D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[the Jester]

It was good- fast-paced, starting in a combat that was last session's cliffhanger and ending in a confrontation with the adventure's BBEG (or one of them, anyway) that was inconclusive and resulted in the bad guy fleeing while the pcs fell back, both sides pretty close to defeat.

For those familiar with it, I am running the 1e module L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, and the pcs fought the skelter, zombire, AND Telvar this session.

 

[Richards]

In today's "Dreams of Erthe" campaign, the PCs:

• Learned there were five dragons who couldn't be contacted through the Dragonmind (the voluntary telepathic network used by dragons when they sleep for months/years/decades, allowing them to stay in contact with others of their kind as they plot and scheme)
• Were told (by the Council running the Dreamlands) that in each case, when the moogles examined the dreams of the five sleeping dragons (one of each of the chromatic species), there was an overly-large hypnalis viper basking in the dream and taking on the properties of the dragon in whose dream they were squatting
• Agreed to rid the five dreams of their half-dragon hypnalis vipers, under the belief that slaying them would allow the sleeping dragons access to the Dragonmind once again
• Went in one by one to each dreamscape, taking on the white, red, green, blue, and black half-dragons in that order, five against one each time
• After each viper was slain, sure enough, that allowed the dragon to return to its "normal" dreaming and got it back into the Dragonmind (which was good, because that way the other dragons could talk the dragons out of attacking the dreamwalker PCs it "suddenly" found invading its dreams)

So, five short encounters with creatures the PCs had never fought before. These advanced hypnalis vipers were tough; several times I almost "killed" a PC (which would have resulted in that PC being thrown out of the Dreamlands and waking up in the Mortal World in a cold sweat), and there was a lot of draconic breath weapons and catching PCs in coils and constricting them going on in the dreamscapes. (In each case, the dragon's dreamscape was a representation of its lair on the Mortal Plane.) As a result, there was no treasure this time through, and the next adventure will have the PCs tracking down where these five advanced hypnalis vipers came from, considering the Nightmare King who controlled the "normal" ones has long since been slain.

Johnathan

 

[James Gasik]

Session 2 in the bag. Introduced the new character to our all-caster party, a ranged Fighter (sigh, lol), and after a lot of discussion, finally got the party on the road, only to run afoul of the first optional encounter, Sir Nycklos of Roeh, a 70+ year old Paladin (CR 8 Knight Champion!) with a Don Quixote complex and packing radiant heat! From there, they teamed up with a friendly "half-oger" and made their way to the next leg of the main quest...and almost turned right around and left after seeing what appeared to be a red dragon! Following an annoying fight against Jermlaine (annoying CR 1/8 fey) and their giant rat pets, they found a sizable hoard of loot.

Lessons learned: why do I always give the players multiple plot hooks simultaneously? It's just going to lead to time spent debating where to go.

Also, if you don't want the PC's to go someplace because they aren't ready for it, that is the one place they really want to go!

Stocking shops with useful items doesn't do you any good if the party is poor and doesn't think they can afford things.

If there is a potential for a combat, the players will always choose to fight.

If it looks like a dragon, expect the players to seriously consider turning around and going home!

16 cr 1/8's and a cr 1/4 might look like an ok encounter on paper, until you have to start rolling dice. Especially if a bunch of them have pack tactics!

Lighting rules suck.

Letting players find useful magic items doesn't help if they don't have the ability to identify those items in a timely fashion.

Players with darkvision will never say they have a light source unless you impose some penalty to them for being in dim light.

Til next time!