Ruby Crown Postmortem
Welcome, ye brave and foolish creatures, to the home of the chrome chaos warrior! Come, come, Sanarm welcomes you to his maw!
I ran a D&D 5e game over the course of a year and a half called The Ruby Crown. It ended up being about an ancient feud between a dragon and an angel, and the nation caught up in their game. It touched on themes of power, religious control, response to foreign influence and feudal loyalty. There were very many good moments, and a couple really terrible bad ones. This article is a summary of how I ran the game, things I noticed, memorable moments, and things I could do better in the future.
Tools used while Running the Game
I ran without a screen for the first time ever and I’m never going back. Not only can I reach the minis better, I feel so much closer to the people at the table. The game feels way more open and fair. I’m definitely sticking with this long term, though maybe I’ll find some way to hide the dungeon maps better, because players didn’t like that they couldn’t help but see them.
I kept my notes first online (for like 3 sessions) then printed in A4, then into an A5 notebook, and finally in an A4 ringbinder. Moving notes around was always a pain, I was always losing things. In future, one A5 notebook will be plenty. Because I was figuring out my prep method, the A5 notebook filled up quick and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to lay out my notes that I just
The Ruby Crown - Recap
Beginnings
The party started in Fangmire and hexcrawled around the woods for a bit. Then, searching for some kind of direction, they made their way to the only thing they’d heard about, Solemnity. On their way they, they got waylaid and kidnapped by Baron Voghtairi, the ruler of Nildazi. He forced them to investigate a sunken temple, where they found a magical teleportation gate that led them all the way across Orthos. Having escaped, they made their way south to warn the queen of Voghtairis evildoing. Along the way they made friends with Baron Amecouth, who would become the only real recurring allied NPC, acquired their retainer Rolf and said goodbye to Gruffie Mayhem.
Solemnity the First
In Solemnity, The Friends uncovered and fought beastmen, made some ties to the local Sorcerous Academy, and had the first encounter with Balthazars Hound of Ill Omen. After burning down Hevlod manor, they left Solemnity to investigate a mysterious ruin they’d heard about called Canos.
Journey West
On the way west, The Friends ran into Rykus Kilran, emissary of Baron Cortier of a strange land far beyond Orthos’ west border. They learned he wanted to meet them, and promised to entrust The Friends with Baron Voghtairi’s true name. They endeavoured to visit, passing through Canos on their way.
Canos was the first real big dungeon crawl of the game, was fun to prep and interesting to run. The Friends’ first encounter with The Green Lich was there, and they found The Deck of Many Things, which would become The Deck of Red Things later in the campaign.
Over Orthos’ western border, The Friends hexcrawled north through hoggoblin infested mountains and arrived at Cortier.
After learning that Cortier is actually an immortal vampire bent on divine ascendance and having their asses handed to them they regrouped and liberated the old barony of Desaune from Cortiers control. In his ancient library, they found the desecrated word of the old master of the sunless realm as well as a note detailing Baron Voghtairi’s true name.
Meanwhile, Balthazar has journeyed by his lonesome to do some soul searching. He ends up dealing with the foul rakshasa Ludo Discognia in his tower (with the aid of a stone giant transformation), putting an end to The Hound of Ill Omen.
Back to Solemnity
In their absence, several things had happened to Orthos. The LLamontca Wode had been stolen by a fey presence, and the township of Encathra had been completely destroyed. With the beastmen somehow able to penetrate the forest, the northern border of Orthos seemed to be failing. The Friends agreed to meet with Baron Voghtairi to discuss the future. They journeyed through The Beastlands where they saw a gathering of the beast kings followers and lost one of their retainers.
In Fort Duvno, a clay giant attacked with some beastmen, but they were driven off. Rolf-Hydel-Amecouth tragically died in the attack.
At the peak of Mt Pasture, The Friends meet face to face with Voghtairi. He tells them of his plan to wrestle control from the queen of Orthos and steer the nation into the direction of a sorcerous future. The Friends are surprisingly sympathetic to his vision, but ultimately their differences cannot be settled but with blood. Voghtairi teleports away before The Friends can kill him.
The Sceptre of Languard
Back in Solemnity, news of Voghtairis betrayal spreads. In the two week period before a castle council meeting, The Friends persue a growing zealous religios movement centered around Balthazar and the ancient Sceptre of Languard. Delving into the tombs under The Tenebrous Church, The Friends embroil themselves in The Lawful Councils plan to overthrow the queen themselves, due to the pressing (and ignored) threat of the dragon trapped in Nildazi.
After delving the dungeon (and accidentally freeing Uriel, the False Saint of Worms) they retrieve The Sceptre of Languard and attend the council meeting.
The coup is staged. With some twists of fate, The Queen, her consort Yanapo Iteikahn, and High Priest Oland of the lawful council is killed and Balthazar instated as king. With a bloody coup he did not want, there are now questions about threats from the far northern country of Ajira. Time is running out on multiple fronts. As quick as they can The Friends mount an army and march for Nildazi.
The Dragon and The Sorcerer
When they get to Nildazi, The Friends march straight to the dragons lair. After a brutal fight, they prove unsuccessful, and the dragon Sanarm breaks free to terrorize Solemnity.
Voghtairi offers a parley, one final chance for The Friends to do it his way, but they refuse. They storm The Spiked Keep of New Ornos and find Voghtairi in his study.
Voghtairis plan is revealed: to enter a terrible place called The Red Realm and seize it’s maddening power to claim the dragon as his own. Rightfully fearing the influence of The Realm, The Friends follow Voghtairi through a magical artifact called The Red Door and defeat him within The Red Realm. As his forces fall, The Green Lich, who has been acting in the shadows this whole time, covers Nildazi in a blanket of desolation to stop the red door from ever opening again.
The Friends gather the remains of their army and march back to Solemnity. After storming the city from the shore thanks to a water breathing spell, Sanarm is conquered by the forces of law from inside his own mind. The trouble is, to do so required The Friends to sacrifice their souls to future oblivion.
The dragon is defeated, Voghtairi is gone, and now Balthazar controls the single strongest weapon in the country. The realm is secured, but The Friends split up, each going their seperate ways.
Reflections
Good Bits
The first meeting with Voghtairi is where I figured out what he was doing and what his plan was. I really liked how his ethos was rooted in his vision of Orthos as a country and the different things the nation means to different people. I wish this theme had been more prevalant for the whole game. The standout moment for me of the whole campaign was when a player looked up from the transcript of Voghtairi’s “why I’m doing this” speech and said “guys, I think he might be right.”
Fantastic political talk. Though it was a bit lengthy
Mid Bits
I kind of forgot about the teleportation gate, because it turns out it didn’t make that much of a difference
Some sessions had next to no game in them. We had a few sessions right at the end that were all talking and political maneuvering. That stuff was great, but some players were super bored, and I don’t blame them. It’s D&D! I like when there is game in the game.
Bad prep methods meant I was sometimes running way out of time for the game and barely had enough sleep. Those games were always mid. Though my sweet players were very good at giving feedback and always said they were enjoying it, so maybe I was in my own head. Still, the workload was quite intense for a period in the middle.
The hexcrawl through the wilderness on the way to Cortier was pointless, but it was kind of cool.
Bad Bits
Balthazar was straight up the main character. It was totally my fault, though done accidentally. By the end of the game it collapsed down into one primary character and his followers. Now, I think those followers had some weight in the decision, and there were multiple chances previously to debate the issue, but the players moved along in the spirit of cooperation and it ended up getting critical right at the end. Solution: Just don’t do that.
At the very end of the game there was PVP because the Balthazar was asking The Friends to sacrifice themselves (in the future). This was terrible, and made me really nervous in person. The final session threatened to blow up and leave everyone unhappy. Luckily my players were mature enough to see it as a game, and took the situation seriously enough to rationalize it in character, so the effect was mitigated. But still, it’s a dick move to subject my friends to that out of the blue. I think the drama was excellent, but you need permission before you throw them in the deep end like that. Solution: Either don’t create a scenario where your friends are forced to fight one another, or make sure everyone is okay with it first. If they are it won’t cheapen the drama to ask, and if it won’t then it’s better to have a cheap resolution than have your friends get mad at each other.
5th edition D&D is awful and by the end of the campaign it was actively fighting me. My fault for wanting to run an old school style game where choices and tactics matter and choosing the worst system for it.
There needed to be a lore dump at some point about who people were in the city. A lack of information killed what could have been a great campaign of intrigure and politicking.
Lessons Learned
- Sandbox Adventure vs Curated Narrative
Fundamentally, the game most suffered from a lack of cohesion as to whether it was an open ended aimless sandbox and a curated series of story beats. It ended up walking a middle ground that had its moments, but ultimately got a bit stuck. I intended the game to be a sandbox, but I wanted rich feudal drama between barons and kings. It wasn’t so much about predetermined outcomes as it was about predetermined moments. As the villains got more fleshed out and plans got more intricate, I was constantly wondering if this would ever show up “on screen”. I spent a lot of effort having things happen that I felt would be wasted if they never showed up. (Many things didn’t! See point 3).
Example: Everything that happened with Voghtairi was careful curation rather than vectors and resolution via tables. On one hand this provided a way more intricate (and I think plausible) series of events. On the other it meant that this was the focus of the game.
I also didn’t know how to prep a sandbox. I had a hexmap and some hex fills, but that’s not really it. That’s more like one adventure. I needed more setting, more context, and a set of good tools to adjuticate what I needed (see point 5).
Example: The hexcrawl out west of Orthos had minimal tables and was pointless, hard to adjuticate on the fly, and didn’t provide anything compelling.
Remedy: Spend more time fleshing out factions and relationships between them, and have tools for moving parts in the background. Have a ruleset that doesn’t suck and adequate tools for setting generation. Know more about your setting (point 4).
- Prep is never wasted…
I frequently found myself prepping stuff that didn’t end up getting used (because I’m really bad at knowing what might happen) but I was able to use it in other ways, either as inspiration, or to provide context for other details.
Example: The cloud giants castle was something I had cooked up since before the game started, and it came in handy in the final session when Icoriol rolled a cloud-themed corruption.
- …unless you never talk about it
There were 13 factions parading about Solemnity, with a detailed faction web. It started the first time they arrived and was fully fleshed out by the second time they came to the city. And they never interacted with it at all, because they never saw it at all. I was so scared of an exposition dump that I just never found a way to bring them up, and so when they were important, there wasn’t enough information about them for them to matter, and not enough time to introduce them all. As it turns out, exposition is kind of necessary. Bad exposition is what you need to be afraid of.
Remedy: Just do a lore dump. Make it good if you can, but it needs to happen in some form. Ideally, sprinkle it throughout the game in creative ways.
- Setting is game prep
This is probably the biggest useable lesson. I’ve wanted to write a gloopy on this for a while but I never quite found the words. In a sandbox game, informed choices is the core gameplay. You can’t do anything with meaning unless you know stuff, and you can’t know that stuff if the details don’t exist. With a solid set of rules and a couple of more gamey things taken care of (a dungeon or two), the real crux of the game is dealing with a realistic world that has enough detail to provide information for meaningful choices and responds to your actions in a realistic way.
You need to know your stuff. I wanted mine to be almost authentically medieval, which means I spent time figuring out how big armies might be, where all the food comes from, how Orthos get’s it’s wealth. This stuff all served me, but it took me a while to realise I needed that, and it invalidated some of the things on the map that were meant to be big deals.
This is going to sound kind of dumb, but it took me well over half of the campaign to realise that if you want something to feel true about a place, you need to make sure you know that thing is true and make it evident. Broadly, this can be seen in things like “I want Orthos to be wealthy” but then not thinking about what that wealth means, how that might impact the world, where it comes from, and how it might be exploited. This is what transforms a setting into a sandbox game, but I didn’t know that.
Remedy: When designing an area or thinking about a place, interrogate details until you are satisfied that something makes sense. The outcome isn’t enough, you need solid reasoning to get there. And if you start with an outcome and you can only come up with contrived reasoning, maybe it’s better to let go of your precious idea and go with the one that makes sense.
- Work with your players
I knew this one on paper, but not in my heart. Writing the last few city diary entries it was so painful how obvious the players were pointing themselves at stuff they were interested in - with Razor and the fighting pits and the O.T.I.A - and I just blow right past it because I thought The Sceptre of Languard was more important to getting the game finished. If you pay attention to what your players are doing, it’s really not hard to think of things they might persue.
Remedy: Reflective notes (like campaign diaries) can be really helpful for spotting this stuff.
Conclusion
All in all, this is the best D&D campaign I’ve ever run (the bar is not high). It had its down moments, but I learned a lot from them, and there was a lot more good than bad.
Here’s to the next one! I’m excited to employ the lessons I learned and extremely greatful I was able to get all the way to the end of the game.
Peace.
P.S. If any of my players read this, shout out to you all, the game wouldn’t have been nearly as enigmatic or interesting without all of you. <3