D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

Blue · Apr 28, 2020

Okay, this takes a bit of setup. I'm in a FATE game. Mankind has been led for generations by an AI that catered to everyone, generated a way to upload (and backup) your soul and put it in other bodies (resleeving like Altered Carbon), and created a host of Colony Arks with mankind's best and brightest towards a far star with an earth-type planet with the premise that when it gets there everyone will eb able to be sent there because the Earth is pretty used up.

The Colony Arks launched, and soon after the AI went silent. It's been a generation, and all of the automated systems it left behind to cae and feed for the teeming population are breaking down. Currency, violence, captialism, and humans over humans have been reemerging. As has - superheroes. The last superheroes predate the AI, and they fought the wrong battles - they'd beat up terrorists when we really needed leadership to solve world hunger and inequality.

So this is sorta post-singularity-heading-towards-cyberpunk with supers. Oh, and child processes of the AI that have developed sentience and are trying to do things in their own, very narrow, focuses. DM wise the players are invited to have vast amounts of narrative control (with DM guidance and veto) and to flesh things out.

The end of the last session we played, the party was split with half in a very important defense and the other half sent via their implants to the Colony Arks to deal with a problem. We found the AI, found that the reason for the Colony Arks was that it detemined there was something heading towards Earth from another system and it is, at worst, a lifeboat for humanity. Also that it worked out that leaving a copy of itself behind would lead to bad scenarios, which is why it's gone. We dealt with the problem and came back.

There is no FTL communication. While played out at the same time, it took years to transmit us out and back. It was effectively a "season one finale". Season two would be "five years" (for some values of five and of years) later.

So our sessions between we all got together and talked about the various factions and what they would be doing, and what he heroes back on earth would be doing, and introduced new factions absed on the social upheaval that was going on the the legends of the heroes. It ended up including one hero breaking off from the others to make an army of masked copy cats, etc.

Right at the end of the planning, the DM inserted what we believe is the alien object, in a zone in midwest USA somewhat reminescent of Area X if you've read those books. And that the one masked hero we had, his son was one of the first to go into it and no one has returned.

This was our first session after all of that.

My character is a mentalist who can reach to computers - or to people if they have the interface that lets people get reskinned. Meeting the AI and learning why it did and it's limitations, my Trouble Aspect changed to "If your not with us, your against us" - with US being able to scale up to humanity vs. aliens. I also had another Aspect that has gotten me in trouble before "Sometimes Easy is the Opposite of Good." - I tend to take shortcuts with my powers without thinking through the consequences.

Anyway, the new season started with us observing the enclosed alien zone, visiting a hastily thrown together observation by several of the factions. Ones that were willing to treat us as VIP guests, but not really give us much information and try to get us to agree to the plan of not instigating it.

I go to try and pull information from the various sensor and systems using my power, and roll horribly. I'm about to invoke an Aspect to reroll when the DM offers a compel - these people aren't helping us, so they're against us. It would be so easy to flip the VIP status of Eildion, one of the heroes (a figurehead of one fo the main factions doing well) to actual loyalty to him. This hits both my new trouble aspect as well as that other one about easy...

One great roll later, they are bringing all this information to Eildion, including that there are prisoners who were "called" to enter the area that they never would have shared with us. So easy, so effective. And now they are with us.

And such, possible Supervillains are born.

Nebulous · May 2, 2020

They escaped The Death House!!! Took them about three sessions, but they all made it out, although severely chopped to pieces, ragged and barely alive. They are like "GREAT, that's the first house in Barovia. We're gonna go farm XP in the woods until we reach 13th and come back."

Richards · May 2, 2020

We ran into a pair of gibbering mouthers and my PC failed his save, so I rolled on the confusion effects table for two rounds and coincidentally hit "you stand there, babbling" both times. So while the rest of the players went through their PCs' actions in fighting off this menace, I role-played a babbling idiot by spouting off a new nonsense word every couple of seconds...for about ten minutes straight.

I managed to keep myself amused.

Johnathan

THEMNGMNT · May 2, 2020

85th session with my group of 13th level player characters. Currently nearing the endgame of a modified Storm King's Thunder. Characters are in Skyreach Castle, attempting to free Hekaton from the Zhentarim. It was surprisingly eventful:

Characters located an ancient blue dragon guarding the storm giant's treasure hoard. They donned the robes of Cultists of Tiamat (which they found two years ago IRL) to parlay. They discovered that the dragon: 1) is enspelled by the Zhentarim to guard the hoard and Hekaton 2) is the father of a blue dragon they slew many levels ago 3) likes bardic music.
NPC drow cleric with the party banished the storm giant rider of an enormous roc, then was nearly slain by the roc despite being invisible.
NPC drow cleric (of Lolth, natch) successfully used Divine Intervention. She had a ten percent chance and rolled a 09. She wanted the Orb of Dragonkind that's known to be in Skyreach...and it appeared in her hand. (In retrospect, that was too easy. It was late. I was tired. And a little drunk. But still--she rolled a 09!)
Characters encountered a clone of Manshoon atop the highest tower in Skyreach. This is the fourth clone they've encountered, and the other three have literally gone down without getting off a single spell. This time the clone trapped them behind a Wall of Force, protected himself with Globe of Invulnerability, and took out the paladin with Maze. (The clones' hive mind allows them to have multiple Concentration spells active simultaneously.)
To counter the Wall of Force, the characters started knocking down the walls and ceiling of the tower, which led to the whole top floor collapsing. They are, of course, in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Also, the shadow sorcerer cast Reverse Gravity, so all the debris (and the foes within it) flew 100 feet straight up into the air.
A Zhentarim champion on a flying nightmare took out the sorcerer in a single turn. That ended Reverse Gravity. Everything fell 100 feet back down to the top of the tower. The impact caused the rest of the tower to begin collapsing.
The roc and a backup force of storm giants are now converging on the characters' position. And there's still two more Manshoon clones somewhere in Skyreach Castle.

That's where we ended things...for now.

the Jester · May 2, 2020

Good game last night. My Alpha group had ended their previous session having infiltrated a hobgoblin fortress from below, reached the enemy general (who was an old enemy and archmage wearing these black, skeletal hands in place of his own- the Grimfingers), and killed him, which summoned a balor, which blew up when itself slain. That put the whole fortress on alert.

This session, they fought off a wave of enemies (hobgoblins, including a pair of warlords and a pair of devastators from VGtM), managed to put two barred doors between them and the rest of the outraged fortress, loot quickly, and make their way back down to the underwater area they used to infiltrate in the first place. Behind them, they could hear rams smashing down the doors they barred. They fled, made their way back to the boat they had hidden away, and escaped up the river.

EDIT: It's not super important, but they also fought some giant catfish while underwater. Much of that combat was made significantly easier because of a pc's use of a trident of fish command to turn one of the fish against the others, and after her hold on it was broken, it was already in a fight for its life.

I should say that they took the Grimfingers, after which, the whole session, I kept telling them how it occurred to each of them how powerful they would be if they put them on; kept reminding the thief that she could probably sell them for a million gold pieces; the LG monk, how if he put them on, they could do so much good for the orphans... etc.

Also, everyone knows that everyone else is wanting to keep the hands for themselves.

No Wis saves yet. But the monk keeps using his "spend an action to break the charmed condition on yourself" ability, just in case.

Anyway, while fleeing, they caught sight of a circle of Chaos cultists performing some kind of weird ritual where it seemed that they were trying to pull something out of a mass of churning Chaos, but the pcs didn't stick around- they were too concerned about the cultists potentially stealing the Grimfingers- and kept moving upriver instead.

ccs · May 2, 2020

Last session not much at all happened.
Right now there's only two players. A human Fighter (formerly a Paladin) & a winged teifling celestial Warlock. Both 5th lv.
In the previous session they'd headed off to thwart the Fire Giants from SKT (yeah, under strength party & NOT high enough lv - they know this). They fought the chimera, raided the Yakman village, freed some of the slaves & managed to escape.

This session they (cleverly) managed to evade several Yakman patrols that were hunting them, fought one patrol (that ended up randomly being only 1 Yakman - we rolled a d3), and a bunch of RP between themselves & the handful of people (mostly dwarves) they'd rescued. Most importantly they learned that A) there's more slaves within the mountain/forge, B) that the giants seem seem to be making something, C) that the giants & their allies raided a dwarf hold, enslaved those not killed, & looted an Iron Flask that contained a very powerful Fire Elemental - whom the dwarves believe is now being used to reignite the forges.
Then they wasted a whole bunch of session time debating what to do/how to do it.

One player - the Fighter - keeps going on about returning to the city, buying magic items, & having the NPCs send an army. While this is certainly the "logical" in-world thinking, especially as there's only the two of them.... He's done this before in previous games/campaigns - thinking that/expecting/trying to recruit NPC help that will solve whatever the current problem is. And to date he's always been disappointed by the amount of NPC aid.
He doesn't quite get it. That HE (well, the party) is the star of this movie, not the NPCs that he always wants to hand things off to.

The other player - the Warlock - understands how action movies work. She realized that NOW is the time to double back & infiltrate the Fire Giant lair as most of the Yakmen are searching the woods for the party/slaves. But that window is closing....
And she came up with a way to enter the lift area.
She also realizes that the priority doesn't have to be "Kill all the Fire Giants" - a task she & the fighter are not up to.
But sabotaging their forge by stealing back the fire elemental & rescuing more slaves.....
She also argues that I've probably modified this chapter of SKT downwards because what'd be the fun of running an 8th+ lv adventure intended for 4+ players for two 5th lv PCs & not likely much if any NPC aid (she's paid attention to how I run NPC help in games)?
{But have I altered it though?? The PCs decided on their own to go track down the rumors of Fire Giant activity. Knowing that there's only the two of them for the time being, knowing they're only 5th lv, knowing the CR of Fire Giants, knowing my approach to major NPC help & knowing that I don't run a world where everything you'll meet is lv appropriate. And there were several other adventure options.}

The Green Hermit · May 2, 2020

Richards said:
We ran into a pair of gibbering mouthers and my PC failed his save, so I rolled on the confusion effects table for two rounds and coincidentally hit "you stand there, babbling" both times. So while the rest of the players went through their PCs' actions in fighting off this menace, I role-played a babbling idiot by spouting off a new nonsense word every couple of seconds...for about ten minutes straight.

I managed to keep myself amused.

Johnathan

Where did you get your confusion effects table?