The last session I was in as a player was pretty fun. It was a large home game, and we had 2 new players, and one player that is normally out of town who was back, so it was more of a casual, social session than anything. We fought some goblins, killed a goblin shaman, got some information from a goblin, and found a riddle we are working on. Pretty productive session, lot of jokes thrown around. Was just all around a fun session.
The last session I DM'd in was a one shot with a newer player, and the last actual session from the 'main' campaign was CRAZY. Long story short, players found an entire network of Kobolds worshipping a green dragon that a city leader (A LG Golden Dragon) had instructed them to get information on, and decided the best way to deal with the kobolds... would be to claim the wizard was a prophet of Tiamat. A few negotiations with the golden dragon later, they had a few scrolls of major illusion. They then went to the Kobolds and used the scroll of illusion to pull a really creative persuasion check of the Wizard being a prophet of Tiamat. They got the Kobolds with them at the time to help them fight the Green Dragon, and started a major internal conflict between Kobolds that they dont fully know about yet. The fight with the green dragon was super intense, and ended with two of the party members being downed, and their skeleton friend Jerry (long story) picking up a bandolier off the Ranger, and using the Dash action to run and jump onto the green dragon, and then the Wizard used fireball to hit the green dragon and detonate all of the dynamite at the same time.
That turn alone they would have dealt more than 2/3 of the dragons health (if the dragon had that much left). Best part? The XP from that fight brought the Wizard above the threshold for level 5, and so he was able to then revive Jerry the Skeleton. It was a crazy ending for everyone involved, and I dont think it is something any of us are likely to forget in the near future.
The campaign I'm in right now has just started, but in the first session we(a hafling rouge and me a lizardfolk monk)stopped some robbers that had been breaking into a local bakery.....
We have be trying to have another game session but things just keep happening.
In our last session, two of our players rolled crap for crap on perception and our horses got stolen. We found the 4 bandits, killed three of them and burnt a bandit's feet then knocked him out. The fairy and the half orc stayed with the caravan while the rest of the party went to get the horses back. The half orc and fairy rolled nat 20s for intimidation and made the bandit pee his pants. They untied the guy and made him run back to his camp.
We just finished and I've got to say, it went better than expected!
So, we popped into Grudd Haug, where four ogres, five hill giants and Chief Guh herself spotted us. We found out that Guh planned to become the biggest giant and thus choose the laws of the ordening by eating anything her minions could get their mitts on.
'If you want to be big, why don't you eat giants?' Our fighter/warlock asked.
It ah...it didn't go well.
My plan at this point was to cast fog cloud and encourage everyone to do a leave, but I rolled a flat two for initiative, so we went for plan b: gratuitous violence!
After an intense fight where we managed to kill the regular hill giants and ogres and we nearly ran out of spell slots, only Guh was left. Well, Guh and some cowering goblins, but they weren't a problem. From Guh, we learned that the giants were attacking more often because [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and she demanded food. After feeding her some stew (made of giants, not that she ever knew) we got her to tell us how she learned about it. Once she told us that, I offered her a special meal that was only meant for the most powerful giants.
It was a fireball.
She fell through the floor.
We looted her throne.
Then we killed her as she writhed in the pig pen.
Oh, and then we set fire to her house, which kind of sort of accidentally caused the dam to catch on fire, but we got away before any flooding happened. Whoops!
It would have been better had a certain klutzy wood elf not filled up my players' world map after they gained entrance to the Rangers' Cadre. I understand part of it since a lot of what they do is track epic monsters to their lairs and hunt for bandit strongholds. She nearly covered the map with the amount of stuff that there is in the province where the PC's started. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me (DM) because all the extra symbols and writing made it harder for the players to figure out where they need to go next. I think they plan on putting of the main quest to get strong enough to tangle with some of these Epic Bounties The Cadre has posted. There are some that they just won't be ready for until closer to endgame or maybe even postgame.
Ancient Sea Dragon that can control a massive whirlpool anybody? How about a Greater Ancient Red Wyrm? He makes Smaug look like a total joke!
I had to pull an adventure out of thin air because I was the only DM who could take the table. And I had DMd exactly once before.
It was fun. :) Turned a piece of a Christmas shrine into a child-stealing mutant tiger. My party saved the kids and now I have a germ if I ever have to make up another on the fly story again. Bwahahaha.
The campaign I'm in right now has just started, but in the first session we(a hafling rouge and me a lizardfolk monk)stopped some robbers that had been breaking into a local bakery.....
I absolutely love the innocent simplicity of this recap.
In last night's session, we ventured into the Underdark, where we had to light a series of furnaces with a magic flame (carried in a lantern) to prepare the way for an allied dwarven army that would be following behind us. As the squishy wizard, I didn't want to hold the lantern because I knew it would make me a target. But then we had the following exchange:
DM: Whoever holds the lantern should probably be someone without darkvision.
Me, one of only two humans in the party: ...Shit.
DM: And who needs only one hand free in combat.
Me, the only human who doesn't carry a shield: ...Shit.
So I carried the lantern. We were eventually attacked by a pack of redcaps, who tricked us into thinking a dwarven child had been captured by a giant spider. Predictably, they made a grab for the lantern, but I rolled a Nat 20 on my Athletics check to keep them from taking it! Woo! We dispatched them without taking too much damage and found the first furnace to light.
When we found the second furnace, our ranger noticed some suspicious red stalactites hanging above it... and one had an exceptionally long feather in its cap! More redcaps, the cheeky buggers. While the rest of the party picked off the redcaps at range, I tried to slip past them and light the furnace. They cast darkness on me and snatched the lantern, hopping into a nearby minecart to make their escape. But the sorcerer cast haste on the ranger, who managed to catch up to the fleeing redcaps and used his whip to snag the lantern back!
The DM was very put off that we short-circuited the minecart chase sequence he'd had planned.
However, we needed to head in that direction anyway, so we hopped into the remaining minecart and continued at a more leisurely pace. But there was a chasm! Instead of trying to make the jump, we decided to stop the cart and pull it back to a switch in the track and go another direction. But as we were doing this, we heard a rumbling behind us... the redcaps were barreling towards us in their minecart from the other side of the chasm! They ramped off the track and started sailing through the air towards us... and that's where we wrapped our session.
Another incident of note: before heading to the Underdark, I popped into the library to do a bit of research, and found the very book that the dastardly General had used when hatching his evil plan. Naturally I checked it out. (I'll need to return it in two weeks.) The rest of the party wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about my find as I was. Kept on saying I was going to go crazy if I read it or some other nonsense. I'm not worried.
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"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
The last session I was in, my Hill Dwarf paladin, Morgann Solbeard, was on a scouting party to explore some old ruins near the Azure Dawn's new settlement, Aurora. Upon noticing the statues littering a battlefield, all in various stages of combat and all far too detailed to be just statues, the party decided to stow their weapons and proceed cautiously. Upon entering the ruins themselves, they were greeted cautiously by an introverted girl wearing tinted glasses and with green hair. Morgann, being the 'face' of the party, decided to greet her with a show of chivalry, and knelt down to kiss the back of her hand in true knightly fashion. One crit persuasion roll later, our married father of two finds himself slightly abashed and nonplussed when the medusa, Eos, absolutely -swoons- over his gesture, mistaking it for a courteous advance.
All in all, a good session that resulted in us making a new friend, my paladin getting teased mercilessly by his guildmates, guildmistress, and wife, and some sweet lore involving the gods being ascended mortals. Oh, and a cool magic spear wielded by former hoplites of Pelor.
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Working on a supplement for the adventure-minded. A project including (and crediting) homebrew subclasses from the community, a world of my own design, premade characters, magic items, and even a prologue adventure to start things off!
Past and Current Characters: Morgann 'Duskspear' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Paladin/Fighter/Warlock; Ephemeral 'Skye' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Artificer; Zaldrick Lawscrip of Orzhov, Hobgoblin Wizard; Eremys Spydrun, Shadar'kai Monk; Cuchulainn, Wood Elf Blood Hunter.
Last session we tracked a sailing vessel from our airship, keeping far away and doing the actual tracking with my owl familiar until nightfall.
We rested while the airship crew caught us up with our quarry. Once above them, we dropped glass jars of lamp oil on their rigging, and then used cantrips and spark arrows (I’m a tinker) to light up their sails and rigging, and then swooped in to board them.
We took on their crew, about 30 of them to 6 of us. Their ballista nearly broke our airship, but I ganked their captain in the first round with a flying Sneak Attack with Booming Blade (level 5 rog/wiz is fun) while my wife’s ranger/druid rained pointy death and her wolf tore into their ranks. The Eldritch Knight rushes into the frey along with the two Paladins and the monster slayer ranger.
Their mage hit 4 of us with fear, but on the wolf failed the save, and while the MS ranger and I held the doors from belowdecks, the Paladin’s deatroyed the ballista (just in time to save the airship), BM Ranger took down the mage.
A few of theirs surrendered after that, and the rest were free from being enthralled with the mage down. We had won.
Then, the aftermath. The crew were mostly goliaths, like my wife’s ranger. She didn’t feel great about killing them, because they were all slaves, just like her grandparents had been. The Dwarves belowdecks were also slaves, of an even lower caste than the goliaths. Me and the EK argues about whether to kill the Goliaths as slavers, and finally we left it to the Dwarves, who chose mercy.
Finally, we searched the ship, and got new sails up and mostly running. When we made it back to port, we gave the ship to the Dwarves. We'll see what happens next!
I'm not going to say my last session was crap, but I won't; not say that it was awful. One of the players had been acting perfectly fine all day before we started playing, but had been having phone problems on and off all day. He conveniently waits until we get the game started to suddenly and irascibly get mad at his phone for not working, saying he'll keep playing, but his heart's not going to be in it. His craptastic attitude shift bummed out the other player to the point where he just meekly sat there like a small child in trouble until it was his turn to do anything, then attempted (in game) to do things that would cheer up the other player (who already said they wouldn't get into the game all session long) which frustrated me, the DM. Please note before this even got started, I had to tell them both out in real life that the guild they were in was threatening to throw them out for inactivity. It had been almost 2 weeks since the previous sesh, and they had done nothing. I had to be the d**k DM and enforce a down time limit, since they got payed to do work for the guild, and had accepted a job already, gotten paid to do it already, and then just stopped playing or wanting to for two weeks.
So by this point, the first difficult fight they were going to be in (carefully prepared before hand to be just hard enough to level the PC's enough xp to level up) ended up becoming a "sulky player broods instead of taking his actions" infused with "other player is upset, now I'm upset that they're upset. I hope I didn't do it" to the point where I, as the DM stepped in, and banished the armor off of the bandits and cultist, gave the beasts aiding them, automatic fails on all their rolls and just handed them the level up to get the session over with.
at this point, I suspended my campaign indefinitely, I know that sh*t happens, I understand that and always make allowances for this when I can. But the way my players are acting about things now is making me not want to DM anymore. I'm confident in my storytelling ability, I can plan things just as well as improvise them; but them acting this way is making me start to feel like I'm just not a good DM. If I can't even engage my flatmate/best friend and a reformed murder-hobo playing cousin, then how am I going to handle a group bigger than this? One wants almost nothing but interaction and immersion and the other has literally said f**k the roleplay, I hit it with my greatsword at the end of another game...
So, my local game store had a gauntlet D&D session, wherein a bunch of people sign up to try and beat a dungeon in the shortest amount of time. My group consisted of a warlock, a paladin, a sorcerer, two others who I don't quite remember and myself, an arcane trickster rogue.
Our quest was to enter a dungeon created by a mad wizard and find other adventurers who had gotten lost. As the groups (five tables in total) travelled through the icy snow, we were magically separated and shrunk into a mysterious house. Our weapons had been turned into toys or candy and we were in a hallway full of pictures of a sullen child, one devoid of joy.
So, we walk down the hallway. I have my mage hand out, tapping the ground for any secret traps, but I find nothing. The hallway eventually opened up to a room with five pedestals. On each pedestal was a gold ring. Everyone was wary, but the paladin said, 'I PICK UP ONE OF THE RINGS!'
She was great.
Anyway, as the paladin (either a paladin or a barbarian, I can't remember what she was) picked up the ring, five creatures appeared. They looked like Christmas puddings, but with legs and eyes and they were basically mimics.
Our party was six. There were five of them. Once I killed one of the puddings, I was feeling pretty good. So, to attack the next pudding, I climbed up on a pedestal and leapt on the next, short swords bared. In one attack, I turned it to mush. With my remaining movement, I rushed over to another pudding and cut right through it, felling my third pudding. For my efforts that turn, I gained inspiration.
We never did find out what happened to the previous adventuring group, but we survived, that's a thing!
EDIT: Firebolt is cast via the somatic component of finger guns and nobody can tell me otherwise.
One of my players had to cancel D&D last night, and I'd heard that there was a local game held that day at a community LGBT center, with an "allies welcome" tagline.
It was a lot of fun. I kinda assumed going in that it was going to be a place of "safe spaces" and tolerance, but it ended up being one of the most racist games I've ever played. In-game, of course!
We had a halfling ranger with orcs as her preferred enemy, which naturally extended to the "abomination" in our party, the half-orc barbarian. We had an aasimar who felt the tiefling PC and NPC were inherently evil creatures that were only attempting to manipulate the rest of the group into buying their innocence. And we had a metallic dragonborn paladin and a chromatic dragonborn cleric who were pretty consistently at each other's throats.
Of course, this was all in-character, and there was no player-on-player friction. In fact, in keeping with my original assumption, we had all received a small card with "X" written on it, that we were expected to indicate or raise if we felt uncomfortable. They were not once touched. It was a silly game of laughs, I rather enjoyed it. And I did participate, I played the aasimar.
The actual game, which our tomfoolery prevented us from getting very far into, was to provide a protection detail to some cargo this particular politician wanted picked up and brought over. The ship that would be doing the transportation had some very shady history that people didn't want to talk about. Or rather, the ship's crew did, while the ship and its captain had a stellar reputation. Seemed odd, so I dallied on the way to the ship to try and glean more information from local taverns and other sailors. Most I got was that the crew were not welcome customers, and many establishments will outright refuse service. Except the captain, nobody will mess with the captain.
So we finally get to the ship itself, find its second-in-command, a tiefling, organizing the crew and getting supplies brought aboard. He was very resistant to letting us speak to the captain, which might have been my fault, but eventually exasperation won the day and the captain was brought forth. The captain was himself an old, old aasimar, and after reading the scroll we'd brought with us explaining the situation, was absolutely livid. Allowed us on, said he'd do the job, but very clearly was exceptionally pissed off about the contents of that letter. We hadn't read it, so we had no idea its contents. I assume the captain was being blackmailed or otherwise manipulated into doing the mission.
Getting on board, settling in and checking around, first thing of note was that there was very few uninjured crew. Many were badly injured, groaning on mats down below, or debilitatingly injured such as broken arms. We had three PCs with healing abilities, but each and every one of them refused us. We even discovered that their cook was a former cleric, served as a battle medic before joining the crew, was similarly injured, and wasn't even restoring himself. It was very odd, certainly raised some red flags in my mind, but we didn't get any further.
Last session I played: It went fairly well. The party came to a larger city, where my character met some people from his homeland (which he ran away from) and set up a meeting with them. This was all done telepathically, making the rest of the party suspect me. To make things more confusing, I then took off after a weird-looking cart, told my goblin friend/other party member to cause a distraction (achieved by setting a barrel on fire) and then ran after it, tailed it for a bit, and then went inside a magic shop, where I inquired about magic items I found in a temple while the other members questioned what I was doing (and the goblin flirted with one of the workers). I went to the meeting, where I found out the demise of my former clan was prophesied, which makes this the second character in two campaigns to deal with prophecies. All in all, it was pretty fun.
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Member of the YouTube channel Beneath the Basement, a games-and-movies type channel where I play D&D with friends.
Characters: Level 1 Human Fighter and level 1 Human Rogue
- Players picked two of the pre-generated characters: fighter and rogue. We got game started very easily because all modifiers were calculated already.
- I forgot to pick up my whiteboard pencils with me so we used Pathfinder gridmat and lego blocks to draw walls, doors etc.
- First two hours we used to clear bandits from warehouse. Warehouse was filled with bandits and barrels of wine and characters spend lot of time playing with barrels. They lifted, throwed and smashed barrels for fun. They really loved to use improvised weapons and were not afraid to try many combat related things.
- I had no premade content prepared after first warehouse but they wanted immediately to play more so I improvised second warehouse that was quite same as first one. We spend about one hour with that.
- We had really fun! Lots of laughs.
- My players are hack & slash players for sure. They literally kicked in doors and charged towards enemies.
- I offered them chance to create new characters for next game but they wanted to continue with pre-made characters.
- For next game we will update characters sheets for level 2. They only asked for more monsters and traps for next game.
2nd session:
Characters: Level 2 Human Fighter and level 2 Human Rogue
- They decided to travel to lake to hunt some crocodiles. On a way to lake 2 Giant Lizards attacked.
- When they arrived to lake they were camping and fishing. Soon they found a crocodile. One crocodile was exactly good amount of challenge for two level 2 characters so it was easy to drop a crocodile for them.
- They climbed on cliff next to lake and fighter let his clothing (whole gear) on shore and jumped to lake. A crocodile attacked the player without gear. Rogue grabbed melee weapon of the swimming player with him and jumped to help. It was challenging fight in water with disadvantage and missing gear but they survived.
- After that they went to "main quest" location. There was a seven room warehouse with 9 bandits and 1 orc.
- In a room with stairs fighter threw two bandits down to lower part of room with natural 20 Athletics roll. Bandits took lot of falling damage.
- In last room of the dungeon they set a bed on fire and last fight was quite fun with spreading flames. One of the bandits was stuck in room when fighter blocked the door with his secondary weapon so flames killed the bandit.
- Crocodile hunting was totally improvised but warehouse was pre-designed.
Last session, my players embarked on the first leg of a month-long journey to an isolationist neighboring country as additional security for the traveling diplomats. We had a roleplay-heavy session this week, as two players ended up rolling new characters after last session and I wanted to get a feel of the new party dynamics. Right away we all had the realization that the party is now essentially a group of super-powered teens/20-somethings and one older mom-friend type character. Characters are as follows:
Arsys: Half-elf warlock, who does not realize that he has essentially turned the homeschool his foster family operates into a cult to his Friend
Theodosia: Human paladin/warlock, who has taken her paladin father's place in the party and got her levels in warlock from Arsys' Friend
Lily: Wood elf druid, who was raised by faeries for most of her life and believed she was one until recently
Pepper: Changeling bard, whose boss recently became lord of a faerie castle and messed around with his race a tad
Pabu: Variant tabaxi ranger, the only real adult here, whose player was ill and thus absent this session
The first two days of their journey were essentially spent starting their crash course on etiquette and customs of the country they're headed towards, and so there was lots of roleplay in which Arsys was oblivious to Theodosia's increasingly obvious flirting, Lily did extra credit work, Theodosia abused her access to the Princess Consort's scryPhone number, Pepper worked on projects unrelated to his homework, and all of them loved on the NPC ranger's beast companion, who is a very good, very patient wolf.
Their only encounter this session was fun. They set up camp, and due to Theodosia and Lily both rolling insanely high Perception and Nature checks, they knew a pack of Winter Wolves was headed towards them. Between Pepper's fabrications and hallucinatory terrain and Lily's druidcraft, they managed to create a fairly convincing illusion of a cave where the camp would be. During Theodosia and Arsys' watch, the wolves showed up and started sniffing around. Instead of waking up the Princess Consort, Theodosia got Lily and Pepper and convinced them that they should handle the problem instead. Which, amazingly, they did without killing any of the wolves. After a few rounds of ass-whoopin' and a series of frankly astonishing Athletics and Persuasion checks, these crazy kids had scared off all but the alpha female of the pack, which Theodosia managed to wrestle into submission and then begin to work on taming it with her Bag of Steaks (a customized Bag of Holding that is refrigerated and only stores raw meat). She named it Fenrir. If Theodosia keeps succeeding on her Persuasion checks (which I had her roll instead of Animal Handling because 1. Winter Wolves aren't beasts and 2. they are smarter than some PCs) I'm gonna let Fenrir join their party permanently.
The last session I was in as a player was pretty fun. It was a large home game, and we had 2 new players, and one player that is normally out of town who was back, so it was more of a casual, social session than anything. We fought some goblins, killed a goblin shaman, got some information from a goblin, and found a riddle we are working on. Pretty productive session, lot of jokes thrown around. Was just all around a fun session.
The last session I DM'd in was a one shot with a newer player, and the last actual session from the 'main' campaign was CRAZY. Long story short, players found an entire network of Kobolds worshipping a green dragon that a city leader (A LG Golden Dragon) had instructed them to get information on, and decided the best way to deal with the kobolds... would be to claim the wizard was a prophet of Tiamat. A few negotiations with the golden dragon later, they had a few scrolls of major illusion. They then went to the Kobolds and used the scroll of illusion to pull a really creative persuasion check of the Wizard being a prophet of Tiamat. They got the Kobolds with them at the time to help them fight the Green Dragon, and started a major internal conflict between Kobolds that they dont fully know about yet. The fight with the green dragon was super intense, and ended with two of the party members being downed, and their skeleton friend Jerry (long story) picking up a bandolier off the Ranger, and using the Dash action to run and jump onto the green dragon, and then the Wizard used fireball to hit the green dragon and detonate all of the dynamite at the same time.
That turn alone they would have dealt more than 2/3 of the dragons health (if the dragon had that much left). Best part? The XP from that fight brought the Wizard above the threshold for level 5, and so he was able to then revive Jerry the Skeleton. It was a crazy ending for everyone involved, and I dont think it is something any of us are likely to forget in the near future.
The campaign I'm in right now has just started, but in the first session we(a hafling rouge and me a lizardfolk monk)stopped some robbers that had been breaking into a local bakery.....
We have be trying to have another game session but things just keep happening.
Current game- Pelegos: Singularity
Game world- Thad'thra, homebrew
Role- DM
Players- Maro: Light Cleric, Rivqah: Feind Warlock, Kortek: Artillerist Artificer
Plot: Uncover a conspiracy and truth behind the Dragon, Blasphemy, and the light of the kingdom that was stollen. Drenching Baranara into shadow.
In our last session, two of our players rolled crap for crap on perception and our horses got stolen. We found the 4 bandits, killed three of them and burnt a bandit's feet then knocked him out. The fairy and the half orc stayed with the caravan while the rest of the party went to get the horses back. The half orc and fairy rolled nat 20s for intimidation and made the bandit pee his pants. They untied the guy and made him run back to his camp.
Good times
That is freaking hilarious! Good to know Jerry is okay :).
Well that's a one way ticket to roll for initiative town.
We just finished and I've got to say, it went better than expected!
So, we popped into Grudd Haug, where four ogres, five hill giants and Chief Guh herself spotted us. We found out that Guh planned to become the biggest giant and thus choose the laws of the ordening by eating anything her minions could get their mitts on.
'If you want to be big, why don't you eat giants?' Our fighter/warlock asked.
It ah...it didn't go well.
My plan at this point was to cast fog cloud and encourage everyone to do a leave, but I rolled a flat two for initiative, so we went for plan b: gratuitous violence!
After an intense fight where we managed to kill the regular hill giants and ogres and we nearly ran out of spell slots, only Guh was left. Well, Guh and some cowering goblins, but they weren't a problem. From Guh, we learned that the giants were attacking more often because [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and she demanded food. After feeding her some stew (made of giants, not that she ever knew) we got her to tell us how she learned about it. Once she told us that, I offered her a special meal that was only meant for the most powerful giants.
It was a fireball.
She fell through the floor.
We looted her throne.
Then we killed her as she writhed in the pig pen.
Oh, and then we set fire to her house, which kind of sort of accidentally caused the dam to catch on fire, but we got away before any flooding happened. Whoops!
We decided to not leave the fairy and orc alone together anymore
It would have been better had a certain klutzy wood elf not filled up my players' world map after they gained entrance to the Rangers' Cadre. I understand part of it since a lot of what they do is track epic monsters to their lairs and hunt for bandit strongholds. She nearly covered the map with the amount of stuff that there is in the province where the PC's started. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me (DM) because all the extra symbols and writing made it harder for the players to figure out where they need to go next. I think they plan on putting of the main quest to get strong enough to tangle with some of these Epic Bounties The Cadre has posted. There are some that they just won't be ready for until closer to endgame or maybe even postgame.
Ancient Sea Dragon that can control a massive whirlpool anybody? How about a Greater Ancient Red Wyrm? He makes Smaug look like a total joke!
...Ehhh, whatever. It was a dumb idea anyways
I had to pull an adventure out of thin air because I was the only DM who could take the table. And I had DMd exactly once before.
It was fun. :) Turned a piece of a Christmas shrine into a child-stealing mutant tiger. My party saved the kids and now I have a germ if I ever have to make up another on the fly story again. Bwahahaha.
I absolutely love the innocent simplicity of this recap.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
In last night's session, we ventured into the Underdark, where we had to light a series of furnaces with a magic flame (carried in a lantern) to prepare the way for an allied dwarven army that would be following behind us. As the squishy wizard, I didn't want to hold the lantern because I knew it would make me a target. But then we had the following exchange:
So I carried the lantern. We were eventually attacked by a pack of redcaps, who tricked us into thinking a dwarven child had been captured by a giant spider. Predictably, they made a grab for the lantern, but I rolled a Nat 20 on my Athletics check to keep them from taking it! Woo! We dispatched them without taking too much damage and found the first furnace to light.
When we found the second furnace, our ranger noticed some suspicious red stalactites hanging above it... and one had an exceptionally long feather in its cap! More redcaps, the cheeky buggers. While the rest of the party picked off the redcaps at range, I tried to slip past them and light the furnace. They cast darkness on me and snatched the lantern, hopping into a nearby minecart to make their escape. But the sorcerer cast haste on the ranger, who managed to catch up to the fleeing redcaps and used his whip to snag the lantern back!
The DM was very put off that we short-circuited the minecart chase sequence he'd had planned.
However, we needed to head in that direction anyway, so we hopped into the remaining minecart and continued at a more leisurely pace. But there was a chasm! Instead of trying to make the jump, we decided to stop the cart and pull it back to a switch in the track and go another direction. But as we were doing this, we heard a rumbling behind us... the redcaps were barreling towards us in their minecart from the other side of the chasm! They ramped off the track and started sailing through the air towards us... and that's where we wrapped our session.
Another incident of note: before heading to the Underdark, I popped into the library to do a bit of research, and found the very book that the dastardly General had used when hatching his evil plan. Naturally I checked it out. (I'll need to return it in two weeks.) The rest of the party wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about my find as I was. Kept on saying I was going to go crazy if I read it or some other nonsense. I'm not worried.
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
The last session I was in, my Hill Dwarf paladin, Morgann Solbeard, was on a scouting party to explore some old ruins near the Azure Dawn's new settlement, Aurora. Upon noticing the statues littering a battlefield, all in various stages of combat and all far too detailed to be just statues, the party decided to stow their weapons and proceed cautiously. Upon entering the ruins themselves, they were greeted cautiously by an introverted girl wearing tinted glasses and with green hair. Morgann, being the 'face' of the party, decided to greet her with a show of chivalry, and knelt down to kiss the back of her hand in true knightly fashion. One crit persuasion roll later, our married father of two finds himself slightly abashed and nonplussed when the medusa, Eos, absolutely -swoons- over his gesture, mistaking it for a courteous advance.
All in all, a good session that resulted in us making a new friend, my paladin getting teased mercilessly by his guildmates, guildmistress, and wife, and some sweet lore involving the gods being ascended mortals. Oh, and a cool magic spear wielded by former hoplites of Pelor.
Working on a supplement for the adventure-minded. A project including (and crediting) homebrew subclasses from the community, a world of my own design, premade characters, magic items, and even a prologue adventure to start things off!
Past and Current Characters: Morgann 'Duskspear' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Paladin/Fighter/Warlock; Ephemeral 'Skye' Solbeard, Hill Dwarf Artificer; Zaldrick Lawscrip of Orzhov, Hobgoblin Wizard; Eremys Spydrun, Shadar'kai Monk; Cuchulainn, Wood Elf Blood Hunter.
Oh man!
Last session we tracked a sailing vessel from our airship, keeping far away and doing the actual tracking with my owl familiar until nightfall.
We rested while the airship crew caught us up with our quarry. Once above them, we dropped glass jars of lamp oil on their rigging, and then used cantrips and spark arrows (I’m a tinker) to light up their sails and rigging, and then swooped in to board them.
We took on their crew, about 30 of them to 6 of us. Their ballista nearly broke our airship, but I ganked their captain in the first round with a flying Sneak Attack with Booming Blade (level 5 rog/wiz is fun) while my wife’s ranger/druid rained pointy death and her wolf tore into their ranks. The Eldritch Knight rushes into the frey along with the two Paladins and the monster slayer ranger.
Their mage hit 4 of us with fear, but on the wolf failed the save, and while the MS ranger and I held the doors from belowdecks, the Paladin’s deatroyed the ballista (just in time to save the airship), BM Ranger took down the mage.
A few of theirs surrendered after that, and the rest were free from being enthralled with the mage down. We had won.
Then, the aftermath. The crew were mostly goliaths, like my wife’s ranger. She didn’t feel great about killing them, because they were all slaves, just like her grandparents had been. The Dwarves belowdecks were also slaves, of an even lower caste than the goliaths. Me and the EK argues about whether to kill the Goliaths as slavers, and finally we left it to the Dwarves, who chose mercy.
Finally, we searched the ship, and got new sails up and mostly running. When we made it back to port, we gave the ship to the Dwarves. We'll see what happens next!
We do bones, motherf***ker!
I'm not going to say my last session was crap, but I won't; not say that it was awful. One of the players had been acting perfectly fine all day before we started playing, but had been having phone problems on and off all day. He conveniently waits until we get the game started to suddenly and irascibly get mad at his phone for not working, saying he'll keep playing, but his heart's not going to be in it. His craptastic attitude shift bummed out the other player to the point where he just meekly sat there like a small child in trouble until it was his turn to do anything, then attempted (in game) to do things that would cheer up the other player (who already said they wouldn't get into the game all session long) which frustrated me, the DM. Please note before this even got started, I had to tell them both out in real life that the guild they were in was threatening to throw them out for inactivity. It had been almost 2 weeks since the previous sesh, and they had done nothing. I had to be the d**k DM and enforce a down time limit, since they got payed to do work for the guild, and had accepted a job already, gotten paid to do it already, and then just stopped playing or wanting to for two weeks.
So by this point, the first difficult fight they were going to be in (carefully prepared before hand to be just hard enough to level the PC's enough xp to level up) ended up becoming a "sulky player broods instead of taking his actions" infused with "other player is upset, now I'm upset that they're upset. I hope I didn't do it" to the point where I, as the DM stepped in, and banished the armor off of the bandits and cultist, gave the beasts aiding them, automatic fails on all their rolls and just handed them the level up to get the session over with.
...Ehhh, whatever. It was a dumb idea anyways
at this point, I suspended my campaign indefinitely, I know that sh*t happens, I understand that and always make allowances for this when I can. But the way my players are acting about things now is making me not want to DM anymore. I'm confident in my storytelling ability, I can plan things just as well as improvise them; but them acting this way is making me start to feel like I'm just not a good DM. If I can't even engage my flatmate/best friend and a reformed murder-hobo playing cousin, then how am I going to handle a group bigger than this? One wants almost nothing but interaction and immersion and the other has literally said f**k the roleplay, I hit it with my greatsword at the end of another game...
...Ehhh, whatever. It was a dumb idea anyways
My last session. Was. Brilliant.
So, my local game store had a gauntlet D&D session, wherein a bunch of people sign up to try and beat a dungeon in the shortest amount of time. My group consisted of a warlock, a paladin, a sorcerer, two others who I don't quite remember and myself, an arcane trickster rogue.
Our quest was to enter a dungeon created by a mad wizard and find other adventurers who had gotten lost. As the groups (five tables in total) travelled through the icy snow, we were magically separated and shrunk into a mysterious house. Our weapons had been turned into toys or candy and we were in a hallway full of pictures of a sullen child, one devoid of joy.
So, we walk down the hallway. I have my mage hand out, tapping the ground for any secret traps, but I find nothing. The hallway eventually opened up to a room with five pedestals. On each pedestal was a gold ring. Everyone was wary, but the paladin said, 'I PICK UP ONE OF THE RINGS!'
She was great.
Anyway, as the paladin (either a paladin or a barbarian, I can't remember what she was) picked up the ring, five creatures appeared. They looked like Christmas puddings, but with legs and eyes and they were basically mimics.
Our party was six. There were five of them. Once I killed one of the puddings, I was feeling pretty good. So, to attack the next pudding, I climbed up on a pedestal and leapt on the next, short swords bared. In one attack, I turned it to mush. With my remaining movement, I rushed over to another pudding and cut right through it, felling my third pudding. For my efforts that turn, I gained inspiration.
We never did find out what happened to the previous adventuring group, but we survived, that's a thing!
EDIT: Firebolt is cast via the somatic component of finger guns and nobody can tell me otherwise.
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ModeratorOne of my players had to cancel D&D last night, and I'd heard that there was a local game held that day at a community LGBT center, with an "allies welcome" tagline.
It was a lot of fun. I kinda assumed going in that it was going to be a place of "safe spaces" and tolerance, but it ended up being one of the most racist games I've ever played. In-game, of course!
We had a halfling ranger with orcs as her preferred enemy, which naturally extended to the "abomination" in our party, the half-orc barbarian. We had an aasimar who felt the tiefling PC and NPC were inherently evil creatures that were only attempting to manipulate the rest of the group into buying their innocence. And we had a metallic dragonborn paladin and a chromatic dragonborn cleric who were pretty consistently at each other's throats.
Of course, this was all in-character, and there was no player-on-player friction. In fact, in keeping with my original assumption, we had all received a small card with "X" written on it, that we were expected to indicate or raise if we felt uncomfortable. They were not once touched. It was a silly game of laughs, I rather enjoyed it. And I did participate, I played the aasimar.
The actual game, which our tomfoolery prevented us from getting very far into, was to provide a protection detail to some cargo this particular politician wanted picked up and brought over. The ship that would be doing the transportation had some very shady history that people didn't want to talk about. Or rather, the ship's crew did, while the ship and its captain had a stellar reputation. Seemed odd, so I dallied on the way to the ship to try and glean more information from local taverns and other sailors. Most I got was that the crew were not welcome customers, and many establishments will outright refuse service. Except the captain, nobody will mess with the captain.
So we finally get to the ship itself, find its second-in-command, a tiefling, organizing the crew and getting supplies brought aboard. He was very resistant to letting us speak to the captain, which might have been my fault, but eventually exasperation won the day and the captain was brought forth. The captain was himself an old, old aasimar, and after reading the scroll we'd brought with us explaining the situation, was absolutely livid. Allowed us on, said he'd do the job, but very clearly was exceptionally pissed off about the contents of that letter. We hadn't read it, so we had no idea its contents. I assume the captain was being blackmailed or otherwise manipulated into doing the mission.
Getting on board, settling in and checking around, first thing of note was that there was very few uninjured crew. Many were badly injured, groaning on mats down below, or debilitatingly injured such as broken arms. We had three PCs with healing abilities, but each and every one of them refused us. We even discovered that their cook was a former cleric, served as a battle medic before joining the crew, was similarly injured, and wasn't even restoring himself. It was very odd, certainly raised some red flags in my mind, but we didn't get any further.
Last session I DMed: This tells you pretty much all you need to know.
Last session I played: It went fairly well. The party came to a larger city, where my character met some people from his homeland (which he ran away from) and set up a meeting with them. This was all done telepathically, making the rest of the party suspect me. To make things more confusing, I then took off after a weird-looking cart, told my goblin friend/other party member to cause a distraction (achieved by setting a barrel on fire) and then ran after it, tailed it for a bit, and then went inside a magic shop, where I inquired about magic items I found in a temple while the other members questioned what I was doing (and the goblin flirted with one of the workers). I went to the meeting, where I found out the demise of my former clan was prophesied, which makes this the second character in two campaigns to deal with prophecies. All in all, it was pretty fun.
Member of the YouTube channel Beneath the Basement, a games-and-movies type channel where I play D&D with friends.
1st session:
Characters: Level 1 Human Fighter and level 1 Human Rogue
- Players picked two of the pre-generated characters: fighter and rogue. We got game started very easily because all modifiers were calculated already.
- I forgot to pick up my whiteboard pencils with me so we used Pathfinder gridmat and lego blocks to draw walls, doors etc.
- First two hours we used to clear bandits from warehouse. Warehouse was filled with bandits and barrels of wine and characters spend lot of time playing with barrels. They lifted, throwed and smashed barrels for fun. They really loved to use improvised weapons and were not afraid to try many combat related things.
- I had no premade content prepared after first warehouse but they wanted immediately to play more so I improvised second warehouse that was quite same as first one. We spend about one hour with that.
- We had really fun! Lots of laughs.
- My players are hack & slash players for sure. They literally kicked in doors and charged towards enemies.
- I offered them chance to create new characters for next game but they wanted to continue with pre-made characters.
- For next game we will update characters sheets for level 2. They only asked for more monsters and traps for next game.
2nd session:
Characters: Level 2 Human Fighter and level 2 Human Rogue
- They decided to travel to lake to hunt some crocodiles. On a way to lake 2 Giant Lizards attacked.
- When they arrived to lake they were camping and fishing. Soon they found a crocodile. One crocodile was exactly good amount of challenge for two level 2 characters so it was easy to drop a crocodile for them.
- They climbed on cliff next to lake and fighter let his clothing (whole gear) on shore and jumped to lake. A crocodile attacked the player without gear. Rogue grabbed melee weapon of the swimming player with him and jumped to help. It was challenging fight in water with disadvantage and missing gear but they survived.
- After that they went to "main quest" location. There was a seven room warehouse with 9 bandits and 1 orc.
- In a room with stairs fighter threw two bandits down to lower part of room with natural 20 Athletics roll. Bandits took lot of falling damage.
- In last room of the dungeon they set a bed on fire and last fight was quite fun with spreading flames. One of the bandits was stuck in room when fighter blocked the door with his secondary weapon so flames killed the bandit.
- Crocodile hunting was totally improvised but warehouse was pre-designed.
- Once again we had really fun!
- We are playing homebrew campaign, Clam Island: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf
Last session, my players embarked on the first leg of a month-long journey to an isolationist neighboring country as additional security for the traveling diplomats. We had a roleplay-heavy session this week, as two players ended up rolling new characters after last session and I wanted to get a feel of the new party dynamics. Right away we all had the realization that the party is now essentially a group of super-powered teens/20-somethings and one older mom-friend type character. Characters are as follows:
The first two days of their journey were essentially spent starting their crash course on etiquette and customs of the country they're headed towards, and so there was lots of roleplay in which Arsys was oblivious to Theodosia's increasingly obvious flirting, Lily did extra credit work, Theodosia abused her access to the Princess Consort's scryPhone number, Pepper worked on projects unrelated to his homework, and all of them loved on the NPC ranger's beast companion, who is a very good, very patient wolf.
Their only encounter this session was fun. They set up camp, and due to Theodosia and Lily both rolling insanely high Perception and Nature checks, they knew a pack of Winter Wolves was headed towards them. Between Pepper's fabrications and hallucinatory terrain and Lily's druidcraft, they managed to create a fairly convincing illusion of a cave where the camp would be. During Theodosia and Arsys' watch, the wolves showed up and started sniffing around. Instead of waking up the Princess Consort, Theodosia got Lily and Pepper and convinced them that they should handle the problem instead. Which, amazingly, they did without killing any of the wolves. After a few rounds of ass-whoopin' and a series of frankly astonishing Athletics and Persuasion checks, these crazy kids had scared off all but the alpha female of the pack, which Theodosia managed to wrestle into submission and then begin to work on taming it with her Bag of Steaks (a customized Bag of Holding that is refrigerated and only stores raw meat). She named it Fenrir. If Theodosia keeps succeeding on her Persuasion checks (which I had her roll instead of Animal Handling because 1. Winter Wolves aren't beasts and 2. they are smarter than some PCs) I'm gonna let Fenrir join their party permanently.
"Can we please stop debating philosophy with the dapper crab?"