Hey, Hey, It’s Game Day (Nov 2026 Office Edition)

Greetings, fall gamers! November already – can you frickin’ believe it? We’re finally on the doorstep of our first full-fledged crawl after what feels like a slew of Wilderness Trek scenarios. Let’s begin!

We’ve even managed to schedule a sesh in a holiday month. Although October and Halloween got us good, we decided to play in early November, so we stayed far away from good ol’ Turkey Day.

We always like to start a Game Day post by recapping last session’s events.

• Traveled even deeper inside Mushroom Alley.
• Interrupted a Bugbear ambush on a lizard merchant.
• Set up a new water-breathing potion trade deal with Thetsis.
• Reached the Fellowship of the Golden Mongoose franchise doorstep.
• Discovered NPC Gilda Duhn hiding in the rubble.

Then, DM Ben played a Hyena sound effect, told the players to roll for initiative, and ended the sesh on a cliffhanger.

So, our encounter plan couldn’t be simpler for Friday night’s upcoming dice throw:

• Ruins Entrance and Lone Survivor.
• Area 1: The Cellar
• Area 2: Storage
• Area 3: Hall with Pit
• Area 4: The Crypt P1 | P2 | P3
• Area 5: Cells
• Area 6: Empty Room (Blacksmith)
• Area 7: Failed Ritual
• Area 8: Chasm P1 | P2
• Area 9: Cockatrice
• Area 10: Far Realm Rift
• Area 11: Workshop P1 | P2
• Area 12: Office
• Post-Encounter Cleaning Crew
• Post-Encounter Tavern

These are the moments DM Ben cherishes. Prepping an entire dungeon crawl and having it ready to go in advance gives him 2-4+ sessions of fully ready content. We’re already working on one-shots well past that, so we keep game-prep stress to a minimum.

So our Tresendor Manor dungeon crawl is going to be a blast as our adventurers try to figure out what on earth happened to the Golden Mongoose franchise and their inexplicable disappearance. Always eager to try out new card deck DnD game accessories, we were over the moon to get a review copy of Loke Battle Mat’s slick Dastardly Deck.

This robust 100-card deck contains 100 helpful tips, hints, and ideas to reward player innovation and zing ’em for complacency. Using the deck is a breeze. Simply select a set of fitting cards for the next sesh or even randomly deal out a short stack. DM Ben can stare at a prepped encounter for too long, so it’s handy to add some inspiration and liven up game night.

Sometimes a DM thinks an encounter will be amazing, only to realize it’s landing with an unexpected thud. That’s where Lokee Battle Mat’s Dastardly Deck can be a Dungeon Master’s best friend. Let’s do an example for our upcoming Hyena ambush encounter at the ruin’s entrance.

Concerned that this beast battle might be a little dull, he pulled these cards:

• Have a loot-carrying goblin run out to make a greedy player choose.
• Use waves of combat to test the party’s resources (easy to hard).
• Bad weather rolls in: ranged attacks become useless.
• Fake-out dice rolls to add to player paranoia.

He’s going to stack the short deck and pretend to draw one randomly just to further deepfake the players. Each thought-starter card has two elements: Descriptive advice at the top and a detailed example underneath it on how you could implement the new idea. DM Ben truly enjoyed reading these tactics and tips and felt energized by the wide variety of different gamemaster suggestions. Good stuff, y’all.

Until next time!