D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[jasper]

The player that gave away free dice has started DMING.
1. All his monsters are DUCKs. Small ducks, Tiny ducks. Medium ducks. Ducks with Santa hats on. Huge ducks.
2. He gives out inspiration tickets. If you don't use your ticket at the end of the session, you get to pull from the goody cigar box. My wife stole my baby yoda bracelet.
3. He does use a whiteboard like me but does not post the AC until round 2.
4. He told a DM who was playing to shut up with the non table talk and pay attention to the dm. That Jasper is a rude fellow.

 

[cbwjm]

Last OSE game ended up with 7 players trying to raid a ruin. After a handful of uneventful rooms, we entered a room with a large obsidian like pillar. This room had a krank which we really shouldn't have touched but since we were there anyway, we did. This caused the sides of the pillar to move downwards released what I assume was an immense black pudding. We bravely ran to search elsewhere in the dungeon.

We encountered a large room filled with kobolds, my dwarf being the only one who could communicate tried to deal with them, but were unable to negotiate a pass, long story short, 7 of us vs 30 of them, we managed to down 16 of them before they broke and ran, though we also lost a warrior who had only recently joined us (4 sessions, 3 dead heroes so far). We're now camped in this dungeon as when we left, we saw that the tower had goblins on dire wolves roaming around the place and we aren't sure we can take them without rest, the kobolds and black pudding are in here somewhere as well...

 

[Richards]

In tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session, the PCs:

• Explored the interior of a glacier, finding a winding, sloping path up to an upper level that leveled out
• Encountered a "guard beast" in the form of a polar worm just outside a pair of massive ice doors, and killed it at range
• Readied attacks when we heard someone about to open the doors, and fired arrows and maximized scorching rays at a little old lady frost giant botanist (fortunately, she was still evil despite being all grandmotherly-looking)
• Entered the frost giant abode, explored two empty rooms, then opened another pair of ice doors which led outside onto the glacier - right as the "grandfatherly" frost giant and his two winter wolves were returning empty-handed from a hunting trip
• Duked it out with the frost giant while the winter wolves concentrated on the paladin's celestial pegasus
• Eventually slew all three, returned to our mapmakers (our PCs are escorting them through an Underdark passage through a mountain chain), and finished the journey down the underground river in our folding boats, proving there is a subterranean passageway through the Lortmil Mountains
• Got paid for the completed mission, sold frost giant armor and weapons to a band of allied stone giants back near our headquarters

We're now ~5,000 XP short of 11th level.

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Sessions 54 and 55 of my Neverwinter campaign. 10th level drow evoker wizard, human genie warlock, half orc vengeance paladin.

After 25 sessions in Neverwinter, the characters have moved on to Mir Vardun, a town created by the paladin's player to be his birth place. I'm placing it as Helm's Hold in the Neverwinter regional map. A league of evil nobles have taken over the towns surrounding Neverwinter. All of them have gathered here, in Mir Vardun, to cement a secret alliance with an orc horde. Their plan is to unleash the orcs on the region, using the resulting chaos to overthrow the Queen of Neverwinter and seize power for themselves. The players know this and have come to town to break up the negotiations.

What they don't know is that in two days, there's a lunar conjunction when the townsfolk will be sacrificed to power up a new orc champion that will lead the horde.

The characters arrived in town in the dead of night. Their plan was to sneak into the castle and get stabby with the evil nobles. However, they quickly crossed paths with a group of outriders hunting down a lone man. The loner was the town ranger, who taught the paladin how to hunt and track as a youth. The characters easily dispatched the outriders and saved the ranger. Unfortunately, the wizard dropped a fireball, alerting the whole town to their presence.

They found a hiding spot. The ranger gave them a full exposition dump on where the orcs could be found, the personalities of the assorted evil nobles, plus a sinister mage using the townsfolk as lab rats. They decided to first deal with the mage.

The mage had converted the town windmill into her laboratory. The characters quickly found a way in, battled a leprous hill giant, and discovered the living test subjects were covered in a sort of magical leprousy.

Meanwhile, the nobles' thugs are going house to house, looking for the intruders who had incinerated their colleagues.

Next session: Leper Messiah!

 

[Richards]

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

• Began their two-month ocean voyage on a halfling barge pulled by two baleen whales
• Were bored out of their gourds for the first nine days, experiencing what life at sea is like for unskilled passengers (they spent a lot of time in their extradimensional lamp, staying out of the way, although the cleric/paladin of the God of Air and Healing summoned his air element celestial horse and went riding through the sky for a good portion of each day)
• Got a bit of midnight excitement when the barge was boarded by a group of 20 sahuagin from either side (they climbed up the struts keeping the stabilization pontoons in place)
• Fought off the sahuagin and killed a bunch on board - it was only when two slain sahuagin fell into the ocean that the sahuagin cleric - who was riding a Huge shark underneath the vessel - took matters into her own hands by summoning a fiendish elasmosaurus behind the ship and a giant crocodile on the deck
• Had the elf sorcerer slay the elasmosaurus with two maximized chain lightning spells enhanced (for extra damage) by a ring of electricity, dealing 90 points of electricity damage each round
• Had the dwarf cleric banish the giant crocodile
• Finished off all but the last three sahuagin, when the sea devil cleric called it quits and had her remaining forces flee
• Thought that was that, tossed the bodies back overboard, and returned to their sleep shifts (with four halfling rangers on guard duty), only to have the kraken which the sahuagin served come in person to attack the vessel, as his minions had failed to bring him a tribute of flesh from the halfling barge
• Fought off the kraken, and managed to drop it to about a quarter of his hit points in three rounds, at which point it grabbed up a (summoned) dire elk as a snack and fled - only to have the elf sorcerer mega-zap it for 90 points of electricity damage with the same attack that had taken out the summoned fiendish elasmosaurus earlier that night.

Next game session we fast-forward by three weeks, when they'll stop at "Halfway Island" to restock fresh fruit and water and maybe kill a boar or two for some fresh meat - and possibly get involved with a convenient plot hook....

Johnathan

 

[cbwjm]

5th (I think) OSE session, 2nd character death. 3 people were killed in this session.

 

[Zardnaar]

Fate of Atlantis Castles ad Crusades OSR. Ancient Greece.

Previous session they killed the Stag Lord a bandit lord preying on pilgrims heading to Delphi in Pilgrins Landing.

Looting the joint they got some magic items and found a wagon full of equipment and a note.

Someone had being supplying the bandits. Message was found signed E. Bards legend lore ability identified the smith's marks. The Smith was located in Amfissa.

They set off overland but a couple of random encounters including the Cult of Aries convinced them t return to Kirrga tgen travel the safe road to Amfissa.

Tgey rescued an NPC potential henchman but she rolled meh for ability scores. She did introduce them to her friends in Amfissa though.

22 second mark roughly. They're trekking through that.

 

[Richards]

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

• Stopped at a small island called "Halfway Island" by the halfling crew on the ship they're traveling on, given its location about halfway between the continents of Armaturia and Talona
• Found "HELP" laid out in stones on the beach, despite there not being any humanoids living on the island, leading the PCs to believe there was a shipwreck survivor(s) somewhere on the island
• Spread out to search for the survivor(s) while some of the halflings gathered fruits and others went boar hunting
• Found the corpse of a monkey whose body had been pulled apart; it didn't look like anything had eaten any of it except maybe rats after it was already dead
• Had the elf sorcerer's pseudodragon familiar go find the halfling rangers on the boar hunt and lead them to where he had spotted a small group of six boars from the air (effectively taking the pseudodragon out of the rest of the adventure, as I "hand-waved" the boar hunt once none of the PCs opted to join in)
• Had the half-orc cleric/paladin investigate an occasional flash of light from the top of Bald Mountain, the lone mountain on the island which rose above the surrounding jungle canopy; he did so by riding his air element horse to the top of the mountain and discovered it was a hand mirror dangling by a length of ripped fabric from a chunk of rock overlooking a cave entrance
• Had the half-orc transport the other PCs up to the cave inside an extradimensional lamp
• Split up at the cave entrance, with some going north and others going east
• Had the bard/rogue activate his dire tiger figurine of wondrous power
• Found a large cavern filled with bats roosting on the ceiling and rats scrambling around on the floor down the passage to the east, while the north passage led to a bedraggled-looking man resting on a few planks of wood in the back of a narrow cavern that also led to the bat/rat cavern
• Sealed off the opening between the two back caverns with a wall of stone spell cast by the dwarf cleric
• Fought off the four bat swarms and four rat swarms (the dire tiger dealing out a lot of damage on that front, although some ranged spells helped against the swarms attacking 3 of the PCs)
• Had the dwarf cleric cast a heal spell on the castaway, which woke him up, at which time he unsuccessfully tried dominating her
• Ended up fighting the castaway, but it was a short fight once the elf sorcerer sealed him off in a small section of the back cave with a wall of force spell
• Cast a flame strike spell into the castaway's area after he turned invisible, then he cast an obscuring mist spell when the elf sorcerer used his scout's headband to see invisibility
• Had the elf drop the wall of force spell and cast a fireball spell at the back wall, which burned off the obscuring mist but left a smaller cloud of vapors hovering over the boards the castaway had been laying upon when first discovered
• On a whim, carried the boards away only to have the mist follow
• Brought the boards out of the cave and into the sunlight, to have the mist follow and be dissipated by the sunlight

The castaway was a vampire cleric of the God of Night in this campaign, who have been traveling by sea in a crate/coffin when the ship he was on was sunk by sahuagin. The currents took the crate to Halfway Island, where it crashed against the rocks and was broken open, releasing the vampire (fortunately during the night). This left the vampire, who couldn't travel over running water, stranded on an island inhabited only by animals; he'd been subsisting on the blood of monkeys and looked like crap as a result, with sallow skin, his hair falling out, and an overall appearance more like that of a zombie than a vampire. I deliberately set up my initial description of him to make it seem as if he might be in a dream coma (an ongoing feature of the first half of this campaign, but which had apparently been resolved), to draw attention away from the fact that he was a vampire sleeping during the day on the remains of his coffin. He wore a ring of positive protection which prevented the heal spell from doing him any harm, although had either of the two clerics tried turning him he'd have been susceptible (but as a 14-HD undead despite only having 10 HD, due to his unholy symbol of the God of Night).

I had the players guessing, that's for sure, but it ended up being a short session since the whole boar hunt part was sidelined. But everyone leveled up to 14th afterwards, so we got that taken care of.

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

In tonight's "Ghourmand Vale" session, the PCs:

• Traveled through a small village, in which the women asked us to go check out a dryad's grove a few hours away on foot, as the dryad had begged for assistance the day before to rid her grove of an invading flight of harpies, and most of the village's men went off to deal with the problem, but they haven't returned yet
• Went to the grove, cast prep spells, and moved in for the attack
• Had the archer focus a called shot to the eye of one of two harpies she had spotted, while the paladin rode his celestial pegasus to the grove, the druid did likewise riding her enlarged wolf, and my sorcerer used dimension door to teleport himself, his shield guardian, and the invisible halfling rogue behind a tree in the grove
• Had the invisible halfling climb up the central tree (in which two harpies were devouring the limbs of dead men), avoiding the two assassin vines growing nearby
• Got spotted by a harpy archer we hadn't noticed (she was in a tree farther away), who shot at the shield guardian
• Killed the first harpy with a shot to the eye by the archer, who was wisely about 600 feet away
• Had the sorcerer use a maximized scorching ray spell (via his metamagic rod) at the harpy archer, hitting with one ray and missing with the other, which hit the back of the tree and set it ablaze
• Heard the second harpy start her captivating song, which charmed the halfling (the sorcerer saved, and the others were out of range or protected by a protection from evil spell)
• Killed that harpy by an attack from the paladin's holy flaming burst longsword
• Took out the harpy archer, whose own captivating song had charmed the druid (just shortly after she'd gotten into range while riding on her timber wolf animal companion, enhanced to horse size via an animal growth spell) - the paladin used a smite evil attack and got a crit, after the sorcerer softened her up with a cone of cold spell
• Found the townsfolk and the dryad dead (as well as two other harpies), being devoured by the assassin vines, which were then burned to death with scorching ray spells
• Found their way inside the dryad's hollow tree home, where they found a bit of treasure

We then got to break the news to the women in the village ("the village of suddenly lonely women who needed comforting") about their menfolk. As a party of five PCs, three of whom are women and the fourth being a chaste paladin, the majority of the comforting fell upon my nobleman sorcerer - good thing he was raised not to take advantage of commoners!

Johnathan

 

[Older Beholder]

In our last OSE game we explored more of the dungeon we're in.
We cleared out some more rooms, found a few more pieces of the sword we're searching for in order to lift a curse on one of the characters.

Eventually we decided to rest, picked a room and set our watch order. During the night a tumbleweed made of swords rolled through our room, we all had to make saves, a bunch of us failed resulting in the death of the cursed character. I said that means we don't really have much motivating us, so we should think about heading back to town. The DM responded that the tattoo (that represents the curse) on the dead character starts to fade and reappear on another one of the characters that's still alive.

It was OK, I'm enjoying playing a Halfling as it's been a while.