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Swords & Sorceries: Hearts of Iron, Episode 2 - The Sea Demon's Gold
🕑 Added 2020-03-17 15:06:02 +0000 UTCPreviously: Session One
In The Sea Demon's Gold, the adventurers journey through a deadly storm to the isle of the Sea Demon, where rumors say a forgotten temple holds riches. They find the island rising like a living thing from the sea, surrounded by and filled with dangers.
In Session Two, they press on past the first danger and find threats far more lethal.
This 5E campaign brings together Shane Ivey from Arc Dream Publishing, Mark Finn from the Monty Haul zine, Chris Spivey from Darker Hue Studios, and Aser and Megan Tolentino from The Redacted Files.
Shane, the Dungeon Master, introduces the Heart of Iron, a trading ship from the crumbling, devil-haunted city-state of Zyirra. Among its crew are four adventurers:
- Baldo Vandalerius (Mark), Zyirran human rogue with a heart of gold, or at least electrum
- Thalus Longbarrow (Chris), a wood-elf ranger from the wilds near Zyirra
- Ki (Megan), a scheming and ruthless dwarf from far Iskutai, a priestess of the underworld goddess Sahayaak
- Astartus (Aser), a Zyirran human fighter with a broad shield and a heavy hand
We use the Roll20 module for The Sea Demon's Gold, which you can see in action in the video. The Sea Demon's Gold is also available in PDF and full-color paperback.
You can listen to the audio of this episode here or in the Arc Dream Presents podcast.
Produced by Rachel K. Ivey. Character sketches by Kurt Komoda. “Five Armies” by Kevin MacLeod, http://www.Incompetech.com, music from http://www.filmmusic.io. License: CC BY.
SWORDS & SORCERIES LINKS
- About the Broken Empire
- The Sea Demon’s Gold in paperback, PDF, and Roll20 VTT
- Mystical Inspiration for 5E Spellcasters
- The Bladesharp subclass for rogues
- The Shieldbearer subclass for fighters
- The Summoning domain for clerics
- The Future of Swords & Sorceries
Comments
Julian Breen
I have very limited exposure to 5E but from what I've seen it looks as though there is very little availability of magic items with instead, characters gaining new level abilities which emulate them. Very much video-game level-up style.
Arc Dream Publishing
The unimportance of treasure in 5E irks me. In my prior campaign, I houseruled living expenses and downtime to make wealth matter a lot more. I may write up the changes as a post.
David Azzageddi
By the time I could use it in my current game, the main characters were up around 6th level, so naturally I modified it a lot. I put in Sons of Kyuss and just added some HPs and damage to a few encounters. Also, the characters are completely unmotivated by treasure and experience, which requires considerable changes to adventures, or they just walk past more than half of many published dungeons. They don't care about exploring every room, or taking treasure (which sets off traps), so I had them coming here to save the soul of a friend's lover, who had been trapped in the caves. In the end, they indeed skipped much of the map and never encountered the cube. I gave them a way to destroy the Sea Demon, not easy, of course, but they managed it and released all the accumulated souls, including their friend's lover's. So they were happy.
