For the first time since our 2019 trip, Quinn and I were able to re-attend the D&D in a Castle event at Lumley Castle in England, where we were paired with Dungeon Master Kelly Lynne D’Angelo, and players Vincent, Chris, David, myself, and my hubs Quinn to play Kelly’s wholly homebrewed “Ruinview” campaign. I then turned the campaign into a printed book, much like I did for our 2019 trip to this event.
We landed in Newcastle, UK, and met up with the general group for the “You Meet at a Tavern” event (aka a small mixer with some good food, drinks, and bardic music).
We later arrived by bus at Lumley Castle for a sorting ceremony to meet up with our dungeon masters and groups to do a zero session meet & greet before the Barovian Ball and room check-in. The lovely Kelen Coleman presided.
After room check-in and a much needed shower, everyone got ready for the Barovian Ball and attended “dance practice” to do a bowing line dance. You can get as dressed up or not as you want, but this year we got dressed up. IF you’re unfamiliar with “Barovia“, it’s from the Ravenloft setting, for the Curse of Strahd campaign (gothic vampires).
Here are some event pictures of the dungeon masters for March 2022, our DM Kelly, the bards of the event, and mini painting.
We finally settled into our room and attended an early morning, well-informed guided walk around the grounds with Guy Sclanders (a DM with the event, and official sponsor of the fall 2022 events).
Here are some great drone shots from the event photographers:
While I was admittedly not a huge fan of the catered meals (English staples take some getting used to), the snacks were seriously on point and amazing.
I don’t have any pictures from our very first D&D session with Kelly D’Angelo, but some nice views of the sitting room and library bar, as well as the first one-shot we did with Josh Perry. Quinn picked up an item in this one-shot that caused us quite a bit of trouble in our main campaign–which both Josh and Kelly LOVED!
We may have taken the story a bit out of order and made life difficult for our DM, but we had a great lot of fun on our first day! This campaign was a fully home-brewed adventure by Kelly Lynne D’angelo, which she called “Ruinview” (more on that below, in the section about the book I wrote for this campaign).
Day 2 started off with a fight in a cavernous crypt, and a tussle with a water elemental (JVP’s one shot’s fault) in a tavern keg room. I tried out my hand at Dungeon Alchemist and even made a few maps of the locations.
Our second one-shot, this time with Ralph Stickley and most of our regular group! Oh, I nearly forgot — THE SWAG from this event was awesome! Books, dice, cards, everything you could possibly want!
Dinner on the second night of game play included sight seeing around the ground again, and Krystian Ibanez gave the people a wonderful, original D&D sea shanty! For anyone concerned about the well-being of the castle kitty, she has full run of the place and a cozy bed over the radiator in the lobby.
We played more scenes in our unfolding adventure, and I made a few more maps of a graveyard and our druid-initiated “kill box” to manage the battle against several large monsters.
Our midday session was free-time, so I painted the mini of a group mate who hadn’t had time, ate dinner, admired the candles, and tried some kind of gingerbread drink.
Our final session went LOOOONG into the night, had some crazy antics from the Deck of Many Things (including someone pulling Void, the literal worst card to be pulled, which we had to deal with), but we defeated the BBEG, with Kelen Coleman’s help as our sorceress NPC, of course!
The Ruinview Campaign
Here is our group, commissioned from Aly Huber, who made us look like rock stars!
Ruinview Players
DM Campaign Hook: You’ve all been enjoying your time in Ruinview together over the last year. It’s a gorgeous little town of no more than 500, just off a salty coastal bluff that’s ripe with good wheat harvest and strong ale. There’s been enough to do locally to make solid coin and names for yourselves as a group. So much so that the Ruinview town mayor, Nessie Rakken, has quietly come to you with some startling news: out of nowhere, a nearby forest has turned into a charred marshland overnight, and with it the appearance of what was considered lore before: the ruins of an ancient castle made entirely out of bones.
The Ruinview Book
I really didn’t intend on novelizing our campaign this time around because writing the 2019 book was a lot of work last time. But, within a week, I tested the waters with a first chapter, and then continued for 3 drafts from April-August 2022. Here’s what the book ultimately looked like, below.
Want to know more about the Ruinview book? I wrote a post about the book overview and my writing, formatting, and printing process for this book. Thanks for reading!
