LFP - Dragonlance: DL1 Dragons of Despair

[Vodkard]

EDIT 09/22/2018: The game is full. Thank you everyone for all your quick responses!

I have converted Dragonlance: DL1 Dragons of Despair (1e) into 5th Edition. I’ve been really shy about running my products (Dragonlances in Faerûn, found on www.dmsguild.com) to complete strangers. Normally I run them with people from my D&D store. But I think it’s time I break out of my shell. Now, although my products are set in the world of Faerûn, when I first make them, they haven’t been converted to Forgotten Realms yet, only 5th Edition. So although I can’t give and sell my original versions, that doesn’t mean I can’t DM them. So that’s what I’m going to do. The link to my event in the calendar is at the bottom of this post. And without further ado:

Title: DL1 Dragons of Despair (5e)
FG License: Ultimate
Game System: D&D 5th Edition

Time Zone: MST (without daylight savings)
Day of week and time: Thursdays at 5:30pm-9:30pm Arizona time.
If new game, planned start date: I start on 09/13
Planned Duration & Frequency: 3-4 hours

Text or Voice: Voice, push to talk
Voice software used: Discord

Roleplay & Combat mix: 50% Roleplay / 50% Combat
Number of Players in game & needed: Need between 3-7 players
Character starting level & equipment: level 4. Will make characters on first session. I redid every race and added two new ones and a new class and a new background. Or you can play as one of the Heroes of the Lance!

Details of your scenario: You stand on the road east of Solace, tired from five years of adventuring, from a fruitless search for lost clerical magic. You know the old proverb that claims "You must return to find what you left to seek," but the saying never really made sense. Soon, however, it will.
For the world of Krynn is not the same: refugees stream out of the northernmost human lands, telling horrible tales. An invading army has burned their villages and put their families and friends to the sword. Among these stories you hear even darker rumors-that older evils, the dragons themselves, have returned to the world, for new and more terrible purposes.


Link to Game Calendar page: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/calen...ex.xcp?id=3186

[BlackPhoenix424]

Im interested if this ever gets going. I have been playing 5e for about 6 months and for trying something new for once. Dragonlance sounds like it might be a refreshing change from what im used to playing with 5e. i will go ahead an apply on the page then.

[hehaub]

We would not be able to make it for the Sept 27th session, but if that is OK and please invite Hehaub and Shehaub to the game

[Vodkard]

BlackPhoenix, I hope you'll like this. I saw you signed up thanks!
Hehaub, we can work around that date if needed. Glad to see you two aboard!

Forewarning, This is based on a 1st edition module. Even a faithful conversion still makes it feel a bit old. But still, so far all my previous players and I have thoroughly enjoyed running these modules. The story is still fun and if you know the story then it's like getting high on 'member berries. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into these conversions and this was the first one I ever made. So it's a bit amateur. Fortunately, after working on a few more of these, I just went back and revamped a LOT of DL1. I call it my 2.0 conversion for Dragonlances in Faerûn: DL1 Dragons of Despair, so this is a perfect time to test its strength and weaknesses. I think you all will be surprisingly pleased. See you all soon!

[mawgwy]

Hi this sounds fun!

[Lothar the Fellhanded]

I would love to play if you're still recruiting!

[Vodkard]

EDIT 09/21/2018: Two spots have opened up for my Dragonlance game. We are only about 4 hours into the game and our next session isn't until October 4th so this is the perfect time to jump into my game. Sign up on the Game Calendar link at the bottom of this post. Message me or find me on Discord if you have any questions. I will be continuing the Dragonlance modules with 'DL2 Dragons of Flame' once this module is done.

[RaiRai]

I advise against others joining this campaign as my experience with this campaign was terrible, and the Dungeonmaster has completely blocked from communicating with him because I simply wanted to play character that didn't fit his story, In turn, I am going to review his campaign and performance. His choice of setting was the dragonlance where basically it was after 1000 years of the gods abandoning the people, taking healing magic with them, thus in turn basically rendering certain classes or archetypes unplayable or at best undesirable, so I went with something that didn't adhere to normal spellcasting as Triton Great Old one Warlock with the Lawful Evil alignment whose secret goal was to summon his patron, or "God" into the world. After a few sessions, an impression became clear of this module of his design and by extent his style, the players had no room for developing their own agency and were simply being railroaded into delivering a macguffin to a place we had little to no information about in the first place aside from being a collection of temples dedicated to old gods. The story progresses where we find Draconians, or essentially dragonborn, cultists whom were easily dispatched by using an evil method of convincing them to kill one another by utilizing Awakened mind, who in turn enslaved the nomad villages we visited that were in pursuit of the macguffin, a blue crystaled staff intended to be delivered to some temple.

My character in the rationale of that if these rampaging hordes of draconian creatures were enslaving and murdering in pursuit of this staff, or macguffin, in order to obtain some power for an evil purpose, the best course of action would be to throw it in a volcano so to ensure that no one could abuse it or receive a gift that we hadn't any clue of what would be. The DM after this last session accused of me breaking the game when I was simply trying to prevent further mass murder, and thwart the hordes of evil, by convincing the party that the best course of action is destroy the staff. Not to mention when we strayed from the path he prescribed, he forced us on the track repeatedly, and basically wouldn't let us explore.

Now to review the DM proper: At character creation, he provided a massively unfair advantage to those who were willing to use pregenerated characters versus homemade ones and essentially castrated a lot of character options with both classes and races, creating an extremely restrictive, and by extension an unfun campaign. He also failed to explore a lot of key aspects to the world of dragonlance and the setting since most of the players only know of dragonlance, since most of us players were thrown under bus as far as knowing the world. His pacing of the story was to be noted, as he rushed us through various points as opposed to letting us explore and learn about the world, ala railroading the players into this story by just handing us the macguffin on a silver platter instead of having to search for it proper and give the players agency to find such an artifact as race against time before the antagonizing force finds it. Much less taking away the option to destroy said macguffin to prevent it from falling into evil hands, and to thwart the efforts of evil ala Ring of power preventing it from getting the hands of the big bad to save the world by destroying it.

His narration was drull, lacking any sort of inflection or emotion to give a sense of the environment or mystique to the world to the point I found myself losing interest in the story, accompanying the fact he rushed our sessions in effort to cram what should have been a 4 to 5 hours sessions into hour and 30 minutes if at best two hours. He failed to provide various opportunities to roleplay, and was focused on cramming the story down our throats to the point it was practically suffocating, draining the fun out of D&D for me as a player. The DM intensely lacked the flexibility and versatility that any great DM, like Matthew Mercer, expresses when DMing a game that creates a fun environment for the players where they have the agency to explore the world and interact with it, versus the feeling of being raped creatively by his lack thereof.

[Vodkard]

Whether your (RaiRai) post is sincere or vengeful, you obviously spent some time to write it, so I will not take it down. But let his post be a warning. I am very flexible, but I will not allow people to try and break the game (such as spending over 30 minutes arguing with, and pissing off, the rest of the party that we need to destroy the Blue Crystal Staff).

[damned]

Hi RaiRai

There are many, many ways to both run and play a RPG. Many of them are incompatible with the play/gm styles of some people.
If a game is not to your style you are far better off advising the GM you want to withdraw from the game and thanking them for the opportunity.
They may ask you for feedback and you can offer feedback but dont force the issue.
Public posts like this one tend to harm both parties.
Id personally remove the post, and if the GM hadnt posted above Id probably have suggested that to you.

My general advice here is to mark experience and move on.