The Circle Of Lost Truths Light Keeper: Elizabeth Montgomery - Deceased by the end of campaign. Circle Members: Enola Ross: Scholar and NPC. She was primarily responsible for research. What she knew depended on the dice, and in a combat/high-risk situation, her having a turn was usually because I was rewarding the team members who rolled two or more sixes in a roll. It was super fun to play that way, I'm not gonna lie. Walter Dooley - AKA Walter Leideaux - Group Criminal, used an alias to hide the fact that he's the owner of Ledeu Cabeling, one of the first companies to help manufacture electrical cables. His father had managed to garnish a deal with Halen government forces during the Last Great War. Incredibly weather, but incredibly jaded about his childhood best friend and chosen brother going missing. Walter, instead of becoming a serious businessman like his father, chose to delegate the matters to capable employees who would help care for and run his company while he investigated his brother's disappearance. His investigation led him to Candela, where he was received with expectancy instead of surprise. He was skeptical at first, but curious. Until he found out that his brother was, in fact, a member of Candela Obscura. His circle had gone missing for some time during an assignment. While most of his 7-member circle had been found dead in Old Faire at the site of the assignment, his brother and two others were instead missing. He went into his first Candela assignment with some hope that he might be alive and that Candela would lead him to wherever his brother was. Character Fun Facts: The player of this character, *also my husband btw*, decided he wanted it to be a mystery to HIMSELF. "I already told you my brother is missing, and my search led me to Candela's doors. I want you to write the rest for me because I want to feel surprised by the end of the story." To which my SISTER said, "That sounds so fun! I've never played that way before. Me too! Me too!"

The session 0 that didn’t happen Session 0 was supposed to happen last night. I put the group together through a local D&D Facebook group. None of us knew each other going in, but we’ve been chatting on Discord for about a month. I shared a few player primers about the campaign, and everyone seemed genuinely excited to get started. Then the weather got involved. The big winter storm threw a wrench into things. Even though the worst of it wasn’t expected until Saturday, one player was feeling anxious about the possibility of getting stuck in bad conditions. They let the group know they couldn’t make it and didn’t want to hold everyone else up, even offering to bow out. Since this was Session 0, I felt it was too important for anyone to miss. I decided to push the start back two weeks. We meet every other week, and I’d rather have everyone present and comfortable than rush it. The good news is everyone was understanding, and a couple of others admitted they were also feeling anxious about the weather. Honestly, that response made me feel even better about the group. I’ve got a strong feeling this is going to be a really good table. I think the moral of the story for GM’s would be: take care of your players before the schedule. I think when players feel safe, heard, and included, the group becomes stronger and more connected.

Posting my in-person Daggerheart games in three different threads here… Please post accordingly so I know which game you’re commenting on. 🙏 One thing I’ve noticed is that emergent/proactive play is pretty streamlined in the Daggerheart system during world-building and character creation. I’m also taking some of my lessons learned from previous campaigns since reading the PARP guide and gauging ahead of time how proactive and goal-oriented the players want the campaign to be. That means these three different campaigns may have varying levels of proactive versus reactive play. Stay tuned!

I'd love to follow some of your guys games if you guys post them anywhere. I love learning by watching, and I think the main people I follow are more reactive roleplay games. So it'd be cool to see some of your guys proactive games in action for ahem. Research purposes.

The new spot for posting campaign chronicles has me inspired to start throwing in some of my own, since I've had such a good time reading through/learning tricks from the others I've seen so far. For the past six months, I've been running an ongoing game of Draw Steel, and last week we had our first game since November. I won't recap too much since it's been a pretty long-running game, but here's a speed recap. This'll be a long one, but for future sessions I'll be a lot faster I think. We opened with a collaborative Session -1, in which we built a setting that worked with the core fantasy of Draw Steel. Most of it is pretty standard fantasy stuff, give or take a few exceptions like memonek (almost robot-esque beings from a plane of law). The setting we came up with revolved around powerful gems that form pseudo-sentient hive minds deep underground, but can be separated and harnessed for magical abilities. The players wanted a sort of "New Gods" coalition of humans to feature as antagonistic empire builders, who have found and hoarded the knowledge of safely using the gems to themselves and used them to build an empire, while doling out less powerful "gem devices" to the less fortunate at a profit. They set up a very cool concept for a flying city, in an almost steampunk-esque world where most technology is powered by gem fragments. First session started with a bang. They wanted the inciting incident to start right when the city took off, and they did! The session started with the party's execution, which was interrupted by the unannounced early launch of the city. They fought the disoriented guards, escaped, and have spent the past six months fighting their way through the forces of the Curator, who runs the museums (propaganda) in the city and foiling his plots. The players reached level 3 (out of 10, in Draw Steel, so they're nearing the end of the first "tier" of play) and completed a dungeon. Our most recent session was a big one. I've felt like the game has been stagnating pretty badly, not necessarily because of the content or characters, but just because scheduling issues have been absolutely terrible and there have been various issues with a few players. Recently, we lost a player from scheduling concerns, and probably another one down the line, so I asked a mutual friend of the remaining players if he'd like to join, and it was an absolute blast. He's totally new to TRPGs, but took to it quickly, and I think the shakeup of the player composition combined with a little break from playing has really breathed some new life into the campaign.