My first playtest deadline is coming up at the end of this month, and I still have plenty of work to do! But I’ve made good progress so far.

I’m writing a homebrew campaign in the style of a Hades-esque roguelike. I’m going to playtest it with my group before I finalize it and run it for real! These posts talk about my experience making a campaign from scratch. The last homebrew campaign I ran was much more improvisational than this. But D&D 5e isn’t made to fit this campaign idea right out of the box, so there’s some design work I need to do beforehand!

Completed work

Last post, I had this done:

  • A broad list of monsters for each area
  • The bosses for each area and a vague idea for what the boss fights will be like
  • Part of a list of D&D magic items I’ll use as inspiration to create the buffs you can collect in each room
  • The NPCs and basic plot

I won’t need to touch the NPCs and plot piece for the playtest. The session will involve minimal roleplay to keep things a surprise for the full campaign. The playtest focuses on the mechanics of the campaign only. Aside from that, the NPCs are ready to go, and what I have of the plot will last until what I’m estimating as 60-70% through the campaign. I will need to flesh some of that out later, but it’s not a priority right now.

I have added more to the list of magic items I’ll be drawing from, but I don’t actually need a full list for the playtest. I’ve got a large enough pool to draw from. So, what’s next for that piece is actually coming up with the bonuses/items/buffs to collect as the characters progress through the “dungeon”.

The boss fights are about 70% done now. I have the first boss’s stats figured out and just need to zero in on the amount of “helpers” or minions she’ll have. And I have the other two in various draft states. The mid-second-floor boss has stats and a puzzle gimmick; I just need to decide how solving the puzzle will help the characters in their fight. The third boss is the final one for the playtest, and I think he’ll need some additional customizations for his stat blocks.

My instinct is to always create unique boss monsters for my players. This poses some difficulty for me, because game design math is still math, so it’s always intimidating. My compromise is to grab an existing stat block and work from there. As a Dungeon Master, I recommend this approach because you can find something that’s close enough and tack on Legendary Actions or change an attack or anything you want. Then, you have something that’s unique but still saves you the work of creating a monster from scratch.

For the regular monsters, I’ve got a workable draft of the tables I’ll use to randomly generate each encounter.

I’ve done some work on the currency systems that characters use to purchase temporary and permanent upgrades as well, but I haven’t figured out how to price things yet…

Progress

So, to bring back the list of things I would need from last post, here’s my estimated progress on each of those items:

  • Character creation rules – 20%

We’re starting at level 3. I still need to decide on starting equipment and what options people will have for their characters. All official classes and subclasses will be available, but I need to decide if UA will be permissible. Alternatively, I could just keep the playtest to Player’s Handbook content and push these questions off for the full campaign.

  • Campaign intro information (or at least a draft of it) to set expectations – 10%

I have ideas in my head of what I want it to say, but I haven’t started on drafting it up yet.

  • Safety tools – 10%

Similar to above, I know what tools I want to use (Consent Checklist, stars and wishes, the X card) but haven’t drafted up how I’m presenting them to the players.

  • Workable drafts of three out of the five areas, including boss fights, monster encounters, and bonuses/buffs/items – 50%

Boss fights are mostly done, monsters are done, but I anticipate the bonuses/buffs piece to take a good deal of work to complete.

  • Workable draft of the Tavern and permanent upgrades – 30%

I have ideas, and but I still need to figure out pricing for permanent upgrades and what will be possible to obtain in a given visit to the Tavern.

What’s next

There’s a lot of work left to do! Part of my struggle right now is determining how complete I want this playtest to be. The less I prepare now, the more I’ll have to do after the playtest to get the final version working… so, the best way to handle this is finish everything “absolutely necessary” and keep adding things as I go. That way, I’ll meet my self-imposed deadline and use whatever leftover time to make my life easier afterwards.

Wish me luck, and see you in the next post!