D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

Dragon of Icespire Peak for my group of D&D noobs, 10th session, characters have just hit level 4. In my modified version of the adventure, the characters entered Cragmaw Castle to take out a tribe of orc raiders. These orc raiders had killed another group of adventurers, then tried to ransom one of the survivors to get the blueprints to Icespire Keep. In the keep is a magical spear that the orc chief can use to reunite the clans and destroy Phandalin. However, the characters thwarted the ransom scheme and are now in possession of the Icespire blueprints themselves.

In Cragmaw, the characters found the orcs dead by their own hands. They had failed their chief, and he does not tolerate failure. As the players investigated, the dead orcs began to rise as zombies and attack.

Fleeing the castle, the characters walked into an ambush from living orcs that were waiting for them. However, the party's half-orc paladin pretended that the other characters were his captives, and claimed he was looking for help ransoming them. The bluff worked. The orcs are now taking the party back to their lair in the ruined dwarven stronghold of Axeholm. Fifty orcs await. The paladin thinks he can trick the orcs into helping them slay the dragon of Icespire Peak, then double cross the orcs. We'll see.

What made this session really fun is that I thought it was just going to be a straight up fight and the half-orc's player threw me a total curve ball with a crazy scheme. I had planned for the player characters to arrive in Axeholm much later in the campaign, perhaps even as the climax. They're essentially leapfrogging a significant portion and shortening the campaign by several sessions. Interesting stuff. It's great when your players surprise you.

EDITED with some more details.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Modified version of Storm King's Thunder. 5 players. 13th level characters.

The characters are in a stand up fight in Skyreach Castle against storm giants and their Zhentarim masters. Three of the characters activated the Boon of Annam, a divine blessing that is my version of the Potion of Giant Size from STK. It doubles hit points and triples damage. The opposition didn't stand a chance. The players feel awesome.

Next session they'll be exploring the castle, hoping to rescue the high priest of the storm giants, obtain an orb of dragonkind, and perhaps even free a captive ancient blue dragon.

The Zhentarim are essentially using Skyreach as a trap to wear down the characters before three clones of Manshoon arrive to deliver the killing blow. I'm not planning on pulling any punches. Can't wait to see how this plays out.

 

[The Green Hermit]

People were tired, grumpy, and unprepared, so I cut it short. Today we are supposed to start some downtime, so I am going to review what tool proficiencies can actually do. Along with using the ones we have, my kids need to start thinking about what might be beneficial to start training in. House rules say that they can still produce goods while training, but it takes longer (plus the 1 gp training charge), decreasing every 50 days of training, so that in the last 50 days production is at normal speed, just with the added on training fee. I haven't figured out how to do something similar with languages/weaponry. Languages will probably be connected to a d20 roll and weaponry will probably have some reduced effectiveness.

How do other people handle this? It just doesn't make sense to me to go from 0% proficiency the entire time you are training to 100% proficiency the day you finish training.

 

[5atbu]

Excited convivial bubbly fun.

 

[The Green Hermit]

Today's session was pretty short too. Basically, we just did the downtime that would have happened last session if people hadn't been so spacey.

We are now officially at the part where I have to do a lot of planning again, so our next session might not be for a couple of weeks.

 

[Nebulous]

Dungeon World group #2, Session #2! It went well. There's six of us and only one is familiar with DW, so we are all learning as we go. For better or worse, it's hard to get out of the DnD mindset, but I am trying.

 

[Manbearcat]

Dungeon World group #2, Session #2! It went well. There's six of us and only one is familiar with DW, so we are all learning as we go. For better or worse, it's hard to get out of the DnD mindset, but I am trying.

Tell us more.

What transpired (and relate the triggering mechanics)? Where do you feel you (as GM) struggled?

 

[Nebulous]

Tell us more.

What transpired (and relate the triggering mechanics)? Where do you feel you (as GM) struggled?

Well, I have to prepare a lot of maps ahead of time, and I have monsters and loot prepped on maps, and they're creeping through not unlike any regular DnD session (which is fine) but we don't understand fully how to do XP yet, aside from on a miss, so I haven't been awarding XP for bonds or alignment, we were talking about that after the game. I'm still unclear how to adjudicate misses sometimes, like on a failed Spout Lore for instance. If it's a combat situation it's easier to do, add a GM Move.

 

[Umbran]

My session yesterday was... ghoulish.

Meaning, there were a whole lot of ghouls. It is the first encounter the party has had with hostile undead. Either we really over-thought things, or got lucky (or, generated our luck through very solid planned tactics), but so far, they aren't all that bad. 15 ghouls down, we are not sure how many to go...

 

[Ovinomancer]

I did a very different thing from usual last night. I run via roll20, and enjoy maps for D&D because my players enjoy the tactical minigame. However, my game last night centered on a pit-fight championship bout, where pit-fighting is usually handled as a down-time activity (houseruled expansions to downtime), so I wasn't sure how to get the cinematic quality of the streamlined rules into the nitty-gritty of the combat engine. Plus, the championship bout was also a draw to bring a wanted criminal the party had already failed to capture out to play, because the opponent in the bout was a compatriot of the criminal. This meant a lot of skullduggery and openness to how the party located the criminal and attempted to apprehend him. Further, being a criminal at a major city event, there wasn't a chance that a scheme wasn't afoot to complicate the entire situation. So, what to do?

Well, I abandoned the idea of maps and adopted a much more freeform approach to everything. The championship bout was handled like an expanded version of my downtime event, meaning mostly skill check options and cinematic stages, so no hp tracking, just points toward victory or defeat. The PC only rolls here, but failure let me dictate the opponent's success. As for everything else, I put up some images to form a rough 'idea' map of the area -- a tavern/bar attached to the arena, the stands, the offices, the 'locker room', box/VIP seating, and the Pit. PCs moved between these areas as they acted. Turns out I also needed an "outside the entrance" and "nearby alley" as the game went on, but these ended up as simple boxes with labels. Play went smashingly. The PC contestant spent time in the offices talking up the manager (unoriginally named Vince Wight), and in the locker room, vying for psych advantage with his opponent. A poisoning plot was foiled when the opponent offered a drink, following the Man In Black formula of both drinks being poisoned. The rest of the party noted the start of that plot -- the handoff of the antidote -- but didn't know enough to stop it. Instead, the PC contestant, already a brash and foolhardy character, accidentally foiled the plot by refusing the toast (which cost him jeering by the other pit-fighters for being scared of a little drink -- he failed his attempt to turn the toast offer back on his opponent) and then stealing the drink with the antidote in a petty bit of revenge for being made to look bad for the toast. Totally awesomesauce.

The upstairs crew located and kept a watch on the criminal and his gang, who were acting oddly. This was because they 1) weren't looking for a few bounty hunters that they beat up months ago and never thought of again, and 2) were actually there to rob the box office take during the championship bout! The upstairs PCs managed to thwart a rushed attempt to procure more antidote after the first delivery failed, finally cluing into the plot with a timely read lips. They then ended up splitting the party -- against an agreement not to as splitting the party cost them the first attempted capture -- with the wizard going down to the locker room invisibly (using excellent portent rolls to avoid being bumped into in crowed passaged), the cleric getting a private box to watch the criminal (who also had one), and the ranger going outside to watch for the returning minion bringing more antidote to mug him and relieve him of it. All of this worked well, except the cleric lost track of the criminal when he slipped out to start the heist. Confusion ensued until a bar fight was started by the ranger to get past the look-out thugs left to watch the entrances to the offices (where the heist was happening) and the main event got underway, but with a poisoned competitor making the fight much easier than otherwise (the pit-fighter PC still didn't know about the poison plot, so this was roleplayed very amusingly). This ended with a confrontation in the locker room (which was the exit strategy for the theives) with a released hezrou to cause confusion, the fight still happening, and spells and whatnot flying in the confusion of pit-fighters and staff. Truly fun. And, at the end (which was fortitous), the pit fight ended right as the locker room fight did, and the now victorious pit champion burst into the locker room, saw his friends standing over the criminal with bags of coin spilled around and total confusion, and loudly said, "DID YOU SEE THAT FIGHT?!!!" Of course, they had not.