A Home for your favorite Dice…

Order your wooden dice caddy today! Comes in Walnut, Bird’s Eye Maple, and Aromatic Cedar.

Click Here to order yours today.

Pet Jelly Cube

The Pet Jelly Cube makes the perfect gift for your D&D enthusiast.

Click here to choose your color…

Mask of Deception

A fantasy novel set in the Realms of Edeos. Nor Gan is a young sorcerer. He trades his freedom to the Fire Lord in exchange for the magical power of flame. Now cursed, he cannot remove his mask. Will his team of adventurers defeat his nemesis within the shadowy realm known as the Void?

Order your copy on Amazon today!

https://www.amazon.com/Mask-Deception-DrakenStone-Chronicles/dp/B09GCLWL4W

Levels 1-8

Hear ye, hear ye!

Our Book of Quests is now available on Amazon!

The Broken Cavern

This cavern ha crumbled…

Inner Sanctum

Here is the Inner Sanctum. Players must solve a puzzle to conitnue.

        

DrakenStone Castle Campaign Setting

AnnArborDnD.com

All the adventures listed on this site have been playtested. Some at GatorCon, some at Total Escape Games in Broomfield, CO, some and some at Get Your Game On in Ann Arbor, MI, and others at Eye of the Beholder Gaming Guild in Taylor MI. Read a week-by-week synopsis of the latest adventure on our site just for players… 

The premise: this world is criss-crossed with magic teleportation circles. These were created with an ancient, forgotten magic. The true number of circles is unknown. Partial maps have been discovered. Some circles lead to neighboring realms.

Each circle has a unique activation cycle, weather it be a puzzle, trap, or “pre-requisite” to activate. Each circle also has certain rules, such as “only teleports one creature every 5 minutes” or “resets every 24 hours”.

DrakenStone Castle:

A great place to start a new campaign. The players start in a city under siege. For three generations, the ancient black dragon Zykquedoss has attacked the castle. Its once gleaming, white marble spires are now blackened and charred from a century of dragon breath. The scorched towers have survived, however, due to an enchantment placed on the stones by the dwarves, elves, and humans who built them.

To create background, the players role-play a scene as a child, when the dragon attacks. And a second scene, as a teen, under yet another dragon attack. And a third scene as a young adult, which sets in motion the intrigue of the rival factions inside the castle.

As the PCs begin the game at level 1, the dragon has disappeared. The council has chosen the group of adventurers to venture forth from DrakenStone castle. Their foremost mission: to discover the fate of the dragon, and if she will return. Secondly, to communicate with other surviving cultures, if there are any. The characters step out of the front gate. Which direction will they travel?

Roll initiative…

Catch us at these game conventions…

**************************
Bardicon 2019. August 16-18. 111 N Grand Ave, Lansing MI. We’ll be showing off our modular magnetic stackable terrain. https://tabletop.events/conventions/bardicon
**************************
GrandCon 2019. August 30 to September 1. DeVos Place 303 Monroe Ave, Grand Rapids MI. Catch our booth at this year’s game convention, where we’ll show off our magnetic dungeon. Register here: Grand-Con.com
**************************

An Empress Betrayed: Introducing Afton

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series An Empress Betrayed

…and now, dear reader, the childhood of Afton the Elven Mage. When she was 8 years old, a band of High Elves came to conscript her father into the Army. Rather than hide in a tree trunk with her mother, Afton jumps out and tries to fight off the brigade single-handedly. The captain of this Elven unit has his eyebrows singed by Afton’s child-sized fireball, and is impressed. He decides to conscript her as well.


The Army gathers to fight a huge dragon, a nightmarish beast of both red and black scales. The Army is decimated in minutes, and Afton’s magic bounces off the wyrm’s skin harmlessly. The dragon’s tail swipes through the ancient oaks like tissue paper, and Afton and one other child from her village are buried beneath the timbers. When the smoke clears, Afton and Lagor are the only two survivors.
After living in a Wild Elf village for several years, Afton comes across a gruesome scene in the forest. A human caravan has been destroyed, all of its members slain. All valuables have been picked clean by some unknown thief, but Afton finds a magic wand of unspeakable power among the rubble. Instead of keeping it, she travels to the nearest human town to try to find its rightful owner. She eventually finds him; she gives the wand to Allbright the Ancient, a wizard of enormous power. Impressed by her selflessness, he takes her on as an apprentice. After years of tutelige, he tells her that he’s taught her all he can, and encourages her to make her own way in the world. Allbright promises to remain her staunch ally.

 

As Afton travels to the Sarpadian capital to participate in the tournament, she finds herself in a tavern. Overhearing the local’s conversation, she is flabbergasted: she hears the name of her father mentioned! Not only alive, but a famous dragonslayer? Although she did not find his body after the dragon attack all those years ago, she assumed he was dead just like all the rest of the Elves. But these townsfolk speak of him in fear, as they are afraid of his ‘dark magic’. After asking for a bit more information from the townies, they begin to get curious. “Why do you want to know?” they ask. Afton elects not to tell anyone her true identity until she can find out more about this “DragonLord”…

 

Next week: The adventure officially begins, as the party travels to the Forests of Ultair (where the Ambassador was last seen) to gather clues. Ultair is one of the Brother Kingdoms. It used to be one Kingdom, but when the king died, the twin brothers split the land down the middle and created two kingdoms… Comment below and I’ll send you the map…

 

-Uncle Andy

An Empress Betrayed: Introducing Valcora

“The companions returned to the Throne Room, victorious in their mission to free the Emissary of Ultair. Her Majesty stood stoically, facing the party with unblinking eyes. Wondering why the Empress was so still, they approached cautiously. Before them was poised a statue in the perfect likeness of Brelia. Her face was frozen in a pleading gaze, her hands raised as if to shield her eyes from a bright light. To their horror, they suddenly realized that in their absence, the Empress had been turned to stone…”

The first meeting of the companions is tonight, in beautiful Longmont, CO. In the group so far, we have three 4E Level 1 characters:

  • Valcora – a Dragonborn Cavalier, played by Angela
  • Afton – an Elven Mage, played by Shasta
  • Delsior – a Satyr Bard, played by Andy

img_0455

As a child, Valcora disobeyed the direct orders of her parents, and ran into a burning building to save her two brothers. Unfortunately, she could carry only one of them, and had to leave the other behind. Upon exiting the collapsing home, her mother gave her the ring off her finger, saying “No matter what happens, make certain that you bring this ring to Master Simon.”

Her mother then ran into the flames to rescue her still trapped son – but neither emerged. To this day, the brother she saved is bitter toward Valcora, as if it was her fault that they lost both a brother and a mother.

Years later, Valcora is in the Young Cavaliers program, learning about military discipline and defending the Empire of Sarpadia. During this time she takes an oath to obey every order she is given by her superiors. One evening, as she is walking past the Royal Alchemist’s tent, he commands her to enter. “Drink this!” her orders, handing her a green, frothy potion.

Obeying the order, she drinks it without hesitation. The liquid burns her mouth and throat, as well as the inside of her skull, and the back of her eyes. Lightning shoots upward from the ground, and scars her with a purple streak from the bottom of her right ear, down her throat, and across to her left armpit. She is now spell-scarred for life. Sometimes the purple streak glows with a ghoulish light when she gets angry, or when she is in the midst of battle, but she does her best to hide it beneath her collar…

Later in her teenage years, Valcora is constantly teased by her rival, Xanth. He is a handsome human Cavalier, who pokes fun at her spell-scar and constantly tries to embarrass her. During a parade, she finds herself in several situations where she could push him in to a mud puddle, or embarrass him in a speech at an awards ceremony. She elects to do neither, taking the high road of honoring fellow knights. Upon graduation from the academy, Xanth pulls her aside and commends her on holding back, and a delicate truce is declared between the two as they both attempt to move up the ranks as Knights…

As Valcora takes her first assignment as a knight, her father dies of old age. Being a Knight himself, and having served decades faithfully for the Empire, the Dutchess of the Grey Mountains commissions a statue in his honor, to be built on the burned out ruins of the family home. The land is cleared, but before the project can get started, Valcora decides to take the budget for the project and give it to poor hungry children instead. Cleric Peltanis visits Valcora personally, and thanks her for the donation. It is more money than his charity has seen for three decades! He promises Valcora “If you ever find yourself in need of a favor from the Brotherhood of Light, name it, and I will see that it is yours.”

Spirits high, Valcora walks the streets of the capital city as a celebrity. Roses pelt her from every direction, and dirty children and street urchins jostle for a touch of her cape. But the reverie is shattered as she passes her old home where the statue was meant to be – a merchant named Jardan is now building there, having bought the land from the Dutchess for ONE GOLD PIECE! Angered by court politics, she demands to know how her family’s land can be sold off for pocket change, but she is dismissed by a wave of Jardan’s hand. “Finders keepers, loosers weepers! You should have kept it, you fool! But now its mine and there’s nothing you can do about it!” he says with a crooked grin.

DM note: Valcora role-played several non-combat situations as a child, which formed her backstory and personality. Without rolling any dice, we developed a clear picture of her motivations, allies, rivals, incomplete quests, and home city. As a DM, I plan on drawing these out as the story unfolds…

Tune in next week when I introduce Afton, the Elven Mage… Write a comment below to ask about the childhood non-combat encounters (I call them decision points. Remember “Choose Your Own Adventure?)

 

-Uncle Andy