Thanks to all of you who have given feedback so far, super helpful for us as we continue forward. As a celebration of passing 5,000 subscribers and as voted on by the community, we’ll be writing our first full one shot! We don’t want to give too much away right now, but the title will be “The Mayor of Mayville.”
If you have any NPC ideas for us (vendors or merchants primarily) let us know! We’d love to include community ideas. Now, onto the spotlights!
DnD Creator Spotlight
DM Resource: We came across this one on Threads this week and while it’s a few years old it’s a great primer (or revisiting) of running skill challenges in 5E. With Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) and Teos Abadia (@alphastream), the two discuss different pros and cons of a common piece of the game.
Artist: Bodie H aka Slowquest, drawer of gobbos and creator of adventure booklets, we love his art style and how he takes something as gross and chaotic looking like a goblin and turns it into something that appears mild-mannered and simple.
Podcast: The Dadvantage Podcast is a combo of advice and one shot actual plays. “The D&D show where a couple of old school dads embrace new school play: …with a few dad jokes thrown in”
Local Game Store: Dragon’s Lair Columbus! The store John frequents the most, this is a magical place. With free plays, paint and take sessions and plenty of other events, this store is how we judge all other local game stores and the bar is high. Remember to support local when you can!
Have other creators we should feature? Let us know!
Free NPCs
- Ferrous Bueller – Blacksmith – working primarily with Iron, he’s fairly lazy and tries to call in sick to work most days, but his boss, E. Drooney, knows he’s faking. He’s not a GOOD blacksmith, but he’s got decent prices and sometimes gives things away for free.
- Antonio Snark – Artificer and Businessman – Antonio is a hefty fellow that created a series of armored suits for the town guard, but has recently lost ten of them, along with his assistant Blarvis. He’s a quest-giver that will ask the party to go find his intellectual property.
This Week’s Encounters
- Pack-man – Based on the classic arcade game Pac-man but in DnD! The party encounters a rotund man wearing yellow who is exploring a series of mazes. Levels 4-7.
- The Batman Returns – A masked vigilante is seeking revenge against the bards who bullied him out of the College of Clowning. Help him achieve his dreams by relaunching his standup comedy career in this city encounter for any party level.
- I Am Iron Man – An armored suit mogul has lost some of his intellectual property to a den of Behir. Can the party assist in returning the suits? For high level parties, 15+
- Here Come the Men in Black – A couple of government agents need help finding and welcoming extraplanar creatures to the realm (and getting them to fill out their paperwork) in this city encounter for party levels 8-11.
If you have a moment, we’d appreciate it if you could take a quick survey for feedback about what else you’d like to see in these weekly newsletters.
Other DnD Encounter Ideas That Didn’t Make It
A Spider Man
- A druid gets stuck half wild shaped between his human male form and a giant spider
- Protector of a town, heroic
- Choldriths trying to convert him to their Underdark religion (thinking he’s one of their kind of some new hybrid created by their gods) -Temple of LOLth
- Green goblin, hobgoblin, artificer Doc Oc, the Lizard
- Outreach group for people who botched their own experiments/magic
- Victims from this lab, meet to talk through their trauma
- Help them get closure by destroying the lab…abandoned…cure inside the lab
Straw Man Fallacy
- Animated scarecrow wants to prove that straw men can do just as much as fleshy men
- Help him prove his point by assisting him in taking down a roving gang of thieving Kenkus who rob travelers after distracting them by throwing baked Magpies in their faces
A Good Man is Hard to Find
- Help a business find a new employee
- Androsphinx consultant strikes again
- But make sure they’re only mediocre so that they don’t raise the bar on work expectations
Man Cave
- Men feel emasculated
- Town of valkyries doing all the impressive stuff
- Man Cave is a safe zone to find purpose
- In the cave, they have an opportunity to prove their worth
- Instead of just hiding
Man on the Moon
- NEville armstrong is convinced that the face in the moon is taunting him
- Is devising a plan to make a large enough beam to reply back
- Must make a gigantic clearing in the woods/fields and procure enough glass to create the screen
Manwich
- Restaurant markets selling human sandwiches to ogres
- In fact, they are vegetarian burgers, and the town is trying to get the ogres hooked on something other than human flesh
- Restaurant sells sandwiches that are made from manticore meat
- A manticore pleads with the party to help shut the restaurant down for health code violations (stealthily mess up the kitchen)
The Elephant Man
- Archaeologist discover a giant mammoth frozen in ice
- They release him, and he immediately asks what year it is
- Realizes that the ancient prophecy of something awakening happens in 48 hours
- Venture down with the elephant man into some dungeon..he’s a capable fighter but he’s terrified of all the mice that are in the tunnels
- Druid gets stuck in between human and elephant form
- Split vertically though, suuuuper lopsided
- The last loxodon in the realm
One Punch Man
- Wild party, Jungle Juice…everyone adds some beverage (one punchbowl)…someone adds a strange potions that transforms everyone into ___ or causes some mass hallucination or something
- Man is infamous for hosting lame parties…”Only one cup of punch per guest please.”
- Help him throw a successful party that is remembered for the ages
- Stage a murder mystery…becomes an actual murder
