D&D 5E Out of the Abyss Play Reports [spoilers]

Has anybody played a session yet? How did it go? How did the party break out? Did they get their stuff? Which direction did they go?
Let's share ideas. I'll go first.

I've started DMing it by email, so of course it is very slow. They have talked to more than half of the prisoners. The orc attacked the dwarf and a player's Bard calmed him down. Now the party has been summoned by the HeadMistress. I think I'm going to have her use her prize slaves as furniture while she plays Dragonchess with her consort. This will allow a lot of interaction and probably a demonstration of how dangerous the drow are.

PBEM is a little different than face to face because its so slow. So I've been laying down a lot of info-dump dialogue. It's always weird to have NPCs talking to each other.

I got mine on September 4th at my local store and have now run two sessions. During the first session, they were introduced one by one as they were taken prisoner (using the d10 roll for how many days they have been imprisoned), met up with the NPCs, and were forced to do the typical menial tasks for the drow. One of the characters is a bard, so the drow priestess thought it would be fun to have him play dinner music one night, and he was of course beaten for any sour note. They thought it would really be amusing to make the half orc paladin dance, but he rolled competently, so, disappointed, they forced the dwarf druid to dance. Again, the player rolled well, so, deprived of their hoped-for amusement, everyone was beaten anyway.

The party escaped during the demon attack, but the poor warlock attracted attention of a giant spider in jumping down into the webs and nearly died. They then escaped into the Underdark aiming for the unpronounceable and unspellable kuo-toa city. During the second session earlier today, I had them go through the Silken Path mini-adventure, where the tiefling sorcerer skated off the web strand out of control and right into another giant spider nest (spiders don't like her as she pried the jewels from the Lolth shrine back in the first settlement during the escape). Lots of fun was had as players and NPCs attempted to jump between the webs, with several failing checks and falling some distance below into the webbing.

The quaggoth NPC persuaded the quaggoth slaves of a random encounter drow to turn on him, and then sent them off towards the drow pursuit party. As they paid the goblin web surfers more than what they had originally promised, the goblins also promised to lead the drow pursuers astray. Needless to say, those drow are even more hugely angry at the party now.

Upon reaching the unpronounceable kuo-toa settlement, they helped unpronounceable kuo-toa priest A defeat unpronounceable kuo-toa priestess B. But then the Big D arose out of the water - and my players freaked out! It was awesome! The warlock, impressed by a powerful entity's presence, decided he would try to commune with him, which meant automatic extra Madness Check (which he failed), my half-orc paladin was torn between charging recklessly forward or trying to shepherd the NPCs out of town - it was basically mass chaos. They are now all 3rd level, furiously rowing across the Darklake away from the unpronounceable settlement on boats commandeered from the kuo-toa as the Big D destroys the town behind them.

Both my players and I are having a great time, and everyone is remarking how good the adventure is so far.

Demetrios1453 said:

Both my players and I are having a great time, and everyone is remarking how good the adventure is so far.

Click to expand...

Awesome, and welcome to the boards.

Best. First. Post. Ever.

I like.

(tapatalk style, that is manually)

Sounds interesting.

That's awesome. You got alot done in two sessions.

I've only played one session in Adventures League play, but I had to be honest to my DM and the coordinator...I came close to having a PTSD episode playing my rogue. Especially for us older players who felt so helpless back in HS, which is why many of us came together to play RPGs back in the day - and I had it worse, being in a boarding/reform school for a couple of years, where there were some staff who loved to toy with and belittle us - the first part before the characters finally escape could dredge up some dark memories for some. (Seriously, I know of at least one player in a friend's other group who would have a full-blown psychotic episode if their DM decided to run 5e, and use this as the first module.)

I'm not saying to NOT buy this module, just that DMs need to really know their players before running it.

Please don't expect the prisoner/escape theme to be one that people treat like a trigger one; to most people, it's fairly benign and innocous. Please don't blame your DM for your discomfort.

But we're veering dangerously off-topic here.

I hate the anti-magic wards in the slave pens in Area #11 of chapter one. It sets a bad precedent (who is casting these permanent improved Anti-Magic Zones? and if they waste such magic on slave pens, shouldn't it be ubiquitous in drow-secured locations?) and it is unnecessary to boot. Instead I just declared that, since the drow are not stupid, anyone who shows signs of being a spellcaster will be summarily killed, as they are too dangerous to keep as slaves (since they cannot be disarmed).

It accomplishes the same dramatic purpose in the slavery context without introducing complications in the larger gameworld.