D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

47th session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three 9th level characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. Short session due to lots of (lovely) chatter at the table.

The characters are attempting to infiltrate the residence of the Tower Arcane's ambassador to Neverwinter. (Tower Arcane is my version of the Arcane Brotherhood.) They want to steal his spellbook, which is themed around teleportation, and is being used to gate in personnel and supplies that will be used for nefarious purposes. The players decided to go in through the sewers. They found the way guarded by a neo-otyugh. Only a CR7, but it hit hard, and the characters are already in rough shape before entering the residence.

Next session: Teleportation traps!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

49th and final session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo. Five player characters at level 10.

• Dwarf Executioner/Berserker/Warrior. He now wields the sacred Axehammer of the Lost Clan.
• Elf Librarian/Wizard/Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, Chaos, and Fey.
• Goblin Pyromancer/Oracle/Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions, with a dose of Divination.
• Changeling Dervish/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 Defender/Paladin/Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the primary god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His murdered wife was has returned as undead and now he seeks to stop her.

This is the end! The characters are in the heart of the Spire, fighting for the magical key that will lock (or unlock) the Banewarrens forever. Only the Dread One (creator of the Banewarrens) remained. Last session, the Dread One had obtained the Book of Inverted Darkness, an artifact that would allow it to reconstitute its form and threaten the world once again. The Dread One's shade had possessed an undead boneclaw. So it looked pretty bad ass!

The session started with the ceiling collapsing, dropping the Dread One and two of the characters into the vault below. What was in the vault? Another bane -- the Disk of Dissolution, which could disintegrate anything with a touch once per day. Of course, there was also a chance it would disintegrate you. The elf wizard decided to take that chance. He teleported beside the disk, picked it up, and touched the Dread One. Pft! The boneclaw was disintegrated, leaving behind the Dread One's still-deadly shade.

Remember when I said only the Dread One remained? I lied. The paladin's wife (and the undead cleric that had turned her into a vampire) had been merged into one horrific abomination. The paladin brought his weapon down, destroying it/them.

The other characters swarmed the shade, but just being near it inflicted insanity and madness. On the Dread One's turn, it turned toward the elf wizard. The human paladin used an ability that granted an ally the ability to move away, and the wizard scooted behind the paladin. Thwarted, the Dread One took out its frustration on the paladin. With a single hit, it knocked out the paladin.

Once again, the elf wizard decided to act. He kissed his magical staff -- Yaeshla, the intelligent staff of shards that destroyed the Dread One 3000 years ago with a retributive strike. But this time, the target was different -- the Book of Inverted Darkness, the artifact that corrupted Danar and twisted him into the Dread One. In a sense, the Book was the true source of evil.

The retributive strike destroyed the staff, the Book, and the Dread One. Every character had to make a saving throw ("challenge roll" in the parlance of SotDL) or be obliterated. Being unconscious, the paladin automatically failed his saving throw. The changeling spellbinder also failed her roll, too.

Both of the deceased characters had corruption, which means their souls went to hell. The wizard was able to trap the paladin's soul in a locket that held a picture of his wife. This now-holy relic was then entrusted into the care of the Church of Lothian, perhaps to aid future adventurers.

The three survivors -- elf wizard, goblin oracle, and dwarf berserker (whose mind was actually that of the changeling...yeah, it got weird at the end) -- sealed the Banewarrens. Together we narrated the Church of Lothian rewarding them for saving the city of Ptolus, as well as the ultimate fate of each character.

We set aside some time to discuss what the players thought of Shadow of the Demon Lord and the Ptolus setting. Both were big hits. In fact, two players said they preferred SotDL to 5E. I've wanted to play The Banewarrens for almost 20 years so it was hugely pleasurable to see it deliver such a satisfying campaign.

Next up: The paladin's player is going to GM a few sessions of the latest edition Twilight: 2000, which is one of my all time favorite settings. After that, the berserker's player will run us through Shadowdark. Excited to be a player for a while! And then we'll kick off my next foray into D&D variants: 13th Age!

 

[Richards]

In last Wednesday's "Ghourmand Vale" campaign session, the PCs:

• Attended the naming ceremony of my PC's newborn nephew and niece, where my PC's father welcomed me back into the family and presented me with a minor ring of spell storing engraved with the family crest
• Were asked to escort the daughter of the frost barbarian's leader back to their ancestral home, following several days behind the large group of barbarians we had rescued rescued from slavery
• Got ambushed by a wyvern, which we cut down at range (with arrows and magic missiles) before it could close with us
• Met up with the barbarian tribe, all bloodied from a recent fight with the orcs who had captured them into slavery; they had managed to slay the orcs but were driven back by a hill giant and his winter wolf allies
• Went to go take down the giant and wolves, tracking them to a cave in a hill
• Ended up inside a large cave with two tunnels leading deeper into the hill, and soon ended up trapped in the middle of a "Y" - a hill giant and a winter wolf in one direction, four more winter wolves in the other, and a Medium white dragon coming up behind us from the cave entrance
• Kept the four winter wolves out of the fight for a bit when the elf archer shot an arrow (upon which had been wrapped the "clothlike" item resulting when my sorcerer cast a shrink item spell on a blazing bonfire), setting the bonfire in the middle of the corridor before the wolves
• Took down the hill giant first with concentrated attacks from the archer shooting arrows, the sorcerer casting magic missiles and scorching rays, and the half-elf paladin trading blows with him with his flaming burst longsword, while the dragon was kept busy trying to find out who kept dropping boulders on its head (it was Ogilvy, my unseen servant, dropping pebbles which were actually boulders reduced in size by my shrink item spells)
• Easily slew the lone winter wolf after the giant had been brought down (when the scorching rays became especially useful!)
• Finally dispatched the white dragon after it had used up its breath weapon for awhile, wasting it on my unseen servant and the PCs' mounts (the halfling's pony got dropped into the negatives, but we revived it in time)
• Took out the winter wolves trapped behind the bonfire with scorching rays and arrows dipped in oil, shot through the bonfire's flames - it was like shooting fish in a barrel!
• Had my sorcerer use shrink item spells on the white dragon's corpse, figuring we can probably sell it when we get back to civilization, and the coffers we found in the dragon's lair
• Leveled up to 7th at the end of this adventure (so my magic missile spells now deal 4d4+4 damage - good, because I'm running out of charges on my 5d4+5 wand of magic missiles!)

Johnathan

 

[Bitbrain]

Second session of the Functional Addicts saw the DM get our background information all mixed up in his head.

As a result, what was supposed to be a simple “get to know the town and go to a fancy dress party” session resulted in we the players going down a GLORIOUS conspiracy theory tangent that can best be described as Romance of the Three Kingdoms with firearms and a potential Moonshae-Isles-Japan invasion of the mainland…

Then we look up to see the DM with a look of shock on his face, holding our background information in one hand and desperately jotting down our conspiracy theory on a notepad with the other.



We may have accidentally created a brand new campaign endgame. One significantly more intense than anything the DM had thought of…

 

[Richards]

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

• Agreed to check to make sure the sword of temptation was still in its hiding place, after the guardian (who didn't know exactly what it was she guarded) had determined someone got past the door she was never to enter herself, but had yet to come back out
• Read some hastily-scribbled notes taken from the home of the traitor who had kidnapped the Elven Queen last adventure and held her in the Abyss, with the sword of temptation as her ransom; the notes were the traitor's written half of a conversation with his familiar after he'd been struck mute (by one of the PCs) last adventure
• Arrived at the hidden location of the sword of temptation (the interior of a dryad's tree), only to find she'd subdued the traitor when he'd tried to follow the thief he'd hired to fetch the sword; as it granted wishes to the wielder, it was the quickest means by which he knew to restore his ability to speak
• Discovered and captured the traitor's invisible quasit familiar, who had entered the tree interior with the PCs, unseen
• Were given a token identifying them as working on the Elven Queen's behalf
• Entered the extradimensional interior past the door the dryad guarded, inside of which was a statue of a guardian naga in the middle of an octagonal room with seven doors, each with a picture of a different animal carved upon it (sloth, lion, peacock, snake, goat, pig, dragon)
• Explored the rooms, discovering each to be a trap based upon one of the seven deadly sins
• Found the elven thief, invisible and in stasis, which they bound tightly in rope and returned to the dryad
• Discovered the naga was not a statue after all but a "stasis guardian" and convinced it to let them downstairs, through the hollow pillar it was wrapped around
• Went downstairs and met the Primary Guardian, a gynosphinx in charge of the whole extradimensional dungeon, who assured them the sword of temptation was still secure with her
• Returned upstairs, exited the dungeon, reported back to the Queen, and turned in the traitor and the thief
• Got paid for their efforts
• Picked up a plot hook for the next adventure: a druid is two days late with his weekly report, and divinations reveal he's in a dreaming sleep from which he cannot awaken without help....

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

We've kicked off Free League's edition of Twilight: 2000. This is one of my all time favorite campaign settings. Even better: This time, I'm a player! Our GM for this campaign was the paladin in the previous Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign (and before that the tiefling shadow sorcerer in the 5E campaign). He's the only one in our group with military experience so he's definitely the authority.

For Session 0 we used random tables to roll up our characters. We ended up with:

• 26 year old American spy with a history of criminality
• 56 year old Polish truck driver who spent 30 years in prison
• 33 year old American special forces NCO who is career military
• Not-sure-how-old American who has done literally everything: military, police, criminal, blue collar
• Me: The Baroness Petra von Breza, age 30, Polish special forces descended from a noble family

It was a hoot.

Session 1 was a comedy of errors. After getting oriented as to the current situation, we decided to march southwest, toward the town of Szadek, hoping to evade Soviet forces while seeking shelter and provisions.

Our spy was on point due to her high Recon skill. She spotted what appeared to be a young mother and baby attempting to open the trunk of a burnt out car. We formulated a plan. Since our spy didn't speak Polish, I went with her to speak to the mother. Meanwhile, the rest of the team kept a distance and provided overwatch.

The baby was a fake, and "mom" was attempting to lure us into an ambush by local bandits. There was a great lead up to the firefight where the chaos and confusion was growing each turn. It was obvious something was wrong but everyone was reluctant to be the first one to pull the trigger. Eventually the trunk popped and a man with a gun told us to surrender. I put 6 rounds into him. Our spy finished him off.

Nearby was a firebombed bus with three bandits lurking inside. Our special forces NCO spotted them and fired into the bus with his .50 rifle, scoring gory critical hits. The bandits fired at me and the spy but missed. The Polish truck driver and rando guy also fired into the bus to finish off the bandits.

Meanwhile, the bandits had a sniper in the woods, who hit me twice in consecutive rounds -- once in the chest and once in the head. Fortunately I had armor. I ran for cover behind the bus, dropped prone, and emptied my magazine into the sniper, scoring a critical hit on his arms that took him out of the fight.

All of this sounds much more coordinated than it was. In reality, everyone spent multiple rounds debating whether or not they should shoot and/or running to get within firing range. Like I said, comedy of errors.

Great fun! The system really evokes a gritty feel and keeps combat tactical without being overly complex.

Next session: Loot the corpses!

 

[Richards]

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

• Were asked by a circle of elven druids to go find one of their number who's two days late in his weekly status report; he's an awakened giant eagle druid named Skywatcher, who has an eagle animal companion named Shrieker, and divination spells indicate he's recently become trapped in his dreams
• Were accompanied to the cliffside where Skywatcher makes his nest by a goliath barbarian/druid following the tracks of a missing band of four of his people; indications are they entered the cave network at the bottom of the cliff and made their way up (rumors are the network leads all the way to the top); he's been instructed to see to their well-being or at least retrieve the +2 goliath greathammer one of them wielded, if they're already dead
• Successfully avoided the first two caverns, one filled with four bat swarms and the one above it with two stirge swarms, by having everyone but the half-orc cleric/paladin enter their extradimensional lamp and have him quietly air walk with it up past the sleeping swarms
• Ran into trouble in the next cavern up, when the half-orc got attacked by four olive slime zombies, the remains of the missing four goliaths; the others exited the lamp to help fight, and the dwarf priestess got her Intelligence drained down to 2 points (she was later restored all the way back up to a 4 intelligence by the barbarian/druid)
• Made it past a blocked tunnel to encounter a stone drake, guarding the goliaths' gear (which he considered to be his treasure now, and which included the +2 goliath warhammer in question) before slaying the slime zombies and eradicating the pools of slime
• Successfully convinced the stone drake that their goliath companion would be the drake's new "decider" (humanoid adventuring companion) and got him to join them
• Made it to the surface, found the eagles' nest, convinced Shrieker they meant no harm (via speak with animals), and brought both eagles into the extradimensional lamp, where the five dreamwalkers entered Skywatcher's dream
• Fought two perytons in mid-air, in a dream sequence that was a days-old memory of the giant eagle having driven them off for real
• Returned to the top of the cliff to join up with the goliath and stone drake, just in time for the full force of peryton invaders - five perytons and an advanced pack leader - to show up to kill Skywatcher in a pre-emptive strike
• Eventually slew all six, then returned to the elves to report their success, at which time they were rewarded with a bunch of potions and teleported back to the town near where they'd been taken by the elves three adventures ago.

The goliath barbarian/druid was a last-minute addition I added to the adventure once I learned the oldest (adult) son of the family we game with was going to be in the area over the Easter weekend and was available for this session; he used to game with us from age 8 until he went away to college, so it was nice seeing him again.

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

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

• Were sent to hunt down a chimera that had been rampaging through a forest
• Found the chimera, and the halfling rogue immediately caught it in a web spell from her cloak of arachnida (just purchased prior to the adventure session's start)
• Killed the chimera at range before it could escape from the web (archer snipers are pretty good at that sort of thing)
• Heard a bulette heading their way, crashing through the forest
• Killed the bulette with long-range arrow attacks, magic missile and scorching ray spells
• Returned to the elven druids who had hired them, to find them under the sway of an ogre mage
• Burst into the room and slew the ogre mage before it was even aware it was involved in a fight (it helped that the druids were measuring it for living plant armor, and thus it wore only a breechcloth and had no weapons at hand)
• Went through the entire adventure session without anyone losing so much as a single hit point.

Johnathan

 

[THEMNGMNT]

48th session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three 9th level characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard.

The characters are infiltrating the residence of the Tower Arcane's ambassador to Neverwinter. (Tower Arcane is my version of the Arcane Brotherhood.) They want to steal his spellbook, which is themed around teleportation, and is being used to gate in personnel and supplies that will be used for nefarious purposes.

In this session, the players used the sewers to enter the basement. Attempting to exit the basement, they triggered a teleportation trap that whisked the paladin away to a locked room with a golem. They traded blows. Realizing he was getting the worst of it, the paladin used his magical armor to turn ethereal and slip through the walls. He found himself outside a tower on the grounds of the estate. He used misty step to reach the roof of a skybridge connecting the tower to the main residence. A second floor window let him into a large room guarded by a gishy wizard/warrior. They drew swords and turned to confront each other.

Meanwhile, the warlock and wizard ascended to the ground floor, entering an oversized kitchen. At first, they tried to be stealthy, but found two apprentice mages waiting for them. A couple fireballs took them out. Looting the bodies, the warlock and wizard found amulets that would protect them from the teleport traps.

Next session: Nefarious schemes revealed!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Sessions 2, 3, and 4 of Free League's edition of Twilight: 2000. This time, I'm a player! Player characters:

• 26 year old American spy with a history of criminality
• 56 year old Polish truck driver who spent 30 years in prison
• 33 year old American special forces NCO who is career military
• Not-sure-how-old American who has done literally everything: military, police, criminal, blue collar
• Me: The Baroness Petra von Breza, age 30, Polish special forces descended from a noble family

I've missed the last two sessions. While I was out, the characters entered a small village where the military-age men and women are being kidnapped by marauders from a nearby city. The characters fought off a raiding party, killing 6 of the 8 marauders. Unfortunately, the Polish truck driver took a bullet to the dome and is now bedridden.

In this session, the leader of the marauders arrived with an APC, a dozen men, and an offer to negotiate. The negotiation didn't get very far: He wanted unconditional surrender. Our American spy was the face, and as she walked away, we opened fire from the treeline. The American special forces NCO has a .50 Barrett M82 that is absolutely devastating, and he used it to kill the leader. Unfortunately, that didn't have the effect on the marauders we had hoped. The APC started up its engine and opened fire with its heavy machinegun. The special forces NCO took a direct hit that broke his ribs.

We fell back to the village to mount a defense.

Loving this game!

Next session: I'm pretty sure we're all going to die.