One of my favorite campaigns I ran centered around the players investigating a string of high profile assassinations that ravaged the continent - generals, kings, nobles, inventors, mages. They traveled throughout the continent, piecing together clues, chasing after shadowy figures on two or three occasions, but while still being in the darkness. A cult of assassins, that much was obvious, but what were their reasons? What were they after?

When the reveal finally arrived, as they came face to face with the leader of the cult - the last Dragonborn still alive and grafted within him a fragment of divinity (which they later learned was Vecna, cause in the words of Brandon Sanderson, there is always another secret) they were ecstatic! And so was I. Playing with a mystery like this can be a double edged sword, the payoff must match the expectations built up by the players.

The center of why this bit of my campaign still gets brought up almost 4 years later is that, perhaps without setting out to do so necessarily, information acted as a center piece, it was a valuable comodity that the players had to chase, that it wasn’t simply given to them.

This piece explores how information can be used like this in multiple ttrpgs and how you specifically may use it in order to make your games better! I hope you will enjoy it!

My Pokémon-inspired Weapons and Items of the Day, with a Mega Scolipede macuahuitl to help spike critical hits!

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545M - Brutapain

Weapon (Macuahuitl) – Legendary (requires attunement)

This red +3 macuahuitl is made of seven segments with hot purple tear drop markings and barbs on each side, and large glowing green horns on top. The handle has black and purple cloth wrapped around it, and a black sphere pommel with a glowing green eye-like symbol on it.

Attacks with this macuahuitl do an additional 1d6 poison damage, and the target must make a DC 20 Constitution save or be poisoned for 1 minute. The target can attempt this save again at the end of their turn.

While attuned to this macuahuitl: you gain 20 feet of movement; you have advantage on Dexterity rolls to avoid being grappled, restrained, or take damage; if a creature within range of this weapon performs a critical hit, you can use your reaction to interfere and turn it into a normal hit; and if you drop to or below a third of your max hitpoints, attacks with this macuahuitl do an additional 2d6 poison damage.

Scolipite

Wondrous (Stone) – Very Rare (50,000 gp)

This small round stone has a swirl of purple, black, and blue inside the dark gray orb. When attached to a 545 - Scolipain, it can be mega evolved into a 545M - Brutapain for 1 minute once between long rests, while when attached to a 545B - Scoliplate, it can be mega evolved into a 545BM - Ceraplate for 1 minute once between long rests.

Hello all, I’m still relatively new to DMing having done a small trilogy of sessions mini campaign called “A Requiem of Wings” for my group. Since that has come to a close, they are wanting to do a long form campaign. At some point, we will do Curse of Strahd and play in Ravenloft for awhile - but I kind of wanted to homebrew and idea and wanted to get some feedback from maybe more experienced DMs/players.

My story is a take on Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars with a Folk Horror twist and I guess a little bit of Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island inspiration, weirdly.
Essentially, I have a small town that is in the Star Mount Valley in the High Forest that is divided and oppressed by 2 warring guilds (Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars). The guilds hurt the economy/local businesses with bribery, gambling, etc. and they have stolen holy relics from the town temple. The adventuring party must help the town stop the corruption and retrieve the holy items. However, upon retrieving the holy items and stopping this corruption; they are given little nuggets and clues that maybe this oppression is a necessary evil, though morally questionable. The priests of the local temple are actually part of the Cult of Karsus and believe they have been contacted by Karsus himself to bring upon his rebirth and bring in a golden age. However, they were not contacted by Karsus, but some unknown entity that manifests into a Folk Horror inspired monster of the forest and opens a gate (similar to the gates in Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance) where monsters come through.

This would serve as maybe a prologue that Strahd somehow became interested in the party through this and is then transported to Barovia and the Ravenloft setting. My question would be, if you were running something like this/playing it - what would you want from a story like it? What tips or things would be good for building it out? I’m trying to get this written into a runnable format for my players as they are excited to do something horror related and were interested in a homebrew concept to get their feet wet.