#homebrew module

[dnd-patch-notes]

Hello! Welcome to DnD Patch Notes!

Starting in mid 2022, I began working on a project called Singularity, a completely homebrew dungeons and dragons campaign with original lineages, subclasses, boons, items, monsters, and worlds.

Since I started actually running the campaign, I thought it would be fun if it were an actual campaign module, but never had the time or energy to actually make it a module. But today that all changes! I'm going to use this blog as a place to chronicle my attempts at making a full-length campaign module for dnd 5e!

This blog will be the Patch Notes and Dev Notes for Descent Into the Abyss, a Dungeons and Dragons 5e Module :)

Disclaimer: This module is a horror campaign designed primarily to unsettle and scare. The book features intense horror, gore, suggestive content, unreality/dreamscapes, and heavy topics, and is 18+.

Find the admin (me) here: @atlas-of-the-mind

FAQ under the cut

Q: What's the module about?

A: Singularity is a massive horror-themed campaign that brings the players through the many worlds that reside in the Abyss, as they try to unravel the mystery of what happened to their ability to dream and the gods of Mitas -- The Stars and Moon.

Q: What kind of horror is in it?

A: The module contains body horror, fantasy horror, psychological horror, and cosmic horror, and primarily focuses on eldritch and apocalyptic themes.

Q: How many worlds are there? What are they?

A: There are 8 worlds in total; The overworld, Mitas | The buffer plane, Anasu | The afterlife, Sev'runs | The clockwork domain, Caelwyrk | The island of Rebirth, Viseur | The Dreaming Dark, Somn'exerri | The frozen wastes, Gelida | The endless depths, Anchori. (Does the edge of the universe count as 9?)

[More to be added soon]

[tofu-bento-box]

wwwwwwwelcome back to the car of strahd everyone. party has met the abbot and been rightfully weirded the fuck out by that whole situation. ismark’s wolf form made its first appearance, ezmerelda spilled her backstory, another npc confessed to murdering lady wachter and the twins (he fixed stella while he was there tho!), victor got put in a chalk circle labeled “baby jail” for a wild magic surge that flipped gravity and slammed a bunch of revenants into the ceiling, and the hottest seditionist alive got exiled from the the vistani on-screen.

[goldenwaves]

AUGH you people have no idea how badly i want to run another dnd campaign i play in two weekly and sometime run one BUT i need more…..

[monmatch]

I wasn't happy with the cover so I redid it. Please appreciate the effort of the boxes, I haven't drawn so many since college lol

[stick-or-treat]

kind of honest pro tip for becoming a better dungeon master: run a one-on-one campaign for a good friend or your partner or your sibling or something.

you'll learn

how to prepare a lot of content very quickly - having only one player means there isn't a ton of interparty chatter or debating how to storm the castle, so content goes by faster.

how to cater content to fit your PCs - with only one PC, they're essentially a Main Character, and it feels weird to send them through content that doesn't tie into their goals or backstory.

how to balance encounters - it is so unbelievably easy to kill a single PC so you get the hang of action economy real quick, especially if you start at a low level.

how to play and run lots of NPCs - not only do you run side characters and monsters, but you may also play a few complex NPCs to help simulate an adventuring party.

how to run combat quickly - again if you are both the monsters AND most of an adventuring party, you have to go fast otherwise it's just you playing against yourself for like 30 minutes at a time.

how to delegate tasks - giving your player some NPC stat blocks to run for you in combat, asking your player for details about the world, working together to decide what "shared" NPCs would do.

how to roleplay real good - you're the ONLY person your player has to interact with, so you'll get a lot of practice driving the plot through NPCs and setting details in a way they'll latch on to.

and if you want to go to DM boot camp like I did, find a player who:

loves combat but also wants to play a fancy noble who avoids combat by rolling Persuasion when at all possible - you will get very good at coming up with non-traditional encounters like stage play combat, fights with heavy social elements, and how to move them into situations where talking just isn't going to help.

loves all monsters, is tired of human-centric stories, and hates the trope of "this entire species is evil therefore you are justified in killing them on sight" - you get really good at quickly modifying modules and encounters to have less humans and way more complex depictions of monsters and monster races.

thinks you're cool and likes watching you create stuff - ok this one is just nice, it's very heartwarming when you apologize for taking so long for your NPCs to take their turns and your player is like "no I love it!! I'm just watching the drama like (⚆ᗝ⚆)"

anyway thank you for attending my Ted Talk

[girlspecimen]

my favorite response to annoying reddit gamer guys who give me shit abt being bigender and using she/him is to just be like “yeah man i’m multiclassing” they never have anything snarky to say in response. you can’t tell me to pick one because im out-playing you at your own game by having levels in male and female and im dual wielding pronouns while you’re stuck as a binarycel…. if you don’t get it than like i just think that might be a skill issue? lol

[allthemodules]

I made a horror module for kids on bikes! First thing I'm posting here so feel free to let me know how I could improve. I test ran this with some people online and it went pretty well so I thought I'd share it here too. I've include the custom character sheet I made either printable or as a form fillable document (make sure you save your own copy before making changes!)

There's also a handout I used in my game and some adversity tokens I made that you can print if you like

[ali3nboyfriend]

i say “oh i’ll just run a little pathfinder one shot it’ll be short and get me back into DMing without needing to commit to too much!!” and then everyone got attached to their characters and now we’re looking at maybe running more with them.

they’re posting musings and making suggestions for playlists to each other.

they’re making incorrect quotes.

[captaincleverusernamehere]

My favorite part of running modules is picking one npc to be my favorite little creature and rewriting the whole thing so they stick around for as long as possible

[ace-robot-has-matcha]

Cooking something…a Skullgirls Dnd module, perhaps? Stay tuned 💀❤️

[dnd-patch-notes]

Patch Notes 11.09.23

- Added Coin of Probability

- Added Skull Chest

- Fixed an issue where humanoids would spawn randomly in the overworld

[1-50thofabuck]

Need feedback for first release/minor updates

It's not what was planned as a "first release," but it seemed like the easiest adventure I've written to rework quickly into a publishable form. Of course, it took a lot longer as I kept finding things to alter or ideas to add! I need commentators and proofreaders. Any help you're willing to offer will get your name on the front page as a thanks. The module will be released for free once finalized. Anyone interested in reading through and offering suggestions, fixes, and so forth? Let me know! I'll send you a PDF or a link to a Google doc, your choice! So, please let me know if you'd like to check this out! Anything you want to help with or "contribute" will be appreciated!

A synopsis: a cavern and mine dating to prehistoric times, reputed to be haunted by a banshee, has led to death and suffering each time anyone has attempted to reclaim it. Now, goat-headed fomorians and other horrors are flocking to it to serve the dark being that has revealed itself. As their numbers swell, aided by a spying bandit cultist and his unwitting accomplices from town, the number and power of monsters in the area has increased, ruining trade and travel, yet due to a calamity in a nearby town, the influx of needy individuals has continued. This unfortunate situation is made the more sorrowful for the many desperate refugees that have been lost to the vicious creatures whose frequency and strength have grown. As if all this is not enough, the falling of a star has unleashed a terror from beyond. Trade, travel, and pilgrimages have been all but cut off; economic disaster looms as the number of needy continue to increase; cultists set traps, goblin tribes kidnap and enslave, something that fell from the sky devours all in its path, and all the while, fomorians gather together and plan for a war to retake the land that was once theirs.

In other news, I completed half of an "All the World's Monsters" readthrough entry, but gave it a rest to work on the adventure module I'm previewing here! Also because it was getting a bit frustrating as it became increasingly more difficult to review some of the atrocities in that book without being overly negative(they get real dumb, with about 10 "alignment: hungries" in a row!). Aside from that, since the posts I make here are a mixture of materials and general posts, I'm going to add an index to the website of the posts here that are actually relevant such as adventures, monsters, NPCs, graphics or anything else potentially useful for a GM, as opposed to the ones about kickstarters or whatnot. I'll index readthroughs there as well.

[phylaxery]

A faux (semi-fake) D&D module I made for my worldbuilding subject, which was primarily an excuse to flesh out my next campaign setting (Ardent). Here's the first three pages of a train heist.

[monmatch]

Just a few side by sides of my concept/painting attempts a few months ago vs now. I finally feel like I’m really coming into my own with digital painting lately. Seeing my art finally getting close to the level I want it to be, I think Red Hill is really gonna be something special :3

[jules-makes-stuff]

You know, I firmly believe that dms can and should mess around with and modify modules to fit their and their party's tastes.

But sometimes I read what's happening in another dm's game and I honest to god don't recognise any word of the plot besides NPC names.

E.g. if the canon module was Little red riding hood then their game sounds like "And then Red storms the city with her hoard of zombie wolves and the players parley with queen Cinderella, who is now a 5 headed avatar of Tiamat and ascended sorcerer".

This isn't a dig, I'm just blinking and trying to figure out what kind of player induced butterfly effect got y'all there.

[vulpixelates]

trying to find a balance between "module that's easy to understand and follow bc i am terrified of DMing and might cry" and "module that's not boring af especcially in the first adventure bc that might be as far as i manage to get through before losing my mind and i at least want my forever DM to have fun as a player for once" is killing me lmao