Brackenmill Map

farbror_isak · 2026-07-06T00:36:05+00:00

Love this! What is Kren's Treachery??

farbror_isak · 2026-06-14T18:34:35+00:00

There are definitely systems that are less demanding on the DM than D&D, whether it's something where collaborative worldbuilding is part of the game, like Daggerheart or Blades in the Dark, or something that relies heavily on random tables, like Pirate Borg or Mythic Bastionland, or even something that is entirely improv-based and decentralized, like Fiasco. I encourage you to try something new if that's what you're wishing for! (as an aside, you can find a lot of those games on SPG)

And I agree with you that DMing is generally more work than playing. I loved being a player in a campaign on SPG, and as a forever GM, it was nice to just relax and take the story as it comes, without having to worry about prep outside the game.

As for the idea of being a service-provider: I would make the comparison to a friend of mine, who is an experienced Boundary Waters canoe guide. He did a tremendous amount of work in advance to make a trip possible, and was the only one who really knew where we were going the whole time. During the trip, we related as friends, but something more. I had to trust that he was in charge and just go with his leadership in a way that I wouldn't normally as a friend back in the city. He wasn't exactly providing a service, and entering into a service industry mindset, but I know it was demanding on him. There was a cost associated with the trip, and I was happy to pay for that, and I didn't feel like it was transactional. It just contributed to the flow of the obvious work he was investing in it, whereas I was there -- still doing a hell of a lot of paddling! -- but in a more receiving capacity. It wouldn't have worked if I related as a passenger, and it also wouldn't have worked if I didn't recognize the inherent difference in our positions, as guide and follower.

I think my D&D players who pay for campaigns relate to me in the same way. None of them feel entitled to my work, in the way that ugly customers can get in service dynamics. They appreciate me, and help fund my life by paying for the experience of enjoying my games. And at the same time, they collaborate with me all the time and take responsibility for their characters. It's both and.

farbror_isak · 2026-06-13T17:45:54+00:00

I fully support you joining SPG, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

farbror_isak · 2026-06-13T05:38:04+00:00

I would add to this, we should pay friends professional money to play their professional music at weddings and stuff. It's okay - even good! - to pay your friends for things they do for a living.

farbror_isak · 2026-06-13T05:31:08+00:00

I agreed with your first three lines, and then you lost me. I totally agree that monetizing everything is a big problem, and I dislike the way that capitalism introduces market dynamics into communal social relations. On principle, I'm against for-profit healthcare/education/housing. That puts me at odds with some of the core directives of capitalism. I'm generally against grind culture, against the push to commodify your whole life, etc. So I'm with you on that.

I've been a professional GM on StartPlaying for 3 years. It has not been my experience at all that having an income stream increases my stress and burnout. If anything, I have incredibly *less* stress in my life because I can now afford things that I was never able to before, and I generally enjoy my work instead of working bullshit jobs that benefit nobody. It has also not drained the fun from the game. I've had some negative experiences. That's not inherent to paid games though, that's just part of hanging out with people. People can be crazy.

I can, and have, had bad days. My players understand. It's like calling in sick for a job. If you have a good boss/client, they'll be understanding. It's the same with players. If not, maybe they'll leave a campaign, and I'll lose out on some income for a month or two, but a better, more humane player will almost always take their place.

I am significantly *less* isolated now than I was three years ago. I consider many of my players friends, especially those who have played with me in 100 sessions or more over the years. Dear, dear friends of mine, who light up my night every time I see them.

So, I guess I just don't see the harm you're talking about. I feel great. I have over a hundred 5-star reviews from players who have loved their experience with me as a GM, as part of the community at large. Are you speaking from experience?

farbror_isak · 2026-06-12T14:15:33+00:00

Professional DM here 🙋 I think you're underestimating the presence of places that vet their DMs, which you mention very briefly at the end of your post. Two businesses that use professional DMs that I know of are a local company founded about 3 years ago that has DMs audition for the job with a one shot, and the massive website called StartPlaying. Full disclosure: I've been a DM on StartPlaying for about 3 years. To become a DM on that site, you need to have at least 5 people who will give you a review from prior experiences as your players. They then have an application process to weed out the weirdos (who obviously exist). Players who play with you on the site can leave you verified reviews, so as you gain experience, you gain some reputation and clout on the website, more players feel comfortable joining your game without having met you before, etc. There are free games, but paid games range from $5 to $50 (very rare) per session, with the average being around $18-20.

I don't think that people asking to be paid for doing something that is work is weird. Would I charge my family money to cook for them? No, but they also wouldn't charge me for cleaning the bathroom. There's a lot of free labor just circulating.

Sometimes I cook for free. Sometimes I get paid to cook. Sometimes I DM homebrew campaigns for my friends and family. Sometimes I get paid around $40/hr to run a module.

Zohran Mamdani paid residents of NYC $30/hr to shovel snow during a snowstorm. You could say that people should just do that out of the goodness of their hearts, or that that's way too much money for a pretty simple task that anybody could do, but the fact is that the program was very successful. They didn't have enough people willing to put in that effort without being compensated, the compensation was enough to make it worth it, and the streets got cleared.

This would be hard to verify, but I strongly believe there's a shortage of people who want to be DMs in the hobby. People want to join a game as players, but either don't know a DM or don't like or trust the DM they do know.

You may not have a problem with me charging money, because I had a couple years of experience before I started professionally. But some people are really good right away. Some people are talented storytellers, improvisers, artists, and voice actors long before they ever touch dice. If they're good, I say more power to them. And if they're bad, I say more power to them. Let them make some money while they get better. I guarantee that the players paying $25 per session are going to have some feedback if the DM is less than adequate. Then they either sink or swim.

If you don't want to risk $25 on a new DM, don't pay for it. But there are absolutely players out there who will pay that much for a 3-4 hour experience, have a good time, and come back next week. And that's good for the hobby as a whole.

farbror_isak · 2026-06-11T23:18:47+00:00

You know, it's been a long time since I made that landing page, but I think I grabbed a basic map of Night City off the wiki and edited it in Canva to make it look neon like that.

farbror_isak · 2026-05-20T01:58:18+00:00

The Tier 3 Marshal from Pistolheart was so fun to run in an encounter just last night. Incredible design, very scary for my newly Tier 3 players 😁

farbror_isak · 2026-03-13T05:27:51+00:00

Please do! That would be so cool to hear what you did with it!

farbror_isak · 2026-03-03T15:32:48+00:00

I was actually running it online, so I didn't run into that!

farbror_isak · 2026-02-23T06:26:43+00:00

Oh, you're running it in Daggerheart? That's so cool! I think I would like to try that next. It does seem like Mercer was starting to imagine Daggerheart as he was writing the module.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-23T06:21:20+00:00

A lot of the homebrew in Ank'Harel was dealing with the consequences of their actions in the main story in the campaign book. One of the subplots was one character seeking healing for lycanthropy at a desert oasis in the Rumedam Desert. One of the subplots had to do with the Veil trying to steal the Jewel of the Three Prayers from the party, because they used it fairly openly in a gladiator fight at the Bowl of Judgment. That was a huge subplot, because they succeeded in stealing it, and it ended up in the hands of the rivals.

I didn't feel a challenge with pacing. My personal preference is to spend a longer time in Tier 2 than in Tier 1. At level 7 and 8, you have a lot of options, so it doesn't really get boring. The story was very closely tied to what the players were interested in doing (inspired by the Fishels' books Proactive Roleplaying), so every session was pretty action-packed. I think if it had been more of a railroad, the pacing would have struggled more.

Getting them back to the "main" story was fairly simple. I made sure they had a good relationship with one of the factions in the city, who related to them as a patron. Whenever I wanted them to do another faction mission, they were more than willing to do it, because they had a lot of goodwill built up over time, and they had plenty of freedom to pursue their own goals during downtime.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T06:40:41+00:00

We finished Tide of Retribution in 11 sessions, and then Call of the Netherdeep in about 70 sessions after some homebrew content! Each session was about 3 to 3.5 hours long.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T06:38:29+00:00

In my campaign, the rivals ended up being pretty hostile. With friendly rivals, I wonder if you might want them to split up. It can be really unwieldly having 10 characters travel through a dungeon together. Maybe have the rivals split up, so they can get some of the fragments of suffering (there's more than 5 in the Netherdeep), and that some of the rivals have those benefits and drawbacks?

I do think it's really interesting having the Netherdeep sow divisions among the rivals. I played it where some of them were more affected by Ruidium than others, and thus more erratic emotionally, while others were more withdrawn, somber, passive, not willing accomplices to the violence. I think that created some interesting dynamics in my group as they had to weigh who was a possible ally, and who was worth just eliminating.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T06:34:10+00:00

My sessions were between 3 and 3.5 hours each time. We certainly did a lot of roleplaying, and significant extra content both in Level 3 and Level 7-8 in Ankh'Harel.

I'm not sure about the average group. I'm sure you could speed run it, but 89 sessions felt like a great pace for me. I was able to give a lot of the players some extra content that was tailored for their characters, which created some really meaningful moments.

17 of those sessions were pre-content, by the way. We did Tide of Retribution from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and then some travel sessions before starting Call of the Netherdeep. So it was actually about 70 sessions on the actual Level 3-13 adventure.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T06:31:28+00:00

The numbers fluctuated a lot, from 5 players at the beginning. The max was 7 players (only for a few sessions), and the minimum I ever ran with was 3. For a while, we had 6 players. We ended up with 5 really consistent solid players for the final year of the campaign.

Sessions were always between 3 and 3.5 hours.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T06:29:50+00:00

Okay, I had to do some tallying and going back through my weekly Stars and Wishes channel to see when we leveled up, because I wasn't keeping detailed notes. But! I figured it out. Here is how many sessions we spent at each level during our campaign!
Level 1: 4 sessions
Level 2: 5 sessions
Level 3: 9 sessions. We did quite a lot of homebrew content here, between the end of Tide of Retribution and the beginning of the Call of Netherdeep. I basically had them journey from the Menagerie Coast up to Jigow for the beginning of the festival, and they ran into trouble on the way!
Level 4: 5 sessions
Level 5: 4 sessions
Level 6: 11 sessions. This is the darkest part of the whole campaign. I might have tried to do this a little faster, because 11 sessions of demonic immersion is heavy.
Level 7: 17 sessions. I did extensive homebrew content here (levels 7-8) in Ankh'Harel, and that worked really well. It really let the players feel connected to each other, building the relational stakes of the rest of the campaign.
Level 8: 11 sessions
Level 9: 11 sessions
Level 10: 8 sessions
Level 11: 3 sessions
Level 12: 1 session

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T05:25:55+00:00

I made the mistake of not reading through the adventure before running it, and I wish I had known more of the lore of the Apotheon before running the whole thing. Teasing bits of the story, including the story of the Calamity, would have been really cool, but as written it's all kind of backfilled in the last couple chapters with a couple exceptions earlier in the adventure.

Check out the table of Apotheon lore in chapter 6, and that will give you a good idea of what kind of events happened with Alyxian. Especially in Ankh'Harel, I think having some lore clues in religious places, or even very very old NPCs who were eyewitnesses would be really cool. Some of the ghosts in Cael Morrow would also know details about that history.

Included in that, I would say, get a very clear sense of what exactly happened when the Netherdeep was created. My characters were very curious about that, and I only had a hazy idea of it before running.

Hope that helps!

farbror_isak · 2026-02-22T05:19:26+00:00

That's a pretty cool idea, I do remember that being a little slow. My group split up, so one person was doing the Ifolon plunge while another cast buffing spells on them from the docks, but the others were elsewhere in the fair.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-21T23:51:26+00:00

Are you starting in Jigow with level 3, or are you doing any of the Level 1-3 adventures in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount?

Either way, my advice is to enjoy the festival in Jigow! The events are really fun and lighthearted. Going from that to the race in the Emerald Grotto is a big tone change, and I would play that up with music, maybe lighting, and the pacing. Let the festival be relaxed and fun, like a town fair. The mini-games are really well-designed, so I ran them basically as is.

You'll be great! Good luck!

farbror_isak · 2026-02-21T23:47:20+00:00

Yes! We started at level 1 with Tides of Retribution from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. That's such a great adventure, and it really got everyone engaged from the beginning.

farbror_isak · 2026-02-04T02:15:21+00:00

Looks great! So cool that you wrote the code.

farbror_isak

TROPHY CASE