Keepsake: Everward was designed with a party of three to six members in mind, and is optimized for a party of four to five members. As the first act in a larger campaign, this module is designed for starting level characters, and will carry them up to level 3. The module as written will most likely take four to five game sessions, assuming that your sessions are four hours long, but additional content has been provided to flesh out this module into a more complete campaign in and of itself, allowing you to run this module for longer.
Understanding Article Layout
The main body of any given article is reserved for narrative detail, encounter details, and images. Information such as stat blocks for enemies involved in an encounter can always be found in the sidebar to the right of the article.
Every article is written with a party of four in mind, but includes details for how to quickly balance the encounters for a party of five. These adjustments can also be found in the sidebar to the right of the article. Encounter balances for parties of three and six have not been written, as four and five show to be the most commonly encountered party size.
Many articles will direct you to the next part of the story. Look for this at the bottom of every article.
Perception Check vs. Passive Wisdom (Perception)
There are some instances where the option between checking a player character's passive Wisdom (Perception) and rolling a successful Perception check is presented, but there are more places where it is not. There is no correct or incorrect way of determining the end results, but when running this for playtest groups, it was found to be easier to check things like noticing traps or hearing nearby conversations against a player's passive Wisdom (Perception) score. This allows you to determine whether or not player characters
could notice something without drawing them to the fact that they
didn't, should their roll fail. That being said, asking for a player to make a roll is perfectly acceptable as well, as long as you're prepared for your players to pick up on the fact that there's something they
didn't notice.
Credits, Permissions, and Copyrights
While the majority of this project is original content, it is, of course, based on Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition, and would not have been possible if not for the Open Gaming License that accompanies the use of the Systems Reference Document. I've also used royalty and license-free stock images to create much of the art in the articles, provided by Pixabay and Unsplash. All portrait and token art was created using DMHeroes, and is used here in a commercial capacity with special permission from the owner and operator of DMHeroes.
All of this information can be found in more detail at the bottom of every page.
Tokens and Maps
Tokens for NPCs, enemies, and creatures can be found
here. Also accessible through this page are maps. Every map has both a version with a grid and a version without, and details such as location names and enemy placement can be found on all maps within the articles themselves.
XP vs. Milestone
This campaign was designed using XP leveling rules. If you and your party prefer to use Milestones to track levels, please keep an eye out for articles with 'Milestone: Level Up!' in their side bar so that your party stays on track with parties using XP to level.
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