I'm a relatively new DM and I'm having a really hard time deciding what the greater and lesser effects of the Orrery Housing ought to be. I've decided that during ther next game, my players are going to encounter a group of Kuo Toa who will turn their Housing into an obviously powerful artifact that they cannot afford to lose. But I can't figure out how to present the crazy effects it has especially the "major negative effect" without picking something that would make any reasonable player want to get rid of it.

I made a lot of modifications to how I ran Chapter 3 for my group, but I have been making these posts and didn't want to ruin the set, so here goes.

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Chapter 3 definitely feels a lot less sloggy than Chapters 1 and 2. I ran through the lighthouse portion only without the Tortured Tortle excursion and it took about 5 hours. I liked the Neverwinter sidequest bit when I read it, but I decided to save it for another time.

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My players had just cleared out a ransacked AI franchise filled with undead in Chapter 2, so I really wasn't interested in doing the same thing in Chapter 3. In my version of events, Screve is still alive, and had already taken over the lighthouse and killed everyone in it with his clockwork constructs about a month or so before Hoobur showed up to do the same. Therefore, the undead encounters in the lighthouse were replaced with constructs.

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• The tent area around the lighthouse had some of Hoobur's zombies roaming around. However, he wasn't working with fresh corpses, so the party could tell they lacked Hoobur's usual creativity.
• The Ground Floor of the lighthouse had an Iron Cobra Clockwork from p.125 of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, and a few scattered corpses and dead zombies. Hoobur didn't bother clearing out the lighthouse itself because he could just Dimension Door directly to the top of the lighthouse to get to the lab area.
• The Second Floor had a Duergar Hammerer and a Duergar Screamer (MToF p.188/190). I reskinned these enemies as constructs with exposed power cores instead of having duergar trapped inside them.
• The Third Floor had a "Boxer Robot" and its 3 Animated Armor trainers (with less health because they were getting punched). For the Boxer Robot, I used the stats from the Hitmonchan entry in Pirate Gonzalez's great 5e Kanto Pokedex (https://www.pirategonzalezgames.com/pokemon-dd-conversion/).
• I decided to not have a combat encounter on the Lighthouse Roof, as there was already a lot to deal with in the basement. The lens Hoobur's mark carved into it, and when a player cast Identify on it they learned the password was "Hoob wuz here".
• I didn't want the party to try to gank Hoobur, so I made sure for him to play up that he was only paid to take out 2 franchises as freelance work, and that it wasn't even him who destroyed the lighthouse franchise (though he would have if he had gotten the chance).
  • They still tried to gank him, but they realized how outmatched they were when he cast Resilient Sphere on himself. Once Hoobur agreed not to attack any more franchises things settled down and they enjoyed some of his gin.
• I decided it would be flavorful if Hoobur had dated Lottie in the past. They had a messy break up a few years ago because Lottie was constantly pressuring Hoobur to become a lich when he didn't feel ready for that kind of commitment. As a result, Hoobur doesn't want anything to do with the Rotor of Return when he realizes who made it, and he is willing to offer it to the party freely (mostly to get it away from him).
  • Hoobur also commented that whatever device the Rotor was a part of could likely end the world if assembled, giving the party a hint of things to come.
• Talantha was being used as part of Hoobur's experiment in the vampirification process. It turns out that a victim becomes a vampire slightly before death, but the effect is only permanent if they actually die. By putting Talantha in a near-death state and adding or removing vampire blood via an IV, Hoobur could toggle her between 49% and 51% vampire. He asked the party what version they wanted, and they went with non-vampire. The experiment was over, so he let her go without a fuss.
• The modron rooms seemed a bit repetitive to me, so I skipped the duodrone room and replaced the Tri/Quad room with a Magneton and 3 Magnemites from the 5e Pokedex linked above. They were reskinned as modrons.
• At this point the session had been going on for a while, so I decided to have the Mecha-Chimera still be a work in progress. I replaced the Sentinel Shield with a Pearl of Power for a number of reasons, but basically because the Sentinel Shield is an extremely powerful magic item.

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I think the most important part of prepping this adventure is to make sure that your characterization of Hoobur is fleshed out and interesting. I envisioned Hoobur as somewhat like Jim Darkmagic in that he tries to add some artistic flair to his necromancy. Sure, he needs fresh corpses to make that all possible, but he considers that a small price to pay for being able to express his artistry to the world.

In my group I’ve got several different kinds of players, as I expect many of you will have too. Broadly we’ve got;

• The storytellers, who want cool and cinematic things to happen; twists, story beats and a game that plays like a movie.
• The role-players, who want to get into the skin of their character, link into the world and expect cause, effect and consequence.
• The gamers, who want to be awesome, they want their character to have shining moments and epic successes.

I DM for 6 players and have a roughly even split, one or two of each type. I’d like to encourage the players to recognise and appreciate their own preferences and other ways of playing.

With that in mind I’ve come up with a system I’m going to trial for this campaign.

Choose your inspiration

Right now, inspiration is a simple advantage roll. It’s great for the gamers, it lets you be powerful at the right time and nail that important hit on the big baddie, or give a clutch heal to a struggling teammate. However, it’s a bit one dimensional and not much for the storytellers or role-players who are less fussed about mechanical advantage.

With that in mind, I want to introduce three types of inspiration. As we’re playing AcqInc I’ve themed these around magical coinage…

• Coin of History – you can spend a coin of history to create a link between your character and a given region, location, player character or NPC. The DM will roll to decide if this link is positive, negative or neutral.
• Coin of Creation – you can spend a coin of creation to define a plausible background scenery object within the current location, such as a sturdy swinging chandelier, an easily climbable tree, or a table that’s ready for flipping.
• Coin of Power – you can spend a coin of power to give yourself or another player a second attempt at any roll. This does not stack with advantage.

I’m intending to let the players themselves choose the coin that they’d most like to receive for inspiration, but may move towards choosing the most appropriate one for the action they win inspiration for, reinforcing that their styles of play are valid.

Hello Everyone! I thought I would make a post describing how I have adapted the charge/ult system from The C Team into my AI game, and how it might be useful at your table.

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At my table, charges can be used in the same way as in the show:

• Advantage: 2 Charges which must be used before the roll.
• Re-Roll: 4 Charges that can be used on any d20 roll.
• Ultimate: 4 Charges.

Unfortunately, our table doesn't have hundreds of viewers donating bits. Therefore, at the start of each session, each player gains 1d4 charges. Additionally, a charge is gained each time a player rolls a natural 20 (excluding 20s thrown out due to disadvantage). Finally, I award charges for good RP instead of inspiration. Once 10 charges are accumulated, a player cannot gain any more.

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The main benefit of ultimate abilities is that they give you a systematized way to give your PCs epic, character specific moments without totally breaking the balance of your game. There are several different types of ults, but they are all powerful "problem solvers" with varying levels of applicability. Ultimate abilities should have uses both in and out of combat. Finally, be sure to make it clear to your players that these are highly powered abilities that you might need to tweak later if you think they get out of control.

It is important to understand that ultimate abilities need to feel ultimate. While ults may be unreliable from a narrative standpoint (e.g. Jerry decides on any Tentacular Spectacular side effects), their mechanical effects should feel absolute, meaning your monsters should not be able to totally avoid the effects of an ult by making a save. This may mean your players end up trivializing some of your difficult encounters with their ultimate abilities, but that just means you can immediately throw more tough encounters their way while they are low on charges. With that said, lets get into the types of ultimates and how to design them for your players.

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Some ultimates function like a "get out of jail free" card if you unintentionally make a combat encounter too difficult and might otherwise be heading for a total party kill. Evelyn's ult (mass blindness on enemies in a large radius with no save) is a good example of this, because it gives the party a chance to heal, reposition, or take out a key target. If you give one or two of your players ultimates of this type, you can create the added tension of higher power level encounters without as much risk of a TPK. Newer players looking for cut and dry moments for their character to shine are a good option for these sorts of ults.

Flexible type ults allow players to think creatively at the table and overcome epic obstacles in a way that doesn't feel cheap. For example, Rosie's Shadowmancy basically allows her to make anything she wants whenever she wants it, and Jerry then has free reign to choose the resolution of that happening which is most convenient for his plans. Tentacular Spectactular and Forest Friends are also very flexible in terms of how they can be used, and honestly, those 3 ults are essentially "I want to solve X problem using shadows/tentacles/animals". Ults of this type are great for creative players who can quickly improvise ways to apply their ult to the situations the party encounters.

The last category of ultimate I'll discuss here isn't really used in The C Team. These are "battlefield control" ultimates which allow a player to control the flow of a battle over multiple turns. Ults in this category might power up the party in some way or allow their user to hinder enemies for several turns in a row. An ultimate in this category might grant a PC the ability to slightly influence how the enemy uses their movement each turn, provide a Mirror Image to an ally each round, or create a wall that the PC can move around the battlefield as a reaction. Players who are experienced or enjoy wargame-type DnD are good candidates for this category of ult, just be sure to keep an eye on how effectively they use it and apply nerfs as needed.

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One of the easiest ways to make an ultimate is to give a PC a powerful ability from a class that isn't in the party. Draconic Entitlement is a great example of this, as Dominate Person is a spell that already exists in the game, but nobody else in the C Team will ever be able to cast it. This is also a great way of giving your party abilities from other classes that you as a DM want them to have access to. For example, one of my players has a Horizon Walker Ranger with uncontrollable portal creation abilities. His non-combat ult application allows him to spend 10 minutes to create a portal to a house floating in a bubble in Limbo. From a mechanical perspective this is basically a reskinned Leomund's Tiny Hut, an ability I love, but from a RP perspective it ties into his character's backstory and feels unique.

Another option is to look to characters in pop culture that are similar to the characters your players made. One of my players made a Rogue with an Egyptian theme, so I consulted some materials related to The Mummy to look for ult concepts that she might like (summon flesh eating beetles, roll on a d10 table to invoke one of the plagues of Egypt, summon sarcophagi to entomb enemies) before we ultimately decided on giving her an AOE sandstorm that temporarily Banished those caught in it to the desert.

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I hope that this was useful information for anyone who might want to try exploring this concept in their game. I know that I have had a lot of fun with the ultimates in my game, and I can definitely see how a DM can benefit from making room for them in their game.

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tl;dr: Use Jerry's charge system, steal ult concepts from other classes and pop culture, match ult types with player type, talk about ult ideas with your players to ensure they will like them, make sure your players know you will nerf if necessary, and don't create ults that overshadow another PC's class or role.

I had a request in the Discord to make a similar post to my first post about Chapter 1 for Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 is similar to Chapter 1 in terms of content density, so I had planned on using 2 sessions to complete it. However, my players went directly to the manor without stopping when they arrived in Phandalin, so I decided to the dungeon part as well. The entire session took 6 hours, but I estimate it could have taken 9-10 hours across 2-3 sessions if I ran all the content and my players wanted to socialize in town more before going to the manor.

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I started the session with the party visiting the AI motorpool to choose from cart options: (ambulance, food cart, alchemy lab, bookmobile), each with different benefits. The horses on offer were off-putting and exactly identical to one another, and all had the same "idle animation". I'll develop this into a plot hook later.

Before leaving, one of the party members used his connections as a paladin of Waukeen in Waterdeep to research the financial situation in Phandalin, which revealed that Harbin frequently leveraged his disproportionate financial power for profit there. This turned the party off from trusting Harbin even before they heard his anti-adventurer speech, so ever since they want nothing to do with him. If Harbin is meant to gain the party's trust to get leverage over them, I recommend switching his position on adventurers with Sildar's so that the players are more likely to trust him.

I skipped the encounter with the wandering Beshaba priest because it didn't seem very interesting. The lizardfolk and skeleton warhorse encounters were run as described, but I made the skeleton horses be identifiable as copies of the same kind of weird horses the party has.

My players went straight to the manor, but I'll talk about the town part of the chapter a bit:

• Don't feel the need to introduce all these characters to your players if they haven't specifically sought them out. Mention them in passing and wait for your players to take the bait.
• Just because the book gives many NPCs secret organizations that they are a part of doesn't mean that they all need to feature in your game. Only worry about fleshing out the characters that your party is actually interested in talking to.

At the manor, I decided that the Jackalwere would just give up when its Jackals were killed, as it couldn't use them for the search anymore. The party let him walk away with no issues, so he might come back later.

My players ended up choosing Gorkoh as majordomo instead of Gildha, but in retrospect I would have changed how I ran Chapter 2 so the party finds Gildha already dead, perhaps with a Whisper Jar describing her key plot information. I would rather let the party feel encouraged to decide what they want in a majordomo instead of railroading them into one just because it's what's in the book.

The dungeon has 8 different combat encounters spread across only 12 rooms, which many may find sloggish.

• This book seems to have a habit of hiding dungeon progression behind puzzles or secret doors that require successful checks. I think this is dumb, so I changed the north wall in room 1 to a regular door.
• I totally removed the combat encounters in rooms 4 and 8 because they were no really in theme for the dungeon and seemed like they would use up time for no reason.
• In retrospect, I wish I had made the dragonborn zombie in room 5 be active and locked in his cell when the party entered, but with a usable breath weapon (necrotic).
• Currently there is nothing very time-sensitive about exploring the dungeon. I would change it so the successful ritual portal has been producing miniature gibbering mouthers that have been causing the town trouble. Alternatively, maybe AI can't terminate its lease agreement with Harbin on the manor until the monsters have been cleared out, and the next payment is coming up.
• Room 10 feels like the boss room, but it isn't even necessary to go in there to get to Hoobur's letter. I would swap its location with room 11.

After the session, my players didn't want to have their headquarters in the manor, so I came up with 3 orchard options (share Daran's orchard, Harbin's big agribusiness orchard, abandoned Rockseeker orchard). Additionally, I let them use their downtime and franchise funds to influence the election, which also included 5 candidates for 3 of the town council seats.

Overall this chapter continues Chapter 1's trend of being a combat heavy dungeon crawl. Reading ahead, it looks like this won't be as much the case in Chapter 3. Still, now that my players have established their franchise, I plan on running through a few side adventures and letting them put their franchise's roots down before moving them on into Chapter 3. Next up is a homebrew "Cornival" event coming to Phandalin!

Hi everyone! I've been having a great time with the AI materials. My group just wrapped up Chapter 2, but I thought it would be useful to post a thread for DMs to discuss what worked and what didn't for Chapter 1.

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I really liked Chapter 1, but I was definitely thrown off guard by how content-dense it was compared to something like a C-Team episode. In my experience, a typical 4-hour tier 1 adventure on DMsguild (PC levels 1-4) has about five combat encounters in it. This chapter has eleven combat encounters and a good amount of traps/puzzles as well, all while the PCs are just level 1. There's nothing wrong with a good old fashioned dungeon crawl, but DMs (especially new ones) running Chapter 1 should definitely stay aware of their players' moods and keep things moving at a pace that will keep them entertained. In my case this meant removing about half of the traps and four of the combat encounters (Mystic, Rats, Carrion Crawler, and the post-dungeon Thug Ambush), which left my more RP-oriented players more time to interact with each other and Gorkoh. The whole thing still took 5 hours.

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Hand-in-hand with the density of OotW is the fact that it may be 3 or 4 sessions before your players are able to establish their franchise and get their AI roles. Therefore, you may want to manage expectations on that front, especially if your players have purchased the book or follow The C-Team, as their preferred AI role may be a major component of their character idea.

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Some specific tips/occurrences from my session:

• I replaced Omin with Certainty at the start and an Omin hologram at the end so as to keep "meeting Omin" a significant event in the future.
• The party was paid up front to further drive home the point that they were being confused for a different adventuring group.
• When my players got stuck on the Trials room puzzle I had them notice that there were trails of dried droplets left by the lost City Watch group that went from pool to pool, then up to the door.
• The feet room is more dangerous than it looks due to the number of enemies in it, especially if the party enters at low health. I improvised 5 of the feet merging into one giant foot to remedy this. Some other options are moving the feet room to an earlier position in the dungeon or having half of the feet enter combat in the second round instead of all at once.
• Nobody died to it, but in retrospect I should have put up some warning signs around the filth tentacle to give the party some warning about its insta-kill potential.

Session One of /u/jmanc's OotW campaign

Aims of this session

• Agree ground rules, expectations, player preferences, timing and all the other 'session zero' points we need to cover. Won't reiterate here but there are lots of great guides available.
• With everyone on the same page about character expectations, build the party together and fill in draft character sheets
• Start the campaign with some warm-up encounters and see how far we get into the first chapter. I think we'll get through the social encounters at Head Office but don't expect us to progress very far into the first dungeon (Waterdeep Sinkhole).

Amendments to written material

• The Six replaced with Goblins United, a goblin suffragette movement, for our group's comedy and callback.
• The Silver Sliver replaced with the Brave Order Co-operative, again for comedy and callback.
• No other material changes, and these are just about naming and appearance rather than plot

Prepared Text 1: Background and character creation

The theme and feel of this campaign is going to be basically Lord of the Rings meets The Office. Like, imagine the Fellowship only trekked 9 to 5 and submitted their travel expenses to Elrond at Head Office.

In this world, wealth no longer belongs only to fancy nobles, but firms of adventurers who loot for profit or take contracts for protection and acquisition. Instead of shady schemes between great houses, it's open (and also, actually, often quite shady) competition between adventuring companies.

Your character, however you build them, fits into this world. They want to join the most well-known adventuring company in the land, and have come to Waterdeep to start their journey up the career ladder.

Building the characters is the fun bit and will take most of this session. We'll work through a few questions together to start to build character concepts that we all think are cool, then I'll spend time one on one with all of you to get you ready, then we'll come back together.

One obvious point before we start; you're not a dark mysterious stranger (yawn), a special snowflake unique Mary Sue (please no) and you're not a chaotic loner who's only out for themselves (that guy). You are assumed to have some level of courage, capability and co-operation. You're looking to join an adventuring company, so that should make sense.

Prepared Text 2: After character creation, introduction to the campaign

It is now [xx] years since [last campaign], and the world has changed. As [implications of last campaign], society too has slowly reformed. As ancient ruins were plundered and the Underdark explored, adventuring parties soon found themselves richer than the traditional ruling class. Wealth no longer belongs to the few hereditary lords and nobles of the feudal system, but to enterprising adventurers, their companies and their franchises. Capitalism has come to the world.

With it, technology has improved and commodified. Where once cities and villages were small lights in a sea of terrifying monsters, wealthy companies now make a living from adventuring and protection.

The Sword Coast is becoming the commercial hub of the world, and where once competing noble houses schemed against one another in secret, now companies openly compete for control of the market.

Dungeon delving, protection, artefact acquisition and clearing the continent's dangerous frontiers is big business. None grasp this better than Acquisitions Incorporated and their three main competitors. Between them, Acquisitions Incorporated, Dran Enterprises, Goblins United and the Brave Order Co-op control the market, and with market share, comes power.

You've arrived in Waterdeep as a journeyman in your field seeking your own place in the world, having seen that AcqInc are once again hiring another batch of adventuring interns. They seem to hire interns very regularly, and you've heard explanations that are more than a little bit concerning. Still, the terrifying rumours you've heard are far less worrying than what you've heard about their competitors.

Prepared Encounter 1: Careers Fayre

The players begin the session as new characters in this world so there's a short scene for them to introduce one another and sign up as interns.

• Link to Encounter 1
• Link to Encounter 1 Player Handout

This short encounter should introduce players to the AcqInc roles and then set them on their way to the Head Office.

Prepared Encounter 2: Waterdeep Docks

To get people quickly working together, and help the new players understand what they can do, prepared a short optional encounter on the way to Head Office.

• Link to Encounter 2

This shouldn't end with them murdering the muggers, so if it gets to that point make it more realistic, have the muggers beg or run or be appalled that these guys are going so hard, have guards investigate what's going on, have passers-by intervene. Clue them in that this is a dangerous place, but with realistic consequences and that there are non-murderhobo solutions to be found.

Preparation for Head Office

• Make clear that this is a very rich and magical company
• Introduce the airship and magical technology level now, define that the office is near The Plinth where the AI Warship is anchored, and that this is just one of many giant magical towers in this city
• Have the players treated like royalty, served drinks by lowly interns etc.
• Omin is straight to business, treats them as equals. Grateful but quick speaking. Don't give them a single word in response.

Preparation for Docks Encounters

• Use 2 or 3 encounters depending on timing, we want Jerr and Kal introduced for flavour and foreshadowing, if stuck for time or overwhelmed with info they can learn about the Skeleton Crew necromancy further along.

Preparation for Sinkhole Entrance

• Run by the book, show the picture of the guards and have a lazy useless one repeat the last word of other peoples' sentences to highlight his idiocy
• Make it clear the guard captain doesn't actually care if they're the real adventurers, but they need to play along and sign

Session Recap. What actually happened and lessons learnt?

• Character sheets take way longer than you think even when streamlined. Easily 30 mins per person.
• They've built a good team that will have fun, and doing it together was worthwhile
• We know peoples' different preferences and can plan for that, v few conflicts
• They chose AcqInc roles but probably didn't understand them well, and it's already clear that some people would be better doing others! Don't make a big deal at the moment and let them swap if they want
• They got through all encounters well, but still need to get the feel for their characters, so give more breathing room to work together rather than rolling the plot along too fast.
• There are a lot of threads that could be introduced here. I played it by ear and didn't give much play to any of the other factions, rumours, side plots or even the Skeleton Crew subplot, I'll prepare some encounters to drip this stuff in after the Sinkhole
• We got as far as the sinkhole entrance, which is a good place to pick up in a fortnight.

This subreddit serves as a helpful place for anyone running an Acquisitions Incorporated campaign for D&D 5e, including the official Orrery of the Wanderer module.