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The Astral Express | A Festive 5e Adventure for 5th-Level Characters (Patreon)

Published:
2020-12-18 18:01:01
Edited:
2021-03-26 18:53:49
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All Aboard The Astral Express!

Every year, Klaus the Kindhearted travels across the planes visiting all the good little boys and girls and delivering to them magical treats and gifts. He does this on his magical train, The Astral Express. This year, however, while skirting the abyss he inadvertently picked up a nefarious hitchhiker. A creature born of malice and hunger and hate: The Gingerdead Man. Summoned by Klaus as a last-ditch effort to save his train and the gift-giving season, will your party be able to safely navigate the Astral Express and thwart the Gingerdead Man’s evil plots?

Hey everyone!

In honor of the holiday season, we have gathered together for another free collaboration, this time centered around a magically powered train soaring through the sky!
Along with maps of a wide variety of train cars to navigate through, this collaboration includes a written adventure, new monsters, minis, magic items, and musical tracks to bring it all together in one cohesive package! You can view a list of everything contained in the pack below as well as links to each of the creators responsible for contributing to this effort. Most creators have also created their own patron-only content, so we highly encourage that you check out their Patreons below.

Included in this mega collaboration is:

  • 4 atmospheric musical tracks
  • 8 yuletide magic items
  • 17 monsters complete with stats
  • 25 monster tokens
  • 16 different 17 x 11 maps, available as gridded and gridless, as well as printable PDFs.
  • 2 backdrops to place your maps onto

You can download all the PDF, maps, tokens and music using the link at the top of this post.

Here are links to all the creators involved in the project!

Adventure Writers

Adventures Await

Instant Adventures

Cartographers

FableKit

GoAdventureMaps

J.Dungeonmaster

Loke BattleMats

MapGuffin

Midgardia

Moonlight Maps

Oak+Resin

Rudok's Tavern

Scribbles in Space

The Goblin Explorer

The MAD Cartographer

Tom Cartos

Venatus Maps

Zach Moeller

Composers

AudioGoblin

Boy King of Idaho

McRoMusic

Music d20

Illustrators

Rudok's Tavern

Splatteredink

Zach Moeller

Magic Item Designers

Adventures Await

Instant Adventures

Splatteredink

Zach Moeller

Miniature/Token Creators

Papelchemy

Zach Moeller

Monster Designers

Adventures Await

Amellwind

Instant Adventures

Splatteredink

Zach Moeller

To everyone reading this, we hope you enjoy this huge collaboration. We wouldn't be able to create all this without your support! From everyone who joined in on this project, thank you for your patronage. :)

Files

Comments

SPP

I'd like to run this for my family this Thanksgiving, but one thing that I can't seem to find is the total number of HP Klaus has-- during the final battle he can take a significant amount of damage, but I have no clue what I would be subtracting from. I read through the entire PDF multiple times, am I just missing something?

Степан Куликов

Hi all. I've compiled your entire adventure into a free Foundry VTT module. Can I share the link with everyone?

tomcartos
>>124432422

Hi! I'm afraid I can't have any links on my Patreon that aren't my own for security reasons. You can however share it elsewhere if you like.

Kris

Not to raise an old thread, but I think there is an issue with the print maps? Maps 02 and Maps 03 are the same.

Katelyn Holland

Just found this awesome adventure and I'm building it on Roll20 to run for some friends. Was there ever a stat block or a total number of HP given for Klaus?

Vivacia

this is amazing!

Mykey 2 Lyfe

the sheer amount of content is jaw dropping!

Thibaut Lorimier (edited)

Comment edits

2022-02-04 13:54:05 The maps are awesome and full of very good idea ! I'm impressed of the collab ! Thx again and merry xmas :)
2020-12-18 21:22:45 The maps are awesome and full of very good idea ! I'm impressed of the collab ! Thx again and merry xmas :)

The maps are awesome and full of very good idea ! I'm impressed of the collab ! Thx again and merry xmas :)

Mark W Parrish (edited)

Comment edits

2022-02-04 13:54:05 First, I would like to say that this collaboration is epic and everything included in it is absolutely wonderful. The concept as a whole is wonderful and it is amazing that everyone was able to work together on the project. I am running this just a couple days after Christmas and wanted to point out a few observations. I am not complaining in any way but did have some challenges in preparing this adventure and felt a responsibility to share them. The encounter names in the adventure document do not match up well with the names given to the individual maps. Some of the names are easy to figure out but some of them are way off and I had to fully read the entire description and carefully study the maps to figure out which maps went with the correct encounter. After I spent more time than I am willing to admit to figure out the correct order, I found the youtube preview video of the adventure and it somewhat shows the correct order but it is not fully correct either. One of the encounter descriptions does not have a corresponding map and one of the maps does not have a corresponding encounter. This makes me wonder if I have an outdated document. As an American left to right always feels more natural to me so I assumed the direction of the train would be left to right, or that the train is heading east and the party arrives on the caboose to the west and makes their way eastward. Some of the maps seem to be created with the party entering from the west and some with the party entering from the east. The locomotive or engine car is facing to the west. The youtube video has the engine car first heading west followed immediately by the caboose and then with the cars in correct order except for the extra map. The facing issue was easily fixed by just flipping the maps horizontally to make everything go in the direction I want. I really appreciate all the work the artists did on the maps, however it would have been a nice option to have map versions that did not have the actual encounter monsters drawn directly onto the map. I am running this in a VTT with moveable tokens. Despite those minor challenges I love this adventure and look forward to running it. I did want to also state that I am running this purely as a stand alone one-shot and the good boys and girls that are summoned by Klaus are actually human children from modern day Earth 2020. They have manifested onto the train in the bodies of D&D adventurers and instinctively know how to use all of the skills and abilities but are still little kids on the inside. My players will have to role play as little kids in a heroes body. Should be fun!
2020-12-24 23:08:30 First, I would like to say that this collaboration is epic and everything included in it is absolutely wonderful. The concept as a whole is wonderful and it is amazing that everyone was able to work together on the project. I am running this just a couple days after Christmas and wanted to point out a few observations. I am not complaining in any way but did have some challenges in preparing this adventure and felt a responsibility to share them. The encounter names in the adventure document do not match up well with the names given to the individual maps. Some of the names are easy to figure out but some of them are way off and I had to fully read the entire description and carefully study the maps to figure out which maps went with the correct encounter. After I spent more time than I am willing to admit to figure out the correct order, I found the youtube preview video of the adventure and it somewhat shows the correct order but it is not fully correct either. One of the encounter descriptions does not have a corresponding map and one of the maps does not have a corresponding encounter. This makes me wonder if I have an outdated document. As an American left to right always feels more natural to me so I assumed the direction of the train would be left to right, or that the train is heading east and the party arrives on the caboose to the west and makes their way eastward. Some of the maps seem to be created with the party entering from the west and some with the party entering from the east. The locomotive or engine car is facing to the west. The youtube video has the engine car first heading west followed immediately by the caboose and then with the cars in correct order except for the extra map. The facing issue was easily fixed by just flipping the maps horizontally to make everything go in the direction I want. I really appreciate all the work the artists did on the maps, however it would have been a nice option to have map versions that did not have the actual encounter monsters drawn directly onto the map. I am running this in a VTT with moveable tokens. Despite those minor challenges I love this adventure and look forward to running it. I did want to also state that I am running this purely as a stand alone one-shot and the good boys and girls that are summoned by Klaus are actually human children from modern day Earth 2020. They have manifested onto the train in the bodies of D&D adventurers and instinctively know how to use all of the skills and abilities but are still little kids on the inside. My players will have to role play as little kids in a heroes body. Should be fun!

First, I would like to say that this collaboration is epic and everything included in it is absolutely wonderful. The concept as a whole is wonderful and it is amazing that everyone was able to work together on the project. I am running this just a couple days after Christmas and wanted to point out a few observations. I am not complaining in any way but did have some challenges in preparing this adventure and felt a responsibility to share them. The encounter names in the adventure document do not match up well with the names given to the individual maps. Some of the names are easy to figure out but some of them are way off and I had to fully read the entire description and carefully study the maps to figure out which maps went with the correct encounter. After I spent more time than I am willing to admit to figure out the correct order, I found the youtube preview video of the adventure and it somewhat shows the correct order but it is not fully correct either. One of the encounter descriptions does not have a corresponding map and one of the maps does not have a corresponding encounter. This makes me wonder if I have an outdated document. As an American left to right always feels more natural to me so I assumed the direction of the train would be left to right, or that the train is heading east and the party arrives on the caboose to the west and makes their way eastward. Some of the maps seem to be created with the party entering from the west and some with the party entering from the east. The locomotive or engine car is facing to the west. The youtube video has the engine car first heading west followed immediately by the caboose and then with the cars in correct order except for the extra map. The facing issue was easily fixed by just flipping the maps horizontally to make everything go in the direction I want. I really appreciate all the work the artists did on the maps, however it would have been a nice option to have map versions that did not have the actual encounter monsters drawn directly onto the map. I am running this in a VTT with moveable tokens. Despite those minor challenges I love this adventure and look forward to running it. I did want to also state that I am running this purely as a stand alone one-shot and the good boys and girls that are summoned by Klaus are actually human children from modern day Earth 2020. They have manifested onto the train in the bodies of D&D adventurers and instinctively know how to use all of the skills and abilities but are still little kids on the inside. My players will have to role play as little kids in a heroes body. Should be fun!

Mark W Parrish
>>50135741

Update: Saw on a different post on reddit that the Lounge car map had been added, so that resolved that issue. I've already downloaded it and added it to my VTT. Thanks for fixing it.

tomcartos
>>50135741

Hi Mark, Thanks for the great feedback! We will take all of this into account for future collabs. Its always a bit tricky getting so many creators organised, especially when they are doing all the work for free and trying to fit it in around their busy schedules. Some content ended up getting cut for time, which is why there is an extra map or two.There is also not necessarily a 'correct' order for the train cars. You can run them in any order you like, and you don't need to use all of them.

Nick Moss

Lounge car is too large for roll20 upload as is, i had to compress the PNG using a tool. Unfortunately roll20 maxes out at 10MB for map uploads

tomcartos
>>50594457

Hi Nick, sorry about that. The maps were all provided by different artists so some may be over the limit for Roll20. Glad you could fix it yourself though!

Evil Scotsman

Love this, setting it up now just finding a few errors in the monsters Gundrop instead of GumDrop, and copying of text from the thrower to the wariors pack tactics, couple monster stats are wrong . I am though a little upset that even though there are 25 tokens there are 2 of the unique monsters that tokens are not supplied for, the mechanical Abomination and the Hot Cocoa Monster