D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

30th session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters who reached Level 6 early in this session:

• Dwarf Berserker/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/Rogue. Created by House Vladaam to replace a child they kidnapped and held in servitude. Naturally, she wants revenge. Two weapon fighter with the Battle tradition.
• 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.

In this session, the characters negotiated with the boggle they captured. They wanted the un-key that could destroy the Bane Keys that opened/closed vault doors within the Banewarrens. With the un-key, they can seal the Banewarrens forever. That is their ultimate goal. So this is important.

The characters had magically entrapped the boggle so it could not move or escape, but it had boggle allies that were willing to fight to free it. The characters wanted the un-key. The boggle wanted its freedom and its former allies, the Pactlords of the Quaan, destroyed. Neither side trusted the other to keep its word. They were at an impasse. The boggle proposed they all swear an oath. Those who broke the oath would be cursed. The characters agreed.

I asked the goblin oracle to come up with the oath, the curse, and the ritual. He proposed that anyone breaking the oath would be cursed to drink water from the gutters. When we all got done laughing, we realized that the paladin would be immune from any disease in the gutter water. But not the rest of them! And so that's the oath they swore. As part of the oath, the boggle agreed to go with them on the raid into the Pactlords' lair.

One of the players agreed to run the boggle and I sent him the 4E statblock, which I love.

The next hour was spent leveling up characters.

The characters had uncovered the location of the Pactlords' lair. They even had a map. They decided to enter the back way -- a cavern above the King's River Gorge. The cavern had a stream and a waterfall, so reaching it was treacherous. When half the characters were in the cavern, half in the gorge, and one tangled up in a rope -- they were attacked by a wyvern guarding the cavern. They'd scuffled before with this wyvern and its lizardman rider. Highlights of the fight included:

• The boggle possessing the body of the rider and throwing himself off the wyvern to his death.
• The human paladin almost being knocked over the edge of the waterfall.
• The dwarf berserker leaping onto the wyvern and then landing the killing blow.

Next session: Raid on the Pactlords!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

41st session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three 8th level characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. We're playing online and sessions are about 2 hours long. This session was particularly short as we hadn't played in about 6 weeks and so there was a lot of socializing to be done.

Previously, the characters had raided the lair of a gang of drow thieves called the Night's Kiss. They were led by the wizard's sister. They took her captive and retreated to a safe house. Having been defeated, there was no way the sister could return to the Night's Kiss without losing her life. She had no choice but to ally with the characters. She gave them two valuable pieces of intel.

First: That night the Night's Kiss was set to receive a shipment of magical weapons from Waterdeep.

Second: The Night's Kiss was in service to a mind flayer with a plan to conquer Neverwinter. She revealed details of the mind flayer's plan and the location of his hidden lair.

The characters decided to intercept the shipment of magic before assaulting the mind flayer's lair.

Next session: The heist of Griffonwing Spire!

 

[jasper]

It was okay. New kid to Adventure League with only 3 other game sessions. One church member. And 2 regulars. However it was the first JtRC chapter and the regulars make the Scooby Gang look like a Sherlock Homes and Columbo team up.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

31st session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 6:

• Dwarf Berserker/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/Rogue. Created by House Vladaam to replace a child they kidnapped and held in servitude. Naturally, she wants revenge. Two weapon fighter with the Battle tradition.
• 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.

In this session, the characters infiltrated the underground headquarters of the Pactlords of the Quaan. Their goal: Destroy the Quaan--the magical font that binds the Pactlords in common cause. With it destroyed, the pact will break, and the evil Pactlords will turn on each other. If they can instead purify the Quaan, the font could be used to reforge and renew the fragmented Empire. They considered that briefly, but dismissed it as too difficult. A practical bunch.

With them are a boggle and a magical staff that they previously rescued from the Pactlords. They know the layout of the headquarters. So the characters navigate this lair with a very good sense of who and what is where.

They entered through an underground tunnel and stealthed past the first guardian -- a massive otyugh in a fetid pool. Beyond a door they found the barracks of a small group of ogres. The fight was short, sharp, and brutal. At this level, the characters are finally to be feared.

Now each character was overcome with a strange sense that their greatest desire was through the next door. I asked each player to describe what their character wanted the most. Their answers were fantastic.

Previously, the dwarf berserker had been kidnapped by the Pactlords. Memories of that time were dim. But now they came back to him. Somehow, he had spent that time in a dream state, living out his ultimate fantasy: to discover, liberate, and rule the fallen dwarven kingdom of Dwarvenhearth. Whatever had implanted that delusion in his mind was clearly nearby.

The characters advanced deeper into the lair. The delusion got stronger. They pushed through a door -- and each player stepped into a dream of their greatest desire:

• The dwarf berserker found himself in the grand hall of Dwarvenhearth, marching toward his throne, surrounded by the proud citizens of his stronghold.
• The elf wizard found himself in a wooded grove. His grandfather -- who had been destroyed by the Quaan -- stood in the center of the grove. Grandfather beckoned him forward.
• The human paladin found himself in the grand cathedral of Ptolus. It was empty, except for his dead wife -- now alive. He felt drawn to her.
• The changeling spellbinder found herself ruler of House Vladaam, living a life of idleness. But as the years passed, she realized she was unsatisfied. Because her greatest desire still had not come true -- the desire to be human.
• The goblin oracle's greatest desire was to start a "church of inclusivity". But he found himself in a goblin slave camp, watching the members of his dead tribe being brutalized by overseers. As one, his tribe looked at him and shouted: "You are not forgiven!"

The dwarf and elf resisted this vision. When they broke free of it, they found themselves in a cavern. Attached to the ceiling was a monstrous balhannoth. Its tentacles reached for them. The other characters succumbed to their vision. They did not fight back. For that, I gave each a Fortune point. The dwarf and elf watched as tentacles engulfed their friends.

And that's where we ended.

Coming up with the dream sequence and delving the desires of each character was delightful. It pushed to the fore some motivations of the characters and themes of the campaign that are really going to pay off later.

Next session: Tentacles of the balhannoth!

 

[Richards]

In today's "Dreams of Erthe" campaign session, the PCs went to the manor house of a nobleman, where they believed the next dreamer they were to rescue was located. The dwarven bodyguards who answered the door said there was nobody there trapped in their dreams, and even after a bit of light flirting from the dwarven priestess PC, they turned the PCs away when the Lord of the manor, Andrus Vesperman, wasn't interested in seeing them.

However, as they were returning to their horses and wagon, a maid summoned them over to the back of the house and snuck them into the laundry room by way of the kitchen. There, the main housekeeper informed them she had overheard their conversation with the dwarven bodyguards and they believed the Lord's wife, Lady Angelica Vesperman, fit the description of the person they were looking for: no one had been allowed to see Lady Angelica for the past week and the maids hadn't gathered any laundry from her in the past week; Lord Andrus insisted on bringing her her food, claiming she was resting up. (She was eight and a half months pregnant with their first child.) The maids had never heard of the dream sickness, but it explained a lot if it were true.

So they waited in the laundry room until Lord Andrus's business partner arrived and they went off to discuss matters in the parlor. Then the housekeeper snuck the PCs upstairs into the master bedroom, where they hoped to fetch Lady Angelica and teleport her into their extradimensional lamp, where they could perform the ritual to awaken her. However:

• The three-dimensional carving of the Vesperman family crest (a wasp about to sting) on the bedroom wall was in fact a mechanical wasp construct, Lord Andrus's familiar.
• There was an alarm spell centered all around the bed where Lady Angelica lay.
• When the half-orc cleric/paladin summoned an air element hippogriff to fight off the activated mechanical wasp familiar and got Lady Angelica into the extradimensional lamp, it turned out she was not in a dream coma after all - this became apparent when the grub inside her ate its way through her belly and crawled to freedom, while she was paralyzed and unable to move.

They captured the grub, healed Lady Angelica, and high-tailed it out the window via a gaseous form spell, leaving the hippogriff to fight off the familiar, Lord Andrus, his two dwarven bodyguards, and two dread guards. But then, figuring out Lord Andrus had used his wife as an incubator for his grub-monster and fearing for the housekeeper and the four young maids back in the manor house, they decided to go back and attack. The half-orc rescued the maids and housekeeper and got them inside the extradimensional lamp, while the others attacked through the back door and via the maids' room (which they had entered through a window). They then had to fight Lord Andrus (a werewasp wizard), his two dwarven bodyguards, the two animated dread guards, the mechanical wasp construct familiar, a summoned fiendish giant wasp, and a wasp swarm summoned by Lord Andrus. Eventually they killed everyone (with the help of a summoned celestial bison and fiendish praying mantis), then figured out the trapped dreamer wasn't Lady Angelica (who had awoken from her grub-induced paralysis) but a teen stable boy they'd assumed had run off two weeks ago. (He'd actually hidden behind a pile of hay in the stables to shirk work and fallen into a dream coma.) They did the ritual to awaken him...just in time to meet up with the hive drake Andrus had summoned via a whispering wind spell before he'd been slain by the PCs. The hive drake - a horse-sized dragon with a swarm of wasps living in its throat bladder for a breath weapon - was eventually slain and the women of the manor returned safely to their home.

The name of the adventure was almost identical to that of a band my son listens to (and which I've come to enjoy as well): "Birth Day Massacre." (The band goes by "The Birthday Massacre.")

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

32nd session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 6:

• Dwarf Berserker/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/Rogue. Created by House Vladaam to replace a child they kidnapped and held in servitude. Naturally, she wants revenge. Two weapon fighter with the Battle tradition.
• 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 characters are raiding the underground headquarters of the Pactlords of the Quaan. Their goal: Destroy the Quaan--the magical font that binds the Pactlords in common cause. With it destroyed, the pact will break, and the evil Pactlords will turn on each other.

This session began with the characters locked in combat with a balhannoth -- a tentacled monstrosity with the ability to extract your greatest desires from deep within your mind and bring them to life. (Originally, I was planning to adapt the stats of the 5E balhannoth. But I ended up reskinning a 4E roper. The roper's a great creature and with increasing frequency I'm using 4E monsters in Shadow of the Demon Lord. I use bloodied hit points as health, convert all damage dice to d6's, and eyeball the rest of the numbers.) Early in the battle, most of the characters were still trapped in their vision. The other characters worked to free them from the balhannoth's tentatcles and bring them back to the real world.

The changeling actually wanted to stay in her dream -- she was infiltrating the estate of House Vladaam and uncovering its secrets. Improvising, I decided that the balhannoth's psychic powers had somehow connected her into the psyche of the Vladaams and that the information she was learned was genuine. In the attic, she found the patriarch of the family locked away by his children. She thought he could be a powerful ally. Touching the bars imprisoning him, however, set off a magical alarm. Aliastar, his son, appeared. The changeling stabbed Aliastar. He sunk to his knees, mortally wounded. With his dying breath, he told her to find him in the real world. Together, they could double cross his sister. Some family!

The balhannoth hit hard. It took most of the characters' resources to defeat it. In its gizzard they found the gruesome remains of previous victims and a small fortune in coin.

At this point, the characters were depleted. They couldn't rest, or even return later. They had to push forward. But they lacked the resources to accomplish both their goals: 1) free the wizard's mentor from the Pactlord's prison 2) destroy the Quaan. They had to choose one or the other. The dwarf proposed they destroy the Quaan first. In the chaos that would inevitably follow they could sneak into the prison. Good plan!

The characters continued to deeper into the lair. They encountered a displacer beast guarding an intersection, but the elf successfully charmed it. Rounding a corner, they neared a massive cavern. They couldn't see into the cavern yet, but they could hear strange chanting and speaking from within. (I played the iconic heart rip scene from Temple of Doom to communicate the vibe.) It was a ritual to convert a monster into a Pactlord by submerging it into the black liquid of the Quaan.

Next session: The Quaan!

 

[Older Beholder]

My overseas group had been on a bit of break, so one of the players who hadn't DM'd in ten years or so offered to run a short low level campaign he had an idea for using 5E D&D.

We started in a prison chain gang down in some mines.

I decided to play an Aasimar (I can't believe it took me this long to do so), with the idea of trying to multiclass paladin/rogue, starting with level 1 as a paladin, although it's more a way to use the paladin abilities for the race. The angel in his blood line is based on a Dionysus God of wine and festivities type domain which is super-fun to play.

The other party members were a pair of goblin brothers (fighter and ranger) and a human bard.

The goblin brothers managed to get us into a fight in the cells on the first night, but the next day while mining we opened up a chamber that led to some large doors. We were rewarded for our find and had a bit of a celebration back in the cell that night. The next day we went back and opened the way further for some of the higher ups to come and check out the discovery... moments later we heard screams before some flesh golems came through the opening, our weapons being useless against them we began attacking the guards and chaos broke out as we tried to escape.

It was a really fun session, I'm looking forward to the next one.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

33rd session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo. Five player characters at Level 6: Dwarf Berserker/Warrior. Elf Wizard/Magician. Goblin Oracle/Magician. Changeling Spellbinder/Rogue. Human Paladin/Priest. Aiding them was Meegus, a tricksy boggle capable of possessing other creatures.

This session was a crazy cool climax to one of this campaign's major plot threads. The characters had infiltrated the underground headquarters of the Pactlords of the Quaan. Their goal: Destroy the Quaan -- the magical font that binds the Pactlords in common cause. With it destroyed, the pact will break, and the evil Pactlords will turn on each other.

The Quaan was a pool of black liquid on a floating island of stone in the middle of a massive cylindrical cavern. A corridor opened onto one side of the cavern. The opening was filled with a dozen mongrelmen witnessing the induction of a new Pactlord. The ritual was on the floating island. A pair of harpies guided a troll into the pool. Once submerged, the troll would be bound to the Pactlords.

The mongrelmen were so focused on the ritual they didn't detect the characters approach. The characters ambushed them from behind. Three were dead before the mongrelmen could even react. The characters were trying to clear a path so the elf wizard could cast a Wish spell from a scroll they had obtained in the Banewarrens. (Ironically, the scroll had originally belonged to a Pactlord.)

The boggle teleported onto the floating island and then took control of the troll's body. The troll was a wrecker. In a single turn it killed both harpies.

The characters were on the verge of victory when a beholder floated up from beneath the island. Riding it was a mind flayer -- the leader of the Pactlords, Yuinthilu. Yuinthilu read the mind of the boggle, discovering the existence and location of an "un-key" that could destroy all the Bane Keys that granted access to the Banewarrens. This is not something the characters wanted in possession of the Pactlords. The Pactlord used mind blast to psychically damage the boggle and leave it dazed.

The beholder blasted the characters but they mostly shrugged off its eye rays. The dwarf berserker lassoed a rope to the floating island, climbed onto it, jumped atop the beholder, and knocked the mind flayer off the beholder. The mind flayer fell toward the bottom of the cavern -- but then plane shifted away. The elf wizard summoned a sprite -- and the sprite used its magical bow to put the beholder to sleep!

Next session: Mopping up!

 

[Reynard]

Awesome! We have really hit our stride with dungeon procedures (Rappan Athuk campaign) and I as GM have settled in to a comfortable place with not worrying about trying to implement everything in FGU ahead of time. I have the maps in but I just ask for a couple minutes if I need to throw together an encounter or whatever. That probably sounds simple, but I am only a few years into running VTT games and for a long time I thought I needed everything perfect before being able to play.

Anyway, Rappan Athuk fits our needs for the 2.5 hours we play on Monday nights and that's great.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

34th session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo. Five player characters at Level 6: Dwarf Berserker/Warrior. Elf Wizard/Magician. Goblin Oracle/Magician. Changeling Spellbinder/Rogue. Human Paladin/Priest. Aiding them was Meegus, a tricksy boggle capable of possessing other creatures.

In the previous session the characters had triumphed over one of the campaign's major factions, the Pactlords of the Quaan. They did so by destroying the Quaan, a pool that magically bound together all the faction's monstrous creatures. Now the Pactlords are turning on each other. But the underground cavern that held the pool was collapsing.

Most of the characters were on a ledge overlooking the cavern. But the dwarf berserker was one hundred feet below, at the bottom of the cavern, with the ceiling about to come down on him. There was also a sleeping beholder drifting toward the ground. And on the back of the beholder was a vicious troll possessed by the boggle, Meegus. The elf wizard used a spell called Hole of Glory to get the dwarf to the ledge. And just as the ceiling came down on the troll, the boggle fled its body and teleported to safety. The troll and beholder were buried under tons of rubble.

I'm sure we won't see them again.

The characters made their way to the prison. The characters rescued the wizard's mentor and also his summoned sprite.

They backtracked toward the storm drain they had used to enter the underground lair. The way was filled with signs of slaughter as the Pactlords turned on each other. The characters managed to avoid most of the fighting, but multiple failed stealth rolls resulted in them alerting the neo-otyugh that guarded the exit to the drain. They made short work of it.

The characters had a deal with the boggle, Meegus -- in return for destroying the Quaan, it would give them the "un-key", a magical item capable of destroying the Bane Keys and therefore vital to resealing the Banewarrens forever. Unfortunately, Yuinthilu had got to Meegus' bolthole first. Yuinthilu is the mind flayer that lead the Pactorlds until about, oh, five minutes ago. Its goal is to release a magical plague found within the Banewarrens and wipe out the population of Ptolus. Meegus' boggle minions were all dead -- brains sucked from their skulls -- and the un-key was missing.

With that, the characters hit Level 7. The rest of the session was occupied with the players selecting their master paths, leveling up, and buying new gear.

Next session: Return to the Banewarrens!