It went well! We started in a Star City (one of the things in my world) in a tavern empty except for the players and 2 NPCs (a man and his child) at the edge of the city, we had a bit of roleplay to let the characters meet each other.
Weird cultist boys teleported in and rolled a bomb into the centre of the tavern and activated the detonations at the entire tavern, everything went boom and the tavern went flying off the edge, we had some rounds in the sky as we fell but the child NPC channeled some magic and everyone’s vision went dark.
We awoke back on the ground of the Mainland and had to scavenge for supplies to survive, we ended after they found some old ruins and were attacked by some funky wolf bois.
@madtown I set the find deer DC to 11. Your way is more complex but looks good. It's funny how small things like this turn into being more fun than the game itself.
Started off with them leaving the acting rooms and the monks drake being turned back from stone. When asked "how are you feeling my old friend", the drake replied "I feel different.". The drake was not capable of talking before.
Finding out that:
this is a temporary side effect which sometimes happens
the Drake would like to stay awakened
There are animals in the woods which can talk
The party sought some out and managed to persuade them that they needed to get the Drake there, and got directions to find a character called Olba. The woods they sought were to the north, beyond an indoor lake which could be circumnavigated easily.
I had planned overland encounters, and drawn a map, and hadn't thought of the characters going over the lake I put between them and their goal, with freaking docks at either end. Yeah, my mistake.
One player is a cleric, and another is a monk who hates being touched. The warlock is also very "hands to yourself if you want to keep them", and the paladin is somewhat uncomfortable in social situations. So, I gave them 3 options - they can go around, they can wait for the ferry, which will take several hours to return, or they can bribe the owner of the Incubus and Succubus, a catamaran "pleasure" barge full of ladies (and gents) of the night. I thought that they would choose to walk.
Whelp, what followed was an intensely funny and awkward half hour of roleplay as they did indeed take the Incubus and Succubus, and then proceeded to:
poledance naked whilst getting a wizard to cast grease on them
get drunk (in that order)
pay for the two most awkward character to get massages, because they thought it was funny.
slide all over the boat, because grease.
pass out
Yeah, so this was the first time I had to roleplay flirtatious people for the entire group. I put various bardcore music on in the background (EG shakira hips don't lie, and that ilk), and everyone found it very fun.
They eventually get to the other side and scout out the woods, and make their way to a temple, after finding a talkative toucan who makes terrible jokes (I would charge, but the bills too big!) and takes them to the temple. There they meet Olba the Owlbear, and are told that the spring is how they stay "enlightened", but that it has been fouled. They recognise the foul, saltwater odour. They smelt it before, in the temple to Mizlavurm the snake god, where agents of Dagon (And the uncle of the cleric) made a sacrifice to Dagon to desecrate the shrine. They proceeded into the temple to clear the infestation and restore the fountain. There they passed a room of trap mirrors which reach out with ghostly hands and hold you, and then a riddle (based on "the word of god" from indiana jones 3). They now enter a fight with an ancient snake guardian, which they manage to overcome. There ends the session.
Was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to what comes next!
Had our fourth character death yesterday!!! woohoo!!!!
Party of four level 9's, only healer is a multiclassed artificer. We were tracking down the source of an algae that dissolves people that had flooded into a town filled with monsters, killing pretty much everything. We were already low on health from the previous session, so when we found the lair of an alchemist with a pet (Unknown Creature That Can Vomit Will O' Wisps) trapped in a force cage, we tried everything to avoid a fight.
We ended up convincing him (the alchemist) not to sic his monster on us, and got the information we needed from him through a healthy mix of persuasion, threats, and manipulation (the artificer, a kalashtar, feigned having no idea why their voice kept asking for answers from Inside the alchemists head). We got a map to the epicenter of the flood, and after a long rest followed it to a cave that was absolutely surrounded by monsters. It was an uphill battle, to say the least. The warlock killed plenty of swarms of bats, but the huge giant death monster was too busy picking up our monk, who through a series of intentionally bad choices started the fight at about half hp because of course he did, and flying away with him grappled and restrained, stunned and deafened by another monster in the fight, and at 7 hp.
I tried, i really did, but Vortex Warp has a track record of simply refusing to work for me. As i typed this, i realized that i could have saved our monk by casting the spell on him and having him willingly fail the save. But i was panicking. The monster rolled a nat 20 on the save because of course it did. Its turn was next because of course it was. It rolled a nat 20 on its super special bite attack where if it crits and lowers the target to 0 it instakills them because of course it would.
so yeah the monk's head got bitten off and the highest level healing we had was either a lvl 2 cure wounds or a potion of greater healing that we all forgot about.... oops.
The party found a side corridor full of Rutterkin, and successfully bottlenecked them and cut them all down. They were lacking in AOE spells, but the Barbarian has a homebrew greatsword which lets you keep attacking (with a reducing number of damage dice) if you kill the target of your attack, so that helped him finish off 3 of them in one head-lopping swing!
They stopped to defile a forgotten gods alter (which they seem to have confused for being the evil god, when it wasn't) and had a short rest, and then continued to the main There, they see a hooded humanoid figure on the raised alter, and several smaller figures around the walls, carving runes which appear the same as those they found in the basement of the cleric's ancestral manor. Half a dwarf hands on chains, in the same manner as below the house.
The man by the alter turns slowly, his robes dripping wet, and locks pale eyes with the Artificer, and says "I thought it would be her first...", then orders the others to stop the party. The artificer (who is a son of Thor, and struggling to work out hit parentage) runs to the alter and throws down his weapon, wanting to talk, whilst the barbarian runs to the alter, wanting to fight. and asks who he is. He replies with "It is funny, how little you know...", and casts Bigbys hand as a tentacle to push the barbarian away, then to grapple the artificer. He then has a brief spiel on how tha Artificer had everything handed to him, and how he had to work for everything he had. He belittled his armour (made of ysgardian steel, which was given as an ingot by Thor, who found the Artificer and briefly gifted him this before leaving), and showed him the chains that are tightly wound around his arm, that he "forged link by link, and with each link, he gained more knowledge".
Then he Banished the Monk, who failed his save, and the Warlock (who likes the monk) did not know what happened and flew into a murderous rage. The fight saw the Barbarian fail his save to Suggestion and be told to "Stop the Cleric", who was heading for one of the rune-carving cultists, who were Yuan-ti Dwarves. The Warlock used an ability which let her fly and get an extra attack, and started firing her longbow at the man, who was using Mislead to disguise his true location. The man summoned a Lophilithan (a homebrew anglerfish-demon who can swallow you), and then used Thunderwave to move to where one of the yuan-ti had died before completing the symbol. The Barbarian managed to destroy one of the runes, having been sworn to by the Cleric that he would not move, therefore was "Stopped", and the room rumbled ominously.
The last round of combat before we ran out of time saw the Monk hit with Confusion and then swallowed by the Lophilithan, the Barbarian still trying to stop the cleric from moving, the artificer demanding answers and getting nothing but scornful laughter, and the Warlock pull a power move - she shot the man with a Deaths-Hand Arrow.
The Deaths Hand arrow is a legendary, single-shot piece of ammo which has a terrifying effect - the target takes normal damage, but at the end of each of their turns thereafter, they have to make a death save, unaffected by damage etc., and if they fail 3, they just die. If they pass 3, then they live. And she hit him!
And there the session ended due to time!
Now I had intended for this character to be a recurring villain (he is in fact Modi, the other son of Thor, brother of the Artificer, and the prophet and Warlock to Dagon, the demon prince of the sea of stars in the abyss, which in turn is where the serpent Mizlavurm was cast by the gods. He is trying to summon Dagon, and is using the cult of Mizlavurm to do it, and when it happens so too will escape Mizlavurm. He hates the Artificer because Thor found him, and did not find Modi.). However, with a Death Hand Arrow in play, I can't just say "he died, but he got better". This could really change things up in the game!
So. Many. Lore Drops. This session was just meant to be rest/exploration of a new city. What ended up happening was the warlock learning that his devil GF is, in fact, already married. To The Devil. Like. The guy. And also my character learned that the bloody note left atop an old party member’s corpse in her father’s handwriting could not, in fact, have been from him, because he had joined a war effort thousands of miles away from where the killing happened. I had been living with the assumption that he abandoned her and got brainwashed/something like that and started killing innocent people. Now I learn he’s still his same old self, he’s just not communicated for TEN MONTHS despite only having joined the war effort four weeks ago, for some Completely Separate reason, which I need to go find out but despite the fact that we are level 10, no one has sending/scrying/anything I can use to get more info, and also I need to find out who/why someone is framing him. The bard is taking blacksmithing lessons, so that’s fun.
there is so much more context I could/should give but it would end up being the full length of the 30 pages of notes I have for this campaign.
Ran a side session using the backup characters for my campaign, aiming to be a 1-2 shot.
Party starts in the tavern where they met the main party, and were left to wait for them. A bald halfling with a powerful voice arrives and orders earl grey tea, and then spends some time arranging a comfy chair by the window. Everyone is helping the tavernkeep to prepare a trophy wall, and then suddenly the tavern lurches, and everyone falls over.
The newcomer assures them all that he's "just borrowing it" as he flies the tavern, using the spelljamming helm he just created, to the moon. He explains on the way that he has seen something crash and needs t ofind it, to prove that there are other worlds out there. He is also amazed his spelljamming helm worked, as he had studied it his whole life.
The party agrees to help, and after almost sinking into a dust-bowl full of Cave Fishers, they find a crashed lifeboat from a ship called the Voidcleaver. They find a dead Giff, and tracks leading toward a strange tower-like structure, which they head towards. They find a book on the Giff, detailing goods in and out, and the last entry mentions Artefacts, "Weapon?", and "Power Source".
They find a strange structure which looks like a torque, stood on end, and made of strange stone-like material. Several players recognise this with an "oh no...", but they investigate anyway.
They start climbing the ship, which aligns its gravity plane outwards so that it is essentially one long corridor, and use Locate Creature to sense the nearest Giff, who is above them. They find a Loxodon in an armoured suit in an observatory, long dead. They then start hearing gunshots, and run towards them as they intend to help the Giff. As they approach, the Giff sensor suddenly moves further up the ship, and the gunfire stops. The wizard uses Clairvoyance to see the Giff, and he sees it running, panicked. A minute later, a black semi-humanoid creature scuttles past the sensor on 6 limbs.
They proceed up the ship to save him, and find themselves in a space where the cargo hold has been overrun with organic resinous structures, the floor ribbed, the hard edges softened. There they fought several Star Spawn Manglers, for whom I used Tyranid Genestealer models from Space Hulk. The NPC wizard (who was caled Pickluke Johncard) panicked and started running, and the 2 druids summoned 8 owls (2 of which died) and 16 giant wolf spiders (!) to fight for them. They pushed back the monsters and recovered Pickluke, who was still running, and they brought him back to his senses.
Up ahead they hear more gunshots, and they race to find the Giff. The wizard casts Message every turn, to say "help is on the way", and after a short run up the ship, he receives the reply "No, gods ple-", and there is no more gunfire. They find the bloodstains in the corridor at the end, and break through the door to find the other end of the cargo hold, where they see the Giff hung in the ceiling, partially encased in resin. They break him down with the Spiders and recover his Musket and Pistol. The only character whos backstory involved such things demonstrates how it works by shooting into the hold, and I describe how as the glowing shot shoots down the hold, they see the glint of dozens of alien eyes in the darkness.
The Divination Wizard cast fireball. The Transmutation Wizard cast Fireball. The NPC Transmutation Wizard cast Fireball.
The resulting explosion did 93 damage, and seemed to incinerate everything in the hold!
They then found a strange glowing dodecahedron in one of the crates, which had been disturbed, and assumed that this was the "Power Source" stated in the quartermasters logbook.
They found the spelljamming helm in the top of the ship, and one of the Wizards stopped to attune to it over a short rest. When they finished, they were surprised to feel that they could almost feel the ship as if it were their body, and they also felt a pain i ntheir abdomen, which quickly turned sharp just as a rumbling tremor of an explosion echoed up the ship.
And there the session ended! It was an absolute hoot!
My group enjoys complex solutions to easy problems. They could've asked an npc to increase the reward for a quest, but one of them decided she wanted to date the npc to butter him up before asking. They met at a tavern. I played the npc as an arrogant bore, which was his persona. The player didn't like his manner. Her friends, sitting nearby, decided to get involved b/c they didn't like him either. One of them punched the npc in the face. He called for his two bodyguards. Then it was on. A fight began, wine splashed faces, liquor bottles smashed here and there, a few unnecessary spells injured the bodyguards. Thankfully, before this got too crazy (and I would have to improv more), the reasonable player entered and solved the problem. The players had to pay the npc and hand him a magic item as the cost of their actions.
The last session I had was a while ago. It was actually the ending of our most recent campaign together!
In the beginning of that session, we had left off on my character(the King of the abandoned Terasque kingdom that didn't have any Terasques and was just named that) on the top floor, thinking of a plan because the Elf Kingdom and the Orc Kingdom had sent assassins for him and was attacking his kingdom. His advisor(an elf named Samuel, another PC) was disguised as my character. Samuel was fighting off the assassins with the OP also-elven royal guard.
Eventually, my character had come to the conclusion that to protect his people and friends, he had to commence an emergency meeting between all of the kingdoms. To my character's surprise(not mine), Samuel had told the Orc King(his name was Joe Mama for some reason...) to go attack the Elf Kingdom's shared territory with the Dwarf King(he was an NPC originally apart of our party, think his name was The Stone Breaker), but the Orc King and the Elf King had made up and decided to send a group of assassins for my character, completely aware it had been Samuel who had threatened his kingdom.
"Because it's fun!" - Elf King.
After a while of lecturing and arguing, the peace eventually came to an end. The meeting room was very big and wide -- I mean, originally for the Terasques, so . . . Turns out, the Elf King had made a deal with the OP royal guard and elf soldiers or whatever came out from the corners of the room and tied up my character and Samuel. The OP royal guard was on our side and restraining Samuel, managing to weaken Samuel's restraints. The OP royal guard eventually attacked the Elf King, I think. He betrayed the Elf King, blah, blah, blah . . . Samuel went outside to try and help the OP royal guard with his battle with the Elf King, but it was already over. I think the elf soldiers hadn't fully left yet . . . Anyways, my character managed to cut his restraints and use his (acid) breath weapon to get the elf soldier off of him. He followed downstairs, but by that time Samuel had come upstairs so he stayed upstairs.
They spoke for a while(the other royals had left, so did the elf soldiers) until they heard something outside. My character noticed it first and pointed it out, but Samuel hadn't noticed until they saw the king and queen Terasque at the front gates of the kingdom with one of their former NPC party members + the Elf King riding one of them. They had to call out to the OP royal guard, realizes he was downstairs, my character sent a message to him, he came upstairs, and then the monologue happened.
The OP royal guard went outside to fend the Terasques off while Samuel had to carry my character(why carry? I think he was faster) towards the exit. One of the OP royal guard's army soldiers turned evil(?). Samuel was having to convince the evil animated armor soldier that my character was the King, before getting knocked over.
After a lot of stress and moving, the Terasques were defeated and we had a happy scene of Samuel, OP royal guard, and my character together discussing. The OP royal guard asked if he wanted him to continue serving him or wait another 1,000 years to serve another king. Samuel offered for him to take a break, but he said it would go against his contract. My character and Samuel discussed for a bit, before my character forged another contract to overrule it. It promised a permanent break, and though my character really liked him as a person, he had to let him go.
There was a week timeskip, and OP royal guard took his last things and said goodbye to Samuel and him, also revealing a secret library my character had never known about the few sessions he had as king.
I'm really gonna miss that campaign, and I feel like I'm gonna cry while writing this. Hope our group comes up with a sequel to it. :)
Just held session 0 for a new campaign: a zombie apocalypse set in the modern day, but also like d&d stuff still exists yknow. (<-- that was definitely as epic-sounding a description as i wanted it to be...)
I had 7 players +1 who couldn't make it, so that's gonna be fun to balance for in the future! We spent the first half building characters, explaining stuff to new players, and figuring out how everyone's backstories related to the setting, as well as deciding exactly what the setting was. We settled on The Waffle House Outside Houston, Texas as the party's home base, as this campaign will be set about a year after the zombie apocalypse has started, with the characters all knowing each other by that point.
We all went in a circle introducing everyone's characters to the level of familiarity that the party would have with them at the time of the campaign's start. That was tons of fun, everyone has absolutely absurd character ideas (and the names??? masterpieces.)
Once that was done, we did a small scenario showing how everyone arrived in the Waffle House in the first place, one year before. The one character who worked at the Waffle House sat everyone at the same table because all of the other ones were so dirty (based on a review we found for the real Waffle House they chose to set up base in), and started playing the bagpipes to entertain them (he is a bard who is a failed actor and found his calling in this random Waffle House as a music-playing waiter). Gary, the manager, got angry because he was being annoying and overcharging the guests, and then suddenly collapsed on the table in front of everyone and started twitching...
We had to cut it off there, so i think i'll open next session still in the prologue right at that point, and everyone can have their first fight with one zombie. Then we'll skip to a year later, mid-apocalypse, and figure out how everyone's changed/what they've done to the Waffle House to help them survive for so long, and all the other stuff. This is going to be a hell of a campaign. We have two bards. The zombies are attracted to sound. I'm so excited.
Went well; the players at my table are still engaged in the progression.
Enlisted by the Blackstaff of Waterdeep, Vajra Safahr, to investigate the presence of the Red Wizards of Thay currently occupying our Druid’s grove in Warlock’s Crypt; the party was magically transported to the region from Blackstaff Tower & told to rendezvous with an agent of the Gray Hands (an organization of adventurers dedicated to protecting Waterdeep).
Their contact was none other than Harshnag the Grim: a friendly frost giant, alongside his new “partner” Maegra, a fire giant.
Following the shattering of the Ordning; Queen Serissa had tasked Harshnag and other loyal giants to re-structuring the other disparate giant clans into something better, one that would be at peace with the small folk. Maegra was one of a few fire giants willing to give this new alliance a try…though the rivalry between the fire giants & frost giants was still made apparent by the brusque attitude between the two large warriors.
Harshnag told the party that they’d been in the area to recruit a cloud giant & frost giant Harshnag had knowledge of…but upon arrival found that the Red Wizards had slayed the frost giant; and disintegrated the cloud giant by way of an Undead Beholder they had been controlling.
Harshnag told Maegra to keep guard of their flank; and the frost giant accompanied the party to the site where they last observed the Red Wizards; which predictably was in the same direction as our Druid’s grove.
Along the way, the party encountered the Undead Beholder: our Druid urged Harshnag to fling him at the floating eye monster. Upon landing (with some understandable damage), the Druid wildshaped into a giant octopus, covering the Undead Beholder’s main eye, and restraining the aberration.
The party took advantage of the distracted beholder to mount a charge; narrowly avoiding several of it’s beams. The Druid took a hit from a necrotic ray, dwindling it’s HP pool until he reverted back to his bugbear form; but by that time, the party had cleared enough ground to get enough hits (the Magic Missile turret of our resident Sorcerer helped a great deal).
The encounter was left at a bit of a cliffhanger, however, as fake and dust swirled ominously to form a Cloud Giant Ghost…the deceased spirit of the murdered cloud giant!
Me, the DM: Alright guys, so you're going to the Ancient Dragons lair. The whole way is shrouded in fog, but the dragon can still see you if you get too close. The dragon will likely be with its hoard, which is just behind the waterfall. If you quietly dispatch the minions in the fog, you won't have to deal with them should you fight them.
Party (Including Rogue): Understood.
DM: Can everyone see the map alright (We use a VTT), sometimes it glitches and doesn't show and it wasn't appearing for the Warlock earlier
Rogue: I can see it
DM: You can see the grass where your standing?
Rogue: Yes, I can see it
----
Ranger: Would my character know how well a dragon can see through fog?
-Rolls a 3 on the check-
DM: You know they see better than normal humanoids
Rogue: Do I know?
-Rolls a 20 on the check-
DM: You know a dragon of this age could probably see you at least 50ft away.
Ranger: Well it's on top of a waterfall, so we just need to not go past the waterfall and we'll be fine
---
Rogue: Alright, I'm going to make sure the path ahead is clear
Ranger: Don't go too far, we're all the way back here
DM: As you move further along, you realise you are standing right next to a waterfall
Ranger: Oh my god, it's right past there
---
DM: Alright it's the Rogue's turn
Rogue: Sure, I'd like to scout up ahead
-Moves model up past the waterfall-
DM: Oh... wow...
Rogue: What?
Ranger: Oh crap
Rogue: Wait, no!
DM: Well I guess I shouldn't say anything cause it's not the dragons initiative yet
Ranger: Why did you go past the waterfall?
Rogue: What waterfall?
DM: The one I mentioned was right next to you and said the dragon was just behind
Rogue: Hang on, this isn't fair, I can't see the map
DM: You said you could!
Rogue: I thought you were using a lack of map to represent the fog!?!
DM: You said you could see the grass!
Rogue: Well, I don't know. I guess we retcon this.
-Moves model back to where it was-
Ranger: Ummm... the waterfall was mentioned repeatedly
Rogue: I didn't know!!!
DM: Well it's getting late, lets wrap up the session here...
Rogue: I don't want to be the one that TPK'd the party!
The first official session of my modern day zombie apocalypse campaign was an absolute success and was SO MUCH FUN. It’s my first fully homebrew campaign and I decided to not stress and not prep too much and it worked out beautifully.
I have a party with eight players and only four could make it, which made the first adventure much easier to balance, which was nice. The party (who live in a Waffle House outside of Houston TX) had to make their way to a 7/11 that had recently been restocked by automated Amazon delivery drones, but was booby trapped and defended by another group of survivors in their town. The very first thing that was said after the very first “so what are you all doing?” while still in the Waffle House home base, was “I’m checking the rat traps for food” from the lizardfolk cleric, which was the BEST start I could have hoped for, and it only got more hilarious and chaotic from there. On the way there they had a fight with three zombies which lasted Much Longer than it should have but the rogue kept choosing to pretend to be scared and cry instead of helping to fight in order to make the other party members feel bad for her, which only led to some of the funniest in-character dialogue I’ve had the pleasure of DMing during. As they arrived at the 7/11 they noticed two dogs chained out front to act as guards/alarms, which, with successful stealth and animal handling checks, two party members managed to free, and one, the bard, got one of the dogs on her side while the other one ran off. I was so happy that through a sort of Freudian slip I accidentally caused the party to fall in love with a half-blind dog and adopt and name it. The aarakocra Paladin also flew above the building and noticed that there were food wrappers and bullet shells on the roof, as well as a ladder leading up to it, meaning someone was guarding the location but didn’t seem to be present. The four finally made it into the 7/11, where the bard immediately triggered a trap and almost got a ton of bricks dropped on her head, and then they continued inward, where the bard triggered the second trap and let loose a zombie that had been held in the back office where all the supplies were. The singular zombie wasn’t much of a hindrance because I was rolling Extremely Poorly, but the party members who were present got to loot the 7/11, and the rogue got to chuck her knife at the zombie and ended up (kinda gross description warning, mostly just funny tho) aiming for and successfully, uh, de-balling him and pinning them to the wall 10ft behind him, all in the name of “facing her fear” since the others thought she truly was terrified of zombies from her little crying performance in the previous encounter. The session ended with them, now loaded up with equipment and food, with a zombie at 4hp still in the store with them, hearing their new dog, now named Jupiter, begin to bark from outside.
The artificer paladin offered his life in exchange for the rest of the party, and the warlock replied with a gravelly laugh, "hah! You think I want any of your lives?".
The Monk fought his way out of the lophilithan's stomach and managed to force a bag of holding over the warlocks head, and trapped him inside. Whilst he was sat on it (to keep it closed), the bag swelled up and leaked horrible saltwater everywhere.
After the fight, they sanctified the fountain and Zorgrak, the drake, drank from it, and can now talk forever (is that a rod in my back? Look at the rod in my back!).
The Artificer decided to have a holiday, and after an emotional parting, walked off dramatically, wishing for a sunset (but there was none as he was inside). He's now having a holiday in the best spas in the world, and has the pangolin they rescued from the circus.
Everyone else proceeded upwards to the fifth floor of the Tower, and there they found a sign for "Gizmo Grayling's Curiosity Shoppe" which when read appeared slightly different for each of them, and they read it in the voice of Gizmo, despite having never met him (he sounds quite like Balin, the old dwarf from The Hobbit).
the Cleric read "Trinkets, magical artefacts, and tea"
the Barbarian read "Weapons, Weapons, and more Weapons"
the Warlock read "Magical artefacts identified"
the Monk read "He can help you find what you're looking for"
They then immediately met the new character, a human paladin who knew the way to Gizmo's shop, and who had been looking for them to find her brother (the artificer paladin who was holidaying). She led them to Gizmos shop, and they got to know each other a bit.
At Gizmos they were offered a large menu of magical items to purchase, and the Barbarian did some shopping. The Warlock bought a paint Gizmo created called Splotch, that makes hard things soft and soft things hard. Everyone snickered. The warlock also asked Gizmo to identify the statue she had found in the dragons lair, and he explained that this statue was some potent and powerful magic, not only overriding his field of antimagic, but negating any and all conventional detection or identification spells, which has has built into a jewellers monocle, which displays all information about items in a HUD, as though you were reading from the rulebooks.
The party leaves the rubber duck they found (when squeaked, it summons a random object, 3 charges per day) and this statue (secret to the rest of the party) with Gizmo, and the Warlock takes a sending stone from Gizmo so that she can talk to him. She also took 19 cursed gems, which he asked her to throw at her enemies and see what they do, and report them back to him. (I have a random table of 300 unique cursed gems. It's going to be brilliantly good fun.)
The party then descended the tower by Sky-ferry, and as always when they get on a boat, shenanigans happened.
They had the were-bear barbarian assume bear form to reduce their costs - 30gp per person, 20gp per mount. He got stored in the hold, in a wedge-pen. The Monk and the Paladin characters started to talk, and bond. The Cleric sees a shady character release a paper plane from the front of the boat, and slip into the crowd. And the warlock tries to pet a dog in an elderly womans handbag, and this results in a fight between them, which is amusing when the cross-talk at the table suddenly stops as they hear her say "does a 17 hit?", and they realise they're in combat?
Well, a copper dragonborn (shameless idea stolen from someone I saw on here) policeman steps in and chases down the Warlock, and then arrests her and the old lady (still indignantly crying out about her "Flopsie"). After a brief interview, he discovers that the old lady swung first, and then finds that the bag is full of Contraband goods, and arrests the old lady!
The rest of the party had cornered this thug who had thrown the paper plane, who was watching them. The Monk recognises him as the man he saw in the Fallen Roc Tavern, who slipped away after watching them. The Cleric casts Hold Person on him, and they take him below decks to interrogate him. They convince the stable boy to leave (a youth with a breaking voice) and then start interrogating. When he pushes one of the party off of himself and stands up, the barbarian breaks free of the mount holding pens and bites his leg to keep him from running. The man starts screaming, and the stable boy runs back in with a shock-prod and zaps the Bear-barian, sending him flying away and stunning him for 3 rounds. He does not let go of the leg.
The thug has 4hp left at this point, and the copper dragonborn appears with the warlock to see what's going on. they convince him that the barbarian was a half orc, not a bear, and the youth panicked. the youth insists there was a bear, but the party rolls higher and the copper dragonborn copper believes them. The cleric heals the Thug and he tells them that he just looks out for Throwdown, an ettin they encountered earlier (and destroyed his animal fighting tent) , telling him where people with bounties are. They convince him to go with them, as he thinks he'll be killed by Throwdown if he knows he talked. The Thug agrees, and the session ends as the sky ferry docks at the ground.
All told, it was a very good character introduction, heaps of inter-party roleplay, and a massive amount of fun! We pick up again Tomorrow!
Stars Druid, autognome. 4th Level spelljammer party (4 of us) trying to capture a ship in port with a crew of 50: I cast entangle on the side of the ship with the stairs going below so they spent the next 9 turns trying to get 40 crewmembers onto the deck to fight us. we killed the 10 on deck and anyone who exited to topside (mostly they got caught in entangle). We had our smaller ship (the other 2 party members (our only martial characters but one has 2 levels in druid so can pilot that ship) and half a dozen low level hired men load and fire the ballista) fire all 3 ballista (anti personnel bolts that explode) at anyone trapped in entangle. the captain and a couple of other flying kobolds were able to get out and fire missiles and spells at me but they could not get me to break concentration. finally the captain tried to flee and was killed by an opportunity attack....and the 20 crewmembers left below agreed to flee one by one though the back window if we let them keep their beer. By then I was down to one 2nd level spell slot (ready to cast entangle again since it was about to expire) and the wizard was out of spells, so it made sense to let them flee. It definitely helps to have a high CON as a spell caster for HP and concentration checks.
-------
I just joined an already started (2 or 3 sessions in) different campaign (homebrew), one in a Lawful evil empire. We were invited to a fake funeral...just to be jumped by the whole group of assassins/rogues. Let's see how that continues next week...with only one frontliner. I'm a divine soul sorc in this one, yuan-ti.
The group managed to evade notice in the market by splitting up. The Cleric and the Warlock went back for the clerics horse and their hashbow wagon, and the cleric got 2 pieces of mail, the first being that they needed to contact the guild of architects to arrange a meeting because of the cost of the renovations to their manor house, and the second thanking them for sending a representative from the bank, and saying their deposit of 2.5 million gold had been accepted, and work would commence immediately. They were dated around 1 week apart, about a month before. Needless t osay, this left the Cleric concerned.
He sought out a local branch of the bank and managed to get an adviser, who told him that his loan had been approved by magical fingerprint (his own) and was also approved by the bank owners themselves - she also said that getting such a loan is basically unheard of, as the owners never take a direct hand in operations.
The rest of the party found a hill to the Northeast of town and the barbarian showed off his new Circlet of Blasting by firing three scorching rays into the air, whilst they were trying to be subtle. They spent the night on high alert, and the cleric & warlock caught up with them during the night.
The next day they let the Thug (called Clive) drive the wagon, and the party bonded somewhat on the road, with plenty of talking, including the Cleric using Sending to contact the ravens at the manor house ruins to tell them to cooperate with the builders, which took 2 attempts as the old raven is blind, and thought the Cleric was there and tried to respond normally, then concluded he was imagining things when the cleric didn't reply!
That afternoon, they started hearing a thrumming rumble in the air, and the Warlock used her familiar (raven) to spot a skyship heading their way. They immediately went on the defensive, the warlock trying to find shelter but failing, and the ship came in to hover overhead, firing a great harpoon to winch the ship down. I described it as being alike to Zheg-He's ship in size:
(That's Columbus' ship beside it for scale)
The party immediately starts attacking the chain on the harpoon, and the Barbarian uses the Steed Stone to make a metal steed from it (the stone uses local materials to form a steed, it's very cool and took me way too long to create), cutting the ship loose. Meanwhile, the raven familiar is sent to the engines with a foot of Firetwine (a magic item) to try and overload it (the Flyorite Drives that keep skyships aloft respond to the presence of magic to generate lift).
Two giants drop down in blocks of ice, and start trying to kill the party, whilst a third uses a great longbow to pick the Warlock from the air (she was flying up), almost killing her.
The fight is short and brutal - the skyship starts listing as the firetwine (glows white hot when connected in a loop) burns into the engine, and a magical shot from the Hashbow (a 4-shot ballista) on the wagon hits the engine as well. They giants struggle to regain control, and then the Cleric uses divine intervention to say "Please make it so that the engines on that skyship are permanently at full power", and rolls a 9 on the d100!
Well, that naturally results in the skyship hurtling upwards into the clouds, and everyone cheering around the table. They start to see flashes of light in the clouds, and then a few giants fall screaming to their messy ends, and they find a cave to take cover in. There, they take a short rest, commend each other on being the first ever to take out a giants skyship, and the session ends!
If you're a player in my game, don't read this next part!
I, however, was struggling to keep the smile off my face - little do they know that the flashes they saw, and assumed were the engines overloading, were the giants using magic to try and cut loose the engines. Next session, this ship is most definitely going to make a reappearance, clad in ice from the upper atmosphere, and gliding gracelessly to an impact with the ground as the second-to-last engine is seen breaking away and shooting into the sky! I have so much prep to make a battlemap of the downed ship!
The last session was fairly straightforward, but still had some pretty epic moments. I’ll put the summary in a spoiler box, as it is an analysis of the episode that I linked before. Listen to the episode first if you can.
The party had just arrived in the town of Lockwood, and after checking off all the normal boxes in the prior episode (shopping, window shopping, haggling), they went to the Golden Goblet Inn to rest. As they were waiting for their soup to be served, in walked two thuggish members of a local militia known as the Iron Guard. These individuals were fanatics who claimed to have power bestowed on them by their leader, the Iron Champion. They started harassing the party, things heated up, and before long they had challenged the party to a duel. The innkeeper told them to take it outside, and so they did. That’s where the session began. The actual plot was fairly simple. The Iron Guard is a very paranoid group, mostly because its leader is paranoid. The two guards wanted to harass foreigners and were using their position in the Guard as an excuse. To make things more interesting, I gave the thugs personality. One was a human warrior named Kildrak, who had a sarcastic, sneering manner. I gave him magical powers to make the fight more surprising and keep the players on their toes. The other was a dwarf thug named Flint, who served as a tactical distraction. Adding another enemy to the fight meant that the characters wouldn’t keep beating up on Kildrak, which in turn gave him time to do some damage.
Kildrak using spells also helped make the combat more exciting. The party hasn’t faced a lot of magic users yet, so having someone to give them a taste of their own medicine definitely intensified the fight. Other small things helped round out the combat. In the end, the party won, but Kildrak didn’t die. Instead, they role played sparing his life. The same for the dwarf, who turned out to be the innkeeper’s estranged cousin. I was also impressed by the way the players handled the end, I was expecting them to try and loot everything, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The innkeeper agreed to hide them from the authorities for the night, and they finally got some well-needed rest.
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Last spelljammer session, we tracked down a ship that had crashed on an asteroid to savage it's (4) cannons, (2) torpedo boats and shot and powder. There was a monster there that was invisible, attacked (60 damage) and swallowed a PC, turned invisible again and then and did the same to several NPC crew members, When damaged (I found a way to hurt it even though we don't have "see invisiblity" and someone missed with faerie fire)...it ran away so we couldn't pump it's stomach to reincarnate the PC (I'm a level 9 druid).
Here is the kicker...the PC who died (who had recently rejoined the campaign) wasn't playing that night and nobody told him he died (I did the next day when i realized he didn't know). :) We did complete the salvage mission (all but one cannon we couldn't get to).
Nothing like I had prepared for or expected. Note that I run my game at the local library and have a very large group; also as it's a library program I accept drop-ins.
So, last week, the plan was for the group to leave Everlund and head out to the Evermoors in search of Ostorian ruins so that they could get a line on the Thundering Observatory from Glory of the Giants, as part of their quest to deal with an artifact they are carrying around called the "Orb of Nether," that they took from a Necromancer's lair. Then at the last minute, I get two new players added. Neither has ever played before and the party is 9th level. Naturally we had to start late, and introduce them to the game and the new characters.
I ended up having the aforementioned Necromancer drop a Balor with some lesser fiends into one of the taverns (where I coincidentally had the new characters), and basically gave them a baptism by fire. First thing that happened was the Balor attacked one of the clerics (the one carrying the Orb) with its sword, and then caught one of the barbarians with its flaming whip. Meanwhile the other barbarian, and the other cleric moved up and attacked the fiend. The first cleric tried banishment, but the Balor saved (I was a mean DM and made the cleric's player roll the save). The sorcerer and the dwarven fighter (the two new players) took on the lesser fiends as did the artificer and bard. It was not going well until the rogue (an Eladrin) used fey step to jump onto the Balor's shoulders and broke the control sigil on its forehead.
The Balor exploded, taking out the lesser fiends, and knocking several characters into death saves. One cleric put out the fire from the explosion with create water, while the second's mass healing word got everyone back on their feet.
It was a pretty good session and got the new players involved. The combat was a little on the slow side with ten players and six enemies, but it all worked out pretty well. The truly scary thing is that I had two players missing...
My last session was my last session with the table group that I had struggled to be part of. Long story short, I got tired of the adversarial nature of one of the players (a game rules argument or sometimes a personal conflict practically every session, taking 20-40 minutes to get past, destroying any RP story magic that we had created up to then), and the distracted nature of another player (would regularly slip onto their mobile, and keep themselves busy with other distractions, including playing computer games, then on their turn would ask something like, "OK, what just happened," requiring 5+ minutes of explanation so they could make their decision, make their move, then back to the mobile).
It is, without a doubt, true that no game is better than a bad one. . . dammit. Might I be the one at fault? Possibly, but after I left the table, two other players have since contacted me with messages like, "Let me know if you find or gather another group. I'd like to join it."
The search for a new table group continues.
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I DM’d Session 1 on Wednesday (New Group).
It went well! We started in a Star City (one of the things in my world) in a tavern empty except for the players and 2 NPCs (a man and his child) at the edge of the city, we had a bit of roleplay to let the characters meet each other.
Weird cultist boys teleported in and rolled a bomb into the centre of the tavern and activated the detonations at the entire tavern, everything went boom and the tavern went flying off the edge, we had some rounds in the sky as we fell but the child NPC channeled some magic and everyone’s vision went dark.
We awoke back on the ground of the Mainland and had to scavenge for supplies to survive, we ended after they found some old ruins and were attacked by some funky wolf bois.
@madtown I set the find deer DC to 11. Your way is more complex but looks good. It's funny how small things like this turn into being more fun than the game itself.
Had a session last week, and well, it went as well as anyone could have expected when looked at from another lens.
Continuing from my last post on here:
Started off with them leaving the acting rooms and the monks drake being turned back from stone. When asked "how are you feeling my old friend", the drake replied "I feel different.". The drake was not capable of talking before.
Finding out that:
The party sought some out and managed to persuade them that they needed to get the Drake there, and got directions to find a character called Olba. The woods they sought were to the north, beyond an indoor lake which could be circumnavigated easily.
I had planned overland encounters, and drawn a map, and hadn't thought of the characters going over the lake I put between them and their goal, with freaking docks at either end. Yeah, my mistake.
One player is a cleric, and another is a monk who hates being touched. The warlock is also very "hands to yourself if you want to keep them", and the paladin is somewhat uncomfortable in social situations. So, I gave them 3 options - they can go around, they can wait for the ferry, which will take several hours to return, or they can bribe the owner of the Incubus and Succubus, a catamaran "pleasure" barge full of ladies (and gents) of the night. I thought that they would choose to walk.
Whelp, what followed was an intensely funny and awkward half hour of roleplay as they did indeed take the Incubus and Succubus, and then proceeded to:
Yeah, so this was the first time I had to roleplay flirtatious people for the entire group. I put various bardcore music on in the background (EG shakira hips don't lie, and that ilk), and everyone found it very fun.
They eventually get to the other side and scout out the woods, and make their way to a temple, after finding a talkative toucan who makes terrible jokes (I would charge, but the bills too big!) and takes them to the temple. There they meet Olba the Owlbear, and are told that the spring is how they stay "enlightened", but that it has been fouled. They recognise the foul, saltwater odour. They smelt it before, in the temple to Mizlavurm the snake god, where agents of Dagon (And the uncle of the cleric) made a sacrifice to Dagon to desecrate the shrine. They proceeded into the temple to clear the infestation and restore the fountain. There they passed a room of trap mirrors which reach out with ghostly hands and hold you, and then a riddle (based on "the word of god" from indiana jones 3). They now enter a fight with an ancient snake guardian, which they manage to overcome. There ends the session.
Was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to what comes next!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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Had our fourth character death yesterday!!! woohoo!!!!
Party of four level 9's, only healer is a multiclassed artificer. We were tracking down the source of an algae that dissolves people that had flooded into a town filled with monsters, killing pretty much everything. We were already low on health from the previous session, so when we found the lair of an alchemist with a pet (Unknown Creature That Can Vomit Will O' Wisps) trapped in a force cage, we tried everything to avoid a fight.
We ended up convincing him (the alchemist) not to sic his monster on us, and got the information we needed from him through a healthy mix of persuasion, threats, and manipulation (the artificer, a kalashtar, feigned having no idea why their voice kept asking for answers from Inside the alchemists head). We got a map to the epicenter of the flood, and after a long rest followed it to a cave that was absolutely surrounded by monsters. It was an uphill battle, to say the least. The warlock killed plenty of swarms of bats, but the huge giant death monster was too busy picking up our monk, who through a series of intentionally bad choices started the fight at about half hp because of course he did, and flying away with him grappled and restrained, stunned and deafened by another monster in the fight, and at 7 hp.
I tried, i really did, but Vortex Warp has a track record of simply refusing to work for me. As i typed this, i realized that i could have saved our monk by casting the spell on him and having him willingly fail the save. But i was panicking. The monster rolled a nat 20 on the save because of course it did. Its turn was next because of course it was. It rolled a nat 20 on its super special bite attack where if it crits and lowers the target to 0 it instakills them because of course it would.
so yeah the monk's head got bitten off and the highest level healing we had was either a lvl 2 cure wounds or a potion of greater healing that we all forgot about.... oops.
:)
Following on from my previous post...
The party found a side corridor full of Rutterkin, and successfully bottlenecked them and cut them all down. They were lacking in AOE spells, but the Barbarian has a homebrew greatsword which lets you keep attacking (with a reducing number of damage dice) if you kill the target of your attack, so that helped him finish off 3 of them in one head-lopping swing!
They stopped to defile a forgotten gods alter (which they seem to have confused for being the evil god, when it wasn't) and had a short rest, and then continued to the main There, they see a hooded humanoid figure on the raised alter, and several smaller figures around the walls, carving runes which appear the same as those they found in the basement of the cleric's ancestral manor. Half a dwarf hands on chains, in the same manner as below the house.
The man by the alter turns slowly, his robes dripping wet, and locks pale eyes with the Artificer, and says "I thought it would be her first...", then orders the others to stop the party. The artificer (who is a son of Thor, and struggling to work out hit parentage) runs to the alter and throws down his weapon, wanting to talk, whilst the barbarian runs to the alter, wanting to fight. and asks who he is. He replies with "It is funny, how little you know...", and casts Bigbys hand as a tentacle to push the barbarian away, then to grapple the artificer. He then has a brief spiel on how tha Artificer had everything handed to him, and how he had to work for everything he had. He belittled his armour (made of ysgardian steel, which was given as an ingot by Thor, who found the Artificer and briefly gifted him this before leaving), and showed him the chains that are tightly wound around his arm, that he "forged link by link, and with each link, he gained more knowledge".
Then he Banished the Monk, who failed his save, and the Warlock (who likes the monk) did not know what happened and flew into a murderous rage. The fight saw the Barbarian fail his save to Suggestion and be told to "Stop the Cleric", who was heading for one of the rune-carving cultists, who were Yuan-ti Dwarves. The Warlock used an ability which let her fly and get an extra attack, and started firing her longbow at the man, who was using Mislead to disguise his true location. The man summoned a Lophilithan (a homebrew anglerfish-demon who can swallow you), and then used Thunderwave to move to where one of the yuan-ti had died before completing the symbol. The Barbarian managed to destroy one of the runes, having been sworn to by the Cleric that he would not move, therefore was "Stopped", and the room rumbled ominously.
The last round of combat before we ran out of time saw the Monk hit with Confusion and then swallowed by the Lophilithan, the Barbarian still trying to stop the cleric from moving, the artificer demanding answers and getting nothing but scornful laughter, and the Warlock pull a power move - she shot the man with a Deaths-Hand Arrow.
The Deaths Hand arrow is a legendary, single-shot piece of ammo which has a terrifying effect - the target takes normal damage, but at the end of each of their turns thereafter, they have to make a death save, unaffected by damage etc., and if they fail 3, they just die. If they pass 3, then they live. And she hit him!
And there the session ended due to time!
Now I had intended for this character to be a recurring villain (he is in fact Modi, the other son of Thor, brother of the Artificer, and the prophet and Warlock to Dagon, the demon prince of the sea of stars in the abyss, which in turn is where the serpent Mizlavurm was cast by the gods. He is trying to summon Dagon, and is using the cult of Mizlavurm to do it, and when it happens so too will escape Mizlavurm. He hates the Artificer because Thor found him, and did not find Modi.). However, with a Death Hand Arrow in play, I can't just say "he died, but he got better". This could really change things up in the game!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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So. Many. Lore Drops. This session was just meant to be rest/exploration of a new city. What ended up happening was the warlock learning that his devil GF is, in fact, already married. To The Devil. Like. The guy. And also my character learned that the bloody note left atop an old party member’s corpse in her father’s handwriting could not, in fact, have been from him, because he had joined a war effort thousands of miles away from where the killing happened. I had been living with the assumption that he abandoned her and got brainwashed/something like that and started killing innocent people. Now I learn he’s still his same old self, he’s just not communicated for TEN MONTHS despite only having joined the war effort four weeks ago, for some Completely Separate reason, which I need to go find out but despite the fact that we are level 10, no one has sending/scrying/anything I can use to get more info, and also I need to find out who/why someone is framing him.
The bard is taking blacksmithing lessons, so that’s fun.
there is so much more context I could/should give but it would end up being the full length of the 30 pages of notes I have for this campaign.
:)
Ran a side session using the backup characters for my campaign, aiming to be a 1-2 shot.
Party starts in the tavern where they met the main party, and were left to wait for them. A bald halfling with a powerful voice arrives and orders earl grey tea, and then spends some time arranging a comfy chair by the window. Everyone is helping the tavernkeep to prepare a trophy wall, and then suddenly the tavern lurches, and everyone falls over.
The newcomer assures them all that he's "just borrowing it" as he flies the tavern, using the spelljamming helm he just created, to the moon. He explains on the way that he has seen something crash and needs t ofind it, to prove that there are other worlds out there. He is also amazed his spelljamming helm worked, as he had studied it his whole life.
The party agrees to help, and after almost sinking into a dust-bowl full of Cave Fishers, they find a crashed lifeboat from a ship called the Voidcleaver. They find a dead Giff, and tracks leading toward a strange tower-like structure, which they head towards. They find a book on the Giff, detailing goods in and out, and the last entry mentions Artefacts, "Weapon?", and "Power Source".
They find a strange structure which looks like a torque, stood on end, and made of strange stone-like material. Several players recognise this with an "oh no...", but they investigate anyway.
They start climbing the ship, which aligns its gravity plane outwards so that it is essentially one long corridor, and use Locate Creature to sense the nearest Giff, who is above them. They find a Loxodon in an armoured suit in an observatory, long dead. They then start hearing gunshots, and run towards them as they intend to help the Giff. As they approach, the Giff sensor suddenly moves further up the ship, and the gunfire stops. The wizard uses Clairvoyance to see the Giff, and he sees it running, panicked. A minute later, a black semi-humanoid creature scuttles past the sensor on 6 limbs.
They proceed up the ship to save him, and find themselves in a space where the cargo hold has been overrun with organic resinous structures, the floor ribbed, the hard edges softened. There they fought several Star Spawn Manglers, for whom I used Tyranid Genestealer models from Space Hulk. The NPC wizard (who was caled Pickluke Johncard) panicked and started running, and the 2 druids summoned 8 owls (2 of which died) and 16 giant wolf spiders (!) to fight for them. They pushed back the monsters and recovered Pickluke, who was still running, and they brought him back to his senses.
Up ahead they hear more gunshots, and they race to find the Giff. The wizard casts Message every turn, to say "help is on the way", and after a short run up the ship, he receives the reply "No, gods ple-", and there is no more gunfire. They find the bloodstains in the corridor at the end, and break through the door to find the other end of the cargo hold, where they see the Giff hung in the ceiling, partially encased in resin. They break him down with the Spiders and recover his Musket and Pistol. The only character whos backstory involved such things demonstrates how it works by shooting into the hold, and I describe how as the glowing shot shoots down the hold, they see the glint of dozens of alien eyes in the darkness.
The Divination Wizard cast fireball.
The Transmutation Wizard cast Fireball.
The NPC Transmutation Wizard cast Fireball.
The resulting explosion did 93 damage, and seemed to incinerate everything in the hold!
They then found a strange glowing dodecahedron in one of the crates, which had been disturbed, and assumed that this was the "Power Source" stated in the quartermasters logbook.
They found the spelljamming helm in the top of the ship, and one of the Wizards stopped to attune to it over a short rest. When they finished, they were surprised to feel that they could almost feel the ship as if it were their body, and they also felt a pain i ntheir abdomen, which quickly turned sharp just as a rumbling tremor of an explosion echoed up the ship.
And there the session ended! It was an absolute hoot!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Dating is complicated, even in dnd.
My group enjoys complex solutions to easy problems. They could've asked an npc to increase the reward for a quest, but one of them decided she wanted to date the npc to butter him up before asking. They met at a tavern. I played the npc as an arrogant bore, which was his persona. The player didn't like his manner. Her friends, sitting nearby, decided to get involved b/c they didn't like him either. One of them punched the npc in the face. He called for his two bodyguards. Then it was on. A fight began, wine splashed faces, liquor bottles smashed here and there, a few unnecessary spells injured the bodyguards. Thankfully, before this got too crazy (and I would have to improv more), the reasonable player entered and solved the problem. The players had to pay the npc and hand him a magic item as the cost of their actions.
The last session I had was a while ago. It was actually the ending of our most recent campaign together!
In the beginning of that session, we had left off on my character(the King of the abandoned Terasque kingdom that didn't have any Terasques and was just named that) on the top floor, thinking of a plan because the Elf Kingdom and the Orc Kingdom had sent assassins for him and was attacking his kingdom. His advisor(an elf named Samuel, another PC) was disguised as my character. Samuel was fighting off the assassins with the OP also-elven royal guard.
Eventually, my character had come to the conclusion that to protect his people and friends, he had to commence an emergency meeting between all of the kingdoms. To my character's surprise(not mine), Samuel had told the Orc King(his name was Joe Mama for some reason...) to go attack the Elf Kingdom's shared territory with the Dwarf King(he was an NPC originally apart of our party, think his name was The Stone Breaker), but the Orc King and the Elf King had made up and decided to send a group of assassins for my character, completely aware it had been Samuel who had threatened his kingdom.
After a while of lecturing and arguing, the peace eventually came to an end. The meeting room was very big and wide -- I mean, originally for the Terasques, so . . . Turns out, the Elf King had made a deal with the OP royal guard and elf soldiers or whatever came out from the corners of the room and tied up my character and Samuel. The OP royal guard was on our side and restraining Samuel, managing to weaken Samuel's restraints. The OP royal guard eventually attacked the Elf King, I think. He betrayed the Elf King, blah, blah, blah . . . Samuel went outside to try and help the OP royal guard with his battle with the Elf King, but it was already over. I think the elf soldiers hadn't fully left yet . . . Anyways, my character managed to cut his restraints and use his (acid) breath weapon to get the elf soldier off of him. He followed downstairs, but by that time Samuel had come upstairs so he stayed upstairs.
They spoke for a while(the other royals had left, so did the elf soldiers) until they heard something outside. My character noticed it first and pointed it out, but Samuel hadn't noticed until they saw the king and queen Terasque at the front gates of the kingdom with one of their former NPC party members + the Elf King riding one of them. They had to call out to the OP royal guard, realizes he was downstairs, my character sent a message to him, he came upstairs, and then the monologue happened.
The OP royal guard went outside to fend the Terasques off while Samuel had to carry my character(why carry? I think he was faster) towards the exit. One of the OP royal guard's army soldiers turned evil(?). Samuel was having to convince the evil animated armor soldier that my character was the King, before getting knocked over.
After a lot of stress and moving, the Terasques were defeated and we had a happy scene of Samuel, OP royal guard, and my character together discussing. The OP royal guard asked if he wanted him to continue serving him or wait another 1,000 years to serve another king. Samuel offered for him to take a break, but he said it would go against his contract. My character and Samuel discussed for a bit, before my character forged another contract to overrule it. It promised a permanent break, and though my character really liked him as a person, he had to let him go.
There was a week timeskip, and OP royal guard took his last things and said goodbye to Samuel and him, also revealing a secret library my character had never known about the few sessions he had as king.
I'm really gonna miss that campaign, and I feel like I'm gonna cry while writing this. Hope our group comes up with a sequel to it. :)
Arjhootie
Just held session 0 for a new campaign: a zombie apocalypse set in the modern day, but also like d&d stuff still exists yknow. (<-- that was definitely as epic-sounding a description as i wanted it to be...)
I had 7 players +1 who couldn't make it, so that's gonna be fun to balance for in the future! We spent the first half building characters, explaining stuff to new players, and figuring out how everyone's backstories related to the setting, as well as deciding exactly what the setting was.
We settled on The Waffle House Outside Houston, Texas as the party's home base, as this campaign will be set about a year after the zombie apocalypse has started, with the characters all knowing each other by that point.
We all went in a circle introducing everyone's characters to the level of familiarity that the party would have with them at the time of the campaign's start. That was tons of fun, everyone has absolutely absurd character ideas (and the names??? masterpieces.)
Once that was done, we did a small scenario showing how everyone arrived in the Waffle House in the first place, one year before. The one character who worked at the Waffle House sat everyone at the same table because all of the other ones were so dirty (based on a review we found for the real Waffle House they chose to set up base in), and started playing the bagpipes to entertain them (he is a bard who is a failed actor and found his calling in this random Waffle House as a music-playing waiter). Gary, the manager, got angry because he was being annoying and overcharging the guests, and then suddenly collapsed on the table in front of everyone and started twitching...
We had to cut it off there, so i think i'll open next session still in the prologue right at that point, and everyone can have their first fight with one zombie. Then we'll skip to a year later, mid-apocalypse, and figure out how everyone's changed/what they've done to the Waffle House to help them survive for so long, and all the other stuff. This is going to be a hell of a campaign. We have two bards. The zombies are attracted to sound. I'm so excited.
:)
Went well; the players at my table are still engaged in the progression.
Enlisted by the Blackstaff of Waterdeep, Vajra Safahr, to investigate the presence of the Red Wizards of Thay currently occupying our Druid’s grove in Warlock’s Crypt; the party was magically transported to the region from Blackstaff Tower & told to rendezvous with an agent of the Gray Hands (an organization of adventurers dedicated to protecting Waterdeep).
Their contact was none other than Harshnag the Grim: a friendly frost giant, alongside his new “partner” Maegra, a fire giant.
Following the shattering of the Ordning; Queen Serissa had tasked Harshnag and other loyal giants to re-structuring the other disparate giant clans into something better, one that would be at peace with the small folk. Maegra was one of a few fire giants willing to give this new alliance a try…though the rivalry between the fire giants & frost giants was still made apparent by the brusque attitude between the two large warriors.
Harshnag told the party that they’d been in the area to recruit a cloud giant & frost giant Harshnag had knowledge of…but upon arrival found that the Red Wizards had slayed the frost giant; and disintegrated the cloud giant by way of an Undead Beholder they had been controlling.
Harshnag told Maegra to keep guard of their flank; and the frost giant accompanied the party to the site where they last observed the Red Wizards; which predictably was in the same direction as our Druid’s grove.
Along the way, the party encountered the Undead Beholder: our Druid urged Harshnag to fling him at the floating eye monster. Upon landing (with some understandable damage), the Druid wildshaped into a giant octopus, covering the Undead Beholder’s main eye, and restraining the aberration.
The party took advantage of the distracted beholder to mount a charge; narrowly avoiding several of it’s beams. The Druid took a hit from a necrotic ray, dwindling it’s HP pool until he reverted back to his bugbear form; but by that time, the party had cleared enough ground to get enough hits (the Magic Missile turret of our resident Sorcerer helped a great deal).
The encounter was left at a bit of a cliffhanger, however, as fake and dust swirled ominously to form a Cloud Giant Ghost…the deceased spirit of the murdered cloud giant!
Me, the DM: Alright guys, so you're going to the Ancient Dragons lair. The whole way is shrouded in fog, but the dragon can still see you if you get too close. The dragon will likely be with its hoard, which is just behind the waterfall. If you quietly dispatch the minions in the fog, you won't have to deal with them should you fight them.
Party (Including Rogue): Understood.
DM: Can everyone see the map alright (We use a VTT), sometimes it glitches and doesn't show and it wasn't appearing for the Warlock earlier
Rogue: I can see it
DM: You can see the grass where your standing?
Rogue: Yes, I can see it
----
Ranger: Would my character know how well a dragon can see through fog?
-Rolls a 3 on the check-
DM: You know they see better than normal humanoids
Rogue: Do I know?
-Rolls a 20 on the check-
DM: You know a dragon of this age could probably see you at least 50ft away.
Ranger: Well it's on top of a waterfall, so we just need to not go past the waterfall and we'll be fine
---
Rogue: Alright, I'm going to make sure the path ahead is clear
Ranger: Don't go too far, we're all the way back here
DM: As you move further along, you realise you are standing right next to a waterfall
Ranger: Oh my god, it's right past there
---
DM: Alright it's the Rogue's turn
Rogue: Sure, I'd like to scout up ahead
-Moves model up past the waterfall-
DM: Oh... wow...
Rogue: What?
Ranger: Oh crap
Rogue: Wait, no!
DM: Well I guess I shouldn't say anything cause it's not the dragons initiative yet
Ranger: Why did you go past the waterfall?
Rogue: What waterfall?
DM: The one I mentioned was right next to you and said the dragon was just behind
Rogue: Hang on, this isn't fair, I can't see the map
DM: You said you could!
Rogue: I thought you were using a lack of map to represent the fog!?!
DM: You said you could see the grass!
Rogue: Well, I don't know. I guess we retcon this.
-Moves model back to where it was-
Ranger: Ummm... the waterfall was mentioned repeatedly
Rogue: I didn't know!!!
DM: Well it's getting late, lets wrap up the session here...
Rogue: I don't want to be the one that TPK'd the party!
The first official session of my modern day zombie apocalypse campaign was an absolute success and was SO MUCH FUN. It’s my first fully homebrew campaign and I decided to not stress and not prep too much and it worked out beautifully.
I have a party with eight players and only four could make it, which made the first adventure much easier to balance, which was nice. The party (who live in a Waffle House outside of Houston TX) had to make their way to a 7/11 that had recently been restocked by automated Amazon delivery drones, but was booby trapped and defended by another group of survivors in their town.
The very first thing that was said after the very first “so what are you all doing?” while still in the Waffle House home base, was “I’m checking the rat traps for food” from the lizardfolk cleric, which was the BEST start I could have hoped for, and it only got more hilarious and chaotic from there.
On the way there they had a fight with three zombies which lasted Much Longer than it should have but the rogue kept choosing to pretend to be scared and cry instead of helping to fight in order to make the other party members feel bad for her, which only led to some of the funniest in-character dialogue I’ve had the pleasure of DMing during.
As they arrived at the 7/11 they noticed two dogs chained out front to act as guards/alarms, which, with successful stealth and animal handling checks, two party members managed to free, and one, the bard, got one of the dogs on her side while the other one ran off. I was so happy that through a sort of Freudian slip I accidentally caused the party to fall in love with a half-blind dog and adopt and name it. The aarakocra Paladin also flew above the building and noticed that there were food wrappers and bullet shells on the roof, as well as a ladder leading up to it, meaning someone was guarding the location but didn’t seem to be present.
The four finally made it into the 7/11, where the bard immediately triggered a trap and almost got a ton of bricks dropped on her head, and then they continued inward, where the bard triggered the second trap and let loose a zombie that had been held in the back office where all the supplies were. The singular zombie wasn’t much of a hindrance because I was rolling Extremely Poorly, but the party members who were present got to loot the 7/11, and the rogue got to chuck her knife at the zombie and ended up (kinda gross description warning, mostly just funny tho) aiming for and successfully, uh, de-balling him and pinning them to the wall 10ft behind him, all in the name of “facing her fear” since the others thought she truly was terrified of zombies from her little crying performance in the previous encounter.
The session ended with them, now loaded up with equipment and food, with a zombie at 4hp still in the store with them, hearing their new dog, now named Jupiter, begin to bark from outside.
:)
Following on from This post...
The artificer paladin offered his life in exchange for the rest of the party, and the warlock replied with a gravelly laugh, "hah! You think I want any of your lives?".
The Monk fought his way out of the lophilithan's stomach and managed to force a bag of holding over the warlocks head, and trapped him inside. Whilst he was sat on it (to keep it closed), the bag swelled up and leaked horrible saltwater everywhere.
After the fight, they sanctified the fountain and Zorgrak, the drake, drank from it, and can now talk forever (is that a rod in my back? Look at the rod in my back!).
The Artificer decided to have a holiday, and after an emotional parting, walked off dramatically, wishing for a sunset (but there was none as he was inside). He's now having a holiday in the best spas in the world, and has the pangolin they rescued from the circus.
Everyone else proceeded upwards to the fifth floor of the Tower, and there they found a sign for "Gizmo Grayling's Curiosity Shoppe" which when read appeared slightly different for each of them, and they read it in the voice of Gizmo, despite having never met him (he sounds quite like Balin, the old dwarf from The Hobbit).
They then immediately met the new character, a human paladin who knew the way to Gizmo's shop, and who had been looking for them to find her brother (the artificer paladin who was holidaying). She led them to Gizmos shop, and they got to know each other a bit.
At Gizmos they were offered a large menu of magical items to purchase, and the Barbarian did some shopping. The Warlock bought a paint Gizmo created called Splotch, that makes hard things soft and soft things hard. Everyone snickered. The warlock also asked Gizmo to identify the statue she had found in the dragons lair, and he explained that this statue was some potent and powerful magic, not only overriding his field of antimagic, but negating any and all conventional detection or identification spells, which has has built into a jewellers monocle, which displays all information about items in a HUD, as though you were reading from the rulebooks.
The party leaves the rubber duck they found (when squeaked, it summons a random object, 3 charges per day) and this statue (secret to the rest of the party) with Gizmo, and the Warlock takes a sending stone from Gizmo so that she can talk to him. She also took 19 cursed gems, which he asked her to throw at her enemies and see what they do, and report them back to him. (I have a random table of 300 unique cursed gems. It's going to be brilliantly good fun.)
The party then descended the tower by Sky-ferry, and as always when they get on a boat, shenanigans happened.
They had the were-bear barbarian assume bear form to reduce their costs - 30gp per person, 20gp per mount. He got stored in the hold, in a wedge-pen. The Monk and the Paladin characters started to talk, and bond. The Cleric sees a shady character release a paper plane from the front of the boat, and slip into the crowd. And the warlock tries to pet a dog in an elderly womans handbag, and this results in a fight between them, which is amusing when the cross-talk at the table suddenly stops as they hear her say "does a 17 hit?", and they realise they're in combat?
Well, a copper dragonborn (shameless idea stolen from someone I saw on here) policeman steps in and chases down the Warlock, and then arrests her and the old lady (still indignantly crying out about her "Flopsie"). After a brief interview, he discovers that the old lady swung first, and then finds that the bag is full of Contraband goods, and arrests the old lady!
The rest of the party had cornered this thug who had thrown the paper plane, who was watching them. The Monk recognises him as the man he saw in the Fallen Roc Tavern, who slipped away after watching them. The Cleric casts Hold Person on him, and they take him below decks to interrogate him. They convince the stable boy to leave (a youth with a breaking voice) and then start interrogating. When he pushes one of the party off of himself and stands up, the barbarian breaks free of the mount holding pens and bites his leg to keep him from running. The man starts screaming, and the stable boy runs back in with a shock-prod and zaps the Bear-barian, sending him flying away and stunning him for 3 rounds. He does not let go of the leg.
The thug has 4hp left at this point, and the copper dragonborn appears with the warlock to see what's going on. they convince him that the barbarian was a half orc, not a bear, and the youth panicked. the youth insists there was a bear, but the party rolls higher and the copper dragonborn copper believes them. The cleric heals the Thug and he tells them that he just looks out for Throwdown, an ettin they encountered earlier (and destroyed his animal fighting tent) , telling him where people with bounties are. They convince him to go with them, as he thinks he'll be killed by Throwdown if he knows he talked. The Thug agrees, and the session ends as the sky ferry docks at the ground.
All told, it was a very good character introduction, heaps of inter-party roleplay, and a massive amount of fun! We pick up again Tomorrow!
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Stars Druid, autognome. 4th Level spelljammer party (4 of us) trying to capture a ship in port with a crew of 50: I cast entangle on the side of the ship with the stairs going below so they spent the next 9 turns trying to get 40 crewmembers onto the deck to fight us. we killed the 10 on deck and anyone who exited to topside (mostly they got caught in entangle). We had our smaller ship (the other 2 party members (our only martial characters but one has 2 levels in druid so can pilot that ship) and half a dozen low level hired men load and fire the ballista) fire all 3 ballista (anti personnel bolts that explode) at anyone trapped in entangle. the captain and a couple of other flying kobolds were able to get out and fire missiles and spells at me but they could not get me to break concentration. finally the captain tried to flee and was killed by an opportunity attack....and the 20 crewmembers left below agreed to flee one by one though the back window if we let them keep their beer. By then I was down to one 2nd level spell slot (ready to cast entangle again since it was about to expire) and the wizard was out of spells, so it made sense to let them flee. It definitely helps to have a high CON as a spell caster for HP and concentration checks.
-------
I just joined an already started (2 or 3 sessions in) different campaign (homebrew), one in a Lawful evil empire. We were invited to a fake funeral...just to be jumped by the whole group of assassins/rogues. Let's see how that continues next week...with only one frontliner. I'm a divine soul sorc in this one, yuan-ti.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Continuing from this post...
The group managed to evade notice in the market by splitting up. The Cleric and the Warlock went back for the clerics horse and their hashbow wagon, and the cleric got 2 pieces of mail, the first being that they needed to contact the guild of architects to arrange a meeting because of the cost of the renovations to their manor house, and the second thanking them for sending a representative from the bank, and saying their deposit of 2.5 million gold had been accepted, and work would commence immediately. They were dated around 1 week apart, about a month before. Needless t osay, this left the Cleric concerned.
He sought out a local branch of the bank and managed to get an adviser, who told him that his loan had been approved by magical fingerprint (his own) and was also approved by the bank owners themselves - she also said that getting such a loan is basically unheard of, as the owners never take a direct hand in operations.
The rest of the party found a hill to the Northeast of town and the barbarian showed off his new Circlet of Blasting by firing three scorching rays into the air, whilst they were trying to be subtle. They spent the night on high alert, and the cleric & warlock caught up with them during the night.
The next day they let the Thug (called Clive) drive the wagon, and the party bonded somewhat on the road, with plenty of talking, including the Cleric using Sending to contact the ravens at the manor house ruins to tell them to cooperate with the builders, which took 2 attempts as the old raven is blind, and thought the Cleric was there and tried to respond normally, then concluded he was imagining things when the cleric didn't reply!
That afternoon, they started hearing a thrumming rumble in the air, and the Warlock used her familiar (raven) to spot a skyship heading their way. They immediately went on the defensive, the warlock trying to find shelter but failing, and the ship came in to hover overhead, firing a great harpoon to winch the ship down. I described it as being alike to Zheg-He's ship in size:
(That's Columbus' ship beside it for scale)
The party immediately starts attacking the chain on the harpoon, and the Barbarian uses the Steed Stone to make a metal steed from it (the stone uses local materials to form a steed, it's very cool and took me way too long to create), cutting the ship loose. Meanwhile, the raven familiar is sent to the engines with a foot of Firetwine (a magic item) to try and overload it (the Flyorite Drives that keep skyships aloft respond to the presence of magic to generate lift).
Two giants drop down in blocks of ice, and start trying to kill the party, whilst a third uses a great longbow to pick the Warlock from the air (she was flying up), almost killing her.
The fight is short and brutal - the skyship starts listing as the firetwine (glows white hot when connected in a loop) burns into the engine, and a magical shot from the Hashbow (a 4-shot ballista) on the wagon hits the engine as well. They giants struggle to regain control, and then the Cleric uses divine intervention to say "Please make it so that the engines on that skyship are permanently at full power", and rolls a 9 on the d100!
Well, that naturally results in the skyship hurtling upwards into the clouds, and everyone cheering around the table. They start to see flashes of light in the clouds, and then a few giants fall screaming to their messy ends, and they find a cave to take cover in. There, they take a short rest, commend each other on being the first ever to take out a giants skyship, and the session ends!
If you're a player in my game, don't read this next part!
I, however, was struggling to keep the smile off my face - little do they know that the flashes they saw, and assumed were the engines overloading, were the giants using magic to try and cut loose the engines. Next session, this ship is most definitely going to make a reappearance, clad in ice from the upper atmosphere, and gliding gracelessly to an impact with the ground as the second-to-last engine is seen breaking away and shooting into the sky! I have so much prep to make a battlemap of the downed ship!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
We record our sessions:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7sknCEntj2KhYUQYQBb0V3
The last session was fairly straightforward, but still had some pretty epic moments. I’ll put the summary in a spoiler box, as it is an analysis of the episode that I linked before. Listen to the episode first if you can.
The party had just arrived in the town of Lockwood, and after checking off all the normal boxes in the prior episode (shopping, window shopping, haggling), they went to the Golden Goblet Inn to rest. As they were waiting for their soup to be served, in walked two thuggish members of a local militia known as the Iron Guard. These individuals were fanatics who claimed to have power bestowed on them by their leader, the Iron Champion. They started harassing the party, things heated up, and before long they had challenged the party to a duel. The innkeeper told them to take it outside, and so they did. That’s where the session began.
The actual plot was fairly simple. The Iron Guard is a very paranoid group, mostly because its leader is paranoid. The two guards wanted to harass foreigners and were using their position in the Guard as an excuse. To make things more interesting, I gave the thugs personality. One was a human warrior named Kildrak, who had a sarcastic, sneering manner. I gave him magical powers to make the fight more surprising and keep the players on their toes. The other was a dwarf thug named Flint, who served as a tactical distraction. Adding another enemy to the fight meant that the characters wouldn’t keep beating up on Kildrak, which in turn gave him time to do some damage.
Kildrak using spells also helped make the combat more exciting. The party hasn’t faced a lot of magic users yet, so having someone to give them a taste of their own medicine definitely intensified the fight. Other small things helped round out the combat. In the end, the party won, but Kildrak didn’t die. Instead, they role played sparing his life. The same for the dwarf, who turned out to be the innkeeper’s estranged cousin. I was also impressed by the way the players handled the end, I was expecting them to try and loot everything, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The innkeeper agreed to hide them from the authorities for the night, and they finally got some well-needed rest.
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Last spelljammer session, we tracked down a ship that had crashed on an asteroid to savage it's (4) cannons, (2) torpedo boats and shot and powder. There was a monster there that was invisible, attacked (60 damage) and swallowed a PC, turned invisible again and then and did the same to several NPC crew members, When damaged (I found a way to hurt it even though we don't have "see invisiblity" and someone missed with faerie fire)...it ran away so we couldn't pump it's stomach to reincarnate the PC (I'm a level 9 druid).
Here is the kicker...the PC who died (who had recently rejoined the campaign) wasn't playing that night and nobody told him he died (I did the next day when i realized he didn't know). :) We did complete the salvage mission (all but one cannon we couldn't get to).
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Nothing like I had prepared for or expected. Note that I run my game at the local library and have a very large group; also as it's a library program I accept drop-ins.
So, last week, the plan was for the group to leave Everlund and head out to the Evermoors in search of Ostorian ruins so that they could get a line on the Thundering Observatory from Glory of the Giants, as part of their quest to deal with an artifact they are carrying around called the "Orb of Nether," that they took from a Necromancer's lair. Then at the last minute, I get two new players added. Neither has ever played before and the party is 9th level. Naturally we had to start late, and introduce them to the game and the new characters.
I ended up having the aforementioned Necromancer drop a Balor with some lesser fiends into one of the taverns (where I coincidentally had the new characters), and basically gave them a baptism by fire. First thing that happened was the Balor attacked one of the clerics (the one carrying the Orb) with its sword, and then caught one of the barbarians with its flaming whip. Meanwhile the other barbarian, and the other cleric moved up and attacked the fiend. The first cleric tried banishment, but the Balor saved (I was a mean DM and made the cleric's player roll the save). The sorcerer and the dwarven fighter (the two new players) took on the lesser fiends as did the artificer and bard. It was not going well until the rogue (an Eladrin) used fey step to jump onto the Balor's shoulders and broke the control sigil on its forehead.
The Balor exploded, taking out the lesser fiends, and knocking several characters into death saves. One cleric put out the fire from the explosion with create water, while the second's mass healing word got everyone back on their feet.
It was a pretty good session and got the new players involved. The combat was a little on the slow side with ten players and six enemies, but it all worked out pretty well. The truly scary thing is that I had two players missing...
My last session was my last session with the table group that I had struggled to be part of. Long story short, I got tired of the adversarial nature of one of the players (a game rules argument or sometimes a personal conflict practically every session, taking 20-40 minutes to get past, destroying any RP story magic that we had created up to then), and the distracted nature of another player (would regularly slip onto their mobile, and keep themselves busy with other distractions, including playing computer games, then on their turn would ask something like, "OK, what just happened," requiring 5+ minutes of explanation so they could make their decision, make their move, then back to the mobile).
It is, without a doubt, true that no game is better than a bad one. . . dammit. Might I be the one at fault? Possibly, but after I left the table, two other players have since contacted me with messages like, "Let me know if you find or gather another group. I'd like to join it."
The search for a new table group continues.