The frontier fort town of Ashgate is home to 400 souls, each trying to make a life at the eastern end of Woldarm’s Passage in a strange and unfamiliar land of strange beasts, volcanic lakes, and mud pots. Agents of the Black Hand skillfully manipulate the politics of the many interested factions to hold their control and push down challengers to their strange rule. Wolfram’s Passage is an ancient pathway under the Spine of the World that was hidden for centuries under a pyroclastic flow. Since their discovery a hundred years ago, Kigs and Vess have leveraged their Passage to grow a black market trade between the Manyhorn Traders of The Expanse and the Spicers’ Guild of the Azure Coast. Under the watchful eyes of Black Hands Agents, this trade slowly built a small population of hospitality workers and caravan drivers, most of whom found a new home across the Spine to escape something from their past with the anonymity of a new start. Life is cheap in Ashgate, but it is theirs. A year ago, something notable changed in Ashgate. Unknown to most residents, the Black Hand made a compact with the Arcanum to develop the mining of essential minerals depleted across the Azure Coast: minerals that are rich and untouched in the lava fields of the eastern Expanse. The result in Ashgate has been an influx of prospectors and explorers who venture beyond the Fort in search of buried riches. Some of them come back. Fewer know why they are here in the first place.

My campaign (dnd 5.5e) has been going pretty steady (thanks to many of you here who jumped in with advice for me and the Fishel bros. books) and we've just had a bit of a summer break. Essentially the group is gearing up for a big rescue mission. I'm familiar with the concept of dialing up and down the difficulty level but I was wondering what you all keep in mind for running something like this: They are rescuing a party members long lost grandfather who has a special time traveling ability. They're fighting kind of like a fascist organization of dwarves who are aligned with an evil wizard group (that is after a different party member). The party has yet to align with some factions they might share similar interests with. My teen son who is in the party has told me my combat has been getting better, (originally was hard for me to think past the monsters lol) this is what I've been doing, I'm looking for just any other ideas you keep in mind when planning combat. - having interesting terrain, traps, objects - Maybe having countdown clocks at different points - Smarter monsters , monsters that turn into other monsters, different waves of monsters Thinking of adding more innocent bystanders, maybe unclear bystanders. Also more height or trench/ underground possibilities. Maybe this is enough but thought I'd check with you all here! I'm aware that maybe the best way to make combat more interesting is to use a different system 🤣 but this is what everyone is into.

I have a party that thinks, when they run low on spell slots and hit points, they can just take a long rest anywhere -- the middle of a corridor, bridge, hallway -- you know, high-traffic areas -- and they are back to 100%. I constantly give them random encounters, which do tend to happen in hallways, but they just keep trying until everyone gets bored and I just say, "the night passes with out incident". I need to find someway to give them consequences, but also give them some mechanism to where they can take a long rest that makes sense. I'm open to any ideas. Thank you.

First: Play the game in front of you, with the people at your table. Second: Respect your players' agency. Third: Be generous with information Fourth: Prep situations, not plots Fifth: Invite randomness, intentionally. Sixth: Make choices meaningful. Seventh: Love your players Always gold advice.

Hi everyone! My name is Juan Pablo. I'm from Bogotá, Colombia and I've found this community recently after reading the books (Proactive Roleplaying and Collaborative Campaign Design). Currently I'm mostly playing SOLO, using a mix of Ironsworn/Starforged + The One Ring 2ed for the mechanics, while going through the backlog of 5e adventures that I've acquired through the years. These books have helped a lot in making sessions more engaging so I hope to find and share even more ideas with this community.