Running a pre-written megadungeon is a challenging undertaking. Combing through a setting built by another person that spans kingdoms and continents is in many ways easier. There are large swathes of terrain left undetailed in the latter. You can write up and plop in just about anything your devious mind can imagine, as the writers of campaign settings make sure to leave plenty of space in the margins for just such a thing.   In a megadungeon, it's very different. It has all the elements of a normal dungeon, sure. Rooms, corridors, encounters, NPCs. But in a normal dungeon, you're in and out in a few sessions. Then the space is left behind to molder and rot until you need it again, if you ever do. With a megadungeon, you're there for quite a long time. The goal is to have the dungeon be the campaign. So you sort of have to choose the right dungeon and then prepare to live and breathe that space.   I've been running Stonehell for only thr...

  I live pretty far away from my friends. I've moved around a lot, so the group has become somewhat spread out over the last few years between Georgia, California, France and Switzerland. This is not a problem normally, because we can keep up with email, or discord or whatever. But playing TTRPGs with them can be a real challenge. Over the last five or so years, I've run many one-shots and three major campaigns online. It can be a real challenge to figure it out from first principles, though.  I thought I would share what works for me to get a game running smoothly every time. It's a simple checklist that I follow to keep me on the right track.   Step one - Choose your inspiration!   There are a lot of games to choose from, and near infinite possibilities within them of what kind of game to run. Assuming you're not entirely new to RPGs, you probably already have a few favorite games you like running. I prefer fantasy RPGs. You may like Sci-Fi or Contemporar...

  Inner gatehouse: Beeston Castle by Stephen McKay.  If you'd like to read the whole campaign in order, look no farther than here: Stonehell Sessions The goblin's willingness to launch into an attack for just a bit of gold in the adventurer's pockets was a bit sharper than the party really expected - and their swords were a bit sharper, too. Tuesday the thief was cut down on the first floor of the gatehouse. But the goblins were defeated and the last of their number was interrogated. The black tongue of the monster wagged freely and earned the goblin's freedom. As he ran off into the wilderness outside stonehell's crumbled wall, the party began to take Tuesday's body (minus a few choice pieces of equipment) to be buried. Two voices calling out for them grabbed their attention. Runum Graves and Fayanna the locksmith - two members of the party who had been delayed by the Wardens Regulant in Absolution   - had arrived. Working as quickly as possible, they built ...

  If you'd like to read the whole campaign in order, look no farther than here:  Stonehell Sessions We didn't do a session 0. That's primarily because these aren't strangers but rather players that I've been gaming with for at least a couple of years now. I have some pretty consistent gaming rules, but they've never had to be enforced. No cheating No intolerant behaviors (homo or transphobia, no racism or sexism, etc) No sexual content Keep to a tone closer to LOTR than Monty Python. If you have an hard limits on content, let me know, and if you have a concern about something that’s happening in the session then ping me privately. I've typed them out so many times that my phone's auto-correct predicts them.   Instead of a session 0, I followed my game setup checklist to get ready. It’s a simple checklist that boils down about 6-8 hours of concentrated prep time. I'll post the whole checklist in another post.  ...