0:00

Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from

0:02

Sly Flourish. Today, we're gonna try something interesting.

0:04

So I have a book that is now

0:06

out and available called The City of Arches.

0:08

You can find a link to a huge

0:10

preview. It's like a 30 -some page preview

0:12

of City of Arches in the show notes

0:14

on the Sly Flourish City of Arches. bookstore,

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web page, so you can check it out

0:18

without necessarily having to buy it, but you

0:20

can also buy it on the store. You

0:22

can pick up the City of Arches digital

0:24

package, which includes the book and PDF with

0:27

a background list version of the PDF that

0:29

makes it a little bit more printer friendly. It

0:31

includes a markdown version of City of

0:33

Arches, and it includes an EPUB version of

0:35

City of Arches. Formats

0:37

well to sit on your phone. It

0:39

also includes a digital assets pack with all

0:41

the art and maps that are in

0:43

it. So you can put that into your

0:46

favorite VTT. It is also available in

0:48

a beautiful hardcover version. You can pick up

0:50

the hardcover version on the store along

0:52

with the digital version as well. A friend

0:54

of mine got it and she was

0:56

very complimentary of it. She really liked it

0:58

a lot. And one of the things

1:00

that she suggested, she said, I would really love

1:02

to see you take one of the adventure seeds

1:04

that exists. She was talking about all the adventure

1:06

hooks in it. We have hundreds of adventure hooks

1:08

in this book. And she said, it would be

1:10

really neat to see you take one of the

1:12

adventure hooks and turn it into

1:14

an actual adventure. So today, we're going

1:16

to do exactly that. I have not picked

1:18

one out already. I haven't done any

1:20

homework on this yet, and we're gonna actually

1:22

take one of the adventure seeds. and

1:25

see what it takes to build it out

1:27

into a playable adventure for our group. Now,

1:29

I have done this kind of

1:31

thing for some other stuff. Over

1:34

on the Slyflourish Patreon, we

1:36

have, for hero tier subscribers of

1:38

the Slyflourish Patreon, I have been

1:40

working on a thing known as the City of

1:42

Arches Key of Worlds Scenarios. So

1:44

in the City of Arches itself, we

1:47

will go down to the Scenarios. And you

1:49

can see an example of one of

1:51

the scenarios in the sample if you want

1:53

to see what they look like. So

1:55

we have these campaign arcs. And the idea

1:57

behind a campaign arc is giving you Enough

2:00

information to be able to build your

2:02

own longer term campaign in the City of

2:04

Arches. We have three of these campaign

2:06

arcs and they have descriptions of the overarching

2:08

arc and what's going on, but then

2:10

also like individual pieces that again are sort

2:12

of like small adventure seeds. It's not

2:14

a giant full campaign already filled out for

2:16

you. The intention is that you fill

2:18

it out. But one of the things I've

2:20

been doing is I have been running

2:22

the Key of Worlds campaign arc for my

2:24

home group. And as I've been doing

2:26

that, I've been building out those scenarios and

2:28

then turning those into these things called

2:30

the Key of Worlds. adventure scenarios available to

2:32

patrons available to hero tier patrons of

2:34

sly flourish I think we've done about nine

2:36

of them so far and the plan

2:38

is to have 15 of them by the

2:40

end I think I have drafts of

2:42

14 of the 15 there's only one of

2:44

them that I don't have but I

2:46

will give the example of the first scenario

2:48

which is called the scroll of a

2:50

crave so in the city of arches book

2:53

If you go down to, you know,

2:55

the whole section about what's going on

2:57

there, but then has like the first

2:59

scenarios, like what are you actually doing?

3:01

Like what's the plan? And

3:03

the first scenario for it is this one, they

3:06

call it the scroll of legend. We call it

3:08

the scroll of a crave, the scenario we call

3:10

the scroll of a crave. And you have this

3:12

scenario, but like what kind is going on? Oh,

3:14

you're going into a crypt, you're getting, picking up

3:16

stuff, you're finding Skeleton, Spectre, Shadows, Thugname,

3:18

Sheila, and her bandit gang called

3:20

the Red Teeth, yada, yada,

3:22

yada. So that's the quick adventure

3:25

scenario, right, designed to take first

3:27

level characters to second level. This

3:29

is that whole thing kind of

3:31

filled out. And you will note

3:33

the structure of having a quick

3:36

summary, secrets and clues, key

3:38

NPCs, adventure hooks,

3:40

random encounters, trap

3:42

information, and then locations of

3:44

themselves, treasure, and further adventures. And all

3:47

the scenarios kind of follow this. And

3:49

the idea behind the scenario is that

3:51

it still isn't a full adventure. The

3:54

intention is still that you as a GM are going

3:56

to take it and sort of, you know, use that

3:58

as a framework to build your own adventure for your

4:00

own characters and sort of use the pieces of it

4:02

to fill out that adventure. So all the, that's why

4:04

they're not called adventures, they're called scenarios. And the scenario

4:06

is like, here's the setup. Here's all the material that

4:08

you need. And from this material, you can then build

4:10

your adventure. So very much like a published version of

4:13

the eight steps of return, although it doesn't have things

4:15

like the characters and whatnot. So

4:17

this is an example of taking one of

4:19

those sections and turning it into a larger

4:21

thing. And we have, again, there's about 10

4:23

of them that are published now. And

4:25

I'm going to have about five more published, certainly by

4:27

the end of the year, for Hero Tier Subscribers of

4:29

Patreon, of the Sly Flourish Patreon. But

4:32

that's today. So those are a little bit more polished, right?

4:34

I spend more time on them. I go through iterations

4:36

of edits. I send them out to patrons and then get

4:38

feedback and change them and stuff like that. And then I

4:40

run them myself and then I change it based on the

4:42

feedback from my own play through of those scenarios. But

4:45

when you are preparing an adventure for yourself,

4:47

you don't need to go through that thing. Like

4:49

you don't have to have a document like

4:51

this at the end of it, right? The intention

4:53

isn't that you're building a publishable thing. The

4:55

intention is that you have the notes that you

4:57

need to be able to run the session

4:59

for you and your group, not a published product

5:01

that you're trying to, you know, expand upon.

5:03

And I think that that's a very subtle. and

5:06

misunderstood difference for new GMs who read published

5:08

adventures and think, ah, that's what a published adventure

5:11

is going to be like. The D &D 2024

5:13

Dungeon Masters guy did a good job of

5:15

saying, hey, it doesn't have to look like that.

5:17

In fact, your notes can look more like

5:19

this, and it offered some notes. I thought the

5:21

notes were a little brief, but they

5:23

kind of grew on me the more I looked at them.

5:25

I was like, well, at least what they're showing is you

5:27

don't need a lot of stuff, and it doesn't have to

5:29

be heavily polished. for your own group

5:31

because it's just you. Your notes only

5:34

serve you. You're not publishing them to everybody

5:36

else. So when we go through

5:38

the process today of taking one of the

5:40

scenarios and building an adventure for it, we're

5:42

not gonna be building a big published thing.

5:44

Instead, what we're gonna be doing is building

5:46

it like notes for running our own game,

5:48

right? Running a game that we're gonna run

5:50

at home. So I have

5:52

not picked one out and we

5:54

have... a

5:56

lot of different places where we could

5:59

run these adventures. They could be

6:01

run directly from many of the locations at

6:03

the surface level of the city of arches,

6:05

the lower reaches, the cliffs of the

6:07

dead, the endless warrens, the

6:09

sunken revia, the of the nameless

6:11

king, the borderlands, and there's three different

6:13

sections of the borderlands, and the

6:15

worlds beyond the arches. I'm probably not

6:17

going to build another scenario for I'm

6:19

not going to build another scenario out

6:22

of the campaign guides, because I've already

6:24

done one for KeyWorld. So we're going

6:26

to pick a one -shot one. The

6:28

idea is that we want to have

6:30

enough material to be able to run

6:32

somewhere between one to three sessions. It's

6:35

not a big campaign arc. It's

6:37

just an adventure. But the

6:39

adventure might take somewhere between

6:41

one to three sessions. So

6:43

I'm going to roll randomly to

6:45

pick what kind of which one of

6:47

the locations that we are going

6:49

to have. So I'm going to go

6:51

to the Slyfler's Dice Roller and

6:53

let's see. So we've got, we'll do

6:55

one, two, three, four, five,

7:00

six, seven, eight, nine,

7:02

10. Okay, perfect. 10,

7:05

boom, nine. So we're going to go

7:07

to the border lands and we're going

7:09

to go specifically to the dead lands.

7:12

So we're gonna pick a scenario from the Deadlands.

7:14

This is good. I like this. So now

7:16

the Deadlands has a bunch of different locations. This

7:19

is why you can see how

7:21

many different places. So I think

7:23

we're about 10. 1, 2, 3,

7:25

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,

7:27

10. Look at that. Another 10.

7:29

Alright. So clear the history and

7:31

we roll another d10 bang six

7:33

one two three four five six

7:35

Oasis of mother's tears is the

7:37

location So now we're gonna go

7:39

to Oasis of mother's tears right

7:41

and we've got this section here

7:43

I'm actually gonna drop over so

7:45

I have the city of arches

7:47

book over here on my other

7:49

Window and I'm gonna switch over

7:51

to obsidian so we have the

7:53

whole book in markdown So

7:55

I'm actually going to, let's see,

7:57

we're gonna go, in my talk

7:59

show notes, I have a

8:01

let's build an adventure with the city

8:04

of arches, but I'm also gonna go

8:06

to my resources, and I'm

8:08

gonna go to city of arches, and I

8:10

have all of it here, let's see,

8:12

we're gonna sort by file name, so I

8:14

get the chapters in the right order. We

8:17

are going to the

8:19

Deadlands and Oasis of

8:21

Mother's Tears, there

8:23

we go. So I'm going to

8:25

grab, because it's all nice markdown, I'm

8:27

going to grab that whole section

8:30

and I'm going to drop it

8:32

into my notes. And that way

8:34

we've got the original notes of

8:36

the Oasis of Mother's Tears. Again,

8:38

the markdown version of City of

8:40

Arches is available along with the

8:42

digital package of City of Arches.

8:45

So it makes it very easy to be able to grab the

8:47

text and throw it right into your notes. And

8:49

we are going to build an adventure from

8:51

this. So what are the things that we need

8:53

in order to build an adventure? So let's

8:55

have a quick look. So Oasis of Mother's Tears,

8:57

a singular oasis in the Waste of the

8:59

Deadlands, the towering form of a weeping mother is

9:01

one of the few signs of life in

9:03

a realm of death. That's grim. Jeez, Mike. Grimm.

9:05

Along the southern edge of the Deadland stands

9:07

a large formation of natural rock marred by numerous

9:10

cracks. Underground springs in the area force water

9:12

up to the rock from which streams of fresh

9:14

water flow into a to fill a great

9:16

pool. The pneumatic clans known as the

9:18

Deadland Shadows refer to this rocky spire as

9:20

the mother for her life -giving waters and

9:22

call the pool and the thriving village that

9:24

has grown alongside it the Oasis of Mother's

9:26

Tears. Clan folk use the Oasis as a

9:28

place of refuge on their journeys across the

9:30

desert and protect the site from wandering monsters

9:32

and bandit raids. Family farmers and

9:34

hunters make up most of the folk who

9:37

dwell permanently in the village, in addition

9:39

to a handful of merchants ready to serve

9:41

adventurers who come to the Oasis during

9:43

expeditions across the deadlands. A former goblin adventurer

9:45

named Riley Gustborn is established as the

9:47

adventurer has established an adventurer's refuge here, renting

9:49

large tents whose fine amenities feel out

9:51

of place in the setting. Riley is also

9:53

the best source for tales of lost

9:56

treasures rumored to be hidden in the many

9:58

caverns that open up beneath the Oasis. Adventure

10:01

Hook, a corruption is taken root in

10:03

the underground streams feeding the mother, shortly

10:05

after an adventurer named Gulak Sandraider, delved

10:07

into the underground caverns beneath the oasis.

10:09

Riley Gusborne is anxious for other adventurers

10:11

to follow Gulak's trail, find the source

10:13

of the corruption, and end it. Characters

10:15

who do so discover that

10:17

an archway in the caverns connects

10:19

to a poisoned world called

10:21

Uvaris and has been opened. A

10:24

venomous blade carried by Gulak was

10:26

secretly the key to the arch,

10:28

which now poisons the water and

10:30

fills the caverns with gray oozes,

10:32

ochre jellies, and poisoned, corrupted grimlocks.

10:35

So that's fun. So

10:37

that's the adventure hook, right? And the idea is, OK, we're going to

10:39

take that adventure hook and we're going to build it out into something

10:41

that we could actually run for our group. That's

10:43

our plan today. So

10:45

the one thing we need to figure out is,

10:47

OK, we've got to figure out what are all

10:50

the things we want to fill out. So

10:52

I'm going to go with, as

10:54

you can imagine, the eight steps of

10:56

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

10:58

One thing in the book itself, we

11:01

describe pretty early on Like, you

11:03

know, the Adventure Hooks and Game

11:05

Prep, right, on page six of

11:07

the book, talks about the expectations

11:10

of how to build out these

11:12

adventures. And I think there's

11:14

even a little section that talks

11:16

about the eight steps of, you know,

11:18

Adventure Hooks Everywhere is here. There's

11:20

one that even discusses the eight steps

11:22

here, Design for Lazy Game Master. So we

11:25

have a section of the book right here. that

11:27

talks about what it takes to build an

11:29

adventure in the City of Arches. And also there's

11:31

a whole pile of random tables at the

11:33

end of the book to help you get quests,

11:36

NPCs, fill in details, find all sorts of

11:38

stuff. This one actually has some pretty good specifics.

11:40

So I don't know that we're gonna need

11:42

too many random tables to build out the rest

11:44

of it, but I think it will work.

11:46

So we have strong start, we have scenes. We

11:48

don't know who the characters are, right? I'm

11:51

building this agnostic from the characters, so I

11:53

don't have a section on the characters themselves.

11:55

We have scenes. We're gonna have secrets and

11:57

clues. We're

11:59

gonna have NPCs,

12:02

monsters, treasure.

12:04

What am I missing? That's only six,

12:06

and there's seven. Strong start, scenes, secrets

12:08

and clues, NPCs, monsters,

12:11

and treasure, Haitian, right? So we're only

12:13

using seven of the eight steps,

12:15

mainly because we do not have a

12:17

character. We don't have any list

12:19

of the characters for this. So what is

12:21

the strong start? So an

12:23

easy, and so to begin with, we should

12:25

ask ourselves like, okay, based on this, like,

12:27

what's the right level for this? I'll tell

12:29

you what my, because I'd kind of like

12:32

this to be a useful thing that maybe

12:34

you might actually want to run with. And

12:36

my favorite level, four or five E is

12:38

third level. I love third level. So I

12:40

think we're going to focus on third, Third

12:43

level characters. They just got their subclasses.

12:45

They are just media enough. It's really

12:47

good for one -shots. Third level is

12:49

a fantastic adventure for one -shots. They're not

12:51

super complicated, but they're just complicated enough to

12:53

be really interesting because you added subclasses

12:55

to them. They are powerful enough to

12:57

be able to handle a lot, but also

12:59

not so super strong that you need

13:02

to like really dial up the difficulty.

13:04

So I really like third level. We will

13:06

assume five. built for five third

13:08

level characters. Real quick, because I know

13:10

that it's going to be five third level

13:12

characters, I can already set up a

13:14

Lazy Encounter benchmark. And the

13:16

Lazy Encounter benchmark is five times three is

13:18

15 divided by four is about four. So

13:20

Lazy Encounter benchmark is about four. That

13:22

means they can generally handle about four

13:24

CRs worth of monsters. Four is

13:26

really at the point where the battles are going to be

13:28

deadly. If they're facing four challenge ratings worth of monsters, they

13:31

are getting to the point where it's going to be pretty

13:33

dangerous. The max CR for

13:35

any one monster is

13:37

three, right? That

13:40

if you wanna know more about the lazy encounter

13:42

benchmark, Google lazy encounter benchmark, you'll find out all

13:44

about it. But it's a quick way to give

13:46

you an idea of like what you should have.

13:48

So, okay, so what's the strong start?

13:50

So one thing that could make sense, an

13:53

easy one is we could have some gray

13:55

oozes. So, One thing we can ask ourselves

13:57

is, so what version do we want to

13:59

run this for? I think I'm going to

14:02

be cool. I'm going to be like one

14:04

of the cool crowd. I don't know if

14:06

I doubt this is actually probably a cool

14:08

crowd, but we're going to go with D

14:10

&D 2024. We're going to build it

14:12

out using D &D 2024, which means I can use

14:14

D &D Beyond. And we are going

14:16

to look up gray ooze. I

14:18

love gray oozes. Gray oozes are a

14:20

really fun monster. They are,

14:22

you know, pretty straightforward. See,

14:24

only CR one half. So I

14:26

think what we're gonna do

14:29

is we're gonna have several gray

14:31

oozes come out of the

14:33

well and attack nearby folk. So

14:35

our strong start is immediately right off the

14:37

bat. They're like, you know, people are hanging out

14:39

doing their regular business. Maybe there's several wells. So

14:42

we'll say a nearby well. Because

14:45

they have farms and things like that so

14:47

there could be irrigation ditches and so we

14:49

could run and go quick Something horrible is

14:51

coming with the irrigation ditch and they they

14:53

come out and find out so then we

14:55

so that we have our strong start That's

14:57

really solid then our scenes the first scene

14:59

is fighting the gray oozes or you know

15:02

dealing with the gray oozes Talking you could

15:04

say like investigating the well We could have

15:06

talking to Riley. There was

15:08

a gula. Yeah

15:10

Riley exploring the caverns

15:13

We'll call them the grim caverns.

15:15

Poisoned caverns, right? They're poisoned. I

15:18

can't spell poisoned. Then we

15:20

are going to deal

15:22

with the corruption, close

15:25

the gate, close the

15:27

arch. I think that's really

15:29

the same thing, right? The dealing with the

15:31

corruption is really the same thing. And

15:33

that's the end of the adventure, right? And

15:35

then, you know... Hurrah. So secrets and

15:37

clues, I think it's still important to have

15:39

secrets and clues. And a fun thing

15:42

could be adding some other, you know, adding

15:44

some other lore, like a dark god.

15:46

I always love dark gods. You know, it

15:48

could be fun to have that. So,

15:50

but some of the secrets and clues we

15:52

can take right out of the stuff above,

15:54

right? So we could say the mother, a

15:57

source for natural

15:59

underground water and the

16:02

desolation of the

16:04

deadlines. Farmers and

16:06

merchants, caravans

16:08

and merchants use the

16:10

oasis as a stopover

16:12

for hundreds of years. Some

16:15

believe there are

16:17

several large caverns

16:19

and numerous tunnels

16:22

beneath the rock,

16:24

beneath the oasis. Some

16:26

believe there is an

16:29

altar and an archway

16:31

beneath, you know, deep

16:33

in the caverns. An

16:35

altar, we could say a shrine, filled

16:38

with glorious treasure

16:40

deep in the

16:42

caverns. Some whisper

16:44

of twisted humanoids

16:46

and other monstrosities

16:48

that call the

16:51

caverns home, but

16:53

these monstrosities rarely

16:55

come to the

16:57

surface. I like the

16:59

one about the world, right? What's the

17:01

poison of Varus, right? The

17:03

poisoned abyssal realm

17:06

of Urvarus is

17:08

ruled over by

17:10

a demon prince

17:12

known as what?

17:16

So here we can sort of like make stuff

17:18

up, right? I don't think, well, we'll take a

17:20

look in the city of arches. Because

17:22

we have sort of a, we have

17:24

like a legendary figures, but I

17:26

don't think any of the legendary figures work.

17:28

We have Carigula on the dead fang, the

17:30

black hand, Prince Azun. one of the lower

17:33

12. So I could add one of the

17:35

lower 12. I think

17:37

I actually have. So here's

17:39

another one. It's actually this at

17:41

the time of this recording.

17:43

It's probably now available if you're

17:45

watching this recording. I am

17:48

putting out another supplement on the

17:50

SlyFlourish Patreon for Heritier subscribers

17:52

called the lower 12. And the

17:54

lower 12 is a two

17:56

page Supplement of the

17:59

gods of the lower 12

18:01

who are like dark gods

18:03

that have been forgotten and

18:05

I can actually use one

18:07

of these guys So because

18:09

we have sister Mevis whose

18:11

serpents death poison thievery and

18:14

assassination. That's a pretty good

18:16

one But I think there's

18:18

another one. That's like all

18:20

corruption Lord Halix Yeah, gellus

18:22

grim touch corrupted fungus nature

18:24

Dead tree growing through the

18:27

eyes of a skull. I

18:29

think gellus grim touch is

18:31

a pretty good known as

18:33

the plate so demon prince

18:35

known as the plate plate

18:37

bringer sometimes known as one

18:40

of the lower 12 called

18:42

gellus grim touch grim touch

18:44

is worshiped by unholy druids

18:46

who believe death and rot

18:48

are the default nature for

18:50

all things the ideal nature

18:52

of all things That's fun. Any

18:55

other secrets and clues?

18:58

Yeah, so the secret,

19:00

which is more like

19:02

the quest, is that

19:04

Gulak Sandrunner into the

19:06

lower caverns carrying a

19:08

magical poisoned, a

19:10

magical dagger. He's

19:12

been gone two weeks. Two

19:15

weeks? How long do we say? Three

19:17

days? We'll do three days. That way he could survive

19:19

without any water. He's been

19:21

gone three days and since

19:23

then, People have said

19:25

said they've been getting sick

19:27

from the well water

19:29

and and plants are starting

19:31

to look disease one

19:33

two three four five six

19:35

seven eight We want

19:38

two more secrets two more

19:40

things the characters could

19:42

discover. What else could they

19:44

find? Gulak dagger known

19:46

as the thorn of and

19:48

we'll pick another one

19:50

thorn of the dead forest

19:52

is a holy

19:55

dagger, an unholy

19:57

dagger for the

19:59

druids of the

20:01

Plaguebringer. It also

20:03

serves as a key

20:05

to the archway

20:08

to Uvaris. One last

20:10

secret. What's the

20:12

last thing that they could

20:14

learn here that we think

20:16

would be a fun angle?

20:19

How about some druids of

20:21

the Dead Forest

20:23

have been

20:25

seen lurking around

20:27

the... around

20:30

Mother's Tears but

20:32

disappear when

20:34

followed. So there we

20:36

go. So I got my secrets and

20:38

clues. We're gonna drop past

20:40

location for a moment and we're

20:42

gonna have some NPCs and I

20:44

think we want to have like

20:46

three main NPCs. We've got Gulak

20:49

Sand Runner. Whoops. Who

20:51

is going to be? Who's

20:53

Gulak? We will use the

20:55

city varches as much as we

20:57

can. We're going to go

20:59

to our random tables in the city

21:02

varches. We got our venture generators. And

21:04

we are going to roll a pair

21:06

of 20 -sided dice. Bang,

21:08

bang. 16 and 9. 16

21:11

is a Y's. It doesn't

21:13

sound very Y's. Lex Sandrunner

21:15

is a Y's. A Y's

21:17

Celestial. That kind of changes

21:19

things a little bit first of all Gulak doesn't

21:21

sound like a very that doesn't sound like

21:23

a celestial name We're gonna we're gonna roll again.

21:25

I don't want to change the name because

21:27

that was the name I used To an elf

21:29

and still does this out. We'll go with

21:31

dwarf right a wise dwarf. Is he

21:33

that wise though? I know

21:35

I said wise But I don't think that

21:37

that really works because the wise guy

21:39

doesn't take it the unholy dagger down into

21:41

the thing to go get treasure. I

21:43

think it's more funny. It's not wise. Did

21:46

I roll wise again now? 15 this

21:48

time. Let's see what 15 is. Sly. There

21:50

we go. Sly. I like

21:52

that one. A sly dwarf. He's

21:55

probably a, is

21:57

he probably not a veteran,

21:59

maybe a scout who took the

22:01

dagger. He's probably wise now. He

22:04

learned from his mistakes. He

22:06

took the dagger and the

22:08

dagger is known as Thorn of

22:10

the Dead Forest. into

22:12

the caverns beneath the

22:14

mother. So that's Gulak.

22:16

Actually, the first NPC we're going to

22:19

introduce is our quest NPC. And

22:21

our quest NPC is Riley.

22:24

Riley Gusborn. Riley is a...

22:26

I think we have a

22:28

thing. Goblin adventurer. And

22:31

proprietor of the adventurer's guild

22:33

in the... I don't know if

22:35

it's really a guild. The

22:37

adventurer's rest in the

22:39

mother. It probably calls it

22:41

the mother's shadow, proprietor of the mother's

22:43

shadow. The mother's embrace,

22:45

the adventurer's camp at the

22:47

Oasis. So we got that. And

22:50

then I'm gonna add a third, which is

22:52

gonna be a druid. And we're gonna have

22:54

a druid of the, the druid of the

22:56

plague bringer. So we have a villain. Let's

22:59

roll, let's see, a

23:01

clear and we'll roll 12, 16. 12,

23:05

let's see, a 16 is a fairy

23:07

folk. I like that. 12

23:09

greedy so we need a name

23:11

root of the plague bringer and

23:13

we'll probably use the the cult

23:15

fanatic We'll do this the other

23:17

way. We could use the priest

23:19

I think we'll use the priest

23:22

step lock instead of the cult

23:24

fanatic step lock and What is

23:26

their name do I I don't

23:28

we're gonna go to my adventure

23:30

generator To get a name but

23:32

earth seeker Eva and instead of

23:34

earth seeker What is a earth

23:36

above the gray earth? Greedy

23:38

fairy folk, druid priest of the

23:40

plague bringer. So, so that's good.

23:42

We've got some NPCs. Now we

23:44

will jump to monsters. So this

23:46

is third level. We know generally

23:49

what kind of, we know, you

23:51

know, monsters should be somewhere between

23:53

like, you know, CR, whatever, one

23:55

quarter. So we're gonna have cultists,

23:57

of course. Cultists of

23:59

the plague bringer. We

24:01

have a priest of the

24:03

plague bringer. We're gonna have gray

24:05

oozes. We know we have

24:07

those. Instead of the

24:10

cultists, we could have Grimlocks, right?

24:13

Are there multiple kinds of Grimlocks in there?

24:16

Let's see. I like Grimlocks a

24:18

lot. So I think there's just one kind

24:20

of Grimlock as a CR one quarter, but that'll

24:22

work well for a cultist. Oh, and they do psychic

24:24

damage. We can switch the psychic to poison damage. What

24:27

else do they say is down

24:29

there? Great oozes, ochre jellies. So I'll

24:31

probably have ochre, ochre jellies. And

24:33

one thing we can do is instead

24:35

of making this a Just a generic list,

24:37

we'll make it a random list. And

24:39

we probably want to have about six possible

24:41

encounters here. It's max three

24:43

means they could face an ogre, so

24:46

you could have a Grimlock ogre. One

24:48

thing I like to do is like Grimlocks

24:50

being these sort of like, you

24:52

know, subterranean, you

24:54

know, subterranean dwellers. You can sort

24:56

of re -skin other monsters into

24:58

them. You can have you

25:01

know, Grimlock veterans and you can have

25:03

Grimlock scouts and you can have stuff

25:05

like that. So I think, you

25:07

know, having Grimlocks of the Plaguebringer, you

25:10

know, Grimlock, Ogre

25:12

plus Grimlocks is

25:14

another one. The

25:17

Priest of the Plaguebringer is really a separate

25:19

thing. I don't even think I really

25:21

need to list it because I already have it listed

25:23

above. So that's four kinds

25:25

of monsters. I'd like to have

25:27

two more. So Underground

25:31

Dwellers. So what are

25:33

some other, so we can

25:35

actually, we'll go into the monster manual

25:37

here. Yi brand new and

25:39

shiny D &D 2024 monster manual.

25:42

And they have, where's other

25:44

lists? We'll do monsters

25:47

by Habitat. Take a look

25:49

at that. And we will

25:51

look at Underdark monsters. And

25:54

we will poke through this

25:56

list. So we

25:58

have gas spores. Those are

26:00

not bad, right? A gas

26:02

spore fungus and myconids are

26:04

another one. Gas spores

26:06

and myconids. Let's see, we

26:09

have, we could have like a,

26:11

like giant poison toads. Those are always

26:13

fun. They're not poisonous. Oh,

26:15

they do acid. Well, they do acid cause they

26:17

swallowed you. That's not a bad one. The

26:19

giant toads are CR.

26:22

Man, this thing, this pop up is obnoxious.

26:25

Giant toads are CR one. So

26:27

they could do like three of those. And

26:30

then you don't always want to run, especially what

26:32

I'm finding with D &D 2024, is when

26:34

you run close to deadly, it

26:36

really is deadly. So feel free

26:38

to run at half the LEB

26:40

when you're doing it. Two toads

26:42

is fine. We

26:45

could have Ogre Zombie that died

26:47

from poison. That's kind of fun. We

26:50

could have Ogre Zombie instead of a Grimlock Ogre,

26:52

we could have an Ogre Zombie. plus

26:54

Grimlocks. That feels good to me,

26:56

right? I think, like, you don't need

26:58

a whole lot, because again, we're

27:00

not doing a massive thing here. So

27:02

then Treasure. Okay, so Treasure, I

27:05

like to just use a Treasure Generator.

27:07

I actually have, I don't know

27:09

if I've released this yet to patrons,

27:12

but I actually have

27:14

a D &D 2024

27:16

Treasure Generator. And

27:18

since we're doing D &D 2024 stuff, we

27:20

will do that. I am

27:23

not giving away inspelled stuff. This is

27:25

actually pretty good. So we'll drop the treasure

27:27

right in there. We'll get rid of

27:29

the inspelled staff and the colloquial protection is

27:31

fine. But then we're also going to

27:33

include, we are also going

27:35

to include the dagger, right? The

27:37

dagger, so the plague bringer, or what was it

27:39

called? The thorn? The thorn of

27:41

the dead forest, which is

27:43

a plus one dagger

27:45

that casts what, entangle?

27:48

We could give it two abilities, right? Once

27:51

per day, Add

27:53

3d6 poison. 3d6,

27:56

that's a lot. 2d6

27:58

poison onto its next

28:00

attack. Once per

28:02

day, add 2d6 poison, once per

28:04

day as an action, as a

28:06

bonus action. Add 2d6 poison onto

28:08

its next successful attack, right? So

28:10

one time on one hit, you

28:13

get to do another 2d6 poison

28:15

damage and poison the target. And

28:17

we'll say it's a DC

28:19

14. Con

28:22

save and I'm not there's like proper

28:24

ways to write this I don't know

28:26

the proper way right now. I don't

28:28

this is enough I get what it

28:31

does I get how to explain it,

28:33

so I don't need anything more I'm

28:35

thinking even another ability. I think entangle

28:37

is not so bad entangle is a

28:39

Spell it is first level right, so

28:41

I think it can create let's see

28:43

So once per day you can use

28:46

an action to have a cast entangle

28:48

right? So that is

28:50

a fun, powerful item, right? That

28:52

is also a key to

28:54

this realm. So I've got

28:56

all of the steps I need. The

28:58

last thing that I want is location. I've

29:00

been putting off the location itself. So

29:03

we are actually going to go over

29:05

to another. I know I'm pitching all

29:07

my stuff. Another tool for

29:09

patrons of SlyFlourish is the Dyson

29:11

Commercially Licensed Map Gallery. This is

29:13

a map gallery. It is downloadable

29:15

and self -hostable to your own machine

29:17

that includes, I think, about 600

29:20

maps to choose from. And I

29:22

use it all the time to

29:24

pick out awesome maps for the

29:26

games that I'm going to run.

29:28

And this is a perfect example

29:30

of what you're going to have.

29:33

And right away, look at this.

29:35

I've actually used this map

29:37

before and I like

29:40

it. There's a lot of

29:42

non -KV stuff here, but

29:45

I think it could

29:47

still work. One of

29:49

the tricks, especially, here's your lazy GM

29:51

trick for you. I mean, you're getting

29:53

packed with lazy GM tricks today, but

29:55

one of the real lazy GM tricks

29:57

that I follow is pick the first

29:59

one that works. So instead of

30:01

like, You know, hey, there's 600 maps. I

30:03

should go through all 600 and find the perfect

30:05

map. Instead, say, which is the

30:07

first map that covers what I need. And

30:10

when you got it, you're done. Grab it

30:12

and you're off to the races. And that's exactly what

30:14

we're gonna do here. Can I drop it? Look

30:16

at that. I can drop the map right into my

30:18

notes. Thanks, Obsidian. So I

30:20

have the map in here.

30:22

What I can't do is annotate

30:24

it. So I am instead

30:26

going to just create a list

30:29

of features for each of

30:31

these chambers. I will

30:33

probably, I'm gonna

30:35

sort of mentally connect

30:37

which room has which

30:39

chamber. So

30:42

they're gonna, you know, I'm gonna,

30:44

I have this little entry

30:46

way to the right. I could

30:48

instead have like the, a

30:50

lower well. So I guess

30:52

one question is like, could we

30:54

have a couple of different ways to get

30:56

in here? Right? That might

30:59

be kind of fun. So like they could

31:01

go down the well that's got the corruption

31:03

of the, the corruption of the well that,

31:05

that where the, where the gray oozes came

31:07

from, but they could also go down through

31:09

the cracks. That are

31:11

in the mother's tears itself and

31:13

that could come from sort

31:15

of a different path That way

31:17

there's sort of an option

31:19

right off the bat So we'll

31:21

have this will be that

31:23

this this chamber right here will

31:25

be the the entryway from

31:27

the irrigation Well, and that's that

31:29

big central well, and it's

31:31

got a statue Half melted of

31:33

the plague bringer who is

31:35

known as what we have a

31:37

secret clue in here somewhere

31:39

Scrim touch so they could do

31:41

they could learn stuff, you

31:43

know, they could learn stuff right

31:45

off the bat by finding

31:47

the statue Also looks like a

31:49

great place to like get

31:51

a text. So that's one entry

31:53

then I think just south

31:55

of that we could have like

31:57

ancient crypts of Priests we'll

31:59

call them ancient plague bringer crypts

32:01

So there's another entry. The

32:04

two entrances are really close to

32:06

one another, but the problem

32:08

is there's not that many natural

32:10

passages in here. It's actually

32:12

mostly not natural. So they can

32:14

come in this way. So

32:16

that covers one room. Then there's

32:18

this like curtained area around

32:20

here. So we could have like

32:22

a Grimlock hovels. That's that

32:24

sort of area right southeast of

32:26

the lake. Then we

32:28

could have like a Grimlock

32:30

feast, Grimlock feasting hall.

32:32

Then an altar, fresh

32:34

altar to the plague

32:36

bringer, to the plague

32:38

bringer. And that's that

32:40

northernmost chamber. So

32:42

I think that covers one, two,

32:45

three, four, five, right? One,

32:47

two, three, four, five. So that

32:49

covers all of the natural

32:51

chambers. So then we

32:53

will, I think we're gonna start

32:55

at the bottom and work my way

32:57

up because I think that uppermost

32:59

chamber is where the archway is. So

33:01

south, We have that raised, the

33:03

hallway with a raised platform with like

33:05

four altar looking things on it.

33:07

We could have shrines of the lower,

33:09

of four of the lower 12. That

33:12

would mean that we would want to have that supplement

33:14

for the other, the other members of the lower 12. So

33:16

we have that handy. Then that

33:18

south chamber looks like a

33:20

big, crazy altar. That could

33:22

be the, the, the great

33:24

shrine, shrine of the plague

33:27

bringer, right? Then we

33:29

have to the north. We

33:31

have that long, pillared hall with the

33:33

little segments off to the side. What

33:35

would that, what would that be? What,

33:37

what had that been and what would

33:39

it be? We'll call

33:41

it ruined because I think that

33:44

is there and it could have

33:46

like statues and murals of dead

33:48

or of dead worlds because I

33:50

think the plague ringer cult likes

33:52

to note that other worlds have

33:54

been completely destroyed by Gala scrim

33:56

touch. I think that works. Then

33:59

we are gonna have a treasury, the

34:01

treasury of the plague bringers. That's that

34:04

middle chamber there. And then

34:06

we have the arch of the name

34:08

of that world. What's that world

34:10

called? Uvaris. And

34:12

that's that northernmost chamber. There's

34:14

other features in this room though.

34:17

There's these like, you know,

34:19

weird, those paintings on the

34:21

walls. I mean, you know,

34:23

I wouldn't get that the plague

34:25

bringer would be... We could have

34:27

like... bodies, bound

34:30

bodies, route bound bodies. So

34:33

like other people have come to this

34:35

chamber and roots are growing out of

34:37

the walls and there's like dead people in

34:39

the roots that have been kind of

34:41

impaled there as sacrifices to this thing.

34:43

And the archway is now open and needs

34:45

to be closed using the dagger. And

34:48

you can decide, one like MacGuffin, one

34:50

little tricky bit that we can use here

34:52

is that we can move the dagger

34:54

anywhere in the area. So depending on

34:56

how fast we want the adventure to go,

34:58

we can make it easier for the

35:00

characters to get a hold of the dagger.

35:02

It's a moving McGuffin. I'm a big,

35:04

big believer in moving McGuffins. And

35:06

a moving McGuffin is essentially, hey, whatever the thing

35:08

is that you need in order to accomplish this

35:11

quest, if it's mobile, the

35:13

GM now has the ability to change the pacing

35:15

of the game by saying like, yeah, you found

35:17

it, or no, you have to keep going. that

35:20

is a very like non OSR sort of

35:22

approach, right? It's definitely like you have your hand

35:24

on how things are going to go. But

35:26

I also believe that sometimes pacing is important. And

35:28

if you wanted to run this as a single

35:30

session, you want to move that dagger. You

35:32

could, of course, roll randomly to decide where it

35:34

is, right? You can always change your mind

35:36

and instead of Deciding where to put

35:38

it you could roll randomly and and where

35:40

to put it which I think is the

35:42

difference between sort of the the stochastic nature

35:44

of OSR style adventures and the more sort

35:46

of modern take of You know GM's having

35:49

their hands more on the story. I'm not

35:51

a I don't I don't believe in either

35:53

one over the other I think both approaches

35:55

can work, but I know that myself as

35:57

a GM what I like is to be

35:59

able to have some hand on the pacing

36:01

and one way to keep your hand on

36:03

the pacing to have some control of the

36:05

pacing is knowing that I can move that

36:07

dagger wherever I want so that the characters

36:09

could, you know, they still need to close

36:11

the gateway. And that's

36:14

really like the main goal, right?

36:16

And I think we want to,

36:18

I think we want to move

36:20

right at the top. We

36:22

want to make clear the

36:24

goal, find the poisoned dagger

36:26

and use it to close

36:29

the archway to Varus, right?

36:31

I want to make that really crystal clear. What's

36:33

the goal? Find the

36:35

Poison Dagger of the Poison

36:37

Caverns. What do we call it? The

36:39

Plaguebringer. What was it there? The

36:42

Thorn of the Dead Forest in the Poison Caverns and

36:44

use it to close the Archway to Avaris. That's

36:46

the goal. We want to

36:48

have that crystal clear. Now,

36:50

how do we feel about it?

36:52

Hopefully, you saw the process where

36:54

I had this You know,

36:56

I had this, I had this adventure hook

36:58

and I took the adventure hook. I got

37:00

some ideas about like who they would be

37:02

for, that we're gonna have it for third,

37:05

you know, the characters are, you know, five

37:07

third level characters. I have my strong

37:09

start. I have my scenes. I have my secrets and

37:11

clues. I have a location. I've got location descriptions for

37:13

a lot of the places in here. I've

37:15

got NPCs that they can meet. I've got

37:17

monsters that they can fight. I've got treasure

37:19

that they can discover. And I put it

37:21

together in, you know, about, I

37:23

don't think it took a full hour. Right? Not

37:25

quite a full hour for me to put

37:27

together the entire adventure. But that is really, I

37:29

mean, what you saw is the process that

37:31

I follow. And it's pretty much the process that

37:33

I follow for making game, making adventures for

37:35

all the games that I run. It's,

37:37

you know, you can watch me do it on my

37:39

lazy RPG prep shows, but also when I'm running my

37:41

home games, I go through a very similar process. Obviously,

37:44

the main difference is I know who the characters are. And

37:46

so depending on what the characters are, where they

37:48

started, what they're going for, my notes might change

37:50

a little bit. But this is a pretty good

37:52

example of it. And hopefully what that gives you

37:54

is if you are looking at the City of

37:56

Arches and you should, it's a really, really awesome

37:58

book. you can use a process

38:00

like that or a process of your own that

38:03

gives you an idea of how I do it.

38:05

That doesn't mean that's how you do it. You

38:07

might have an entirely different process, but that is

38:09

one way to take an adventure hook and turn

38:11

it into a bunch of notes that you have

38:13

ready to run a session. I could, I feel

38:15

very confident that I could run this session and

38:17

it would be great fun as a one shot

38:19

game, maybe one or two sessions. I could probably

38:21

get it to one if I move them a

38:23

guffin around. And I think it'd be

38:25

a lot of fun. Friends. Thank you

38:28

so much for hanging out with me today. I

38:30

hope you enjoyed that little adventure that we

38:32

put together. And of course, you can

38:34

pick up the City of Arches on the Sly

38:36

Flourish bookstore. There's a link down in the show

38:38

notes. There is a big preview available, a 42

38:40

-page sample preview. of the book. So

38:42

if you want to check it out, you

38:44

want to see if it's the kind of

38:46

book for you. No reason. It's, you know,

38:48

easily, it's just one click to go get

38:50

it. And you can pick up the book

38:52

in both hardcover and digital, the digital version,

38:54

including the PDF, a backgroundless version of the

38:56

PDF, a markdown version of the text, and

38:59

an EPUB version, along with all of the

39:01

assets that you can use in your virtual

39:03

tabletop of choice. It's a really good deal.

39:05

It's a product I worked on really hard

39:07

for like a couple of years. I love

39:09

it. I've been running campaigns in it. I'm

39:11

very proud of it and I think I

39:13

think you will really enjoy it as well.

39:15

Thanks so much. Have a great day and

39:17

get out there and play an RPG.