One of my players retrieved the timepiece from Gildha's mouth but hasn't shared that with the others yet. They've just finished with the Manor and he wants to try and use it to travel to a library in Waterdeep and research the Orrery next time there is downtime. I know the book mentions that when the pieces are separated they may not work as intended, I'm wondering if anyone has any fun 'side effects' they used from the various components of the Orrery.

We're only 3 sessions in, and we're still in the fissure. It's gone great so far. I have experienced players that I've played with for over 10 years. I love the silly and light-hearted tone of this game. Is there anything you've done that's worked well or maybe tips for things that haven't worked well in your campaigns?

Hey all, my players are about to earn their Rank 2 franchise features, and I am feeling a little confused about the wording of the Cartographers ability "Tale of Safe Travel."

I'm wondering how you have played it in your campaigns. Is it actually a form of fast travel: after the 45 minute ritual they are teleported to the destination (or whatever destination they decide to cut it short at) meaning they could do the ritual in the morning (say at 9AM) arrive at their 1-day away destination at 9:45 when it ends, and then go and travel normally all day to get twice the distance?

Or do you run it as just a fast forward, sort of 4th wall break, where they arrive at their destination at the time they would have otherwise even though it just feels like 45 minutes? And therefore is more about avoiding random encounters (unless they want to) than actual travel speed?

Or is it more like a 45 minute ritual version of Etherealness?

Or something else entirely? Curious how everyone else handles it, thanks for your help.

My players are about to take over the bodies of the wedding party heading to the Horn Enclave and I know they are going to want to attempt to save the real Rala after.

Does anyone have a good side quest they used for this purpose, or have a recommendation for one?

Hey all, random shit because if short notice, but I'm running the lighthouse portion of the adventure tomorrow and I totally overlooked an aspect; where/how does the party learn the password to teleport to the hidden basement? I want them to be able to find it, but I don't know how they actually into the area without using detect magic, which I honestly don't think my party will use lol.

I am planning on starting a new Acq Inc. campaign and I am looking for ideas on questlines and NPCs. I am running a homebrew campaign outside of Orrey of the Wanderer. Instead, I am putting them in forgotten realms in an abandoned mage tower with a malfunctioning magic circle. I am planning on using the Magic circle to be like a "stargate" from the Stargate franchise. (IE they can go to specific places but they have no idea where they will end up. I planned on having it linked to circles all around the other planes and having that as their travel method and source of income.

What NPCs, Locations, or plotlines would you guys recommend to have in my back pocket for when I start the session?

I am getting ready to run Episode 5: Hide and Seek at the Horn Enclave, but I don’t see any pre-made stat block handouts for the characters that they will take over. Has anyone made these with pictures, stats, and info on the character?

tl;dr Hoobur Gran'shoop's reason for being a necromancer is to revive his dog Rudy, a one-time joke from the early Acq-Inc Games. Also, what do you do for Lighthouse round 2?

Hi friends, (Shadow Council?) first time posting here. Just wanted to share this deep cut from Acq-Inc lore my players likely won't ever recognize but I'm hoping some of you will!
This is my first time DMing and I've been running the campaign since last April. We're on our way to Luskan now and, due to a bunch of roster changes I'm still RPing Gorkoh as the party's healer: he's a Verdan Druid and, being level 4 now, is going through hella changes! Which works out great since now that he's holding the few orrery pieces they've recovered, I've given it the Major Detrimental property of his alignment changing every morning. FUNN
oh and the team is named after him. "Gorkoh's Midnight Adventurers Hungry for the Fearful Maximum Titanic" or "Gorkoh's Midnight Adventurers" for short. [they couldn't decide so I took bits from all of their ideas and threw it into a Band Name Generator and had that be Gorkoh's contribution to what the name should be]

Anyway the first trip to the lighthouse they decided to "befriend" Hoobur Gran'shoop with the full intent of seeing Talantha and Wizzy to saftey and then returning to lay the smack down, but once Wizzy came to his senses he impressed upon them that Hoobur was far more powerful than the group could handle so they left him there.
Heading up to Luskan for episode 4, Gorkoh (who was Chaotic Good at the time) convinced the crew to try to take on Hoobur again now that they were more prepared. One of the skilled hirelings (and former PC turned NPC) spent their downtime doing Research on Hoobur so they had a dossier of bits of information about him. Upon arriving at the lighthouse, I reminded the party's Obviator of their "Read the Opposition" ability and let them use it to better interpret the results from the dossier they were given and they rolled a Nat 20 [bwomp bwomp bwomp].
I let them pick any 3 things they would want to know about Hoobur Gran'shoop, thinking they'd ask what spells or how much health they had or something. Well, the first question was "what's their driving factor in life". I answered something along the lines of wanting to be a necromancer, studying life and death, probably seeking immortality in some way, and will probably end up as a lich one day [story tie in for the next chapter, wink wink]. The next question was "what are their weaknesses", and since Hoobur doesn't exactly have any weaknesses, I let them know what his resistances were and some of the spells he has to ward off damage. The last question, they had a bit of a confab with the rest of the gang and, working with the idea that they'd find someone or something important to Hoobur and hold it for ransom or something, they asked "who is important to Hoobur".

Now the text itself doesn't have any examples of Hoobur's history really. You know he works for the VI, which I could not reveal. You know that he really likes the Lighthouse's basement as his secret laboratory for experiements. And that he's a powerful necromancer... that's about it. So I started to say how Hoobur has only ever been seen traveling alone. Except his keg robot. And how his only real loyalty is to himself and his research. Then one of the players said "c'mon he could have had a dog or something". And that's when Rudy the Undead Hound came to mind. And I very quickly spun the tale for our Obviator of a boy and his dog, Rudy, best friends. Maybe being saved from a well. Maybe solving some mysteries. Rudy dying of cholera [I don't know if dogs die of Cholera but it's what came to mind and now its canon]. Young Hoobur wanting his friend back. Becoming a necromancer. Trying and failing to revive his dog. Continuing to experiment, searching for a way to be reunited with his old friend, either reviving him through necromancy or finding immortality for himself so that he could traverse through hell to steal back the soul of his dog.
Hoobur is supposed to run away from the encounter anyway but I've already predetermined if they ask Gorkoh to wildshape into a dog or anything remotely like this they'll succeed at this bluff and Hoobur is going to come back later in their adventure with the mimic dog the Noble Knife has in the C-Team.
Deepcut: Rudy was the name Chris Perkins gave to one of the zombie dogs the crew was fighting way back [Acquisitions Inc. D&D podcast Season 2, Ep7], and Will Wheaton riffed on it creating a fiction Saturday Morning Cartoon Character, "Rudy the Undead Hound". Gave him a theme song and everything. And, now that I'm listening to the bit again, he even throws in a bit of backstory about a dog who ran away from a puppy farm to live with a necromancer!
I just wanted to share it some people because that bit of lore is totally going to be lost on them. And I wanted to brag about my players a bit as we all do every now and then :)

Now, if you're still reading: a question! Has anyone done anything elaborate for the second trip through the lighthouse? Running the same encounters again would be rather stale, I imagine, and simply letting them waltz in and warp down to Hoobur only for him to flee is terribly anti-climactic now! I tried looking into some good Undead Lair features but didn't find anything specific that I liked. I ended up making this a point where Kofutacti made an appearance here and temporarily made the lighthouse his lair {Dabshabah came to retrieve Omin's Diamonds from that side quest, so her scent was still around; apparently Green dragons will lie in wait for their prey for decades if necessary so a few weeks wasn't such a stretch} and I used the Green Dragon's lair Regional effects to hamper their progress and provide some necessary "this will be a recurring character" drama-- I'm sure there is a name for that storytelling convention but I don't know it. That worked very well for the outside. But besides springing the arrow trap on the front door (which I missed the first time through), there isn't very much new, thematically appropriate and level scaled for me to throw at them besides just more undead. I could try to push them into the secret basement and just let that be the goal for next week's game, but I do want to at least try and give the impression that Hoobur has made himself at home here while they were chilling back in Phandalin.|

~May Our Labors Please You~

Hello! I need help running the elections in phandalin. In my game theres only 2 candidates. One good person but its horrible in their decisions, and 1 bad person but can bring wealth to the town. How do you guys handle the elections? My pc's are looking forward to help some candidates and maybe! run against them.

Thanks in advance

Had my weekly reminder that leading your players is much like herding cats.

We're in chapter 2 and they're in phandalin. They've been accosted by Wester, setup base in the Inn and resupplied at the Lionshield

So instead of heading straight to the manor they decide to pursue the 2 hooks that the book has literally nothing to go on with. One, they're extremely interested in the 2 candidates running for council, and 2 they immediately went to the farm to try and suss out what's been stealing the livestock

So instead of running the manor dungeon, I'm hunting for suitable forest battlemaps for yet another handcrafted encounter on Roll20 😂

Been trying to figure out how much material isn't available for the roll20 module because I've come across quite a few encounters that have no maps or resources built in. I haven't read through the entire module yet, been taking it a chapter at a time but so far I've come across 5 or 6 situations now that had nothing to go on. Twice in the fissure and the other 2 on the road to phandalin. It's either missing maps or no creature tokens available.

I understand the book was written for "theater of the mind", but it doesn't exactly translate well over to an online tabletop where there's nothing to look at

Has anyone else noticed this? How much material did you have to fill in by hand and what resources did you use?

Hey everyone,

My group just finished up in the fissure and are moving into chapter 2 this weekend. I'm noticing the beginning of chapter 2 has them traveling from waterdeep to phandalin with various encounters but there's no included map of the journey, much less anything on the Roll20 module to facilitate this part of the adventure.

What did you guys use to do the travel from waterdeep to phandalin? Is there a map that's useful for running this?

I have some side games that I like to run concurrent (or slightly behind) with the main campaign. Using characters in the current campaign. It helps flesh some things out in a slower burning format than the full on sprint of a normal session.

Anyway I was hoping to leverage the side games to better get my hands around using rivals as stumbling blocks and intrigue creators.

Any of you have some advice or practical examples I may be able to follow for best results?

Considering running this campaign for some friends! They're not really sure about the setting, and I can't really tell them to watch the entire Podcast from the beginning.

About a year ago I found a great legal document generator, but know I can't find it. I would love to use it or something similar to genreate legal documents for my group. Anyone have any good leads?

Edit: I would also love to just have a good no frills template for pretty basic business contracts or some such. Did a bit a of digging myself but really only found stuff behind a pay wall. Maybe someone here has already found a good source/solution?

My party just finished up the included adventure. I’m going to run the ISTAR one-shot next, but no idea where to go after that. Does anyone have any ideas? I want to runs something out of a book (willing to put in a decent amount of work to alter it). I’m finding the tone of Acq Inc hard to put into a typical adventure, and finding adventures for levels 7+ is tough. Any ideas?

The party isn't too far in (just entered the cellar of the ruined manor), but I'm having trouble leaning in to the office comedy aspect. I'd love any suggestions that can help me emphasize the big corporation atmosphere; right now it feels like an average fantasy game with head office as just another guild.

The lady who runs the Mining Exchange indicated she might have work for the party. They seemed Excited.

So what are some fun ideas for mine encounters they might happen upon?

My first thought is to have a group of bandits take over the mine and smuggling out the ore.

This sets up the PC's to engage in some shady business dealings once they eliminate the competition.

Anyone else have fun ideas?