The parts for my new system came in last weekend, but I somehow got a bad motherboard and had to return it for a replacement. Disappointment! I’m a little jazzed to get it up and running so I can resume the weekly D&D livestreams (not to mention the other thousand things I’ll be able to do with it).
On top of getting things ready for Tuesday’s game (a little side adventure with some former squires of Tyr Company – handy to get us used to the switch to Fantasy Grounds. Farewell for now, Roll20), I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on family trees. I grabbed the free software from MyHeritage and created the trees for each of the primary PCs going back five generations. The Ditanis. The Ravencalls. The Kharamans. The Naillos. Close to 200 names and details all laid out, one by one. Births, deaths (including causes), relations. Also recreated the Delle family in it, because why not.
I created the trees in a Google doc at first, ending up with something that looked like this:
ASPASIA
- Melas Ditani (M, leatherworker) Born 1586 AC, Died 1632 AC (Illness)
- Cyrilla Ditani nee Fulos (F) Born 1587 AC, Died 1668 AC (Illness)
- Karia Ditani (F) Born 1606 AC, Died 1607 AC (Accident)
- Kalias Ditani (M, beadle) Born 1608 AC, Died 1636 AC (Accident)
- Aristina Ditani nee Bakoczy (F) Born 1608 AC, Died 1645 AC (Disease)
- Talysa Ditani (F) Born 1630 AC, Died 1642 AC (Natural causes)
- Pedeo Ditani (M, shoemaker) Born 1629 AC, Died 1680 AC (Famine)
- Galeta Ditani nee Hagild (F) Born 1619 AC, Died 1682 AC (Infection)
- Indace Galer nee Ditani (F) Born 1648 AC
- Lorin Ditani (M) Born 1649 AC, Died 1650 AC (Disease)
- Teric Ditani (M, ropemaker) Born 1650 AC, Died 1687 AC (Infection)
- Ceren Ditani (M, mercenary) Born 1651 AC
- Georgan Ditani (M, saddler) Born 1652 AC, Died 1699 AC (Disease)
- Dorana Ditani nee Colas (F, physician) Born 1653 AC, Died 1688 AC (Violence)
- Tarasios Ditani (M, musician) Born 1668 AC, Died 1699 AC (Plague)
- Neola Ditani née Kana (F, playwright) Born 1666 AC
- Eryn Ditani (F, assassin) Born 1684 AC
- Aspasia Ditani (F, adventurer/rogue) Born 1687 AC
Then I would input all the info into MyHeritage and fill in the blanks with additional relatives where necessary.
If I were a programmer, I would create some kind of simulator that could manage populations over time, tracking individuals and families across generations. Man, that would be sweet.
I’m convinced that I’m the only one in the group that enjoys this level of detail.
And as for the campaign – I took them through The Wolves of Welton (slightly modified to fit within my world), the events of which happening concurrently with the main PC groups efforts to thwart the return of Tiamat. Two of the PCs nearly died in the final confrontation with the enhanced wolf pack, but they did manage to parlay and reach an accord with Bolt. Now they will rest up and return to Derithlin, after which we’ll turn our attention back to the west into Gullport, where Tyr Company continues their search through the ruined labs of Zaharad in an attempt to locate the Blackpoint.
Raven & Blade 