D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Guest 7034872]

I think I am (slowly) getting better at this. The improvisational skills required for GMing are considerable, but my current slope is at least upward. Streamlining combat is still very tricky. I see now why some DMs like having monsters be big bags of HP and AC: it keeps things simple once the weapons are out. I, in my questionable wisdom, have chosen a different path from that, though, so we'll see how the combat side shapes up.

What is clear to me now is that letting players riff off each other and cook up their own hare-brained ideas is huge and something the DM ought always to encourage. All our best stuff from tonight came from their minds, not mine.

 

[Guest 7034872]

It was cancelled last minute due to a medical emergency ( ), but thankfully everything turned out okay and we have rescheduled for next weekend.

Whoa. Glad everyone's alright.

 

[Richards]

Tonight was our first time playing since the end of February - one of our players had surgery and was healing up for a couple of months. This was our 3.5 "Raiders of the Overreach" campaign, in which we're taking down the ten Writhing Gates that could otherwise bring about the end of the world.

Tonight we went after the 9th gate, which unfortunately was deep under the ocean. Fortunately, some allied merfolk diviners gave us assistance, not only in providing the location of the underwater Writhing Gate but also in lending each PC a pair of magical starfish that would temporarily merge with our bodies and protect us from pressure damage for being that far down on the seabed. (It turns out that's why you often see mermaids wearing starfish on their chests.) We found the Gate, but it was protected by an advanced kraken, who gave us quite the workout (we're 19th level), and when we finally killed him it turned out he had been magic jarred by the illithid living inside a crystal monolith near the Gate - so we destroyed it as well, preventing the mind flayer from being able to remanifest. (The little bugger tried taking over the body of our dwarven fighter - the only one of us not protected by protection from evil or magic circle against evil spells - before we killed the mind flayer, but the dwarf fortunately made his save.)

Now we have three adventures left in this campaign, in which we will:

1. Travel by ship to the island location of the 10th Gate;
2. Travel across the island (warped by chaos energy from the Far Realm) to find the 10th Gate; and
3. Destroy the 10th Gate and save the world in the process.

Apparently my lizardfolk PC just wanted to be held during this adventure, as I was first grappled by a Bigby's grasping hand spell cast by our sorceress after I succumbed to the kraken/illithid's charm monster spell, and then after having my mind freed I spent the rest of the fight grappled by one of the kraken's tentacles. But that just ensured that wherever it went, it took me along so I was never out of range and got to make a full attack against it every round.

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

38th session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three 7th level characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. Running a modified version of Hall of Harsh Reflections -- an adventure from the Age of Worms adventure path in Dungeon magazine -- which is part of ongoing, longterm plotline about a cabal of aberrations scheming to destroy Neverwinter.

The players haven't yet realized it, but while sleeping they were abducted by a mind flayer. They are now trapped in a dreamscape constructed by the mind flayer as it attempts to break their will and turn them into thralls. They believe they've somehow jumped into a future version of a post-apocalyptic Neverwinter.

In this session, the PCs battled deeper into the Sodden Hold warehouse, lair of the mind flayer's minions -- a guild of drow thieves called the Night's Kiss. They fought a submerged chuul, hacking through a wall to find safe haven from its pincers. They descended into the dungeons beneath the warehouse, caught the attention of a drow guard, and had a running battle with the drow. It culminated with multiple fireballs, an invisible drow mage, and the warlock incapacitating the paladin with a poorly placed hypnotic pattern. Good times!

Next session: The dreamers find their sleeping bodies!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

21st session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 4 -- hitting Level 5 at the end of this session:

• Dwarf Fighter/Warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom. His trinket is half of a treasure map.
• Elf Wizard/Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, Chaos, and Fey.
• Goblin Oracle/Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions.
• Changeling Spellbinder/Magician. Created by House Vladaam to replace a child they kidnapped and held in servitude. Naturally, she wants revenge. Celestial and Battle traditions.
• Human Paladin/Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the primary god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His wife was murdered by undead and now he seeks answers.

The dwarf was captured by mysterious forces last session. Somehow his consciousness has transferred into an automaton they found in the Banewarrens. So that player is now running a Construct Rogue/Artificer with the Technomancy tradition.

This session was one long fight. The player characters were attempting to exit the sewers into the abandoned manor that has been their entry point into exploring the Banewarrens. But House Vladaam was waiting in ambush. The players were in the sewers shooting up at a hole in the ceiling while the Vladaam guards were in the house shooting back at the hole in the floor. It was a massacre. The characters' area of effect spells wreaked havoc on the guards.

When all the guards around the hole were dead, the characters ascended through the hole into the manor. More guards were waiting for them. The artificer tossed his flamethrower down the hall. The goblin oracle used a fire spell to detonate the flamethrower. Instant fireball. The guards were obliterated and the house caught fire.

The characters tried to escape through the backdoor. But Vladaam's rival adventuring party was waiting in ambush for them. I used a modified version of the Doom Raiders from Dragon Heist. Unfortunately, I misjudged their power level. They were butchered by the PCs. Two of them were slain, one escaped, and one was captured.

From my side of the screen, the battle didn't feel very tense. I don't think that was true for the players. By the time it was over several of them were completely out of spells and down to single digit hit points.

We're now about halfway through the campaign.

Next session: Interrogation!

 

[Clint_L]

I'm currently running a few campaigns, all of which I write myself. I sponsor the D&D club at the high school where I teach, and each term I run a 6-8 game campaign for new players. I have two groups running the same campaign in alternating weeks.

It's set in and around the small city of Feolinn on the Menagerie Coast (Mat Mercer's Explorer's Guide to Wildemount). The set-up is that the players arrive at the start of annual Wine Festival, hoping to find work and maybe a bit of a vacation. They immediately got mixed up in an ambush and were imprisoned beneath a ruined villa, so the first session was them figuring out how to bust out while rescuing the aged wizard who was the real target of the ambush. Clues indicated that the wizard was targeted as part of a general plot to disrupt the wine festival, along with a symbol they didn't recognize.

Session two was them agreeing to help uncover the plot and research the clue, which they discovered was the symbol of The Remnant, cultists of Vecna who were thought long-defeated. In return, the party was offered room and board at an inn run by the wizards old, retired adventuring buddies, and an uncommon magic item randomly drawn from a bag of holding. They explored the town a bit and got up to some hijinks at the casino and fair, but on the way home were attacked by beasts that had somehow gotten loose from the fairgrounds, eventually defeating the pair of giant scorpions.

Session three was them investigating how the scorpions were released and what happened to the missing guard from the fair ground menagerie, which led them to a ruined temple in the nearby forest where the guard's blood was being used in a ritual to communicate with Vecna. The lead cultist, clad in red, escaped after summoning a greater zombie, but the party were able to get some information from his subordinates and learned that the lead cultist was a political rival of Feolinn's leader, the Marquis. On their return to town they noticed growing signs of unrest.

Session four had them reporting what they had learned and then returning to their inn, where they discovered that their server's children had gone missing (their server was the wife of the town manager, the Marquis' assistant, in effect). Eventually they tracked the children to the sewers where they were being held for a sacrifice by more cultists who were planning to use them in another ritual and to create further unrest in the town. The cultists were controlling a Nycanoloth, way too powerful for the party to defeat directly, so they had to figure out how to release it so that it turned on the cultists. A clue indicated that the Red Cultist was after two powerful objects that might be able to channel Vecna's power. After rescuing the kids they encountered a protest against the Marquis' weak rulership.

Session five had Maya sending them, via teleportation Circle and ring of spell storing, to an ancient, abandoned dwarf city underneath the volcano Mt. Mentiri so the party could beat the Red Cultist to the first object. They had to endure increasing heat exhaustion to find the object at the deepest level of the city, on a bridge over a lava lake inhabited by the ancient phoenix Desirat. The Red Cultist arrived at the same time so they had to fight him, elementals that were attacking both sides, and lair effects from the imprisoned phoenix. This was designed to be extremely challenging and the party was barely able to escape with their lives, while the Red Cultist secured the artifact for himself (this was by design, to raise the stakes in the last two sessions). Both parties narrowly avoided several deaths (one flirted with a TPK but pulled it out).

 

[Richards]

So this afternoon we played our first 3.5 "Dreams of Erthe" campaign in over two months (we had a player recovering from surgery). Here's the short version:

The PCs, after fighting a Large monstrous scorpion in the desert, show up at the mud-baked home of three sisters and explain they're there to wake anyone trapped in their dreams. The sister who came out to greet them is amazed: How did they know their brother was trapped in his dreams? How can the PCs wake him? Is there anything the sisters can do to assist?

So the PCs are welcomed into the house, the brother's sleeping pallet is brought out into the main room where there's enough room for the PCs to perform their ritual (which involves the 5 PCs sitting in a circle around the dream victim, falling asleep, and entering the victim's dream to awaken him from inside the dream). However, while inside the dream they find they cannot interact with it, nor does the brother seem to be a part of the dream, which involves an orc raider being devoured over and over again by a giant worm. Puzzled, they decide to exit the dream by waking themselves up...and when they do so, the three good-looking male PCs have been carried off into bedrooms by the "desert princesses" (who are stripping them of their magic items). Combat ensues, during which the "trapped dreamer" sits up and attacks the half-orc cleric/paladin and the brother's pet serval deals quite a lot of damage to the dwarven priestess. It turns out the three sisters are all dune hags and their "brother" is actually the hagspawn son of one of them; all had been made to look human by a veil spell. They defeat the hag family, then find the true dreamer imprisoned in a hemispherical prison beside the house. They bind him, free him from the dream, and then send him down to the underground cavern where the hags got their water as a guinea pig (and sure enough, the orc is taken down by the shambling mound and volt guardians, so the PCs opt not to head down that way themselves).

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

22nd session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 5

• Dwarf Fighter/Warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom. His trinket is half of a treasure map. However, after being kidnapped by mysterious forces, his consciousness has somehow transferred into a Clockwork Rogue/Artificer. The whereabouts of his body are unknown.
• Elf Wizard/Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, Chaos, and Fey.
• Goblin Oracle/Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions.
• Changeling Spellbinder/Magician. Created by House Vladaam to replace a child they kidnapped and held in servitude. Naturally, she wants revenge. Celestial and Battle traditions.
• Human Paladin/Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the primary god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His wife was murdered by undead and now he seeks answers.

Interesting and exciting session. Player characters spent most of their time interrogating a captive -- an orc warrior employed by House Vladaam. He told them almost everything he knew:

• House Vladaam did not capture the dwarf.
• Nevanna Vladaam wants to unmake the changeling into a bundle of sticks and dirt to make an example of her.
• Nevanna Vladaam has been able to scry on the party and learn their every move. He isn't sure how. The changeling correctly deduced it was the rapier stolen from Nevanna's bedroom.
• House Vladaam has another team of mercenaries even meaner than the one the party just defeated, including an "evil Tinkerbell" called Glitterdeath.
• House Vladaam's goal is find the Black Grail -- a corrupted artifact that enthralls anyone who drinks from it. With the Black Grail they can gain control of the nobility and rule Ptolus.

The party also laid to the rest the body of an angel they found in the Banewarrens. Everyone got a +1 to one ability score, plus the feather of an angel.

This session was basically a giant exposition dump. I find sessions like this to hugely important and helpful in a campaign. They crystallize the villain's goals and methods and make the stakes clear.

Next session: Into the tomb of Dalen!

 

[jasper]

Saturday made the command decision to promote everyone to same level even if they could not make to a session. Also did an in character information dumps for over an hour and everyone was okay with it. Sunday did a full information dump to facebook page incase people forgot to take notes.
Sunday during a homebrew I cut loose with my Echo Knight (oops wrong kingdom) , killed a shark and got a special necklace with three prayer beads on it.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

39th session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. At the end of the session they all advanced to 8th level.

Running a modified version of Hall of Harsh Reflections -- an adventure from the Age of Worms adventure path in Dungeon magazine -- which is part of longterm plotline about a cabal of aberrations scheming to destroy Neverwinter. The players haven't yet realized it, but while sleeping they were abducted by a mind flayer. They are now trapped in a dreamscape constructed by the mind flayer as it attempts to break their will and turn them into thralls. They believe they've somehow jumped into a future version of a post-apocalyptic Neverwinter.

The mind flayer is allied with a group of rogue drow called the Night's Kiss. The wizard's sister leads them. When the session started, the characters entered the sister's chambers. She is aiding the aberrations in infiltrating the surface world in order to save her subterranean drow city. She offered her brother an alliance. He refused. The characters attacked. The highlight of the fight was the wizard polymorphing his sister into a sloth. Yeah. A sloth. Only in D&D! The sister's invisible ally hit the wizard twice with a lightning bolt but failed to break his concentration and took a pair of fireballs in return.

Moving on, the characters entered a maze and were ambushed by grimlocks. That was over fast.

The characters located the final chamber. There, they found the mind flayer leering over three unconscious captives. Who were the captives? The player characters! Only here did they finally realize they were trapped in the mind flayer's dream. If he defeated them in the dream, he would break their will, and they would awaken as his thralls.

The battle that followed was a nail biter. It was exactly what I wanted out of a fight with a mind flayer. It hit them with a confusion spell that neutralized the paladin and warlock for one round. It took a hit from the wizard, who only had a few lower level spells remaining. The paladin charged and smited the mind flayer to 2 hit points. But then the mind flayer hit all three characters with mind blast -- and all failed their saving throws. He wrapped his tentacles around the paladin's head. Then extracted his brain. That was the first time in decades of gaming I managed to kill a PC with mind flayer brain extraction. Epic! Moments later, the warlock shook off the effects of the mind blast and slew the mind flayer with her eldritch blast.

All three characters awoke from the dream -- alive!

Next session: Rude awakening!