Author: Jon

Fey Adventures and Treasures

What started as five adventures became six quests and 100 magic items!

I wanted to add to my Dangers Series, which while time consuming is really exciting to create and, I think, really useful for DMs. The concept of the Dangers series is to create one-shot adventures (quests that can be completed in one or two D&D home sessions) in as simple a format as possible. This means finding ways to provide ideas and information in a clear and concise way, so that DMs don’t have to turn multiple pages to look for spells or monster stat blocks.

Dangerous Fey is the latest in the series, and like the others pack a LOT of adventure into its 20 pages. Five different adventures providing different locations to explore, NPCs to interact with, fey monsters to encounter, and treasure to loot. Creating the adventures was a lot of fun, and I used different creature encounters for each one, so as to give each one a unique feel. Replayability was also an important factor. In each adventure there are encounter tables that make every play-through different.

Garden of the Archfey is the adventure that simply refused to abide by the rules I had set for the Dangerous Fey series. It wanted to expand and offer different, fun locations to explore within the Archfey’s strange and whimsical garden. It also has its own unique NPCs, encounters and and magic items selection.

Treasures of the Fey Wilds. I had already created two item collections from the Dangers series, but with this one, the items don’t appear anywhere else in the series, they are unique to this book. I dearly love creating magic items and giving them a fey twist was a lot of fun. Magic and mischief are abundant in the playful but dangerous fey wilds, so the magic items reflect that feeling of beautiful fun on the edge of chaos.

Each book can be collected individually or at a discount through DMs Guild as the Fey Bundle.

Garden of the Archfey

My latest quest is a chance to explore the Fey Realm. It is a wonderful setting because it is a parallel land that exists close to the material plane, but it is filled with enchantment, wild magic and colourful characters. As a fantasy writer, and as a player, there’s plenty of excitement and creative possibilities.

The Garden of the Archfey was going to be part of another project I’m working on called Dangerous Fey, which is a set of five mini adventures. But this module just kept on growing, in terms of locations, NPCs, treasures and plot. So at some point I made the decision to give it the space it deserved as a standalone story. I’m excited to share this and to see how DMs and players adapt to it. There are multiple ending possibilities as well as treasures to find. It also includes:

  • 19 different creature interactions (and possible encounters)
  • 10 different locations to explore on the garden map
  • 20 possible treasures (they could be a boon or a hazard)
  • 20 hidden treasures (all are useful and valuable)
  • NPC possessions including a potions and powder table

Finally, after months of creating, working on and editing its contents, it’s time to set this module free. Have many adventurers, Garden of the Archfey!

Garden of the Archfey can be found on the DMs Guild website.

World Cup Manager Series

Creatively, this has been a year of football for me. During my day job, I had a lot of time to listen to podcasts, and many of those were roleplay or football based. To complement this, in the evening, I was playing different board games with friends on the platform Board Game Arena. These activities gave me the idea to create a new football game. I had already created a football-based management simulation series called Football Town Manager. So why create another one?

There are some aspects that my original sim doesn’t cover; primarily, tactics. How to use the space of a football pitch with what formations teams play. The other area I wanted to explore is player creation. It’s my favourite part of the old football computer games. Along with this is the wonderful element of games like Bloodbowl, and other board games, where players are able to get Special Abilities (also part of Football Town Manager).

The system I created has gone through several iterations to try and streamline it, such as limiting defensive movement, and to make it more exciting, such as by adding effects when you roll double numbers on your 2d6 dice (two six-sided dice).

The final element was theming, and this took a loooong time! I was drawn to the World Cup as a theme. I love creating a way to score matches and play tournaments, and that is exactly what the original game does. Like Football: A Town’s Tale this includes story elements which uses Management Statistics. Depending on what you roll, your team’s performances can be negatively affected, or they can be united by your leadership and improve.

After the original, open-plan game, I created scenarios that would require less time to set up. That then gave me the idea of creating the game for previous World Cup tournaments. This was a fascinating chapter in the game’s evolution as it meant researching what formations real teams played, and who their star players were. I really enjoyed creating this, which is why I spent so many more hours, weeks and months developing it.

After creating the 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 versions, I need to take a break from creating these products. Especially as to make each experience unique, I not only tweaked the team tactics and star players, but also the formations used, tactical options and story elements. So I wish my product babies well as they go into the world. I’m proud of them all, and I hope they bring joy to whoever uses them to create their own world cup teams and tournaments.

A Plethora of Birds!

The concept for this module was simply to expand on a fascinating creature-type that has the potential to offer so much to a campaign. The 5E Monster Manual has only so much room but offers a few birds to give the DM enough flavour to expand on its hawk, owl, vulture or raven stat blocks. What I was wanted to do was add special skills to each bird and where appropriate give them ample hit points or opportunities to defend itself.

Beyond giving unique abilities to recognizable birds, I wanted to add magical abilities and increase their sizes and challenge ratings. For example I gave the incredibly distinctive bird called the Ruff its own humanoid race. Birds such as Flamingos, Hoatzin and Puffins also get their own magical sub-species. At the most epic end of the spectrum, there are ten legendary individual birds including Nivanda the Wandering Roc and Zephyr the Storm Serpent. All ten get legendary resistance as well as additional magical abilities and attacks.

Beyond their abilities and stat blocks, each bird has a preferred habitat type within the material plane such as cold climate, grasslands, wetlands and forest. They also have a rarity rating, ranging from common to very rare. Finally, they have a Companion Compatibility status. A tame bird can be bought from specialist shops, and a friendly bird is ready to befriend empathetic travels. However, ferocious birds take a lot of effort before they trust someone, and solitary creatures rarely accept a companion. The effort can be worthwhile if it works as each bird has a companion ability that is unlocked when they partner with a PC or NPC.

The module was a lot of fun to create and expands the possibilities of bird interaction within the game. From the Master Crow’s ability to detect traps to the Golden Phoenix Pheasant’s healing powers they can be valuable companions. The can also be formidable opponents, such as the lightning surge of Zephyr the Storm Serpent, and provide fun encounters (who can resent the rolling attack of the Rotund Duck?!).

Birds: Companions & Encounters is available from DMs Guild.

How to Avoid a TPK

Total Party Kill is when the party of adventurers are defeated in a single event, be it combat, a trap or an unfortunate accident. For the players it can be humiliating and for the Dungeon Master, the story ends here. Of course a TPK has its place; the Player Characters are mortal after all, and there are some modules where everyone is expecting a blood bath going into it and will roll multiple characters before the end.

For most cases, however, the Players grow attached to their character and the DM wants to create the story around them. That’s why I decided to create a book that gives the DM an option – a literal last throw of the dice – to determine what happens to the party if they are faced with elimination. And of course, that dice had to be a d20.

The TPK categories I created are:
– Combat encounter
– Construct encounter (being a combination or combat and trap)
– Ensnared by a trap
– Punishment from a geas or through a deity’s decree
– Abrupt end, such as falling from a great height or a spell gone wrong
– Life drain, such as a disease or a cursed wound.

The twenty options apply to each of these categories and in many cases I created multiple options that can be rolled, meaning there is a huge variety of possibilities to play out. Will a party gain help from allies, a magic item, or will there be a malfunction or will opponent in-fighting give them the chance to escape? It’s been a lot of fun to create an provides a solution to the age-old problem, how to avoid a TPK.

TPK Last Resort is available from DMs Guild.

100 Pre-Generated NPCs

After creating the NPC Creator, I set myself a challenge. I enjoyed creating the product, but I wanted to see what NPCs might be created from it. I was intrigued to see what juicy combinations might arise.

The challenge was really useful in terms of tweaking the original NPC Creator, because I could see if there were any errors, but just as significantly, I could see if the stats boosts and options it created made sense.

The first things to change were the stat boosts. The mental stats (Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma) were far more likely to come up compared to the physical stats (Strength, Dexterity and Constitution). Secondly some of the options in a table produced the same results (for example, boosting Intelligence by 3 and Wisdom by 2), making the description for the chosen word in the table meaningless. I was able to manage this as I created the NPCs.

The remaining changes were all minor, such as changing an ability’s range or strength, but because there were 100 NPCs to create, it took a long time. As part of the process, I made sure to balance the frequency that each creature came up, and to make sure that no creature type ever had two of the same character class.

I am extremely pleased with the outcome. The final flourish was using midjourney for the character art and including the eight animal companions. Now that the product is complete and released, I really hope the NPCs get to play out in the wild. The idea that Nevi could be a kick-ass companion, or a dangerous villain excites me. What will Grenla find in the woods when she goes looking for the flower in her dreams? Can Kourtan be trusted, or will he use the adventuring party?

There are so many NPCs to interact with, and so many plot hooks to explore. It has been a labor of love, and hopefully a lot of fun for groups out there!

The NPC Centesimo and the NPC Creator are both available on the DMs Guild website, in PDF format.

NPC Creator joins the Series

The concluding part of the Creator Series has been the most intensive of the lot. I’ve released the series as a trilogy, as I will be taking a D&D break to work on my other ideas. But there’s an NPC-related product in the works…

I love creating systems, combining my creativity with a methodical structuring of the material. Providing rollable tables, to me, is bliss. It challenges me to come up with plenty of options for the DM in an overall theming that makes sense.

Testing

For this module, I rolled up the results for 100 different NPCs, including their upgrades and possession (equipment). This was so useful, because I caught a lot of changes either for grammatical errors, or because the result didn’t work as I had originally intended. I also balanced the stat increases, which is big part of the NPC creation process.

Modern applications

I found that two new tools were a massive help in creating this module. The first was midjourney, which gave me so much scope in terms of creating experimental art at an affordable price. The second was Chat GPT. I used it to come up with category lists and character backstories based on my rolls for the characters’ personality and background. I always had to tweak it, but it gave me something to work from.

There’s lots to play with in the NPC module. New actions, character traits and backgrounds combine with classic character classes and creature builds. It becomes an extension of the existing DND experience and will hopefully give DMs another tool when creating their world.

The NPC Creator, and Creator Series Bundle are both available on the DMsGuild website, in PDF format.

The Creator Series

In developing new ideas, I naturally create lists or tables so that I can roll for potential outcomes. Once I had my island palette ready to design new destinations, I had a moment where I realized that this may be a more useful tool for other DMs in its current state than a series of completed island locations.

And so, the Island Creator had begun to take shape. Whilst planning this out I expanded the idea to cities and how the same set of tables could help inform the type of ruler it had, the population and the types of magical or intriguing locations that could be visited.

It was definitely a passion project, and many more weeks followed in which I refined the tables and added additional tables that could bring a little extra detail, if required. They are definitely fun, thought-provoking and descriptive tools for any DM, a way of bringing either random selection into the locations the party visit, or just as likely inspiring ideas that the DM can adapt to their grand design.

Here’s what’s included in the Island Creator:

  • Category. What kind of Island it is.
  • Reputation. Is it well known or a complete mystery?
  • Population. How many creatures live there.
  • Size. The shape and area of the island.
  • Creature Types. What type of creatures call this their island.
  • Magic. Just how wild and magical is it?
  • Secrets. Every island has something mysterious yet to be discovered.
  • Threat. What is the main threat to the party.
  • Quests. Combines two tables to form suggestive titles to kickstart the party’s next adventure.

Here’s what’s included in the City Creator:

  • Attitude – How the city is being run.
  • Boom & Bust – The ruler’s strength and weakness.
  • Population Size – The number of inhabitants.
  • Population Make Up – How expansive or monocultural the society is.
  • Creature Types – What kinds of creatures live and work in the city.
  • City Size & Shape – The amount of land the city occupies and why it grew in the way it did.
  • Population – What creatures reside here and how hospitable they are to outsiders.
  • City Origin and Heritage – Why a settlement was established and how it influences the city today.
  • Unique Traits – What makes the city worth visiting.
  • Main Trade Imports and Exports – The main goods and services that the city needs or generates itself.
  • Places of Interest – Some of the city’s most unique sights.
  • NPCs – A way to quickly build interactions with some of the city’s more intriguing characters, including their race, class, personality type, personal objective, strengths, and weaknesses.

DANGERS – Volume One

The Danger Series now has five modules, with a combination of twenty-five individual adventures! There are five more environments I have in mind for future adventures, but for now, I am pausing production to focus on other creative projects.

With this in mind, I thought it was time to celebrate the series by bringing out a bundle. The twenty-five adventures contain many of my creations from the Deck of Foes collection and many more new creatures and NPCs to suit the adventures I created. Each encounter has a scalable mechanism that means it is suitable for low (levels 1-4), mid (levels 5-8), high (levels 9-12) and epic (levels 13+) parties.

The adventures are themed by five different environments: jungle, city, woodland, wilderness and kingdoms. With this theming, expect more weird and mysterious monsters in the wilds and woodland realms, and more corruption and plotting in the city and kingdom-based adventures.

Focussing on one-page adventures was such a brilliant exercise in creating concise, atmospheric content. I think it shows that a little goes a long way and I’m sure that the usability is intuitive and simple for a DM running the adventure.

Festive Characters

The Hybrid series (The original Hybrid Creatures and the Halloween Edition) has been a delight to create! Not only is it a novel way to introduce new creatures, but it is also a fun way to recycle existing content! Why have a plain Illithid, Witch or Centaur when you can have all three! It even has a simple naming table to accompany it.

The Festive Edition goes one step further than the previous two in the series. I sourced and created the creatures externally from the Monster Manual. This means that each creature has been given 5e stats and abilities. All twenty creatures are well known figures that represent Christmas or Winter, and it was a joy to decide what skills and powers they might have.

You could battle Jack Skellington, Scrooge, or Santa Clause himself. Jack Frost is the personification of Winter and very powerful, while Krampus is a feared demonic figure whose aim is to frighten children.

That’s stage one. Stage two, is combining these legendary entities. How about Santa’s magic, with Krampus’ strength and Rudolph’s speed and ability to fly?!

It was enormous fun to create and I love the idea of new mythical creatures being created in home encounters!