Well, our new Stormhaven campaign has begun, and the guys have agreed to an experiment: podcasting our actual play sessions. A number of other podcasts have put out actual play episodes, and these seem to be fairly popular—but I don’t know of any podcasts where the entire premise is actual play of an ongoing home campaign. So, enter the Icosahedrophilia podcast! Each episode of the podcast will contain three segments:

• The Staging Area: Brief introductory remarks and, in episodes 2 and following, recaps.
• The Weather Report: About an hour’s worth of actual gameplay from our campaign. (The campaign originates in Stormhaven, so the gameplay section is the Weather Report … get it? Of course you do. You may groan at will.)
• The Prop Shop: Brief descriptions or capsule reviews of props we used in our gaming session, along with props and shout-outs to folk who made our game and/or podcast possible.

Our group only plays once every three to four weeks, but we play for five or six hours in each session, so I should have plenty of material to push out a full episode every week to ten days. That’s my goal, at least.

You can download the first episode directly or subscribe in iTunes (recommended). To see the full show notes, click on the “Read more” link below. Enjoy the show!

Show notes for episode 1, “The End is the Beginning, Part 1″

1:11 Stormhaven: City of a Thousand Seas is available in PDF form from DriveThruRPG. I was fortunate enough to find a printed copy at Half Price Books in Dallas a couple of years ago.

4:56 If you view the enhanced podcast, you can see images of the miniatures we’re using, from the D&D Miniatures line. Jeff actually supplied his own miniature for Sturm, but I don’t have a picture of it. Also, I didn’t really have the Eladrin Pyromancer (from Against the Giants) with me for Berrian, because I thought Josh would be providing his own miniature, but I’ll be sure to bring it along in the future. You might also notice that Lithian Seawillow is represented by the Elf Archer miniature from the Dungeons of Dread expansion, but with its hair repainted orange instead of green.

15:29 The words for the drunken seaman’s song come from the article “Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Dagon,” Dragon 349 (November 2006), p. 30.

17:38 You can assume that Sturm’s ceremonial anchor is smaller than would be typical for the Broken Promise—so that he can transport it in a handcart by himself!

21:44 The music you hear in the background is “Nyarlathotep” by Nox Arcana, from their album Necronomicon (2004).

24:25 Alanso tries to mug the drunken seaman in order to steal from him a token that identifies the drunkard as one of seven Havenites chosen to help crew the Broken Promise during its ceremonial tour on the next morning, New Year’s Day, the 1st of Summer, D[iscovery ]Y[ear] 678. Alanso wants to get on the boat, complete a task he’s been hired to perform, and then get off the boat before it sails at midnight.

26:48 When David says “I’m not sure how these work exactly,” he’s talking about his rogue’s attack powers. Most of our group have played earlier editions of D&D (Jacob is the only player completely new to the game), but none of the players had played any 4e sessions previously.

27:15 The miniature I used for the drunken seaman was the Tavern Brawler from the War of the Dragon Queen set.

33:25 The miniature that I show to Matt (Jacques) when describing the hideous creature is a Gibbering Mouther from the Aberrations set.

35:38 When I ask for us to “make a little room” on the table, I’m laying out the pier scene described in this episode’s Prop Shop.

36:10 I provided Jay (Tyria) with a key to the layout of the Broken Promise. The key also included some information that Jay would use to guide Tyria’s actions later on.

37:03 The reverse side of the Broken Promise key included a visual key to the honor crew. The PCs won’t learn much about the NPCs’ personalities in this adventure.

40:51 The “strange creatures” were not kuo-toa, but I represented them using a bunch of Kuo-Toa Hunter miniatures from the Night Below set.

43:15 Josh originally told me his character would be named “Valgore,” but he changed to “Berrian” at some point before we got to this part of the adventure.

1:07:28 You can get SkeletonKey Games’s High Seas Warship and High Seas Dragonship from DriveThruRPG. Both sets offer modular tiles for creating a four-masted warship. The Dragon Ship set includes motifs especially suitable for an arcane warship prowling the seas. I like these sets very much, but the ships were too big to use as the Broken Promise.

1:07:54 You can still order copies of Dungeon #141 from Paizo.

1:08:40 You can get SkeletonKey Games’s Adventure Town – Wharf set from DriveThru RPG. The set includes 26 tiles, 6×6 inches each, that you can use to build a wide variety of piers. If your software or printer allow you to print in mirror-image, you effectively double the number of tiles (for my layout, I printed tile ATWf21 in mirror-image). The set also includes a bonus tile that helps you connect the wharf to the Adventure Town – Canals mini-set from e-Adventure Tiles Annual 2, as well as a bonus tile that’s just a 6×6 patch of water. You can see what I did with these tiles below. I was very pleased with the results.

1:09:03 Okay, so it’s really more pi-shaped than E-shaped (see photo below).

10:09:34 You can purchase the GameMastery Flip-Mat: Ship from Paizo. One side of this 24×30 inch laminated map is just deep water—very nice for a nautical campaign. The other side features a three-level ship (yes, there are four maps, but the main deck is actually represented on two maps, one with the quarterdeck and fo’c'sle decks showing, and one with them removed so that you see everything that’s at the level of the main deck). When I put the Broken Promise (Sea Wyvern) cutout together with the e-Adventure Tiles wharf and the GameMastery Flip-Mat, it all looked like this:

Promo Finally, I want to recommend to you the Tome Show with Jeff Greiner, a D&D news, reviews, and interviews podcast. The Tome was the first gaming podcast that I listened to regularly, and it’s still one of my favorites.