D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Richards]

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

• Awoke a nobleman dreamer who'd been dreaming of being attacked by giant centipedes that exploded out of the heads of the other diners at a banquet (in which he had been served a plate of earthworms)
• Were summoned by the Queen of Dreams, showing them a dream of three night hags riding a woman, draining her of her Constitution, and the PCs immediately recognized the dream victim as their spellsword's mother
• Had the night hags demand the return of the extradimensional lamp they had taken as treasure off a different night hag they'd slain many adventures previous, and which the coven of night hags wanted for themselves
• Returned to the victim's house to confront the night hags (as directed), fighting off three night hags, three nightmare steeds, and an imp
• Killed two nightmares, one night hag, and the imp, causing the others to flee into the Ethereal Plane
• Put the spellsword's mother to sleep, so they could use her dream as a beacon to find the night hags' ethereal lair (they knew the hags had made things so her dreaming self appeared in their ethereal arena)
• Slew the nightmare right away, killed another night hag, and caused the other night hag to flee back to the Material Plane...
• ...Where she was attacked by the NPCs guarding their bodies, and when three of the five dreamwalkers woke themselves up to fight her in the Material Plane, they caused her to flee back to her ethereal arena...
• ...Where the two remaining dreamwalkers were waiting and dispatched her forthwith

My granddaughter was visiting us, so we had her roll up a one-shot PC who happened to be in the area (she was renting a room at the spellsword's parents' house), but then she ran an absent player's PC for most of the game session.

Johnathan

 

[Evilhalfling]

Session 16: Empire of Dawn : Bad Moon Rising Level 10.

• Dragon fire traps prove nearly deadly.
• The great bronze door was opened. (thanks to rat-hivemind companion being polymorphed into a T-REX)
• the gold dragon was slain. Going down hard.
• 543 lbs of coins were collected, hoard valued at over 9,000 gp, more money than the party has ever collected or seen.
• The dragon corpse was moved to the boat by an elephant, horses and a Telekinesis spell.
• 5 party death saves, no permanent death.
• party cleric KO'd, AGAIN.
• party is going to show off the dragon corpse, take enough bones to build a spelljammer (this was the point of this quest)
  then call in a favor with the city's strongest priestess of necromancy to resurrect a healthy gold dragon.
  I did not see this solution coming!
  
  
• Also my Minispawn (9 yrs old) got to play cute telepathic conjoined-rat-hivemind then tear up everything as a TREX.
• Rats accidentally admitted to being a warlock, which has the players concerned. (as it should)
  
  Aftermath - solo
  the PC Aberrant-mind Sorceress returned to the city, to the apocalypse cult she has been running without telling other players
  (since session 12). The desperate cult wanted to start innocent human sacrifices. She refused and then became the sacrificial target, Her rat hivemind companion gave her a "Necklace of Power Augmentation" which actually just cut her off from magic.
  Just as she announced her willingness to be sacrificed for the good (bad) of the world, a party of adventures (Level 5) break in to interrupt the ceremony... the players will be running the other adventuring party next session.
  
  Adventures always arrive to interfere with cult sacrifice rituals. this NPC group was last seen in session 11

 

[THEMNGMNT]

50th and 51st session of my Dragon Heist/Deck of Many Things mashup. Three player characters: Half-orc cavalier fighter, halfling swashbuckler rogue, and half-elf evoker wizard/grave cleric. 10th level.

In the first session, they made plans for a high stakes exchange with their enemies. They possess the last two cards of the Deck of Many Things...and the Book of Vile Darkness. Their enemies want both. Who are their enemies? Tassatar, a mind flayer who is part of the Xanathar Guild. And the Tower Arcane, my version of the Arcane Brotherhood.

They set the exchange for an abandoned noble estate that's been the setting for multiple action scenes throughout the campaign. Fitting to bring it back around one last time as we near the end of the campaign.

The characters scrounged up enough money for the material components for Leomond's Secret Chest (IIRC) which allows them to send the chest and its contents to the ethereal plane. They placed the book and the cards in the chest.

They used their contacts with the city watch to get a contingent of crossbowmen and position them on the roof of the noble estate. Unbeknownst to them, their contact with the watch was replaced by a changeling in the employ of the mind flayer...

The second session kicked off with the exchange itself. Midnight in Waterdeep. A light snow falling over the estate's courtyard. For visual reference, I used the House of Blue Leaves from Kill Bill.

First to arrive was a mage from the Tower Arcane. She materialized in a swirl of snow. A woman wreathed in ice that glittered like diamonds.

The mind flayer's thrall arrived next -- the love interest of the half-elf wizard, a drow wizard completely in the grip of mind control. When she opened her mouth, it was the voice of the mind flayer that came out.

The halfling rogue took the lead in negotiations. His intent was to pit both sides against each other. This player is a fantastic lateral thinker who keeps me on my toes. I always love seeing what he'll come up with next.

The mind flayer had taken captive four allies of the characters and placed them in a death trap. It offered the location of the death trap in return for the book and cards. The Tower Arcane offered an alliance and employment. Impressed with the characters, they were asked to be the primary agents of the Tower Arcane in Waterdeep.

When the half-elf wizard produced the secret chest, the "city watch" attacked. Simultaneously, a dozen grimlock thralls burst forth from the estate's basement. The wizard was able to dismiss the chest before the they could seize it. But the characters were immediately overwhelmed by superior numbers.

The rogue offered the Tower Arcane a deal -- save our friends in the death trap, and we'll give you the Book of Vile Darkness. The mage nodded, then vanished. (Cool move, but I was a little bit bummed out by it. The death trap was the Weeping Labyrinth from Dungeon 209, which is an amazing map/adventure I've been dying to run for years. Oh, well.)

The characters turned their attention to the mind flayer's thralls. It was an epic brawl, with the drow wizard casting a sequence of mind control spells that had the characters turning on each other, regaining their senses, and then turning on each other again. Near the end of the session, the half-elf wizard was unconscious and being carried away by grimlocks. The rogue knocked out the drow wizard, breaking the charm the orc fighter had succumbed to. Now in control of himself, the fighter literally punched to death the remaining grimlocks to save the half-elf wizard.

Next session: The Tower Arcane holds up their end of the bargain...but will the players?

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Session 9 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

We said our farewell to the residents of the town we had liberated from marauders. But where to go? We had a long list of rumors:

• Berlin, far to our west, is the rallying point with other retreating NATO forces.
• Near Gdansk is a Special Forces team with orders related to a missile silo.
• An American unit with Nazi gold in an unknown location to our north.
• Perhaps related to the gold, there is a NATO force defending a bridge in Konin.
• To our east is a Soviet unit in Kalicz.
• Far to the south is the free city of Krakow.
• And somewhere out there is an American intelligence agent on the run.

We decided to head toward Konin, see if we could link up with NATO forces, and possibly get a lead on the Nazi gold. Because Nazi gold!

We drove at night through the countryside. Along the way, we heard a repeating broadcast from Radio Free Krakow, then came across a horde of refugees dying of radiation poisoning. Radioactive ash rained down upon us. I was in the machinegunner's position on our modified cop car, and I got a full dose of rads. I screamed for us to get out of here. As I fired to create a panic, we plowed through the dying refugees.

We made camp, decontaminated, and rested. Eventually, we figured out that we were in the wrong location. During our rest, we heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Me and the American special forces grabbed our rifles and ran to get a look. We glimpsed a car moving down a dirt road -- ambushed!

As a group, we decided to see who had ambushed the car.

Next session: Another gunfight, probably.

 

[jasper]

Good and Bad. I wanted give cookies to one player and take a baseball bat to three. One of the three are the ones getting the cookies. I had two not know how feats or a spell work (Or lied about it.) I had 2 who did spoilers for NPCS the pc have never met.

 

[Richards]

In this week's "Ghourmand Vale" session, the PCs:

• Had the two suits of bespoke armor tailor-made to fit our two female PCs delivered by a druid NPC who opted to join the group (the DM decided we needed a permanent healer in the party)
• Investigated a hog farm that had been failing to deliver hogs to market on schedule
• Interrogated the pigs, goats, and chickens (via the druid's speak with animals spell) and learned the farmers had stopped taking care of them for several days now
• Sent the halfling down a well that was suspiciously completely dry and learned there was a tunnel at the bottom of it
• Got everyone down the well (including the druid's wolf animal companion) and started exploring
• Fought the dominated farmer and his wife (they were evil anyway, even before the domination), two zombies, two ghasts, and two vampires, killing everyone
• Discovered many of the undead had been "recycled" foes we'd already slain: the ghasts were weretigers we'd slain in the marketplace; the zombies were servants of the rakshasa trying to steal a magic item currently wielded by our paladin; the vampire was the cleric we'd learned of in another city and whose previous vampire spawn we'd killed many adventurers earlier; the new vampire spawn was the thief who'd been attacked as we were departing the thieves guild we'd plundered a few adventures ago.

And, in an unrelated bit of business, the paladin is now high enough level to summon a celestial pegasus as his bonded mount, so he did that and named his new flying steed Nova.

Johnathan

 

[Longspeak]

I'm running a game that's actually three interrelated games, which has for the past year been building to a big, world-threatening event.

Last night we came one step nearer the final countdown, as mercenaries hired to steal back something super dangerous from a high priest of Bahamut, realized for the first time.... he might not be a priest. Or a person.

 

[Richards]

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

• Discovered they were being scried upon and shut down the magical sensor with a targeted dispel magic spell
• Were accosted by a band of four hobgoblin soldiers who had been sent to escort the dreamwalkers to the castle of the King of the majority of the continent
• Identified the hobgoblins as being evil but went with them anyway, trusting they were much more lawful than evil (as has been the case with the other hobgoblin soldiers in service of the King they've met up with in the past)
• Entered the dreamscape of the King's six-year-old sister, Princess Caroline, to find her with the anthropomorphic representation of her stuffed toad, Mr. Wartimer J. Toad (the "J" stands for "Jumpy"), on the day he's to be married to his girlfriend, Darling Darlene Dumpling
• Set off on a raft, only to be ambushed by bullywug fighters (Princess Caroline refers to them as "frowny frogs")
• Made shore, crossed a gorge to fight four clown spiders (spiders whose abdomens look like clown heads), of whom the Princess is deathly afraid (she froze up solid until they had all been slain)
• Entered the forest, to be encountered by a myconid ("mucky mushroom") who warned them the Nightmare King didn't want the wedding to occur and had set a guardian, an earth titan named Older-Boulder, to stop them from getting to the forest clearing in time for the wedding
• Fought off Older-Boulder, who was a pushover once the two clerics each successfully cast a bestow curse on him making him miss his actions 50% of the time (so he only had a 25% chance of being able to attack each round - which only occurred for one round after the two spells took effect; it was like shooting a very large fish in a barrel after that)
• Made it to Darling Darlene Dumpling in her wedding veil, only to be warned to flee and save themselves
• Spotted the hypnalis viper ("sneaky snake") in the trees behind Darling Darlene Dumpling but failed to spot the other three nearby
• Killed the hypnalis vipers before any of the PCs could be put into a permanent dream coma
• Watched as Princess Caroline presided over the marriage ceremony for her bestest friend, culminating in her casting a light spell on the end of the stick she'd been carrying throughout the full dreamscape
• Got worried when the king's advisor suggested the dreamwalkers should remain at the castle in case they were ever needed again instead of being allowed to free others throughout the kingdom
• Got even more worried when the spellsword PC basically told the King he wasn't as important to them as the Queen of Dreams (and when he asked if the dreamwalkers were beholden to two separate sovereigns, the spellsword answered, "Basically, you're beholden to us, Your Majesty" - which caused the other PCs to want to kill him right then and there)
• Were told they would be guests in the castle overnight while the King made his decision on what to do with them

It was an opportunity for the "dream sequence" in this adventure to last pretty much the whole game session, and we had a lot of fun with it. And the players twigged on to the fact that Princess Caroline is like them: capable of manifesting a single 0-level spell per day and recall her dreams with 100% recall after waking up. (With the proper training, she could one day be a dreamwalker like them.)

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

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

• Were asked by a pair of hobgoblin samurai working directly for the King to look into rumors of a planned upcoming hobgoblin miner uprising or assassination attempt on the King's life
• Were "given a tour" of the iron mines as a reason for them to be there and looking into things
• On the way, heard cries for help from inside the hobgoblin women's encampment and found a pair of human guards attempting to force themselves on an unwilling hobgoblin girl
• Attacked the two guards and subdued them but stopped short of killing them, and turned them over to the castle guard
• Explored the mines as part of the "tour," only with the human bard/rogue PC wearing a borrowed ring of invisibility, scout's headband that granted him darkvision, and with a tongues spell active so he could understand what the hobgoblins were saying
• Had the four visible PCs ask the off-duty hobgoblin miners about conditions in the mine, specifically so the invisible PC could eavesdrop on their conversations after the visible PCs left (but they were mostly asking each other if they'd checked out the female dwarf PC, as the hobgoblins miners and human guards are all male and the miners don't get a chance to see women very often - they were arguing over whether she was a dwarf or an elf, having never seen either before)
• Found out the miners often hit veins of useless "drunge crystals" along with the iron ore, which are thrown away into a nearby magma pool
• Discovered a partially lame hobgoblin miner named Burkin tosses the drunge crystals into the magma, but is secretly feeding them to a pair of magma worms who love the stuff but can't detect it when it's mixed in with iron (the half-orc cleric/paladin PC spying on him saw him take a crystal from an iron wheelbarrow and only then were the magma worms able to detect it, and also overheard him telling the worms that tomorrow was "the big day")
• Figured out that Burkin was likely planning on getting a bunch of drunge crystals near the King the next day, but couldn't figure out how (a search of the mines revealed nothing, and he wouldn't talk)
• Decided they'd best take out the magma worms, and did so by dumping a pile of drunge crystals down a mine tunnel to draw the worms out where the PCs/hobgoblin samurai could take them out
• Interrogated Burkin in his dreams by pretending to be the magma worms and getting the plot out of him in that manner, learning that the accomplices would see to it the worms were led to the King in the gardens the following day; they also learned there were just the two magma worms in the area
• Informed the King about the probable assassination attempt in the garden the next day, and jointly decided to let it play out since the worms had both already been slain
• Accompanied the King and his entourage to the gardens the next day, where a quartet of hobgoblin women (secretly monks - they'd been training themselves unobtrusively) "presented" a special gift to the King, bringing out an iron chest and dumping the contents at his feet before leaping back, and then being completely surprised when no magma worms came to devour the drunge crystals and the King
• Were arrested for conspiracy (along with Burkin)
• Watched as the King had the decapitated bodies of the two human guards who had been abusing the female hobgoblins and threatening them with death if they spoke up dragged in and added to the compost heap
• Were granted permission to leave the castle and go about their dream-waking missions, with a reminder that they might serve the Queen of Dreams in the Dreamlands but they were under the King's authority here in the Mortal Realm
• Were also presented with 2,000 gp each for having successfully awakening the King's little sister (in the previous adventure session), as well as a magic item that can restore lost mental ability scores

Of course, the orb of mental renewal bears the Royal crest upon it and will make it easier for the King's wizard to scry upon the PCs if they're ever needed again, but I haven't mentioned that bit to the players....

Johnathan

 

[Foodgeek]

1st level characters. We just entered a dungeons through a 20' up secret door in a huge tree. after dealing with some traps and having our rogue bitten by a black widow, we found a large room (filled with bones) with a well in it. Instead of just entering, two characters combined the spells druidcraft and minor illusion to create a mouse in sight and sound...and flying squid like creatures descended from stalactites and attacked it and the flew back up. We did something similar (but sound only of a guy yelling) but closer to get them to attack a so where we could surprise and ambush them. DM got good saving throw and bad attack rolls for the monsters and we wiped them out without having our heads injured by darkmantles. Wer searched this room which is covered in bones but all got pretty low rolls. We found a dagger and shortbow, but something was probably still there are one person refused to search them room like the rest of us had....so I cast detect magic as a ritual (I'm a cleric in that game) and the dagger, bow, and a ring on the floor lit up. Turned out to be +1 dagger (wizard found and kept it), +1 short bow (i found and gave to rogue), and the ring of protection I found with detect magic (and kept).