Well guys, it’s finally over. We have our website hosted on a new server. I want to give a particular shout out to Ash, Grant, and Andy for contributing to the server costs as seen below:
I’m glad to announce that I’ve been able to reduce our server costs from ~$13/month to less than $2.40/month. And we are paid off for the next three years. 🎉
I’m changing the look of the new website a bit, as we have had the old look for several years now. Time for a change. I’ll likely be fine-tuning the website appearance in the coming weeks as inspiration hits me, but if you guys have any ideas, feel free to let me know. In particular, I’ve been thinking that we could use a rework of our TableTopGuild.com main logo, if anyone is feeling particularly artistic.
We have some nifty new things made today by some of our members.
Andy has made an Honor & BP Tracker that keeps track of the aforementioned stats as your character levels up in HackMaster. Only those with TableTop Guild accounts can access it over on our Downloads page.
Patrick (me) has also made a Wound Calculator for HackMaster. It will help see how long it will take for those wounds to heal. For example, if you plug in 17 wound damage, you will find that it will take a whopping 153 days to naturally heal up from what might have been an accidental Glaive wound. Feel free to beta test it, as it might have some kinks in it.
At the same time that we have recently ended two campaigns, we are starting two new campaigns in the new few weeks. Read more below for more info.
Ending Campaigns
Just recently, we ended two long ongoing campaigns: Grant’s Storm King’s Thunder (D&D 5E) campaign, and Brett’s Running Alive (Everyday Heroes) zombie campaign. Both were amazing and you can see some of the highlights below. The Storm King’s Thunder epilogue has been added to the notes earlier tonight. The Running Alive epilogue has been available for a while on our Game Notes page.
New Campaigns
We have two new campaigns starting in the next two weeks. This Saturday, Brett is starting his HackMaster Dragon Heist game. Next weekend, he will be running the long-running saga of our Star Wars: Smuggler’s Run.
Hackmaster: Dragon Heist
This will be a fusion of the HackMaster system mechanics with the Dragon Heist D&D module. It will be interesting, for sure. HackMaster is a whole new system for all of us, and can be daunting. Make sure to head over to our downloads page to take a look at the guides. Some of them are super handy.
Since it sounds like the entire campaign is taking place in Waterdeep, you might want to check out this awesome, interactive Waterdeep Map connected to the D&D Wiki:
In addition, we will be needing to use counters to keep track of what we are doing second by second in combat. I recommend those with Android phones go check out this Counter App to help in this endeavor.
Star Wars: Smuggler’s Run, Part 3
Our longest running campaign returns for its third season. For those who haven’t played in a while, feel free to check out what happened last time in the Star Wars: Smuggler’s Run, Part 2 Epilogue. Our band of troubled Rebels have just survived Hoth and have to navigate the dangerous universe they now find themselves in. At least they aren’t in another dimension anymore!
Spent some time yesterday and today working on the website a bit. Have a few updates for you all.
New Downloads Page
We have a brand new Downloads page full of resources for our games. This includes character sheets, source books, links to Wiki pages and more! Make sure to register a username if you haven’t already to gain access, as only members can view the files. If you are already registered, login to have full access.
User Registration
I have moved away from password-protecting pages/game notes and towards being logged in to gain access to the aforementioned things. If you are already have a login, you are already set. If you don’t, get to it! I am now manually verifying users and will grant you access to everything on the website as soon as I notice the new registration.
We had almost 1000 bots signed up for the website before I knew it, so I had to add a CAPTCHA to a few places. Crazy.
Expanded User Capabilities
Everyone who signs up now will also have the ability to create posts and articles on the website after being verified. Feel free to check out my guide to posting if you are interested. Go at it!
Game Notes
All game notes are still viewable, but only registered & verified users can now edit them.
Well, it’s been almost 3 months since our last update and we’ve been pretty busy. In our D&D Forgotten Realms campaign Storm King’s Thunder, we have started to touch upon the edge of war with the Giants when we aren’t busy leaving destruction in the wake of every town we visit.
In our D20 Modern Running Alive game, the player survivors are starting to piece together the cause of the mysterious apocalypse as we fight for survival against zombies, genocidal hillbillies, nuclear radiation, cannibals, and the upcoming weather conditions of winter.
The TableTop Guild Christmas Party was a resounding success as everyone gathered to feast and celebrate the season at local pub Monk’s Cellar. After feeding ourselves and running up large bar tabs, the group moved on finish up the night with a session of our 5E game as we took on an evil green dragon in the ruins of an ancient elvish city.
Many of our group members have continued to hobby out or discover usable models for our games. Shout out to Brin in particular, as he has been a workhorse for the last few weeks, finding and painting dozens of models.
Our friends at Hobby Badger have moved into a new, larger location. For those interested in visiting, feel free to check out the Hobby Badger Facebook page.
Finally, In the coming days I will also be doing a much revamp of our Media page. More details can been seen below.
The Triboar Explorer Corp have continued their adventures, facing road bandits, sieges by Giants, bridge politics, detective work, and attempts to infiltrate flying citadels in a high stakes heist. For more details, make sure to take a look at the game notes.
The Triboar Explorer Corp come upon a group of distressed traders whose cart has broken down. It turns out the traders are actually thieves, and physical conflict erupts. We defeat them and move on to Olostin’s Hold. Olostin’s Hold is in trouble as a group of Hill Giants siege the city. The Giants throw rocks at the city walls. We man the city walls in its defense. Ballistae are brought in to take down the Giants, who don’t like that and advance towards the city walls. The guard tower is destroyed, creating a bridge into the city. The Giants advance. The Giants are finally defeated as the city defenders come together. After leaving Olostin’s Hold a better place, the Triboar Explorer Corp move on to the city of Everlund, where they are ambushed the moment they arrive in the city by cloaked figures in an alleyway. They shoot arrows at us from the roof as our adventurers fight back and call for help from the guards. After we establish ourselves in the city of Everlund, we are sent by our local Harper’s contact via teleport to the ancient elvish ruin of Myth Drannor to battle a domineering green dragon. After a fight for survival, we prevail and return victorious with a small dragon’s hoard. Everyone seemed to want to climb onto the dragon’s back during the fight. We had to do some detective work to discover the culprits behind a recent vault theft. During the course of the night in which we were playing, the power at Grant’s place went out due to heavy storms. It’s nice to play by candle-light once in a while. We return to Everlund to embroil ourselves in the local politics of bridge building and the taxation. Eventually we decide to build a bridge in the middle of the night and make it appear like divine intervention. Andy made a 3D model of our attempt at a bridge. The bridge certainly isn’t pretty. We enter the flying citadel of the Cloud Giants to take back the stolen items from the Harper’s vault. Sometimes staring at a map for too long is not a good thing. ?
Times have been tough for our group of apocalyptic survivors. Being chased from their home by a genocidal paramilitary group with a combat helicopter, everyone tries to find new roots in Rio Linda in a new compound next to Andy’s brother’s house. We have been able to survive as a group for 75 days, but not everyone in our group has made it. For more details of our adventures, make sure to take a look at our game notes.
Later, we raid AirGas to gain crucial chemical supplies to create explosives and propane to fuel our heavy machinery. We almost immediately find ourselves surrounded by zombies. We get swarmed and desperately defend ourselves against bites. We start a convoy to Beale Airforce Base in a retaliatory raid to save captured relatives and get revenge against the Beale Raiders. We breach the on-base commissary, where our family and friends are being held. We have our allies the McDougals right behind us. Firefights break out almost immediately as we fan out from room to room in cover, taking shots at the savage paramilitary group that has taken residence on Beale Air Force Base. We discover the hostages in this room, but there are enemy soldiers inside. They continue to fire, killing a few of the McDougal clan. We free the cage full of prisoners before making a getaway. We assault the Beale Raider base one final time before deciding to leave the area permanently. After settling down in Rio Linda at GoatHub, we discover an airplane repair professional named Miles holed up in a fortified pile of debris on the McClellan Air Force runway. We also discover a working Cessna airplane. GoatHub, our new base in Rio Linda. The Smokers, a local gang, arrive in a convey of trouble. We refuse to pay their “taxes”, and start lobbing tear gas and grenades at their vehicles. The Smokers’ vehicles break down as their gunners fan out, taking shots at GoatHub. Smokers start sneaking down our side street. Vehicles explode as the firefight intensifies. The tear gas grows to cover the whole Smoker convoy. Thankfully, most do not have gas masks. Patrick picks off one of the few remaining Smokers from the rooftop in a prone position.
Everyone got together to celebrate the season by having food, drinks, and gift exchanges at the Monk’s cellar. We then did what we do when we get together: play games!
We played the first half of the game in the bar. We eventually ended up finishing the game over at Andy’s house.
I’m going to be revamping our Media page in upcoming days since it’s in dire need of some changes. Some of these changes include:
Direct Links to Source Books I know that most of us have digital copies of many of the source books. I personally have a fairly large collection, and I know Brett has a large dropbox with resources for many of our play systems. Our server currently has 20GB of free of space that we are under utilizing and I figure we might as well host some of this ourselves. The current rulesets I plan to make available for download:
5E D&D
D20 Modern
Star Wars
If you want other systems available for public download, let me know in the Discord thread I plan to open in the coming days to gather opinions.
Personal Creations I’m going to include an area for personal creations, such as art, 3D modelling of characters or items that we interact with in-game, etc. We have a talented group of people and sometimes we post really awesome stuff in Discord or FaceBook that eventually just gets buried over time in other posts. I want to create an area where we can sort of consolidate these creative works for posterity.
As always, if you are interested in creating posts or content for the TableTopGuild.com website, feel free to contact me (Patrick) and I can hand out a login. Also, don’t forget to click ‘Going’ to the D&D Movie event coming up in a few weeks if you plan to go. It looks to be at least mediocre – we can only cross our fingers it’s better than the majority of gaming movies.
It’s been a busy few months! Since our last update, the TableTop Guild has started not one but TWO new campaigns. Grant is taking the reins in running a bunch of us through the Storm King’s Thunder, while Brett has started a brand new original storyline in Running Alive, a d20 Modern zombie apocalypse adventure. In addition, we have a brand-new high-tech table with a 70” screen embedded into it. Finally, we have continued to craft more terrain and character models in our spare time to contribute to our growing collection of miniatures.
We are six sessions into taking on the king of giants in Grant’s new campaign, taking place in the Forgotten Realms 1885DR, five years prior to our Tomb of Annihilation campaign and five years after the end of our Saltmarsh campaign. So far everyone’s characters are all a blast, and we already have one destroyed town behind us. For more details, feel free to see the new Storm King’s Thunder notes.
The Triboar Explorer Corp awakens in the middle of the night to find the town on fire. And it’s not our fault this time!Giants and Fire Elementals are attacking. The battle to save the town Triboar begins!The new light strips really help make the town look like it’s on fire. Check it out! Good buy, Sam.In the next town, we track down a sinister mind-controlling wizard into his sewer lair. We decimate the Kuo-Toa population in the process. Notice the use of our new in-table monitor to bring out a crisp, digital map of the sewers. It turns out our evil wizard in the sewers is actually a psychic tentacle fish in disguise! A boss fight develops and we barely avoid drowning as the sewer fills with “water”. In another town, we get magically summoned into the woods at night and hunted down like animals. …by Undead Horsemen! (kinda)More Undead Riders coming from across the bridge. Eventually, we destroy and magically shrink the bridge, prevailing over the evil undead.
In a completely original campaign, Brett is running a Modern D20 campaign that takes place in contemporary times, but with a twist: there is a zombie apocalypse. We play ourselves as the world collapses around us. Like any good zombie apocalypse, danger can be found everywhere, particularly from other humans. You can check out the Running Alive Game Notes to catch up on the plot.
While searching the Lincoln Airport for supplies, when we hear something in the distance. Zombies are spotted! Time to run for our vehicles. Some members of the crew get surrounded before being able to get into their cars, so we have to duke it out. Don’t get bit!Our home base is attacked by local raiders in the middle of the night! The assaulting forces push hard and we are forced to defend. They snipe at us from behind our own cars. It devolves into a melee battle royal in our living room. We finally prevail, but not without price.
Everyone in the TableTop Guild has contributed in some way to ensure we have an awesome new playing table for our games. Special shout outs to Brett for sourcing the TV, Jack for funding the custom protective covering, and Andy for doing everything from writing up the plans in CAD to ordering custom metal bracing for the TV and installing it all. Great work guys! Sam also contributed a series of programmable LED lights along the edges which has really contributed to the mood lighting during our miniature battles.
We embedded a new 70″ into our playing table. Custom metal framing and a carbon covering finish off the look.
After an intense, year-long campaign, the lich Acererak is dead. It was an intense survival game in which all of our characters shed sweat, blood, and tears. Not everybody made it out alive through the final fight, and their sacrifice will not be forgotten. Shout out to Brett Coker who DM’d like a boss and crafted a wonderful tale for us all. I’ll try to cobble together some of the photos we took during the last half of the campaign in another post.
Out with the old and in with the new! Our next campaign takes place against the Storm King! The Game Notes page has been appropriately updated. Time to start working on those new characters. The Storm King’s Thunder campaign starts in 9 days with Grant Reese at the helm. Looking forward to you all showing up.
Great terrain continues to make its appearance. We try to make a quick escape from the Assassins Guild of Baldur’s Gate. They close in fast, but not before Garculi gets off a Fog Cloud to hinder their attacks. Tavsirak tries to Fly above the battle strategically. This ends up being a very poor decision as he is rapidly shot down. The boats have names. Sam brings some quality wine for Grant. The joke here is that Grant plays a cowboy that is in a contract with an “angel”. We get make our jailbreak from the Yaun-Ti torture temple. The enemy closes in quick. More Yuan-Ti guards discover our egress. We carry the bodies of Ulfgar and Vulcan (and later Hank) near the end of the jailbreak. The jailbreak continues under the cloud cover of Call Lightning. Garculi was a rockstar during this jailbreak. Later that night we get ambushed by a giant demon, trying to take Hank’s soul. The demon was beefy as heck. In Omuu, on the way to the shrine of Kubazan we get ambushed by a patrol of Yuan-Ti. Hank, Garculi, and a prone Tavsirak hold the bridge while our melee fighters go out into the field. Theodora quietly wrestles a Yaun-Ti to death in the corner. A surprise ally, Orvex (played by Stephanie) opens fire from the rooftop. After insert the Cube of Power, a Froghemoth is summoned and quickly engaged in battle. Great paint job, Anthony!We work together to down the Froghemoth along with the twin summoned water elementals. Memories of our gaming house’s distant past. Part of me misses the bathroom ceiling.
Just wanted to share a few of the photos from combat in our recent sessions, that all of us have contributed! I tried to cobble together a coherent sequence of pictures from the Discord channel.
Hank and company get ambushed as they leave the Temple of Doom.The rest of the group sees Hank and Company through the tunnels and rush to help him, leaving the canoes in the river in their haste. Our guide Qawasha takes on a group of goblins, solo. Well worth the 1gp a day we pay him!The rest of the group rushes through the temple entrance to engage the goblins. Eventually we prevail and move through the jungle in search of Golem. Later on, we ambush a goblin camp by sabotaging their mechanism that helps them fly through the sky. In retaliation, the Ant Corps attack our rear line as the dwarves hold the flank on the left (seen here). The Ant Corps charge our rear line. The messy front lines maintain…for now.Tavsirak volleys spells at the front lines from the safety of a local tree. Theodora charges the front lines after killing one of the Ant Corps and taking their ant steeds.Eventually we succeed in capturing their main base. Another great Terrain piece by Grant. Grant’s impressive terrain collection. We also have a new Gaming Dog to add into the mix. We’ll have to get him his own set of dice soon. On the way to the Oracle of Oralunga, we get ambushed at night by an undead Trex that vomits out other undead. The world’s mysteries never cease. Theodora uses Vorn as a springboard and hammers the Trex from its own back. With a large number of the undead run off by our Cleric and a severe beating taken on Vorn’s part, we manage to prevail. We arrive at Camp Vengence only to have it ambushed that night by Pterrofolk. Pictured here is Andy’s new Gaming Garage along with some of his newly created terrain. We get up close and personal with the Pterrofolk stupid enough to land. Hank shoots Pterrofolk from the sky. Eventually we defeat the Pterrofolk and follow the Oracle’s advise: seek the Arracocra, for they know the secret location of the Lost City of Omu.Along the way we encounter a Frost Giant and its two Frost wolves and they absolutely wreck us. We eventually get into formation, with Vorn almost being destroyed if not for Ulfgar’s ability to help defend him. Many people almost faced death that day. Cheers to Sam for making the new Vorn model, which looks awesome!Hank sets a fire on the ground with a spell to keep the wolves at bay with limited effect. The journey continues. With sleepless nights, our group is exhausted. One night, we get ambushed by a group of velociraptors. We get seriously fucked up. Too close for comfort! Hank tries to stab a dino with mixed results.
Near death, we eventually prevail (or the GM takes pity on us) and we drive the dinos off. We’ve finally reached the mythical homeland of the Birdfolk. Until next time!
This post has been a long time coming, as it has been a while since there has been an update and much has happened in the last two months! First, with regards to our D&D 5E game, our adventurers find themselves staring their journey in the darkness of the Jungles of Chult! We have also somehow (miraculously!) all survived a whole three levels in Meatgrinder Mode. Yay for us!
Just before leaving (possibly forever) into the dark arboreal canopies that cover the majority of the continent of Chult, we decided to spend one last day in the warm, comfortable embrace of Port Nyanzaru ?, the last bastion of civilization for the foreseeable future. We went shopping for canoes for the long river journey ahead and grabbed a armful of quests in the process.
Desperately in need of coin for our journey, we made a final stop to the the casinos and bet on the dinosaur races! Many of us even participated:
The setup for the dino races.The starting line. Everyone is tense as bets are made and riders mount their dinos. I lost all of my money to Hank’s riding skills. What kind of cowboy can’t ride a dinosaur?! I’m still bitter. The first race!The second race!
The following week, we took on a ghoul bounty from Fort Belluarian with the help of our new druid guide Qawasha and his little sidekick Weed.
After some searching, we find some ghouls hiding in the jungle and attack. Each head is worth 25 precious gold!The ghouls advance at a “28 Days Later” speed and surprise us with their alacrity. Some of the party is briefly knocked down in the fight, but thankfully nobody dies! Theo hunts down a ghoul in the tunnels. It was Sam’s birthday, so Mikaela made a dragon-themed cake. It didn’t just look awesome…it tasted great!The birthday girl enjoying her cake. Ash and Brett set up our awesome new gaming table with an embedded screen! So cool. I’ve wanted one of these for us to play on for ages. Thanks again for the holiday gift Sam and Anthony! You guys are the best!Just as we finally muster up and decide to embark on our jungle journey down the river, the city gates of Port Nyanzaru are attacked by an army of zombies! We help the city watch drive off the invaders then set off into the wilderness. Our first day into the jungle we run into a goblin scouting party. We exterminate it with prejudice. Tavsirak teleports onto the top of a tree at the first sign of danger. Sorcerers are delicate. Look at that gorgeous terrain. Well done Grant. The goblins get revenge later when they attack in the middle of the night, catching us off-guard while we sleep. The next day, Aubry (Mikaela) almost gets air-lifted away as food for hungry harpies after she eats a fruit that causes her to laugh so hard she debilitates herself as she is foraging for the groups’ food. We all look in horror as they carry off her paralyzed body.We all disembark off of the canoes in a hurry and are (barely) able to successfully rescue her before she is flown off to who-knows-where. Later that night we camp in some local ruins, hoping to finally get a good nights’ sleep, ending our session for the night.
This post ends up on a sad note, as our long-time friend and playing companion Mikaela is moving away from the area. We are sad at your leaving at the same time joyous at to your new-found opportunities. Regardless, you will be missed Mikaela, and I think I speak for everyone when I say we always will have room at our table for you.
The Strahd Campaign affected us all in different ways.
At the same time our good friend Matt has also moved before the start of the current campaign as well. While you might not have moved across the entire country, you are already missed during the games and a spot is ready for you at any time.
