Rufus Scott

TTRPGs with Kids – What to Expect

Before life became somewhat more isolated than usual, I often joined in with the D&D club at my school. I also DMed for the children of friends who heard their parents playing and wanted in. From ages 5-18, I’ve run tabletop games for close to a hundred kids.

One thing is for certain, its a very different experience than running a game for adults. If you are thinking of hosting for young people, either as a friend or a teacher, there are a few important things that will help you:

Dungeon23 – Week 5

We’re going deeper underground.

The end of January means the completion of the first layer of the Megadungeon, and the beginning of the next. So I needed to make sure that the first was rounded off at 31 rooms, and I needed to think ahead to what the next layer should be.

What I’ve found curious about this self-imposed project is how the ideas flow steadily. I came up with an overall idea for the whole megadungeon from the start, but I didn’t really know how I wanted the whole of Layer 1 to look until it was half-formed. As I started on Layer 2, I had even less of an idea of how it should look. Nevertheless, day by day, the mental image is developing. I don’t think I would have created the same dungeon if I’d sat down to build it in one go.

A new layer in my mega dungeon means a new time period, a new Prophecy leading to its creation, a new clan living within its halls, and new threats for the party to face.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Yeti

We made it. All the way to the end of the book, two years later. 98 Fantastic Beasts turned into D&D monsters.

Some have been unique, weird and wonderful monsters that were a challenge to convert, some were a new version of a pre-existing critter, sometimes less impressive because the description in the book lacks the outlandish abilities in the original’s stats. It’s a slight downer, that the last beast falls into the latter category, but the result is, I think, a different brute of a yeti from what Dungeons & Dragons already has.

Beating Dark Souls the hard way

This post is for anyone who has ever thought something like “I can’t play Dark Souls, it’s too hard”, or “there’s no way I can ‘git gud’ at these games” or “Dark Souls takes patience and skill”. There’s some truth to this, but I’m here to prove that you are good enough to beat it.

If I can do it, the way I did it, then you can do it to…

Dungeon23 – Week 4

One of the aspects that intrigues me about a Megadungeon is how they can feel so ‘lived in’. A standard dungeon might be completely barren of life – just ancient traps and treasures left behind – or it might still be occupied by a big bad monster or evil villain. If you greatly expand the limits of the rooms and landscape within, suddenly theirs room to add whole ecosystems, small pockets of civilisation, clans, potential allies and enemies.

I have an overall idea that several of the layers of my Dungeon23 creation will have humanoid groups living within. Remnants of a bygone age, or people seeking refuge from the calamities outside. As outlined in earlier blog posts, this ‘dungeon’ was a high-tech complex trying to save the world. Whilst it failed, and has since given way to the chaos, collapse and corruption, some pockets of the dungeon still support life.

If nothing else, offering a party potential companions/nemesis that are just trying to survive amongst the aging machinery and monstrous abominations, has the potential to create interesting scenarios and problems for the players to overcome. Unless they blast through human and monster alike without a second thought… that’s okay too.

Fantastic Beasts and How to Slay Them: Winged Horse

I was recently looking at a friends Lego Harry Potter set when I observed the Lego Thestral and thought: “Have I missed a monster? I’m half a dozen Fantastic Beasts from completely D&D-ifying the whole book, but I don’t remember seeing the Thestral in it.”

The reason turned out to be that Thestral are a type of Winged Horse, and are mentioned in a single half-sentence. Which is an odd way round in my opinion; in a world of griffons and hippogriffs and dragons and pixies, choosing to define a creatures by the fact that they can fly and not by its ability to be invisible to anyone who has not had a specific trauma is more than slightly odd.

What this does also mean, as I round on the penultimate entry in Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them, that I actually need to create three different stat Blocks for the Winged Horse.

Comment Quest – Part 1

Fancy a new adventure? What about a ‘choose your own adventure‘, where what happens next is decided by the comments section? This is Comment Quest.

You see a Goblin

PART 1 – You See a Goblin

It has only been a few months since you left home to seek fame and fortune as an adventurer. To slay monsters, rescue villagers, to become a true hero praised and respected everywhere you go. To see what this strange and mysterious world has in store for the intrepid traveller.

Comment Quest – Part 2b

Click here to start the adventure from the beginning.