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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Found Treasure Island

by on December 9, 2019 at 4:43 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where, once again, the Rogue has convinced the party to follow a treasure map.

 Everyone laughed at how silly it was that nobody questioned the treasure map in the first one, I felt like it would be doubly on-brand to do it again.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue, Brubax the Goliath Barbarian and Tidus the Triton Cleric. Absent: L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock.

 I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

If you have happened to diligently read that prologue post from way back in the past, you will know that each of our characters have, at one point in their backstory, developed a sort of nemesis.

Jon mostly uses these as placeholders for the “villain” of a session, and sometimes ties it all back into the Glacius Rex character who is kind of the (woefully inept) bad guy of the campaign.

Yeah, I had really planned to lean on them more, but in the first season I got so wrapped up figuring out the process and timing for these sessions that I let the nemesis slide.  If I ever run another Big Fish style campaign the nemesis will play a larger role. Missed opportunity there.

Anyhow, my (I play Jim Clocks the Rogue) nemesis is a Kenku. With most of the player character’s relationship with their nemesis, it is the nemesis who is the bad guy. It’s kind of a running joke that with Jim, he is most certainly not the good guy and by all accounts the Kenku really did nothing wrong. Jim just thinks Kenku are weird and creepy and just kind of singled out the poor birdman for cruelty.

Back to Basics

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The Real Captain of the Ship of Horror – An Interview With Anne K. Brown (Part 2)

by on July 28, 2019 at 4:37 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Keith

Welcome back to Part 2 of our interview with Anne K. Brown, author and game designer. Part 2 focuses on her time with TSR, being a woman in game development and more. To read about Anne’s thoughts on working on Ship of Horror click here.

If you’ve been keeping up with Big Fish D&D, you know that we recently did a playthrough of the 1991 “Official Ravenloft Game Adventure” that was Ship of Horror. At one particular moment of the session (namely when we began the encounter with Meredoth the Necromancer) one of us loudly proclaimed: “Who designed this?”

Anne Brown did.

About Anne and Her Career:

(Keith): How did you get into game design? It looks like you worked on Dragon magazine for just a few months before moving into the Game Division. Is that where you wanted to be? How different is the writing process between penning a novel or short stories and writing a game module?

Anne: My path into game design was fairly long. I interviewed for Dragon magazine in May, 1986, literally the day after my last college final exam. I didn’t get that job, but Roger Moore (then assistant editor) suggested that I talk to some of the Games Department staff about freelance work. I got some freelance writing and editing, which kept me connected to TSR.

Roger Moore (then editor-in-chief) hired me for Dragon magazine in May, 1989. By September, the Games Department (formally known as Research & Development) was preparing to expand. Jim Ward told me he wanted to pull me over into Games, and after some negotiating, I moved to Games. I loved working on the magazines, and working at TSR was so awesome that it didn’t really matter to me what department I was in. I stayed until August 1997, when Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and moved it to Seattle.

The writing process for a novel, short story, or game module is really different. With a game module, the first task is to develop the story arc and figure out what the players should accomplish. Then it’s a matter of breaking the story into encounters and developing them, and also developing the nonplayer characters, villains, and monsters. Finally, the actual writing comes, which is mostly instructional passages for the dungeon master plus the read-aloud text. The writing for a game module is drastically different from fiction, and you’re trying to help the DM guide the players through the adventure, offer advice to the DM, and maintain choices for the players (not just lead them by the nose) so they feel that they have a chance to influence the outcome of the adventure.

Novels and short stories share the same development of a story arc and breaking down into scenes, but of course, the actual writing is drastically different. With fiction, the goal is to produce some really great prose that tells the story, develops the characters, and artfully explores the setting. With fiction, the author has complete control over every decision made by the characters, and is much more of a puppet master than with game design.

I do find writing game modules to be easier than fiction. In a game module, you’re pretty much dictating instructions to the DM, whereas with fiction, I’m working much harder on the narrative. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Joined the Crew of The Ship of Horror (Part 2)

by on July 10, 2019 at 11:26 am
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where our heroes are still in the goth infused majesty of to 1991 when vampires were the absolute coolest. They are on a ghost ship, not any ghost ship: The Ship of Horrors.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue, Brubax the Goliath Barbarian, Tidus the Triton Cleric and L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock.

 I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

How To Get Off The Ship of Horror

One of the issues that creeps up in this game is the fact that this group has faced a lot of nonsense scenarios and come out of them relatively unscathed. The Expedition to Barrier Peaks alone would be enough for most parties to become unflappable heroes. Throw in being trapped in The Underdark, sailing through space in SpellJammer and occasionally squaring off against high level Demons and Beholders and you have a crew that has absolutely no problem with marching up to the Captain and telling him a thing or two.

It takes a lot to phase this group of adventurers.

I’m guessing the fact that Jon didn’t want to drag this module out for more than two sessions helped a little two with the pace of discovery.

Time for lightning round part 2, as before Jon, your comments are a treasure.

  • We basically mean mug the Captain into revealing that he used to ferry corpses for the Grabben Family for a lich
    • Actually not a lich.  Boring old Necromancer.  Would have been great to tie his background into Grabben Island and had a few clues about him to earn there.
  • When he suddenly developed a conscience, the Captain threw the corpses overboard and tried to break his deal with the family, thereby invoking the wrath and curse of a lich.
  • The ghosts want their bodies laid to rest, so we need to find their bodies under the ocean and bring them back to Grabben Island to bury them.
  •  Again, this would probably be pretty tricky but we’ve all got swim speeds and some of us straight up breathe under water.
  • The lady and Madeline want to be buried, but Jacob wants vengeance.
    • Tidus decides to give into the demand and accepts a creepy ghost hug.
    • Jacob is now a set of glowing eyes in a sack that Tidus carries and to try to reason with him is to possibly be consumed by the darkness of the wraith.
      • Man I hope none of this comes back to mess with Tidus later.
      • I just liked the imagery from Hellboy, obvs, plus I had some lingering desire to mess with Eric after letting the sword go.
  • Superior Ranger and tracking abilities allow us to nope the hell out of encounters with:
    • A Monstrous Sea-Star
    • Some Vodyanoi, aka, Aquatic Umberhulks.
  • The heroes head to Grabben Island to bury the bodies and track down the lich that started all this nonsense.

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The Real Captain of the Ship of Horror – An Interview With Anne K. Brown (Part 1)

by on July 10, 2019 at 11:03 am
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Anne K. Brown started with TSR officially in 1989 (she had freelanced there before) and in 1991 she was given the task of writing Ship of Horror for the relatively new Ravenloft setting.

To read more about Anne’s career check out Part 2 of our interview here.

So, if you’ve been keeping up with Big Fish D&D, you know that we recently did a playthrough of the 1991 “Official Ravenloft Game Adventure” that was Ship of Horror. At one particular moment of the session (namely when we began the encounter with Meredoth the Necromancer) one of loudly proclaimed: “Who designed this?”

Well, one of the good things about running a moderately successful geek-centric website is that after the session, we tracked down the designer and asked her “What was the deal with Meredoth?”… among many other questions.

This is actually just Part 1 of the interview and deals pretty much exclusively with Ship of Horror. Come back next week for Part 2 where we asked Anne about game design, writing fiction and non-fiction and what it was like to work at TSR in the late 80’s right up until TSR’s purchase by Wizards of the Coast.

Please enjoy this glimpse into the creation of what has become somewhat of a cult classic module from D&D’s past.

How To Make a Ship of Horror

(Jon):  Just to let you know I’ve run it twice (and played it once!) and had a great time with all three groups.

(Keith): What was the starting point for Ship of Horror? Did you have any specific direction (ie: write a ghost ship story) or was it more wide open (ie: write a Ravenloft story)?

Anne: I’m glad you enjoyed it! Writing can be a very insecure business. Most writers finish a project and then have that moment of panic, wondering if it was any good. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Joined The Crew of The Ship of Horror (Part 1)

by on June 26, 2019 at 9:14 pm
Posted In: Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where our heroes travel back in time to 1991 when TSR was frantically trying to get all grimdark on our asses to compete with Vampire: The Masquerade.

As Jon has done several times before, our heroes find themselves stuck in an old school D&D module from the past. This time around they unwittingly join the crew of The Ship of Horror.

I think there was some kind of nostalgia here for you?

Very much so.  The first major campaign I ran was a 2nd edition Ravenloft game, and its 4th chapter was the Ship of Horror.  Took most of highschool, started with 2 players and grew to 4. There were 6 adventures, from level 1 to 13 or so.  If for some inexplicable reason you could survive the end of Ship of Horror, that is.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue, Brubax the Goliath Barbarian, Tidus the Triton Cleric and L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock.

 I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

Point of order, in my brief little dive into the history of this module I found that it was written by Anne K. Brown. A few things here. One, big props to her for being a lady in what was certainly a male dominated industry in the late 80s and early 90s and going from Assistant Editor of Dragon Magazine to designing modules in like a couple of months. Two, she was apparently a big fan of Greyhawk but wrote for Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance so that is cool. In fact, Ship of Horror was the first module supporting Ravenloft which I am assuming is kind of a big deal and shows that the company had a lot of faith in her. Three, she had a bit of a renaissance in the 2000s as an author of non-fiction aimed at middle-school aged kids. Wait, what? That’s right, you can read Anne K. Brown’s take on the lives of Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, Roger Federer or her takes on “Staying Safe Online” and “Migraines”.  Weird.

Now that the history lesson is out of the way, let’s get started. We actually took two sessions to get through this little adventure, but I seriously took like 20 little pages of notes. That said, we’re going to be skipping through some of the narrative and just focusing only on the best bits. You’ll thank me later.

Dealing with Those Githyanki

The session started off with us onboard The Clepsydra, the fast little sloop owned by Jim Clocks. We were on our way to a treasure island, which in fact will be our next adventure. While stopped at a port city, the Ne’er Do Well Cads are pulled away from the important business of drinking by the sounds of a ruckus in the town square.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on our little foray into Spelljammer, you might remember that in the very first adventure we kind of happened upon a +3 Vorpal Sword that has since been wielded by our Cleric, Tidus. Small problem: the sword belonged to someone called The Lich Queen and every so often we are kind of ambushed by Red Dragons and Githyanki. I think this session marked the third such encounter.

But anyways it wasn’t an encounter, Tidus just gave the Githyanki back the +3 Vorpal Sword without a fight. Womp womp.

Almost certainly the first time in the history of DnD that someone gave back a silver sword.  Color me a little disappointed. See, yeah, red dragon/githyanki wizard battle in populated area is no good, innocent bystanders and all.  But I wanted that stolen silver sword to connect Tidus’ divine destiny into having to go to war with the Githyanki. Womp womp indeed. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Had a Wizard Battle

by on June 11, 2019 at 5:25 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

The story of a wizard battle, theme and setting 100% original and in no way stolen from Thor: Ragnarok.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue, Brubax the Goliath Barbarian, Tidus the Triton Cleric and L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock. Featuring: A big blue crab man named Miek.

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

I suppose it is only fair that we point out that this session took place in the midst of Eric’s (the player of Tidus) bachelor party. Substances were in various degrees of abuse. My notes are only a few little pages and are largely incomprehensible. Eric’s real-world brother was along for the ride and he played Meek, a big blue crab man. Dungeons & Dragons!

Jon paints the following word picture for us: Our heroes are in an arena, surrounded by easily over 30,000 spectators. In the sky above, a loose ring of spaceships are docked low in the atmosphere. Each of the heroes is collared and chained to another in pairs. Except Jim Clocks, he is chained to a big blue crab man.

The sky was neon orange. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Found a Planet That Worshipped One of Us The Time We Found a Planet That Worshiped One of Us

by on March 24, 2019 at 5:46 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where our heroes find planet in a crystal sphere where the inhabitants worship one of us. Ha ha! Spelljammer bay-bay!

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

D&D In The Sky With Diamonds

We find ourselves flying through a kaleidoscope of twisting strips of colour, snaking between each other in a backdrop of perfect darkness. The Space Whale is still a bit of a wreck. Yes, we named our Spelljamming ship after The Bravest Warriors’ space ship. We’re cool like that.

Also kinda the Lunar Whale from Final Fantasy IV.  Nobody has ever had an original thought.

A T-rex has stomped across it, molten hot lava has ripped through part of the hull and there’s a bit of jungle that has kind of sprouted up through the boards of the deck. If you remember, there was a bit of a hullabaloo a few sessions ago that involved some kind of a teleportation beam that got us into this mess in the first place.

Jon takes some delight in explaining this is part of the magic of Spelljammer. As long as the helm is intact, you can Spelljam. Doesn’t really matter (that much) what kind of shape the ship is in. Or even what shape the ship is. A freaking butterfly ship called a Flitter is actually a standard ship.

This is actually part of the Spelljammer mythos that I really enjoy.  Let’s just make sure the rules don’t get in the way of making it fun.  You want space hippos.  You get space hippos. Giant spaceship looks like a butterfly.  Why not? Screw making sense. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Started Spelljamming

by on February 17, 2019 at 5:48 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where our heroes find themselves suddenly transported into outer space and find that they are now in the most logical of Dungeons & Dragons settings: Spelljammer.

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue. Eric has a few comments in red. To find out how we got here, check out our last adventure.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

Right, so I’m not really sure how much time I should spend trying to explain Spelljammer to the reader here. And there’s a number of reasons for that. First of all, it is batshit crazy. Second of all, I knew very little of it myself (despite the setting being my suggestion at the end of last game).

So I guess you can prime yourself for some of the concepts at play here by just skimming through the Wikipedia page for Spelljammer or you can enter into it with the same knowledge that I had of the setting. Here is what I knew about Spelljammer when I sat down at the table for our first adventure in Spelljamming:

It’s sci-fi mashed into Dungeons & Dragons where magic explains away a lot of the “science” problems you can think of. People fly around on actual ships that function like spaceships between realities or whatever.

I would later learn that the realities are called “crystal spheres” and the ships didn’t even have to be ships. Also, the stuff connecting the crystal spheres is called the phlogiston. A word I wlll try to avoid typing from here on out.

Are you kidding me?  That word is a stroke of genius.  I can just hear gnomish space marines taking phlogiston seriously.  It’s some Dr Who / Hitchhiker’s Guide quality.

It’s actually a real word. It is “a substance supposed by 18th-century chemists to exist in all combustible bodies, and to be released in combustion.” ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Big Fish D&D – The Time Giddeon Messed Up Real Bad (Part 2)

by on January 10, 2019 at 9:17 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Big Fish is back with “The Time Giddeon Messed Up – Part 2” where Jon basically writes a character out of the game since the player quit and we come face to face (yet again) with the party’s nemesis Glacius Rex!

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue. This is Part 2, so you should probably check out Part 1.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game.  You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

Also, this is Jon’s last chance to wrap up our random improv suggestions from the previous session which were, if you recall: “The time we were sliding through dimensions, in our Nemesis’ (Glacius Rex) keep, to rescue a Genasi Sorcerer who was the heir to a Kingdom and it all started with an avalanche.”

A Interlude of Socks

Not sure how much it has come up in these write ups, but my character has a pet monkey. I have spent a number of downtime actions training and improving the monkey. This monkey is not magical, nor do I have any magical abilities to speak with him or command him. Any commands I give him are based purely on my character’s Animal Handling skill. He is a mundane trained monkey.

His name is Socks.

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Big Fish – The Time Giddeon Messed Up Real Bad (Part 1)

by on December 30, 2018 at 6:14 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

In which our heroes have an improbable adventure and ultimately discover their hideout has been compromised for quite some time.

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a while since we played these sessions, let’s hope my notes hold up.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you like reading these and enjoy what we do, consider dropping a coin or two over on our Patreon.

This two-part adventure serves as a kind of “Season Finale” where we have all picked an adventure pitch and the player who has yet to picked gets saddled with an adventure where their character has messed up real bad.

This happened to coincide with a player leaving the game due to time constraints. So this is the tale of the time Giddeon (The Bard) Messed Up Real Bad.

Freestyle Talespin

So the kick off of the game was basically a freestyle pitch session where each player tossed in elements until someone liked it. How nervous did this make you? Were you confident that your structure would allow a full on freestyle session?

Well, with the reveal in part 2 it sort of makes sense if the session was a total mess.  I wanted a total mess. Also I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do it, and partly I wanted to introduce season 3 with a bang, and you guys pitched ideas that more or less exactly did what I wanted.  I win again! Just like always.

I think the first thing you asked for was a fill in the blank. “Remember the time we were…” and we came up with “sliding through dimensions”.

Then we needed a place? We opted for “Glacius Rex’s Keep”

The next thing we needed was an NPC concept. This story would involve a “Genasi Sorcerer who was the Heir to a Kingdom”.

Finally, we needed a hook. “It wasn’t an avalanche, it was a tidal wave.”

Recall that Jaxxo had final say on which of the ideas were chosen.  The first thing we picked was the lead. In a sense they all came from his head.

From that, Jon spun us a tale. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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