Quote from Doug_Booshaka >>

Start of the Session: "We need to deliver this letter to the halfling's sister!"

Middle of the Session: "Guys I just brought a pet shop"

End of the Session: -Party conducts a drive-by shooting by having the wizard launch a fireball through a taverns front doors during its lunch rush before speeding off out of town-

 the party most the session-normal

the party at the end-i am a god of death

We recently traveled to large continent that, until recently, has been separated from the rest of the world by an eternally raging storm. As a result, it has a lot of unique species, and some familiar species are distinctly different from what we know about them.

Recently a cleric NPC had his alignment forcefully changed to evil by a spell, and we're trying to catch him to protect him from himself and, y'know... protect others from him. As we were tailing him our DM rolled on a random encounter table, and a dragon was supposed to just fly by overhead... but the people keeping a watch out rolled too low to notice it coming, then when it got close literally everyone in the party failed their stealth check, and one person with advantage managed to get double nat 1's. So now an Ancient Black Dragon lands right in front of us (we're level 13, btw), but luckily as I mentioned, the species isn't identical to the traditional version of a Black Dragon, so it's much easier to actually talk to and negotiate. The dragon was instantly fascinated by our Tabaxi monk, since Tabaxi's are unheard of on this continent (although the character, who looks like a black tiger, is frequently mistaken for a Rakshasa, which creates its own problems). So the dragon decides, rather than eat us all, he'll just scoop us up and carry us to his nest and show us to his hatchlings... since apparently in this continent Dragons have an organized society with a focus on community, as opposed to the more isolated nature of dragons elsewhere.

So right off the bat, we're in trouble and we just can't convince this dragon to leave us be, and nobody feels confident in our ability to fight it... so we're forced to abandon our Cleric and fly with the dragon. Then our DM rolls for another random encounter... and another ancient dragon shows up! I asked her, and she says Ancient Dragon is a 1-in-80 chance... and we just ran into two of them in a row. The new dragon is White in color, but breathes lightning and immediately attacks our black dragon for entering its hunting grounds. At first we were going to just let them fight it out... but we quickly realized that we're miles in the air and are completely boned if the black dragon loses, so we join in on the fight as best we can. The funniest moment was with our necromancer... she keeps a bunch of skeletons in her bag of holding, and she essentially sacrificed them (along with a bunch of random junk she's collected), by turning the bag inside-out to launch a bag full of skeletons to attack the White Dragon. Eventually the WHite Dragon is getting more seriously injured, so it gives up and flies away, and our black dragon lands in the desert to rest a bit after the fight.

We managed to get on his good side by assisting him in the fight so he was actually willing to listen to us. Still, it was an uphill battle of wits to convince him to help us, and we couldn't convince him to not still abduct us all to show to his children... but at the very least he consented to help us recapture our Cleric friend, so now we're chasing an evil cleric with the less-than-enthusiastic assistance of black dragon.

Session 6: Fresh off speaking with the undead, we went to the Owl Well to find yet more of them terrorizing the remains of the tower. The mage who controlled the zombies didn't want to hop it, so he learned the error of being a necromancer. (Assembler +1, no zombies died) Ring of Protection went to wizard, despite the artificer REALLY wanting it. sadface
Camped for the night in field 47. For the third night in a row we got attacked by something, this time goblins, who messed up the wizard something fierce. MARC crit again. Assembler 0 crits, MARC 2. Steel Defender took my luck.(Assembler +2, MARC +1, Salem +2, Waffles +1, Hiro "Thunderwave" X +3)
Artificer forged a Bomb to throw in the cave where the orcs were hiding, lining the gunpowder with 50 copper pieces. Fragmentation, grenade was considered too powerful.
Waffles found orc location, and we SOMEHOW snuck up to get a surprise round (3 players with disadvantage due to armour). Took three of us to kill one orc, not boding well for straight up fight. (Assembler, Hiro +0.5)
Assembler snuck in solo to deliver the payload, lobbed it in the centre of the cave and booked it out. 4 orcs died to it. Two javelins hit Assembler, but as he regrouped with MARC and the team, one died to crit fail, one burned to death from fire damage from bomb, and leader died to musket. (Assembler +6, Orc -1)
Waffles Inflicted Wounds on the ogre after Hiro used Hideous laughter'ed it, and it died. Treasure got again. Next stop, return to village, report our success and then onto the goblin fortress to find the dwarven brother. (Waffles +2, Assembler +0.5, Hiro +1)

Playing a Legend of Zelda campaign in which I DM.

My players literally are so great, there RPing is great, and they are very forgiving of me, being a new DM.

The story has been going great! SO FUN.

Quote from OboeLauren >>

I rewarded my players for a session of amazing RP handing out zucchini to a town by having the townfolk give them random magic items from the DMG random tables. They're level 16 so at this point they're already overpowered. They had no idea what was going on and the rolls were absolutely epic: An 8th level spell scroll, a Sword of Answering, and a wand of polymorph!

Guess this dragon they're heading to fight just became extra Ancient...

 Idea:make like Voaraghamanthar and Waeverandor and make two ancient dragon brothers that coexist to defeat people.

I recently joined a Dungeon of the Mad mage game as a replacement player, as two players had dropped out.   One thing about me is that ive been playing the same Bard character (Aurora) for the last 3 years.  Reason being is He's yet to die in a campaign and I really enjoy the continuity.  But if he needs to level down for different stories he generally occurs some form of Accident in the downtime between campaigns in order to be appropriate to the current setting.

My most recent session was the first session with this new group.

Right away even without introductions the party just tells me we are on a mission to kill a druid.

Basically Aurora got accidentally transported to this place. No idea how he got there. Totally disoriented. They all rush past (a bunch of rat people a dark elf and a little dragon man) So Auroras like. "Well shit. Again..... Oh well. Lets kill a witch I guess." As we go on the Twigs on the ground started spelling out words to free someone. I point this out to the group and We Turn tail from the witch to see who needs help. The rats continue on to fight the witch.

We find the thing asking for help, a Dragon with a sword stuck in its head. The sword is sentient and had taken over the dragon. The Dragon was using its magic to ask to be freed. The rogue was going for the sword grab but was just floundering with talking. So while he was distracting the dragon I just walked up n ripped out the sword. THEN the swords personality took over Aurora! So for the rest of the session I've been playing as the sword pretending to be Aurora not wanting to be found out. But the Witch and the Sword are friends. And now the witch is pissed at the group for sending the rats at her. Cause apparently before I got there she had asked them to kill the rat people...

Game ended mid fight as I'm trying to defuse the situation as the sword

Fortunately its not a permanent thing. I get to make a check to retake control if I take injury or after 3 hours. But Aurora is really good at avoiding Injury

So yeah. Went from 0 to 1000000 in zero seconds

Last season was good overall. It’s was a session 0 for our normal group but one of our players became the DM. Did a great job for his first time running it from fresh, players were a little awkward in their new skins ( the other campaign has been going on for 1+year), so takes a little getting used too. I enjoyed my first roll out as a bard, but having a little doubt in it for the long term. We ended on what is set to become a v large fight, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out! 

Quote from OboeLauren >>

I rewarded my players for a session of amazing RP handing out zucchini to a town by having the townfolk give them random magic items from the DMG random tables. They're level 16 so at this point they're already overpowered. They had no idea what was going on and the rolls were absolutely epic: An 8th level spell scroll, a Sword of Answering, and a wand of polymorph!

Guess this dragon they're heading to fight just became extra Ancient...

 Woah. That's awesome!

Oh, boy. As a DM - who still has to get the hang of it - I introduced the first little 'puzzle' for my party. 24 kids got abducted from a village nearby by shadowy, flying monsters. After escaping an underground passage filled with spiders, they came to a barren field. In the middle of that field was a giant windmill and on the highest blade was a child, hanging around.
The three little ones - a halfling cleric, a halfling bard and a gnome wizard - decided to enter the windmill while the biggest party member - a goliath fighter - decided to climb the building.

I wasn't too happy with the goliath ruining the puzzle by just climbing the windmill, but whatevs, he's been "breaking" the campaign enough already (for example: he hugged the boss-spider from the last session and started attacking his party members, who tried to kill the still-hostile spider,).
The other three characters forcefully had to let the goliath know he shouldn't touch the blades, otherwise they would break and the child would fall. Praise the lords that he listened - because that doesn't happen often.
Meanwhile the three solved the windmill puzzle by pulling levers, freeing the windmills gears and letting the wind do the rest of the work while one of them stood outside to catch the child in case he fell. The freed child started to talk about his family and his missing brother. Intelligent, but slightly vain and annoying.

Apparently I made him SO annoying, that the goliath tried to murder him to make him shut up. Thanks to the protest of the other (out of character) players, they changed their mind to just knock him out and bring him to the next town to be treated, pretending he fell out of the windmill... That's basically where the session ended last time.

I want to punish the goliath so bad. He's just not communicating with the other players. Whenever I present them with a choice, the goliath immediately takes the choice away from them by just doing whatever he wants. And the worst part is: I don't even think he'll care about an incoming punishment anyway. It's pretty infuriating and takes away some fun - not only from me, but from some of the players as well. Hopefully the next situation I'll present to them will be handled better... Or at least more decent.

I had a number of players like that through the years. My finding is that it´s less effective to scold the real person nor kill his character (as this feels petty to him - he´s just trying to have fun, right?). What might work is some social punishment. Not from the other pc, but the world. Say that they travel somewhere and he´s obnoxious. As in the real world let him be ostracized, but make the point that the rest of the pc aren´t and are doing better for it.

E.g. he behaves like a lout in the bar at the inn. Have the innkeeper and everyone refuse him service and ask him to leave. No violence or anything, but scorn. If he doesn´t desist have them all thrown out. If he does leave have him sleep in the stable and point out that it was miserable. 

If he keeps insisting on being anti-social up the ante with repercussions like that. Have a Cleric walk up to him in the middle of the street and declare him anathema followed by him being shunned by the whole community until he makes some penance. And let him come back to normal if he does.

The point is to force him to change his behavior and not escape the punishment by wisecracking or rolling dice.

Sorry if it's too long.

Players:
Orion the Traitor: A human rogue that has a habit for betraying the organizations he's part once they are no longer useful to him. He currently works for a network of assassins and spies called the Black Mask.
Sylran Greyhope: A wood elf druid that was frozen in time for 90 years. He's hoping to find atonement after accidentally causing the destruction of his village.
Clerania Clearwater: A half-elf storm sorcerer from the quaint town of Goldenfield. After she unintentionally caused the death of her younger brother, she set out to seek answers about why the kingdom of Galoron invaded her village.
Melanie Boylen: A half-elf bard that was exiled from her village because of her differences. She was taken in by a halfling named Jarvis, who owned a small tavern. After Jarvis fell ill, she took on jobs to acquire enough money to pay for medicine.

The group woke up early and continued along the Verdant Road towards Romreath. Along the way, they passed a tall teenage boy and a stocky man riding towards them swiftly atop their mounts. Orion tried to threaten them, but the boy revealed that he was a member of the Black Mask as well, and Orion apologized for inconveniencing them.

For the rest of the journey, Sylran attempted to force Orion to reveal what he had said to the boy, ultimately threatening him with his quarterstaff. Orion finally told him that he was part of the Black Mask, but he would not tell the elf anything more.

After a hard day of travel, the adventurers arrived at the farming town of Romreath. They stabled their horses, then went to the local tavern to look for news. As they sat down, they overheard a loud argument about the Sorcerer-kings at a nearby table. Another townsperson, Darel, explained that the customers Jareth and Carson often bickered about the topic. Jareth had grown up an orphan, and had only gotten to where he was today by doing work for the kingdom of Galoron. Carson, on the other hand, had known both of his parents. His father had used to tell him tales of the grandeur of Galoron before the Sorcerer-kings had come.

Sylran went over to the table where the argument was taking place and agreed wholeheartedly with Carson, causing Jareth to storm off in a huff. He then asked Carson for any news, but nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the small town. After the group got their meals, they retrieved their horses and set out towards Adranax. 

The change between the Gilded Plain and the Blood Plains happened in a matter of feet. The sunset sky stayed a brilliant red, but grass turned to cracked earth, tree turned to bubbling pit, and bush turned to flaming geyser. But still, the adventurers rode onwards towards Adranax.

Unlike Rushreed or Romreath, Adranax was a true city. Sturdy stone walls stood 20 meters high, obscuring the metropolis itself from view. A heavy gate blocked access to the city’s interior. As the party approached the colossal barrier, a tall guard with dark skin and long black hair called down to them from atop the walls. 

Sylran and Orion asked her whether there were any libraries, and she told them there were two. Afterwards, Clerania asked her which inn she recommended, and the guard told her that the Dancing Dragon Inn was the best in the city. The adventurers then split up, Sylran and Orion going to a library while Clerania and Melanie went to the inn. 

At the inn, the two girls were greeted by the kind proprietor of the inn, a woman named Silvinia. After renting rooms for the night, they poked around for rumors, eventually learning that there had been multiple chimera attacks recently. After they finished talking with the inn’s customers, they went upstairs to wait for Orion and Sylran.

While they were doing that, Sylran was searching for books on recent history so that he could find out what happened while he was frozen in time. He learned some information, but nothing vital that he hadn’t previously known. Since the Black Mask organization had formed while he was frozen, he asked a librarian whether the crime syndicate supported the Sorcerer-kings. The librarian responded with a tentative yes, a fact which Sylran filed away for later.

In the meantime, Orion found a book titled, “On the History of Shadow,” which he began to read eagerly. In the short passage he skimmed, he learned of a fallen angel, Calius, who had died and become a powerful revenant. Orion then decided to purchase the book, which he planned to read more of later.

After their exploits at the library, which they kept hidden from one another, Sylran and Orion headed back to the inn and reunited with Clerania and Melanie. Eventually, the party drifted off to sleep. 

I love it when my players dispute every sentence, every ruling, wear me down to the bone, and never appreciate anything!

Tbh it's somewhat my fault but when I forget something they take advantage of it and dispute things.

Continuation...

After reaching the town of Silent Vale, the party took some time to rest. While the other three ate and drank something, the cleric decided to preach about Lliira, the goddess of joy.
This caught the attention of most of the townspeople, to the annoyance of the wizard and bard, who decided to use magic to get him back to the table with a floating cup of tea. But they forgot that Silent Vale has a strict 'no-magic' policy, so the townspeople immediately fled hahaha. 
However, the local fortune teller, a female orc, wasn't too blown away by the magic. Even telling the guards that came running that everything was okay. Doing her usual marketing strategy - one gold piece for a hint from the future - she approached the party, but none of them except the cleric was interested.
As soon as she touched his hand however, she immediately backed away in a panic, telling him he was 'marked'. After chasing her down she finally decided to write down a name on a piece of paper. A name he should never say out loud within the walls of Silent Vale. He promised he wouldn't, so with that piece of paper they left the town.

After a short journey they finally came across an inn the young waitress told them about (the goliath immediately had a crush on her...). The inn was a couple of meters past a weird line between living and dead grass and crops. The innkeeper, who had the inn on lockdown, told them about the growing darkness but welcomed them in. There she gave them food, something to drink and a room each, but in the middle of the night... the soft cries of children was heard.

Venturing into the basement of the inn - the innkeeper nowhere to be seen - they found a hole in the wall and their very first proper dungeon! (Hooray!)
There they must fight swarms of rats and uncover the secret of the shadows that kidnapped the kids of Meadowhill: the city where the campaign started and the reason why they're on their way. They soon realise an evil witch is behind all of it.

- - - - -
The swarm of rats was no big deal to them, so I'll definitely crank up the difficulty of the campaign. The Encounter Builder told me that four shadows would be too powerful for them, but three would only be 'hard'. So I'll probably do that. But the witch boss is going to be pretty hard as well, so hopefully they find time to heal somewhere in between.

She's going to be a massive Hansel and Gretel reference, using a giant oven as a source of fireballs etc. It's going to be wild.

One shot last night (actually, part 1 of a 2-shot) set in our normal campaign's world.

We were all in jail, most of us involved in (the same?) barfights. My PC - water Genassi Monk. A sailor/pirate in port, who as usual got into a bar fight. There was also a bad-axe Paladin, a LG Warforged Artillerist (who was trying to STOP a bar fight), and a SorLock who was effectively a Jedi... he drew power from the "Weave"  and used Eldritch Blast-powered "Force sabers."
We were a motley crew. Level 8. Stuck in a jail cell, underground, in a port town. We spent a little time getting to know each other, which was pretty fun.

The earth shook, and water started flowing into the cell. We managed to pick the lock, and then rescued the other prisoners. Then we found our gear in the storage. But then, heading upstairs, the lobby was infested with Piranhas. We had to Gondolier through, Jack and Rose style, on doors and tables. The whole town was waist deep in water, the sky was dark, with only some streaks of light in the sky. We managed to climb up onto the roof of a bar across the street (grabbing some floating bottles of alcohol as we did so).

Down the middle of the street came a flat-bottomed boat, with a bunch of weird frog-faced guys. One of them claimed she was Squig, High Priestess of the Kraken, and wanted all to bow to the Kraken and be judged. They wanted to be taken to the leader. We asked, so, where is the Kraken? We were told that the Kraken is all around us, and that we needed to be judged. Squig was reaching into a bag to show us a sign...

When our Jedi threw both Force sabers at her. And it all went crazy. Most of us jumped onto the boat, the Priestess got knocked back into the water, and the Paladin went in after her. Several bits of strategy were ruined by the bad guys not complying with our plans, and bad rolls on our part. We took out at least one frog man, and the leader got Hypnotic Patterned, but the rest piled up on the Paladin (with some amazing rolls) and took him down to 0 HP. We relented, and ended the session realizing that we, and most of the town, were in fact being eaten by the Kraken.

So, fighting our way out THROUGH a Kraken sounds kind of impossible. Another option, that also doesn't sound too good, is just give up and be devoured.
I guess we figure out what Option C is next week.

The ranger nearly died, a bandit cheated by climbing onto the ceiling, we fought a wraith and only one because charm person worked for once...and I think the ranger complimented me? It's hard to tell with gnolls.

The last session I played in was fun. We're doing 'curst of Strahd abridged' in a sense. We've been doing a homebrew campaign for about a year or so now and the DM wanted to try running a module. So instead of running COS as written, he took the module and made it fit into his world, adjusted things for the fact that we're going into it at level 9, and changed up some of the lore details to make them fit their setting. The woman Strahd was obsessed with was replaced with my rogue's mother, and that's made things awkward for her during Strahd's occasional visits to show up and taunt/mess with the party etc. 

Last session, the DM didn't like what was in the book for Argynvostholt (I probably spelled that wrong) and instead replaced that part of the story with us having to prove ourselves to the spirit of the dragon before he'd give us aid in our quest to kill Strahd, having to fight against his former followers who were cursed with undeath to prove we were strong enough to potentially beat Strahd and not just wasting his time. It was a fun dungeon and had some tense moments. 

The last session that I ran was a one shot "Chaos at the Coral Court: Shark Queen's Lair" which was a patreon collaboration from Loot Tavern and several others, it was a fun encounter to play out. 

I've been running a mini-campaign through the holidays. Get through the magically secured labyrinth and congratulations. So far we've had quite the experience, a minotaur attempting to charge an illusion, with a nat 1 to hit. He discovered it was an illusion by falling into it. A couple members split from the rest of the group, figuring the others could handle an incubus and succubus....several rounds later and 2 charmed friends, one broken free of the charm. The monsters ran to recover, and the party continued.  

Tonight, the charmed player chose to cast darkness on a crossbow bolt, then shoot at the minotaur. At disadvantage, hit the minotaur in the rear, only to then break free from being charmed, she released the darkness and pretended it wasn't her. The rest of the party at this point was addressing how to deal with a wurm. Fortunately, the wurm doesn't understand the magical warding, and being poked at choose to burrow out of the labyrinth secured by powerful magic, to attack from below. The power killed it with a magical burst, to which the only one to understand, was the player who's character can't speak, but uses sign language and music.

We're playing an interesting mixed-world game: Ravnica, but Monster Hunter creatures have invaded due to new planegates forming.

The party are currently level 7, and consists of: Zaldrick, Hobgoblin Enchantment-Wizard of Orzhov; Oakley, Human Nature-Cleric of Selesnya; Hemshort, Gnome Battlesmith-Artificer of Izzet; Kymos, Human Battle-master Fighter of Azorius; and Skinwalker, Human Swords-Bard of Rakdos.

Our last session involved us tracking after a rogue branch of the Gruul guild who've been taming Monsters in preparation to assault the Gruul primarch. After happening across a wounded but still-fearsome Glavenus and, after some fierce combat, laying it low, we encountered a huge encampment of Gajalaka near an unstable planegate. They offered us a place of respite and future aid if we could prove our mettle by venturing through the portal to bring them back Yian Kut-Ku eggs. Only able to safely send two of us through it and back without collapsing the portal entirely, Zaldrick and Oakley used a mixture of firepower, illusion and a pack of Giant Wasps (owing Zaldrick's access to a Staff of Swarming) to get the eggs out and away from the wyvern handily.

Then we came, the following day, to a grove, thickly-wooded enough that there was only one entrance and exit. Two druids, marked in the rogue Gruul clan's tribal banners, waited within. Not the stealthiest of parties, our frontliner, Kymos, was blessed with Freedom of Movement before he marched in first, and was immediately cut off from the rest of us by a wall of thorns. The battle began in earnest, with Oakley mucking up the battlefield considerably with Plant Growth, an effect which didn't hamper Kymos one bit. Nor did it hamper the two Earth Elementals that the druids gated in to fight Kymos. After failing to counterspell one before it could be summoned, Zaldrick unleashed a harsh reprisal in kind, casting Summon Greater Demon to introduce a Barlgura to the mix between the casters. With their control over their elementals quickly sundered, one of the druids quickly yoinked out of the fight with Tree Stride (overcoming another counterspell attempt), while the other was harried by the Barlgura full-time. The stone elementals, without their druids' support, fell fairly quickly to a steady, focused series of attacks, cantrips, and with Speak the Dead, we were as ready as could be to continue our hunt for the rogue Gruul clan.

We played the 11th session of our new campaign on Discord. We are using DDB and Avrae. We have four players, 2 guys, and 2 ladies. The campaign is "Saga of the Twisted Rune." In this session, the party wandered 8.5 miles in the Underdark trying to find a way out. They fought a Cave Fisher and had extensive conversations with a summoned bat named Bruce. Their Kender companion, Kinan, who they assume is just a happy-go-lucky kid, is "borrowing" plenty of items on the way. 

Since the campaign continues to take surprising turns as the PCs go one way and then suddenly go a different way that I didn't expect, they are wandering in the Underdark after using a magical item to teleport there looking for their friend, a befuddled old wizard. I am drawing heavily on Out of the Abyss and AD&D Night Below for this section of the campaign as it's taking place in the Underdark.

It's been a wild ride. Having fun with this campaign.