sotf
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 4:43:48 GMT
I ended up buying this one and I've gotten a lot of use out of it since then for a lot of different systems, it's easy enough to make custom inserts or buy them from a few of the pdf shops for a lot of systems.
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sotf
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 4:21:14 GMT
Depending upon what exactly you mean by a dinosaur themed adventure, there are a few interesting options for a more pulp type feel. I'm assuming the 3.5 or Pathfinder stuff, which this will largely be a few things from something I'd done a while back.
For settings, an island, isolated cliff lined valley, or something similar that contained it...something like the Marvel Savage Lands where its a big area in volcanically warmed valleys in the middle of the arctic is a great way to force players to prepare ahead for survival situations either way...it also easily explains away the dinosaurs if you don't use them very often in why they're still there.
The neanderthals have a pretty good option for use from Frostburn as a local native tribe for the players to deal with, if you have the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft book, there is the sacrificial stone described in it that is in the "extra" areas to explore inside and under the castle, it's a rather interesting side piece to keep the players involved with it's resurrection 1/character ability. You might also consider utilizing Ur from Weapons of Legacy...
The stone the players are looking for could easily be important to the locals, something that would make for an instant hook to either "steal and run" or "Help replace it with something else (like perhaps that stone from the Castle repurposed into a lost temple here)" could easily be that the locals have found a way to utilize it's magical powers to keep the larger predators away from the village. Anything larger than a compy/needletooth can't get past the magically enhanced barricades lining the village, of course the villagers still need to head into the jungle for supplies and hunting, but the village itself is safe.
Add jungles and ancient ruins, and you have a good basic setup for the adventure with them finding and gaining the trust of the locals, then dealing with how they get the stone...and find out about the stone that can bring people back to life...and then getting out of the entire mess alive.
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 4:07:06 GMT
I do have a lot of my most recently completed stuff...mainly for the Ronin minis game on a blog, though it's been a few months since I put anything up on it, and somehow trying to organize tags on it moved at least one post out of order... Miniature MayhemBut since the most recent campaign I did was largely a Japanese mythology Oriental Adventures one, a lot of them worked well there at the same time as they can remain as pieces for skirmishes. Most of the tiles I've used are largely cardstock run through the printer for the basic textures from a print and a second time to grid them and then just cut them out. Haven't had any real problems with that, and the nice thing with the 2.5 D ones is that they work well to add buildings to a lot of things by keeping the walls distinct enough there without restricting anything. I think part of the problem with my group moving away from grids is a combination of the things available in the stockpile at the store that have grids already on them, and that half the group are engineers who have the ease and precision part of it, and that the previous DM's egg timer utilization for people to take their actions (something that can be paused for rules issues, or even with someone actually trying to do something more in character... It is always nice to see fantasy terrain that is not Western/European inspired. Your stuff looks really nice, and you captured the setting wonderfully. Thank you so much for sharing. The best part with a skirmish game is that you can take your time with a few minis that really need the attention such as armored Samurai and similar because you only need a few...rather than needing to rush if you ever want to complete an army in most minis games...and skirmish games also allow a rather good variety of things.
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 4:00:55 GMT
One of the best toys I'd swiped from a published adventure was the horde guardian sword...I think it was from Gorgolgand's Gauntlet...the sword is a well decorated magical sword of, I believe a +1 and a small enchant that gave it a total of a +2 Equivalency...but there were two other features. The first was rather obvious, if left with a pile of coins, if anyone other than the one who is the "owner" of the sword and those designated specially, the pile animates into a construct based on the number of coins with a few extra abilities from the type of coins...the last ability of the sword was pretty much the spy abilities that had been in one of the WotC web articles, and probably is still there (Tied into the ancient dragon that pretty much was luring "interesting" adventurers in to get them to carry off the sword knowing that they would eventually leave it to protect their stuff at which point, the dragon could use the sword as a homing beacon to pop in and study anything interesting they'd found on their adventures...but the party didn't like me using it and tying the thing to an artificer they'd managed to tick off at another point who would randomly send a few of his latest experiments the party's way via teleportation options that were set up to ambush them when they got back to their stockpiles...
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 3:52:11 GMT
I do have a lot of my most recently completed stuff...mainly for the Ronin minis game on a blog, though it's been a few months since I put anything up on it, and somehow trying to organize tags on it moved at least one post out of order... Miniature MayhemBut since the most recent campaign I did was largely a Japanese mythology Oriental Adventures one, a lot of them worked well there at the same time as they can remain as pieces for skirmishes. Most of the tiles I've used are largely cardstock run through the printer for the basic textures from a print and a second time to grid them and then just cut them out. Haven't had any real problems with that, and the nice thing with the 2.5 D ones is that they work well to add buildings to a lot of things by keeping the walls distinct enough there without restricting anything. I think part of the problem with my group moving away from grids is a combination of the things available in the stockpile at the store that have grids already on them, and that half the group are engineers who have the ease and precision part of it, and that the previous DM's egg timer utilization for people to take their actions (something that can be paused for rules issues, or even with someone actually trying to do something more in character...
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 3:19:14 GMT
Really nice stuff, far better looking than my version of it...which was just to blow the map up to size and print it to laminate...
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sotf
Advice Guru
Posts: 1,084
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Post by sotf on Aug 9, 2014 3:02:46 GMT
Figured I'd start with a basic introduction.
I've played D&D since near the end of 2nd Edition, and ended up slowly getting most of the DM duties for different things, largely because I'm one of the few willing to do so...though at the moment, the players still have a lot of power over chunks of it and are rather set in their ways with preferences...as shown by times where they pretty much walked out on a few things I've tried. The first being an attempt to upgrade from Spycraft to the 2.0 version shortly after the second version came out, and the second being the try for gridless.
Considering that a good portion of the books we use are still in a library type setup the local gamestore has thanks to the guy who used to DM being a former employee during his high school and college years before his graduation and ROTC enlistment came up, well, the group has a vote on who's running it because the place has a group requirement for running games and they outnumber me there...
A lot of the cardboard tiles, however, work well for more short term specialties mixed with a lot of specific locales, though I'm still largely using a far simpler method of a double run on the printer rather than painting the base...the second run being to add a grid to keep them from walking out, and a few of them are willing to run it, and have from time to time, but would rather play while I like more of the world building angle...but that's the major break with the situation there.
However, I'm also a wargamer with a lot of smaller projects that I've thrown together from time to time there, so a lot of my larger projects are more of a double duty situation there.
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