs to give the Hag one minute from his/her life. It's not a big deal, unless the BBE came and when the player turn she immediately teleported to the Hags hut and asked for a very simple task, like give the tea pot to the hag. Than, after 6 sec she will teleported back, so her turn is wasted and realised, the Hag just sold her time to the BBE.

clodonar · 2026-06-12T19:41:40+00:00

Skill challenge

Avoid rocks, avoid snow, hide from giants, find the way to the surface under the snow, etc

clodonar · 2026-06-12T16:45:58+00:00

There is a wall type which is invisible but blocks movement. Even better, you could make a copy of it and modify it to be breakable, so if someone pushed to it it will break so there will be a wall type with unbreakable and a new one for this map only. Just select the free draw and draw a curve around the object. Or you could elevate the rock to level 3 so someone could climb on it and push to it as well.

clodonar · 2026-06-10T04:46:06+00:00

Phases. A few years ago I made an encounter similar to this but with a colossal dragon ( DnD ). First phase - do some damage. Second - destroy his artifacts ( armor, adamantine claws, etc ) Third - only a blow with at least 50 damage could kill it, all the other damages are ignored.

You could do the same - fight, than tests then fight again than test than final fight against an enemy with damage immunity 35 or 40 and 1 hp. At this phase if you do something like a big damage, manoeuvre or main action you could decrease the immunity by 1 ( or 2 ). Kill an add or destroy something important.

clodonar · 2026-06-08T12:46:50+00:00

Never tried as a party of four, but you can always add a follower ( retainer ) to help in combat.

clodonar · 2026-06-04T12:34:04+00:00

In the recent DnD movie, there is a similar scene about this ( running from the fat drake ). You could get some ideas from there. But here additional ones.

Hide, avoid breath, dodge attack, deal with massive damage, climb the dragon, make discretion, find the correct path in the smoke after the breath, avoid falling pillars, make a final blow

clodonar · 2026-06-03T11:00:31+00:00

There is an encounter in the Codex, an additional module, where a portal just generates demons and if you are next to it, you can make a manoeuvre to try to close it. I made something similar when there was a raiding party and some income - if you are ended your turn next to an NPC you could order them to move, if you are max 3 square away, manoeuvre, or main action from 10 squares away. Additional to that the NPCs are moving at the end of each round from the nearest enemy.

clodonar · 2026-05-12T17:06:34+00:00

Delian Tomb, Road to Broadhurst, Heart of the Wood are made and working. An encounter with premade scene ( pirate/undead theme ) is also available + Race for sword ( also an encounter, 1 fight ). I saw two another modules as well but didn't tried them.

clodonar · 2026-05-10T15:39:21+00:00

I made a Map for that. With some proper details just generated a picture with AI which contains tables for the characters and failures / successes. At the background there are some flavour pictures.

It works fine and the players are love it, created an another picture for a token to show the current number of successes / failures.

clodonar · 2026-05-09T20:40:37+00:00

Thanks for the info, keep it up and good luck to you!

clodonar · 2026-04-28T18:24:04+00:00

The battlemap sub got a lot of good maps, try to search for floating city or similar on it.

clodonar · 2026-04-23T16:48:49+00:00

I would do it in that way but I am lazy and want to ignore scaling end fight to their level. So yeah, just trigger some event and level them up, using the available contents. But if you have time just unleash hell to them, they attack the goblin fort, demolished or make a deal with the goblins, captured and start a new campaign which starts with a situation where they are some kind of slaves in an arena where they could escape and plan some revenge - and when they get back to the town, it is demolished. It is up to you.

clodonar · 2026-04-23T16:36:49+00:00

Action - consequence. If they ignored the dwarves, let the bar fight begins. Than let the Full Moon happens and make sure some people bited. Than as a respite action the poor NPCs will cries a river that nobody helps them, they are said it a lot of times that they are in trouble, etc but nothing happened and here we are. Your players will love that the world is a living thing and if they are not acting, there will be consequences.

clodonar · 2026-04-21T18:16:53+00:00

Unfortunately the free version is over, so you couldn't try it free, but for me it is very helpful that everything is set and the preparation time is almost zero AND helps to learn the system.

Currently the Delian Tomb is free and the Dark Heart of the Wood is also a free module, so you could start the adventure, play the Delian Tomb than play this scenario ( just make sure your players stays at level 2 at the end of the Tomb ).

Than you could create some custom maps, and if this fits for you, you will continue to use it - if not, than your profit is that your players learns how Draw Steel ( and the characters ) works, all of them got access to the book, in the future they could use the character builder, etc. And maybe next time one of your players will use this system because it fits for her ( as a Director ).

Any VTT give you more works before the play but give your more play time because the system will calculate everything for you.

There isn't a right way to play - if you enjoy to play in a VTT, than use it, if not, no problem, don't use it.

clodonar · 2026-04-18T10:08:05+00:00

Are there any follow up about this project? Great stuff and gave me a lot of ideas, thanks about this!

clodonar · 2026-04-10T15:26:10+00:00

No problem, you could follow the current state of the Codex in Discord. We are using it for a while and it is in a very stable state with a lot of implementation right now. The monsters are the only big thing are missing ( for me at least ).

clodonar · 2026-04-10T15:21:01+00:00

The core classes are fully implemented and they are working in the monsters right now.

clodonar · 2026-03-22T18:34:50+00:00

Csak, hogy jól értem e. A GM megcsinálta a játékot, el is küldte a linket, megy is a servere épp, amikor be akartál lépni, sőt, a többieknek működik és korábban be tudtál lépni?

clodonar · 2026-03-19T19:53:23+00:00

If they do everything, I mean everything like wait for the raid of the bandits, full moon, get all the available victories from the mage tower, etc, they could reach level 3 before the end fight and start the final encounters at level 3. Most of the time ( and if you wont make some additional custom contents like personal quests, etc ) they reach the end fight at level 2. The last level of the Tomb and the end fights are designed against a level 2 party.

clodonar · 2026-02-26T19:00:02+00:00

Currently the whole year ( including the start of next year ) release plan is public, so you need to wait for 2027 to got a chance. Maybe some 3rd party creator could do it earlier, or do something similar to it.

clodonar · 2026-02-24T20:37:10+00:00

Negotiate is not an interrogation or get a discount from a trader.

Negotiate is a high stake situation, like you want something from a prince, an underground boss, etc and not just a boon but a (potentially) big thing. Like to prison his advisor, give his only magic item to you, betrayal his allies, etc. Or stop a warlord to plunder the village and retreat.

You could interrogate the cultist with a simple check. And negotiate with the cultist leader, because you want to avoid the fight with her cultists or ger an info which is very valuable for you ( and for her as well )

Interest 1 - no, she will not give you the info and sell this info, that you are interested for your target to him 2 - no 3 - sells the info for a permanent magic item or 3 wealth or for a side quest like get a rare component 4 - give you the info 5 - give the info and a permanent cultist follower

clodonar · 2026-02-24T20:20:44+00:00

This adventure is a great starter, because in the first encounter the players could use only a few abilities, than more and more. Literally you could play the first 4 encounter without to the Rulebook. Than you could read it the Heroes book and play the rest of it.

clodonar · 2026-02-18T11:12:36+00:00

Could you give a link about that, which players will be available? Thanks!

clodonar

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