New This Week on DM’s Guild and DriveThru RPG : 4-15-2020

Go on a solo dungeon crawl or live your life as an every-man while the supers destroy the city on this week’s look through DM’s Guild and DriveThru RPG.

Puzzles for Players

“A collection of templates to help you build puzzles into your game world.

Designed for fantasy tabletop RPGs, these 20 puzzle templates provide GMs with concepts and starting points to introduce challenges that will engage players, no matter how high (or low) their characters’ levels may be. If you want more from puzzle solving than skill checks and dice rolls, these are for you.

Puzzles are categorized at three scales: encounter/room, module/dungeon, and campaign/world. This lets you know how much work you will have to do to integrate the puzzle idea into your game and how broadly the puzzle may impact your adventure.

• Encounter/room scale puzzles require that players only figure out and solve a one-shot challenge. These can be easily dropped in to an existing dungeon or game night, perhaps an empty room on your map or a random encounter on the road, and will result in relatively small, quick payoffs.

• Module/dungeon scale puzzles generally require solving parts in multiple rooms or floors, and then bringing them all together at some point. These may require extra work on your part to prepare; perhaps the final piece will be in the pocket of the 20th level mage located on the top floor!

• Campaign/world scale puzzles are designed to be built in to your game world, with different parts taking place in different environments, city-states, or even planes of existence. These will generally involve extended efforts by players that may continue during much of a party’s or story’s lifespan, resulting in epic treasures, discoveries, and encounters that will enter the history books of your campaign.

Each template includes setting suggestions, examples terms to use with online image search tools to stimulate your own creative work, presentation and gameplay tips, and additional ideas to make this your unique gaming experience. Each also includes an example map and script to guide you in integrating the puzzle into your game quickly. You should feel free to update, change, or add-on whatever you like for your own campaigns.

Finally, remember to enjoy the game at least as much as your players do!”

Coming up with puzzles that your players will find fun and engaging but also able-to-solve is no easy feat and definitely isn’t a skill in everybody’s wheelhouse. Whether you’ve come up with a zillion game puzzles and riddles in the past and the well is starting to run dry, or you need some inspiration to get your campaign going, Puzzles for Players can help you add a little something different to your game.

Solo Adventurer’s Guide

“A recurring question among Solo D&D players is whether it is possible to play an adventure or even a campaign with a single PC (Player Character) and the answer is yes, it is possible. However, as explained in the Solo Adventurer’s Guide, the encounter tables and the level of challenge of the D&D creatures are usually designed for a group of four PCs, which makes it somewhat difficult to build balanced encounters and most of the time it ends with condemning the brave and lonely PC to a tragic and premature end.

Therefore, the purpose of this supplement is to go a little deeper into this issue and present a different, more elaborate and interesting solution that makes it possible to play planned adventures for four PCs with a single PC of the same level, without having to recalculate encounters, decrease the monsters’ Challenge Rate (CR) or decrease the Difficulty Class (DC) of the tests that will be performed.

The Solo Adventurer’s Guide is a d20-based Dungeon Master emulation system that allows you to play D&D without the presence of a Dungeon Master. If you don’t know it yet, don’t waste any more time: click here

Solo Adventurer’s Guide – Legendary Characters is a practical guide to playing legendary D&D adventures with just one character.

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Tags: Solo D&D; Solo Dnd; GMless; DMless; Solo RPG; D&D5e; Dungeons and Dragons; Fifth edition; Solo system; Solo roleplaying; D&D Solo Engine.”

With more and more of us staying inside and away from our campaign companions it’s challenging to figure out ways to keep on roleplaying. If you want to give one-on-one D&D a go, the Solo Adventurer’s Guide has all of the tips and wisdom you’ll need to successfully solo crawl a dungeon.

Magical Lanterns

“Light plays a fundamental role in our lives, as many of our activities are based entirely around its presence. It flourishes in abundance with the rising of the sun, then diminishes to almost nothing with its fall. In the lost eons of our primeval history, our lives stopped when the sun fell.
That is when we, the clever animals we are, worked to create light of our own. For light is needed for life, and for sanity.

Yet it is one of the things we take most for granted. It is only in its absence that we appreciate how important it truly is.

There are some however who are not so ungrateful. They are often the uncannily wise, or those who have lived through great darkness. They know the importance of light, and it is often they who work to create the objects and devices that can deliver it when it’s gone. The most conventional provide mere illumination, but others are crafted to create far, far more…

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This booklet details lanterns whose powers go well beyond the norm, and all the information you need to include them in your Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventures.
It details their look, their feel and their powers; how they are crafted (for players), and possible encounters or adventures that can be built around them (for Dungeon Masters).

May you never again take a lantern for granted.”

Magic lanterns always remind me of the that first view of the lamp post in Narnia. Aesthetically and functionally, lanterns are a useful tool in almost any game, and magic lanterns have so much potential for symbolism and forward plot movement. Is it time to shed a little more light on your campaign?

The Yellow King

“The Yellow King RPG is an innovative new GUMSHOE core game written and designed by GUMSHOE creator Robin D. Laws. YKRPG takes you on a brain-bending spiral through multiple selves and timelines.

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Inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ influential cycle of short stories, The Yellow King RPG pits the characters against the reality-altering horror of The King in Yellow. This suppressed play, once read, invites madness. Or a visit from its titular character, an alien ruler intent on invading and remolding our world into a colony of their planet, Carcosa.

Four books confront your players with an epic journey into reality horror:

• Belle Époque Paris, where a printed version of the dread play is first published. Players portray American art students in its absinthe-soaked world, navigating the Parisian demimonde and investigating mysteries involving gargoyles, vampires, and decadent alien royalty. Includes the core rules.

• The Wars, an alternate reality in which the players take on the role of soldiers bogged down in the great European conflict of 1947. While trying to stay alive on an eerie, shifting battlefield, they investigate supernatural mysteries generated by the occult machinations of the Yellow King and his rebellious daughters.

• Aftermath, set later in the same reality, in 2017 North America. A bloody insurrection has toppled a dictatorial regime loyal to Carcosa. Players become former partisans adjusting to ordinary life, trying to build a just society from the ashes of civil war. But not all of the monsters have been thoroughly banished—and like it or not, they’re the ones with the skills to hunt them and finish them off.

• This is Normal Now. In the 2017 we know, albeit one subtly permeated by supernatural beings and maddening reality shifts, ordinary people band together, slowly realizing that they are the key to ending a menace spanning eras and realities.”

Utilizing a new player-facing combat system and including four books, a GM screen, a playable adventure, and more, The Yellow King takes the Gumshoe core rules and kicks them to the next level for an entirely new gameplay experience. If you’re looking for a horror game to play without leaving your house, The Yellow King looks interesting, engaging, and hands you a very complete GMing package to get started with.

The GM’s Painless Prep Sheet

“Less is more. The less you are scouring through tomes for stats, the more you’re paying attention to your players and the story.

The painless GM prepesheet is one sheet (front and back) and has all the space you need to record the essential stats, plot hooks and more to run your next session.”

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Some GM’s prepare tirelessly for their sessions – making careful note of every NPC, building and, plot thread. Others wing it. I think the majority fall somewhere in between; we’ve got notes, we’re sending out a map, but we also know the players are going to go as off script as possible so why get hung up on the details? For that, simple the “simple two page essentials” approach is perfect. Could you lay that all out yourself without downloading this PDF? Yes, of course. But for a dollar or less, I think the convenience of an organized venue for your thoughts is well worth supporting a fellow TTRPG enthusiast.

Collateral Damage

“IN A WORLD…

Author: Meaghan Colleran

Writer, Former Cosplayer, Tapletop RPGer, Mom, ASL Student, & Coffee Addict. To find Meaghan elsewhere on the internet, check out her LinkTree at https://linktr.ee/habie_cosplays Any emails regarding articles or potential game or accessory spotlights can be sent to [email protected].