Infinite Ideas: Building the Infinity Tower

I've really enjoyed running the Infinity Tower game. The players have been great and learning to share a game online has been an awesome experience that has made me grow as a DM. I've made decisions about what really matters to me in a game, what I want to support in play and why I run or play games. There have been so many great moments in this game that I've been pleased to share with people. I value those and feel honored to have played with the people I have for so long. There were tremendous sacrifices of time and energy by all involved in making this game happen for almost a year. In about 48 weeks we ran 40 sessions. That is by far the best average I've ever had for a game I've run. For all of that, I am very thankful. After running a long series I think that there are some things I've learned about myself and the style of play I prefer. I would have liked an ending to the game that was satisfying to all players. I didn't plan this game in a way t...

Another great session with a great group of players! I came into this session with my loosest recap ever. I barely remembered where the game was the week before, which is totally my fault. I had the events, just not a concrete order of things. Something for me to work on. Once the group set out, they went to Taul'Khazad, the Dwarven city above the Kings' Crypt that they would be exploring. There was a brief interaction, during which I said to myself, 'You know what? 3 of 4 characters here speak Dwarfish. I need to solve this problem for right now.' With that, I threw in a Dwarven bard character to quickly cast Comprehend Languages. The wizard asked if he was a wizard (undoubtedly spellbook grinding). I gave a bard-ish explanation of the character's magic. The Dwarf-obsessed character's player asks if he is a bard, I say yes, she unloads a Bag of Holding full of ancient Dwarven texts. This is a ruined Dwarven city. They have only oral records of their people....

Introducing a new character into a game is a gradual process. Whatever else might be going on, it's important to give some time for the new character to be fully integrated into the group and feel like they have a stake in the narrative. We had a confluence of events this week where we reintroduced a character that had been missing for a couple of weeks and simultaneously introduced a new character. The result was that we had a very role-playing heavy session, which I was looking forward to and prepared for, to make sure the situation had some energy and depth. We set a few plot opportunities up, including the necromancer/wizard trying to find a place to put his animated corpses. There was also an upcoming festival that celebrated the cleric's god (Pelor) and the end of the harvest season moving into fall. The result was a really laid-back session where everyone got better acquainted and built better connections with one another. I think it's a great place to be before ...

The Infinity Tower crew grew in a really interesting way this week! We've had a recent cast change with one player stopping their time with us, but we've also had a new player agree to join our table for a while. It's been exciting waiting to see what they'll do. Now we know: our new player is playing a (CG) Necromancer. It's a really interesting character idea and set of motivations that I'm trying not to spoil or take ownership of, but I'm looking forward to seeing things develop. Additionally, spells. Arg. The downfall of every DM creature! I don't get to play D&D often, but when I do, I play a wizard. It doesn't mean I know the spells or expect certain things. We had a fight at the end of the session that I expected to be pretty brutal but instead turned out to just be a slog, going slowly through the hit points of a stone golem. There wasn't a lot of damage done per round but the creature couldn't damage the party. The culprit:...

Some sessions are just for fun. A lot of times as a DM, I find myself with more details and ideas I want to share than I get to use. It was actually really surprising that in prepping for this session I went back 30 sessions to look at old notes, where I found LOTS of things I hadn't used! This fun, laid-back episode was a chance for two players that like role-play to have fun and take care of some business. With life circumstances coming up, we expected to have a smaller crew, so I prepped a few small scenes to give players something to do. It was almost all character and situation development for existing NPCs and circumstances. We had a big change for our group because one of our players is going to discontinue the game. We've really enjoyed her contributions but she has other things she wants to do and ways that she needs to use her time. I am SO impressed by the group in general- their attendance and energy has been stellar! 36 sessions out of (I think) 40 weeks since...

The best part of D&D is being creative and having fun with friends. We had a whole week off and I really missed seeing everyone and playing D&D!!! The fun part of streaming is being able to see what you make and review how things go. A highlights reel of the best times playing a game with friends is an amazing asset, especially when you need a little boost. This session was the conclusion of an arc for us. It was designed as a fight on top of a sinking boat with a group of undead. I never saw this as a fatal, deadly fight for the PCs. Frankly, during the last few sessions I've become aware that clerics are awesome at dealing with undead and that the PCs in general are very powerful- and I love it! I'm also really glad that our group is creative, supportive and ready to improvise. We had the expectation there would be a session that Kat, who plays Aurora, would be out. In the end, every player but Sean was unable to make the game last week, so everyone sat one out. Kat...

So there was a whale. An undead whale being ridden by a horde of other undead. That was the whole concept I had rolling around in my head preparing for the session. I may have mentioned this before, but some sessions I just focus on a conflict and let the ideas develop around it, like ripples spreading out from a stone striking the surface of a pond... or like a branching thought diagram. This is why I love RPGs. Always go with your fun ideas. Just let them be awesome! There was going to be a fight with an undead whale. Things I learned last session: elemental monk powers are pretty good at creating icebergs. Fire spells blow up ships. Little enemies are easily mowed down at a distance despite what CR calculations say. So I wanted a big challenge, something that would be interesting, and something cool to build. I love whales. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about them, but I think they are wonderful. I wanted to have a whale. Plus, the Big Bad of this arc is an undead, so...

I love being able to run a game! Sharing time: I have a lot of ideas that occupy my brain. Running a game is one of the best ways for me to exercise my creative impulses and quiet things down. I often get to run 2 games a week, which is pretty magical, but running at least 1 makes me a much more pleasant and content person. This was another great session with the Infinity Tower Crew that reminds me of the most successful way to develop sessions: present scenes and lay out obstacles. Let the players deal with them in their way. The two examples for this session were outfitting the boat for the journey and the orc raider attack. Outfitting the boat was a question of resources and interactions. How much did the players want to prepare? Who were they willing to trust? It gave me a chance to give Fang some skill and experience, making him less of a caricature. It also let the players meet the NPCs and make decisions about what resources they would have in the future. I think that'...

I had a lot of fun this session! To be honest, the session before didn't come off as well as I had wanted. I had a vision in my head of how things would go and the session just didn't match that. That was my problem, not the players. It was also a good reminder to me- when you build a game, have options in mind. If you think things are certain to go one way, make sure it's something the players and their characters would go for. To me, that's already pretty hard! Knowing that your players and characters will definitely go in a certain direction is almost impossible. Forcing them to solve the problem in a particular way can only lead to disappointment. So this session, I prepped differently. A lot of this was due to being on a road trip. I focused on the setting and the characters and left the fighting to be addressed as it would. I knew I wouldn't have a lot of space. I also knew that I wouldn't have a lot of time to build terrain or prep the scene. I embr...

I confronted a lot of questions I had about my current story and direction in this session. How do you define a large arc versus a small arc? Can you delay pressure and conflict once you've built it? How do you pace a story? How many characters should be affected by a story arc? A session? Should one character's background and history define an story? A session? In short, I had a lot of questions I wanted to address. The previous few sessions had been very player-driven and role-playing focused. This was coming off of a series of very heavy map-and-mini driven fights that I think got pretty heavy. I have an awesome group of people that I play with that are very creative and interested in role-playing. They build amazing backstories and really get in character. I love it! It also encourages me to say 'yes' and collaborate on the story. The last few sessions have been focusing on two, maybe even three, out of four characters. This session I tried to balance that...

This session went by quickly! It was also a great example of a session where you shouldn't prep too hard. The session started on a cliffhanger, the players waiting to fight a stone construct. I had ideas of how the players would survive but I didn't plan for a real fight. One player had a strong idea of how she would overcome the threat; something rooted in character backstory. I rolled with it, the fight never happened. Roleplaying interactions in a session is important to me. I want it to be fun for players, I want the details to be interesting and I want to encourage players to take part in further roleplaying. I don't worry about whether a fight is avoided or overcome without dice, as long as it makes some sense. A lot of the remainder of this session was about that same character's backstory being explained to the other PCs, giving them the opportunity to learn more about their world and their companion. It wasn't entirely comfortable and has introduced a l...

Things change so fast in a game, just like real life. The way a character deals with tension and stress or with new information should feel like a person. What's the core of a character? What drives them forward? We had lots of examples of dealing with these core values and important ideals this session. Even before this session started, tensions mounted between our Tabaxi entertainer monk and our Gnome gunslinger. The previous session had ended after gunfire in a tavern set off a riot. I had it in my notes, knew it happended but it didn't drive my story. For the player of the entertainer, it was a serious black mark on her prestige as a performer. It doesn't help that in real life the player is a performer, so she really knows the importance of a good reputation. By game day, she was ready to have it out over that interaction. For my part, when I found that out I revised my recap to highlight the situation and make sure things would be in context for players and the au...

Before I talk about the session, I want to mention that the community on Twitch and Twitter is awesome! We have been very lucky and humbled to have great viewership, a large number of followers and subscribers, and to meet 2 goals this week! So awesome and appreciated. Thanks everyone, especially people reading this! This session was very player-directed. I had a lot of improvisation going on because I had decided I really wanted players to be able to pursue the stories and leads that interested them. The result was a session with very few scenes and lots of role-playing. The advancement of the story was much more personal and small-scale. As a DM, parts of it were freeing, because I knew what players wanted out of the story and could help them get it. Parts were challenging, because I haven't fleshed out Eastkeep as much as I might have. I stand by the decision to build as I go, but there's always the challenge of keeping up with players. I'm somewhat conflicted abo...

Concluding a plot is as important as starting it! The same way that you have to build a hook that interests your characters and draws them in, there has to be some sort of resolution that makes the plot end satisfying to them. We've had about 10 sessions of dark, moral-heavy material dealing with curses, transformations, choices, burdens. These are all super heavy things. Some good things came out of this, particularly at the end. The players all started to chime in on how their characters had come to be- the background moments that gave them purpose. Many of these were things that we had discussed at the start of the game, but there was also a lot of development at this point. What did we DO this session? Role-play. Explore. I was checking out an podcast by Mike O'Shea (@SlyFlourish) where he discussed adventures with Shawn Merwin. (@shawnmerwin). They mentioned among other things the 3 pillars of D&D: Combat, Exploration and RP. In short adventures, Merwin advocate...

TLDR; last session thoughts are first, long version DM notes are second. After the previous session, we had a lot of morality and alignment discussion. I love my players and the fact that they and the PCs worry about the consequences of their actions. I want them to feel like their choices matter, so I started to come up with material to support their decision to learn more about a creature before killing it. There's a lot below about how this whole thing got so serious and came to mean so much, but in summary, the players wanted to know 'why' the Big Bad was evil. What happened. What they could do about it. So I started writing a profile of Veyla, my Big Bad, as a trapped, forsaken creature who traded bad for worse. I thought about what her power would mean and how it would manifest. I looked for options other than a big battle that would give closure to the story. Did I reveal everything about the villain? No. Did I make her sympathetic/understandable for the player...

This was a rough session. We had a schedule issue the previous week that led to an excellent fun session with a guest DM. There was XP awarded, so it became canon. But not everyone made it! Because of unavoidable circumstances, one player couldn't be there. The result was that I decided one player was facing the dragon alone, waiting for the others to return whenever. So we have one gnome level 5 fighter against a CR 6 white dragon. The dragon was already mid-air, mouth open, last session. The player decided to Dodge as their action, unaware of the fact that a Dodge affects direct attack actions, not a breath weapon. Dragon breathes cold. PC immediately goes down. But the player is a tinker. A recent invention is an 'auto-cleric' that restores HP when reduced to 0. He's back up. He survives another 2 rounds. The entire time, I'm rolling to see if the magical portal opens. I decide 4 or higher on a d6, the portal opens and the rest of the party comes back. Round ...

The cold, icy realm at the heart of Dreysil has proved to be the site of our most terrifying and difficult encounters! The party was clearly on edge and worried about their survival when they landed in the icy realm. It was cold; they were worried about the elements and resting outdoors. They expected another boss fight to happen any minute. The constant snow and ice made navigation nearly impossible. The party jumped in, as usual, but found themselves unable to navigate in the storm. They blundered around until attacked and had a very tough fight against a pack of Winter Wolves. The Wolves focused on using their cold breath when the party grouped, then attacking anyone who broke formation. I felt like I focused on pack tactics and got into the Winter Wolf mindset really well here; it was a tough fight! Yetis, however, were not as awesome. Through a wonderful random encounter roll, the party was stalked by yetis. The yetis were terrible at stealth. They also were easily distracted b...

We had a big fight last night! This was a level 5 group of 4 going up against a Wraith with a few extra hit points, some spell scrolls and some lair actions. I rated it at CR 6; I feel like it was a little short of a CR 7. During the stream break, there was a mention from Kat that she had recently been in another game that featured a fight with a lich. She felt that the fight was drastically overrated and that initiative and a lack of lair actions (the lich was outside its lair) led to an easier-than-expected fight. There was also some debate about how that fight was run; there's always the question of what the DM was shooting for. It could have been nerfed to make the CR more reasonable; apparently this was harder than reasonable for the party by CR alone. It also could have been DM error. I've definitely used monsters to less-than-optimal impact because I haven't read the stat block thoroughly. This fight was near-deadly for the party. Lair actions got used to limit the...

Encounter balance is hard. Designing encounters from the book as written is fine, but I often find myself underestimating what a party is capable of based on CRs alone. With that in mind, this week I used the tool at Kobold Fight Club ( kobold.club ) to build my encounters. I was really surprised by the results! 1. Low CR monsters can be very effective in a fight, especially in a larger group. 2. I haven't been doing XP for monsters right. My impression has always been that when you give XP, take the base XP of the monster by CR then multiply by the modifier to create a total for all the monsters, so if a Ghoul is worth 200 XP, 6 Ghouls are worth 2*200=400XP. But the adjusted rating is only used to calculate the Encounter Difficulty! For that encounter, the ghouls count as 400XP each of Challenge Rating, for a total of 6*400=2400XP. The same ghouls are still worth 200 XP each for XP reward. The total of the 6 Ghouls is 6*200XP=1200XP for the party. I have been doing this inco...

I had a lot of fun this session. I was in kind of a crummy mood earlier in the day and this was a great end to it! Thanks to everyone involved; players, T2T peeps, the chat and you, for reading this. Some weeks you have to play the game to find out what happens. I've been reading a lot of Fate Core and more collaborative, improvisational RPG books this week, with the result that my game prep went down to almost nothing. My rationale for this: We know what happened last time. The building action is pretty clear for the players. They are 'in action' against particular foes and meeting with known allies, so they are going where I expect or doing something totally different. I feel comfortable doing this. Given those things, I decided that I wouldn't stress the prep this week because I just wasn't feeling it. I knew what I thought would happen and what information I thought was necessary. My players surprised me, for sure. That's part of the fun of RPG games...

Adding a new player, even for one session, really changes play. Anyone who has been in that situation knows this to be true, but we had a super positive experience (in my opinion) with having an added player this week. Out of two new players we've onboarded during the course of the game, there have been two different but positive results, so I'm encouraged to write about that. First, I think that players should play characters that interest them. Each of our added players were very experienced with D&D and generally with RPGs. They created characters that they wanted to play. For the first, it gave us a few challenges and rewrites. We started with 'no lady dwarf beards' and ended with 'some lady dwarf beards', which was a lot of fun. For the second, the player asked about the party and actively made a character (that she wanted to play) that she felt fit what the party needed for balance. I appreciated this because it was a clear signal that the player w...

I love the moment where a group of characters start feeling like a team. When the big player conflict is about who has to accept an evil pact in order to achieve the goal, that's happening. This session was all about getting characters to make hard decisions. The realm of Dreysil, our current setting, is about transformations and choice. The session was all about the players getting a chance to experience that. For me, the idea of Tier 2 play is more than just harder combat; there's the need for increased risk and consequence in the story. So to keep this short, I really enjoyed and appreciated the fact that the players moved into a dark pact, fought over who would bear the burden, then ended the session trying to undo it. That's the note to finish on. Great teamwork!

What is the Infinity Tower? This was the question that I wanted to answer this session. At least a lot more than I have so far. The PCs are entering into 'Tier 2' play now that they are 5th level and I wanted to make sure that there was a dramatic shift in the scale of the story. We're now dealing with the Infinity Tower hands on. There's a planar enemy that may be petrifying people one at a time in Eastkeep. The PCs have jumped into a demiplane of darkness and transformation. As a DM, I used to be totally obsessed with Ravenloft as a 2e/3e setting. For those who experienced the material, the Ravenloft setting was dark and interesting with lots of plot elements that could entice players. I didn't want to copy Ravenloft but I did want to have fun with the idea of curses and dark powers. That's what Dreysil, my little homebrew Demiplane of Transformation, is all about. So we've got a vampire tree that has grown up and through the Shadowfell to become a dar...

OK, I found out about Inkarnate.com today thanks to Clay(@cbsa82). Here is a terrain map of Tregeria, focus of the Infinity Tower campaign.

Monk Weapons These specialized weapons reflect the training of a Monk. Each of these weapons requires intense study and practice to use effectively and as such they are neither Simple or Martial Weapons. At level 1 a Monk can choose one of these categories of weapon to become proficient in. The Monk also gains a special attack with that category of weapon detailed below. A Monk that is not proficient in a category of Monk Weapons may not use this special attack. Flexible weapons Flexible weapons can be used to make an Entangling Attack. Entangling Attack : A Large or smaller creature hit by a flexible weapon is restrained until it is freed. Entangling Attack has no effect on creatures that are formless, or creatures that are Huge or larger. A creature can use its action to make a DC (8 + Proficiency + user's Strength or Dexterity bonus, as used to make the Attack roll) Strength check, freeing itself or another creature within its reach on a success. Dealing slashing d...

As a DM, I love story development. It's the best part of the game. There can be amazing combat scenes and PCs can gain incredible powers, but I'm there for the story. Some of my favorite things that happened this game: Aurora offering up people that she found irritating to a cosmic power as food. Theopraxis feeling guilty about the time he spent building a party cannon while people needed protection. Arven dealing with all the influences that pull at him and remaining centered. Fiction-first gaming is a buzzword from the PbtA games and Blades in the Dark that I like to appropriate for D&D. I want the most interesting thing going on to be the story of the players, so that shapes a lot of my decisions. I still try not to break the game to the point where it's unrecognizable. This week, we added a monk weapon: the flying guillotine. Flying Guillotine Cost: 10gp Damage:1d6 slashing Weight: 2lb Reach We'll give it some game flavor and say that on a crit it l...

This is a busy week for Time2Tabletop! We had 2 back-to-back nights of Infinity Tower and still have What Game Did You Bring? tonight! So this reflections post is really about both games. Firstly, we never planned to have solo adventures for the PCs. There was an earlier show scheduled to accomodate Kat, who we knew couldn't make the regular game. Our special guest Kelsa was unavailable for the changed time, so we made it work for everyone. The Aurora solo on Monday was great and almost entirely off-the-cuff. This was a great example how dice can change the narrative. I had a scene planned and was setting terrain when Kat rolled a Natural 20 on her Death Saving Throw. Then another on a skill check. Then another. At that point, the fates were clearly with Kat and Aurora started telling us what she wanted to see happen. It was a lot of fun! Then our usual session of Infinity Tower Tuesday. This was a simple battle where numbers seemed overwhelmingly in the players' favor ...

We had a ton of changes for Session 13! This was a recharge session after several (6) sessions outside of a city. The players have been on a long arc exploring underground, fighting monsters and doing their best to survive. Getting to Eastkeep, the starting point of the campaign, I wanted this session to be lighter, more fun and feel rewarding for the players. They've completed an important part of their recent arc - really, they're just moments from finishing it - and I wanted them to feel like they had gotten somewhere and accomplished something. I think that having a session that is really role-play heavy, giving a chance t do shopping, crafting and general upgrading is important at points like this. The last few sessions I had noticed a real drain on player resources and a good amount of tension. I think this session gave a chance for that to relax away and let the players focus on their individual goals. Our guest player, Kelsa (@kelsa) was absolutely great. She was ...

I just got to watch our Infinity Tower Session 12 on YouTube. I loved it. I lost it. In Session 11, the party got access to a Rod of Rulership. That was already going to have consequences. In Session 12, first thing, the player holding it used it on the rest of the party. Result: amazing role-play. Lots of fun. Totally removed the threat and consequence of a powerful magical item in the resolution of NPC conflicts. There's nothing like when you put items out for players to use and they surprise you with them. Even better when you don't expect the things your players come up with. Really, the best part of an RPG is playing things out with your fellow players. I've been obsessing over Powered by the Apocalypse games and so this sort of directed action with a player focus was just what I would have hoped for. Fun and unexpected.

A player departure. Ending a story arc. Finding new hope. So many things happened this session! First off, Kelly (@kellydoesthings) is an awesome and passionate player. She's also super busy. She has made the decision to take some pressure off of her schedule and be an occasional player on Infinity Tower. We all wish her the best and want to see her again soon! As a DM, dealing with a player departure is a sensitive subject. We went into the session knowing that Kelly wanted an exit, so I had the goal of completing this portion of the story without making Kelly wait another week. I still wanted to tell the story of the party traveling through the Dwarven ruins but I did my best to balance. I felt like things were a little more rushed, trying to pack things in, but didn't feel that the game was greatly impacted by this. There was an interesting change-up at the beginning when Kat (Aurora) decided to use her Rod of Rulership on the party. I really didn't see that coming!...

This has been a crazy terrain month on Infinity Tower! Edit: added some pieces from Session 12 on 3/28/17. The exploration of the Dwarven ruins of Taul'Khazad has led to a lot of crafting. Some highlights: A section of the bridge crossing the city A 3d map of the city of Taul'Khazad The palace, front entrance   The palace, forecourt, altar, throne The throne room Fire near in the lower crypt (may also be bacon) Upper crypts with captive salamander Upper crypt, sarcophagus and melted door Spike trap (shows our range of minis) This was just so far in March! Next post will have some 3d printed mini pictures and thoughts.

2 things stand out from this session: player absence and the difficulties with duergar. Player absence is one of the trickiest things to handle in a game in my opinion. When a player is gone for just one session due to illness, etc, it's hard to justify why they disappear or fade into the background. In some games I have had characters pass through traps or mystical portals that eliminate them for a period of time, either by jumping them forward to a new space-time coordinate (conveniently near the party) or routing the party back to the recently missing member. I find that these absences can end up being longer than expected, which may just be the universe having a sense of humor. In this case, we had a player absent and also a prepared overlay for our stream (image that takes up the blank space outside our camera views). The solution was to have a 'stand in' for our absent player. I decided that I didn't want them removed from the game for the session. I also th...

TLDR; Power Outage is a cool RPG for kids. Go get a copy for $1! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/199558/Power-Outage-Starter-Bundle?manufacturers_id=9813 I got a copy of Power Outage (PO) through a Twitter contest run by its creator, Bebarce el-Tayib (@bebarce). I have not yet run the game but here are some highlights that I really enjoy about it:  Highlights: 1. The game is built for kids. This is something becoming popular but Power Outage addresses games for kids in a few important ways: - it gives ideas of how to play the game with kids as young as 4 years old. When I say 'ideas' I mean that PO gives you tips to remember the difficulties you may experience running games with children in each age category. - There are also tips on how to simplify the play materials (character sheet and cards) to make the game more accessible at each age category. Throughout the rulebook PO gives you ways to deal with running games across age brackets so that younger kids can play w...