For Six Sentence Sunday, albeit slightly belated, here are a bit more than six sentences of something I originally started for tolkienekphrasisweek - my first attempt at a reembodied Maedhros. (I thought it woulld be a short little ficlet...it got away from me.)

"At last the lady Vairë came to me, and asked me, if I would not leave the Halls, still to accept the gift of embodiment, and to come and work under her direction. 'For,' she said, 'it is not in the thought of the One, nor is it the wish of His servants, that anything should be wasted.' And so I acquiesced, and was embodied, but dwelt still in the halls of the Weaver as the living among the dead. And I worked, and I saw that the work of my hands was fair - that my hands, whatever else I had done with them, might still be turned to fair work."

Indeed, his hands were moving on the loom even as he spoke, threading wisps of cloud across a pale blue sky.

But why, I almost asked - and though I bit my tongue, perhaps he perceived the question in my face, or else his thoughts ran this way already.

"I know not why she came to me," he answered my unspoken question. "It was not for what craft was in me, for though I learned to weave in my youth, and liked it well, I did not then come to mastery - and in Beleriand my hand never touched the loom. Perhaps it was for love of Fíriel, her cherished handmaid, though she herself had never known me. What is certain is that it was not because I deserved mercy. I did not. I have never deserved any of their mercies, but they have been merciful to me regardless. Merciful beyond telling."

I could think of nothing more to say to that. His hands, the fair and the marred, kept moving smoothly on the loom, passing the bobbins in and out, in and out.

Some absolute geniuses (Isaiah Tanenbaum, Rob Casimir, and Dan Iwrey) at the NYC Conflict of Interests Board have created what I feel confident in calling the greatest employee ethics training tool ever created: A D&D 5e oneshot called Escape from the Dinkins Building which was emailed to all 300,000 NYC employees back in June. (It's freely accessible to everyone else at the link, too.) It! Is!! Glorious!!!

I ran Escape from the Dinkins Building for fiona15351, and we had an absolute blast! I highly recommend it. It's designed for parties levels 2-5; we ran it with two PCs at level 6, one rogue and one paladin, and that worked fine. The setting is modern-day NYC, but magic and typical D&D fantasy elements are real and an acknowledged part of society. As adventurers, your characters are city employees in some capacity.

Here's the summary:

Having fallen asleep during a mandated training, the party awakens to find themselves trapped in the haunted basement of the Dinkins Building. To escape, they must face a series of challenges and find the sign-in sheet that proves they attended, lest they be cursed to repeat the training, forever.

As the summary suggests, it's a very funny adventure, although some of the jokes may be too obscure if you don't live in NYC, and many appeal primarily to city employees and other people very familiar with local government bureaucracy. (Fiona was forced to consult the Wikipedia pages for Fiorello La Guardia and Staten Island Chuck.)

There is a hilarious special mechanic, which I am going to discuss behind a cut. If you think you are likely to play Escape from the Dinkins Building as a player, don't read this; it's supposed to be secret from the PCs! ( Read more... )

The adventure is designed to take four hours, assuming the players and DM are experienced. As I recall, it took us less than that, and there are suggestions for what to cut if you don't have that much time. The module is clearly written, with a good amount of detail (and good maps!), such that I think it would be a good choice for an inexperienced or even first-time DM. It's ideal for players interested in roleplay and social encounters - this is definitely not a pure dungeon crawl - but the fights are solid as well. Overall, it's just a really fun oneshot and definitely worth playing!

I cannot say that I ever expected to use my dayjob tag on a post about a TTRPG, but I am so, so happy this exists.