You Ruined It!

We’ve been on such a home-brewed DnD content kick that we decided it’s high time we swung back in our lane a bit with the D&D Beyond Acquisition’s Incorporated 5e module. Check out which encounter we’re prepping next!

One unintended consequence of injecting a D&D 5e module with home-brewed content is that the character-to-monster-levels will be slightly out of whack. For example, we’re only on Episode Two: Fun in Phandalin, and yet our players are currently fifth level. No big whoop. That discrepancy means DM Ben has to do several CR encounter checks against his planned mods, but it’s nothing a seasoned Dungeon Master can’t handle, right?!

Anyway, the encounter we’re prepping today centers around Tresendar Manor and the disappearance of the AI Franchise (Fellowship of the Golden Mongoose) headquartered there. The players will arrive and see that the place is in utter disarray. We needed to 3D-print some scatter terrain that sells the chaos and ruins vibe they just discovered.

After perusing our abundance of STL choices, we settled on Infinite Dimensions Games and their Ruined Scatter Terrain set. It seems like every creator has multiple village ruin sets these days, but IDG gives you all the right pieces to represent some courtyard calamity.

DM Ben has been playing with a new rock paint scheme, and we needed these ruins ASAP, so once again, he drew the short paintbrush. Slap Chop is really your friend here as it makes everything look darker, dingier, and damaged. We’ll set these up to form a courtyard of sorts and then let the party stealth in to investigate.

The Acquisitions Incorporated module plot can be a bit heavy at times, so DM Ben is streamlining things a bit with some very simple enemies and mission goals.

• Collect the pieces for the Orrery of the Wanderer.
• Defeat the rival AI franchises.
• Grow your franchise/Bastion.
• Hunt and defeat the Night Hag (home-brew).
• Find the traitorous Bard & Get the Kinda Sorta Portal back.
• Navigate the new Forgotten Rails.

The first three are from the module, while the others are home brews. Plenty to manage but lots of flexibility and imagination.

DM Ben is putting his spin on The Six by having this be the same group of adventurers that the party impersonated to get the initial Fissure job and their foot in Omin Dran’s door. They’re holding a grudge, and the players will embrace this storyline snippet (as they remember that fakeout fondly).

DM Ben likes when the gang has a lot of enemies, and it’s not always clear who is out to get them at any point in time. He even injected B-side villains like Merv the Swerve for added shenanigans (with plenty more of those one-offs to come).

Still, it sure is nice DM prep exhale to have the core pieces completed, thanks to IDG.

Next week we’ll share more components of this ruins encounter, including the monster miniatures, the lone survivor NPC mini, the Fellowship of the Golden Mongoose face card, some additional scatter terrain accent pieces, and the next wondrous item card.