Cross stitch pattern of the heroes from Golden Sun: Isaac, Mia, Ivan, and Garet. Thanks to Unknown for the sprites. Download the PDF here: Golden Sun Pattern

Grid Size: 68W x 68H
Design Area: 4.86″ x 4.86″ (68 x 68 stitches)
Colors: 23

My Patron Ninja Goemon’s thick scales protected them from the heat of the volcano as they swam down inside, only to find the remains of an ancient stone city with lava flowing through the ruined streets.

I just DMed my first D&D one shot. I was so nervous but it seems like everyone had fun. I ran a light-hearted humor based forest dungeon with a set of five completely separate “rooms”. The thing is that I had no idea how fast the game would go, so I designed clear stopping points after each section so that there would be enough opportunities for long rests just in case my players decided to take two hours murdering every animal on the farm. As it went, the whole thing was over in about six hours with only two combats, but I didn’t know that while writing the thing! I borrowed a bunch of cards with monster stat blocks on them from a friend and ended up using a grand total of two of them.

Combat highlight: the party geared up to fight a pair of Darkmantles, and our wizard fired off his best spell first turn and completely fried a poor unsuspecting octopus that he had mistaken for a Darkmantle. There was no talking his way out of fighting after that!

Non combat highlight, the party had to find a MacGuffin stolen by some angry woodland critters. Instead of killing them all and taking it. They snuck around and bribed an Animated Shrub to tell them where they were hiding it. They basically promised to give the bush a magical Cloak of Billowing to stop him from raising the alarm. Then they didn’t actually give it to him! My players are jerks. They did eventually cave at the very end of the story though, but jeez, so cold.

I learned a lot running this game, but on the other hand, I was so focused on trying to do a good job that I forgot to gauge my players’ reactions. I think they had a good time, but I should have been paying better attention to what parts engaged them and what things I should skip next time.

I’m going to give my notes some polish and post them just in case you guys want try and run it too. Get ready for a lot of pun names though: Catsy Cline the Tabaxi farmer, Enchanting Tatum the sexy Fairy bartender, and Penguineth Paltrow the Kenku traditionalist. Yeah, I had fun with the names.