We were transporting prisoners via cart when we were ambushed by a legendary mercenary group! What followed was an epic fight where the mercenaries got control of the cart and started driving it off, with both party and enemies hanging off it and fighting on top! Some epic kills and fails all around, great stuff! And my goliath paladin got himself a magical +1 greataxe to boot!

Still doing a Dwarven Excavation in Dragon of Icespire Peak. The pally rolls high on an Insight check, so I describe a "discrepancy" in the wall. The pally's character panics, saying "Called it! I knew there would be a curveball!" (BriennetheBarabrian suspected me being cruel and unusual" I later told the group "Aw c'mon. You're not even to the bad part."

Well I'm DMing for a group, half of them are new to dnd.

We ran short on time, but the got their fortunes told by a creepy old fortune teller. Then they borderline harased the metal workers trying to get information on some theives that paid for some expensive armor with fake gold.

Then after some failed persepion rolls, one player found some recent tracks in the mud that led out of town.

The foumd a suspicious shed, and we had to cut the session short there, but that lets me start the second sesion with....

Roll for initiative.

This was by far the most chaotic session we had. Our druid took several hours dealing with a large snapping turtle, that we had to fight. And reclaimed a temple of tempus from a deadly aberration, that our Saytr Paladin took the final blow to creature, and we found out he was a Legendary hero, prophesied to save that temple. 

Still slugging it out with some ochre jellies. Drop one on a player (and accidentally KOed him). He recovered, but now someone (I won't name names) who did some fancy swordwork... and exponentially increased the number of jellies to deal with! I told the group "Now you're at the bad part."

I'm running an adventure of my own making and we're at the tenth session. The players got caught up in a plot to resurrect an old count that once ruled the city of Everpine and the surrounding dark forest with his cohorts of ghouls, and his cult has finally begun to surface, obstructing a harvest festival that was fast away in the city. The players have come far - they exposed a ghoul nest in the sewers, figured out their secret ally was the Duke of Everpine (a young but naive noble who unwittingly helped the cult), tried to apprehend the local criminal king-pin for assisting the cult, gone to a highborn ball and saved it from a ghoul attack and... Well "saved" is a strong word, but they at least stopped the cult from burning down the city and their local inn and the rest of Everpine. That's where we started last.

To be brief, the players rendevouzed with the mayor of Everpine, went to see if the mayor's collection of old artifacts were still there (most of them were, but a cursed mirror they found in the sewers was stolen during the attack), had a short encounter with the leader of the cult, a noble-woman who led the Duke on but mostly used him to weaken the city - one of our players is slightly in love with the Duke, so she's quite mad at her - but she evaded them. Then they went to talk to the young Duke about his involvements in the castle, but he had escaped via a spell-scroll. Finally they went to get a cart and went south into the forest to find the town-dwellers who had been abducted for a fell ritual. On the way, our resident Warforged had a memory spring up in his mind that caused him to lose track of where he was, so he got them off course while the rest of the players slept in the cart. Caught in the middle of a spooky forest, they realize that they are being stalked by a female ghost... A ghost that is more important to this entire plot than they realize.

After some sessions that had felt kind of floundering, this one felt good, and my players told me this was the best session we'd had so far, of which I'm so proud!... Now I just need to make sure I know where the plot is going from here on out!

That's awesome! There's nothing quite like running a session that you know was a great one!

Nope, it felt nice, especially because I dreaded getting into the session because I had these hooks I wanted to players to be hooked by, but I had no clue as to where and how to do it and it all just... Worked out!

Now to figure out how to move on from here xD

Haven't posted here in a while, but I just started my second campaign as a DM. Took a while to get everyone situated class and backstory wise, and one guy showed up late due to class so the first session was relatively short, but we got the thing started so I feel a weight lifted off of my shoulders.

My players were all level one. Two Warlocks (Hexblade and Undead), a homebrew Flame Sorcerer, and a Rogue who tries to convince everyone he's a barbarian. They were riding a train to get to the starting location, when suddenly a systematic takeover of the train cars forced them to action. The Rogue managed to scare the leader a bit, but not before he ordered the lackies to start killing indiscriminately.  One of the Warlocks (hexblade) did some hefty damage to him but got tapped and incapacitated. The Flame Sorcerer ran at a thug and used his breath weapon to one-shot him, and the other Warlock critical eldritch blasted the other thug in their cart, putting a shot right through his brain. The rogue attempted to grapple their leader but failed, and eventually the remaining Warlock finished off the guy. 

I had more planned, but I cut it short because of the late start. 

While one of our players is out of town and the other wasn't able to make it due to another commitment, the DM said she was going to take it slow.

We discovered that one of the king's advisors was why he had been so sick lately, and we had him placed under arrest. 

He then told us that there were several nobles who had been discovering body parts in their beds.

Having been recently outed by the princess as the vigilante who had killed several dozen criminals over the past few months, everyone at the table looked at me. Everyone of the NPCs looked at me. 

My response, "This was not me, your majesty. I've been spending all my free time with your daughter."

Table bursts into laughter.

Me: "Training her, I mean. Along with Sir Zindan and Lady Cassandra."

It was a great time. 

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

While one of our players is out of town and the other wasn't able to make it due to another commitment, the DM said she was going to take it slow.

We discovered that one of the king's advisors was why he had been so sick lately, and we had him placed under arrest. 

He then told us that there were several nobles who had been discovering body parts in their beds.

Having been recently outed by the princess as the vigilante who had killed several dozen criminals over the past few months, everyone at the table looked at me. Everyone of the NPCs looked at me. 

My response, "This was not me, your majesty. I've been spending all my free time with your daughter."

Table bursts into laughter.

Me: "Training her, I mean. Along with Sir Zindan and Lady Cassandra."

It was a great time. 

 Nice save.

Quote from Joshua_the_Autistic_Tiefling >>

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

While one of our players is out of town and the other wasn't able to make it due to another commitment, the DM said she was going to take it slow.

We discovered that one of the king's advisors was why he had been so sick lately, and we had him placed under arrest. 

He then told us that there were several nobles who had been discovering body parts in their beds.

Having been recently outed by the princess as the vigilante who had killed several dozen criminals over the past few months, everyone at the table looked at me. Everyone of the NPCs looked at me. 

My response, "This was not me, your majesty. I've been spending all my free time with your daughter."

Table bursts into laughter.

Me: "Training her, I mean. Along with Sir Zindan and Lady Cassandra."

It was a great time. 

 Nice save.

 Thanks! And to be fair, after I saved her from a shadow demon thing that one temple was using to start a holy war with another temple, that is all we have been doing, training her in case we aren't there to protect her, so I wasn't lying to the king. 

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

Quote from Joshua_the_Autistic_Tiefling >>

Quote from The_Glimpse >>

While one of our players is out of town and the other wasn't able to make it due to another commitment, the DM said she was going to take it slow.

We discovered that one of the king's advisors was why he had been so sick lately, and we had him placed under arrest. 

He then told us that there were several nobles who had been discovering body parts in their beds.

Having been recently outed by the princess as the vigilante who had killed several dozen criminals over the past few months, everyone at the table looked at me. Everyone of the NPCs looked at me. 

My response, "This was not me, your majesty. I've been spending all my free time with your daughter."

Table bursts into laughter.

Me: "Training her, I mean. Along with Sir Zindan and Lady Cassandra."

It was a great time. 

 Nice save.

 Thanks! And to be fair, after I saved her from a shadow demon thing that one temple was using to start a holy war with another temple, that is all we have been doing, training her in case we aren't there to protect her, so I wasn't lying to the king. 

 Well, it could be what some people would assume, as well.

Quite true. I'm sure in his mind, it's bad enough a vigilante who worked for the city watch was not only right under their noses the whole time, but now is a knight who is training his daughter. 

It was just me a goliath genie warlock (the front line fighter), and our light domain arakocra cleric, we had just left the temple of tempus, and continued on our way through the gnoll wilds. 

We fought 6 gnolls, I 1v1ed the gnoll leader as the cleric and an NPC destroyed 5 of them, and I claimed the leaders spear as a trophy. The ranger was able to make it for a little bit but had to leave the next fight.

We met with another NPC and took a rest. And after a bit, we were ambushed by a fangofyeenogu, 2 flesh gnawers, and 2 leucrottas. We're all level 4 and somehow we still survived. 

We make our way to a deep gnome village and found it raided and the shrine to Lathander Morninglord ruined by yeenoghu's followers. As we rummaged through the wreckage we found a manual for a motorized land vehicle we had passed by earlier, and were able to fix it, and next session we'll be on our way to the faceless city.

I accidentally KO'ed two of my party of 6 with Tiny ochre jellies (one of the players decided to slice them apart further), so I hope they survive

I had KO'ed at least one other before this in the same encounter!

Oh youknow.. Alberta my 19th level stupidly powerful undead arch-wizard went into the negative energy plane in a last ditch attempt to break the contract between the night hags and the yugeloths from the beginning of time being one of only 7 remaining free souls left in all of existance. Being a undead mummylord made of negative energy she managed to survive but was trapped in a timeless realm with no magic. She watched over the memories of the original 13 last remainders of the creator race to see the creation of the multiverse and the ones who would become the Lady of Pain and The General of Gehenna, wrote it all down in her own blood so that it might be copied into the Accursed Archive to be read by others, insulted the General of Gehenna for failing to save his love from becoming The Lady of Pain leading to his plan to wipe out everything to bring her back.

Having spent years on Athas and being a Elven Evocation wizard she ended up sacrificed herself to fuel one final spell - to cast Time Stop on the General of Gehenna trapping him in this timeless place without light, others or hope for a infinate amount of time. Got a 100 on the roll and she died but her soul managed to go free only for the remains to end up in the body of a 37 year old wood elf's body that had been the sister of one of her party members - who is now alive as a 1st level Undead Warlock with whats left of Alberta's memories of her past life as her Patron.

So yeah...that was a thing....

I wasn't able to follow all of that, but holy moly.

Hmmm. I fell unconscious, we failed to escape a bandit camp, I was still unconscious and my body became a battering ram... against... 50... 60 bandits because we joined them but then made them angry... And did I forget to mention we have a combined current HP of like 6... So you know, the usual.