D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Enrico Poli1]

Curse of Strahd, 4th session.
5 PCs: Human Paladin of Devotion, Half-Orc Rogue, Human Necromancer, Dwarf Cleric, Dragonborn Barbarian.

They ended the last session in the Town of Vallaki. They had recovered the Tome of Ravenloft but could not read it. A disguised Rictavio tried to steal the book to discover Strahd's secrets; meanwhile, a disguised d'Avenir tried to catch Rictavio.

So Rictavio wanted to give them the means to read the book (a scroll of Comprehend Languages) and learn its secrets by Clairaudience. In Vallaki's square, after the PCs messed with poor Blinsky and his cute monkey, the scroll was delivered via another disguise. D'Avenir also was around, in a new disguise too. (The PCs fought them but did not see their true appearane yet)

Then the PCs moved to Krezk to ask the Bishop for help. They needed help to understand the contents of Strahd's story; moreover, they also needed high-level restorations for Ireena, for the son of Barovia's priest, and maybe for the Mad Archmage who defeated and ridiculed them some day ago. During the trip, I inserted a scene in which their carriage was harassed by a big number of wolves. This time a good Fireball was enough to disperse them, but this was only a taste of what would came.

In Krezk they entered the Abbey and met the mongrelmen and the Bishop. They presented him with the story of the Tome, confirming him in the theory that Strahd needs a woman. So the Bishop invited them to help him complete his ceremony to create a female flesh golem to please Strahd.
The players were really worried. Some wanted to complete the experiment, but in the end the Dwarf Cleric was so horrified that they had to refuse the invitation and leave the Bishop's place, bringing with them a couple of Scrolls of Greater Restoration.

They correctly understood that Strahd wanted Ireena, so they came back fast to Barovia, used the Scrolls to cure Ireena and the Priest's son (they had made a promise) and then decided to take Ireena in a safe place: S.Andral Church in Vallaki, protected by the holy Bones of the Saint. During the trip back to Vallaki the carriage was attacked again by wolves (24 normal, 10 werevolves) that forced the carriage to stop; the heroes were able to make the wolves flee after a few rounds of combat.

A satisfactory 4th session of CoS.

 

[Umbran]

My last session... was trapped.

The party went into a barrow to recover a magic item rumored to be inside. There were, as is often the case in tombs, a bunch of traps. The GM was slightly put out because he had not taken into account the fact that my character is walking around with a 21 passive Investigation. The rest of the party my well stumble into traps, but they quickly learned to put me in front for this one.

The fight at the end against an invisible stalker was somewhat of a challenge. Nobody went unconscious, but one more hit and I would have been.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My last session was not great. I really could have just sent everyone a word doc with the information they gained, and used the play time to do soemthing active. There was a lot of good RP, and an interesting philosophical discussion about the Blood of Vol and the divinity within, but the session was mostly exposition.

Next session they head to the Rogachovya estate on the northeastern edge of the Nightwood, to “explore a gothic manor-keep and go into the woods”. Should make up for the last session.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

It was! Gloriously gross and amazing. Luckily with high level PCs they were able to bring the poor dwarf back.

Last night's session was equally epic. The party returned to the dungeon, made an alliance with the Githyanki and assaulted the illithid stronghold anew (even the the githyanki captain tried to trick the PCs into taking on the neothelid first).

8 orogs and 6 illithis vs 4 PCs and 6 githyanki. It was an awesome battle that almost saw the dwarf get dominated again (last time that happened he smeared the nature cleric into red butter).

I think Dungeon of the Mad Mage is a bit hit and miss, but that section with the gith and the mind flayers is pretty great. I put my players up against a mind flayer and intellect devourer for the first time a couple sessions ago. Sadly, no one last their mind.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Played the 9th session of Dragon of Icespire Peak with my group of D&D noobs. They were 3rd level and gained enough XP by the end to reach level 4. They were on the Dwarven Excavation quest. Like the rest of the adventure, I heavily modified it. The dwarven prospectors the characters were sent to rescue are actually secret cultists of Abbathor, and they've excavated the temple to find a key fragment that can be assembled to unlock a hidden vault holding the lost hoard of a dragon. 'Cause this is D&D!

The session opened mid-battle. The characters used a necklace of fireballs to incinerate a swarm of crawling claws. Two ghouls managed to paralyze the dwarf cleric but were quickly taken out before they could do much more. The sole surviving cultist hit the dwarf cleric with his pickaxe, dropping him to 0 hit points, then hit him again for two failed death saves. Meanwhile, a deathlock -- the undead high priest of Abbathor -- appeared, raising a skeletal swarm that engulfed the characters. The vengeance paladin took an opportunity attack from the swarm to lay on hands and bring back the dwarf from the edge of death. The dwarf then turned the skeletal swarm. The next round he used his tempest cleric class features to maximize shatter and obliterate the deathlock. It was a rollercoaster ride for that player, from the edge of death to MVP.

Unbeknownst to the dwarf, the sacrificial greataxe he took from the deathlock is actually a cursed Berserking Axe. So that's gonna get ugly.

Next session the characters venture to my version of Cragmaw Castle to take on a group of orc bandits that will turn out to be more than they first appear.

 

[R_J_K75]

I started a new 1st level 5E D&D campaign with 3 players set in the Forgotten Realms. Since everyone is social distancing and self-quarantining we are using Skype video calls to play for 2 to 3 hours twice a week. Its working OK but Skype is kind of quirky and the connection could be better, it cuts out here and there and even drops calls. The campaign is set in Cormyr out of Marsember. The players were on a boat hired to transport 4 individuals of a merchant costar and their cargo to Teziir. Unbeknownst to the crew of the boat, mixed in with the cargo were snakes. Snakes got lose on the boat, killed a few crewmen, and the hold was sealed off until the ship made land fall. Once in port and the cargo was unloaded the PCs decided to investigate and followed the merchants and their cargo through the streets of Teziir. When the merchants realized they were being followed, they attacked the PCs to keep them from meddling in their affairs. One of the PC's, a bard perished in the ensuing battle, bitten to death by a swarm of poisonous snakes and then inadvertently set on fire by a flask of flaming oil thrown by one of her compatriots. She was buried in a shallow grave marked by a makeshift cross along with her deflated bagpipes.

I know its lame to quote your own post but figured for clarity sake its worth it.

The two surviving characters made their way back to the docked boat, Valkurs Blessing II. I introduced the replacement for the fallen PC as a shipmate of the other PC, Figured it would be clean and simple, it was. As they were sleeping in their berths during the voyage back to Marsember from Teziir, they were awoken by alarm bells. They grabbed their equipment, ran on deck to find the ship being ravaged by a magical storm. The captain gave the order to abandoned ship so the three PCs, along with three deckhands jumped in a life boat and traversed the treacherous waters leaving the sinking ship behind. They made it out of the storm and intended to head back to Teziir but they ended up lost and anchored a few hundred yards offshore of an uncharted isle. While swimming to shore a deckhand was bitten in half then eaten by a reef shark (natural 20 too) hunting in the shallows which the blood lured others to the feeding frenzy that the remaining party watched from the beach. The island was heavily forested and off in the distance could was a lone mountain. After resting for the night the party decided to head for the mountain to get a better vantage point to try and determine their location. The two deckhands stayed behind to watch the boat knowing in their heart of hearts theyre as good as dead. The group came upon some humanoid skeletons, wearing old rusted armor with rusted weapons beside the corpses, and continuing further they came upon a small orc settlement which they observed from afar and decided to circumvent. They made their way to the other side of the island where the mountain awaited them on another island separated by a ravine with a channel running between the two land masses. This is where we left off and plan to pick up this Saturday. There wasn't a lot of action but the session was made up a series of decision points which dictated the direction of the game and the next scenario.

 

[Manbearcat]

Since the lead post says D&D and "other", I'll volunteer my last session of Blades.

It was only an hour-long Information Gathering/Free Play of Blades in the Dark.

The first attempt at securing a possible Score went reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally sideways when Leninist-inspired Revolutionaries (a problem born out of thin air due to the background of the Whisper's time at the academy) performed a terrorist op on a cafe where the PCs were meeting an unknown muckraker about a possible smuggling job.

One Major Complication (1-3 result on a PC Action Roll) turned the Position Desperate and then another Major Complication (1-3 result on a Disclaimed Roll > basically like rolling for Wandering Monsters and finding out what happens) turned into a bunch of high society ladies and gents getting knifed up on both the balcony and the ground sitting area by the revolutionaries (screaming their manifesto battlecry) while a couple of impotent Bluecoats fumbled with their coffees and loaf in fear, struggling to react appropriately and timely (another Major Complication on another Disclaimed roll to see how the Bluecoats managed).

The PCs made a quiet escape from the scene back to their rendezvous point (one PC was at the cafe while the other was in an overwatch position). A new Tier-relevant rival/threat was established, the PCs gained the upper hand on these two (now named) bumbling coppers if issues arise in the future with them (or to use as leverage in a Score), and both PCs each ate 2 Stress in their efforts!

The next Score-gaining attempt went relatively fine and we'll play the Score and Downtime next session (Saturday).

 

[Umbran]

My last session was... a little slow for me, personally.

I'm getting to play more now than in a long time. Another friend of mine just said, "Hey, I wanna run a game online - Roll20 + Zoom. Who wants to play? And boom, there I am in a second D&D game. This one will be short - a four to six sessions.

It is even a bit more weird, because... it is also starting with the Dragon of Icespire Peak. I'm playing in the same module twice at the same time!

For this new game, I'm going with an experiment - Lizardfolk barbarian, point buy, using both Charisma and Intelligence as dump stats, and trying to play up how the lizardfolk are cognitively and emotionally different from all these mammals.

The slowness comes from how most of the other players are new to me. One is a bit of a spotlight hog, the others are fine but... not playing particularly seriously. My interest in playing psychology is a bit lost in all the noise.

Note to self - just rage anyway. The group of skeletons shouldn't have been a challenge, but two rounds of PCs catching nothing but air, and suddenly things are a bit more dire.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Last night I had one of those special sessions where no dice are rolled but everyone is totally invested in what's happening. A lot of longterm storylines were paid off and new storylines emerged.

The 13th level characters are nearing the climax of my modified version of Storm King's Thunder. They're in the Eye of the All-Father, lost temple to the giant god Annam. His high priest, Hekaton, is in thrall to the Zhentarim, who are sending giants on the warpath across the north to lay low their enemies and sew chaos. From the Eye, the players can reach the hidden fortress where Hekaton is being held captive, Skyreach Castle.

However, the players find 3 erinyes waiting for them: Mischief, Mayhem, and Malevolence. They are sisters of the tiefling shadow sorcerer. The tiefling is an orphan of mysterious parentage. She soon discovers that all of them share a mother--Glasya, archdevil of the Nine Hells, daughter of Asmodeus. The erinyes reveal the tiefling's father is Manshoon, ruler of the Zhentarim. Glasya wants the tiefling to kill Manshoon to prove that her loyalty is with her mother and not her father. The tiefling is conflicted. She wants to kill Manshoon and she wants to be closer to her mother. But she doesn't want to betray her adventuring friends and she doesn't trust the devils.

The erinyes tell the characters that there is an orb of dragonkind in Skyreach Castle that they want the players to find and give to them. Why? The players try to get an answer to that question without too much success. But it's clear the devils want Manshoon dead so someone friendly to them can assume leadership of the Zhentarim--someone like the tiefling sorcerer, for example.

The erinyes then speak to the other players to see what they want...and offer to help, "no strings attached."

The aasimar vengeance paladin is surprisingly/disturbingly open to an alliance of convenience. He's a particularly tasty treat for the devils.

The elf arcane trickster rogue pulls out a mysterious key that he found in a dungeon two years ago (in real world time) and asks to know what it unlocks. I had thrown that key into a treasure hoard with no real plan. I assumed that at some point in the future there would be a door they needed to get through and the key would conveniently provide access. Well, the player forgot about it. It never came up. Until now. By strange coincidence, I recently figured out what the key actually unlocks. The elf rogue is actually a god (it's complicated) and the key will unlock the door that leads to the extradimensional temple where he can regain his divine powers. So the devils offer to tell him what the key unlocks in return for a night of pleasure with Glasya. (Glasya wants to create more children to be her minions in the mortal world). The rogue agrees to a future rendezvous.

The halfling bard is having none of this. He doesn't want to make any deals with devils. His main magical item is a lyre, known as the Hell Harp, that was created by Glasya. He throws it at the feet of the erinyes and tells them to take it back. Inside the lyre is the soul of a rival bard. That rival has slowly been taking control of the halfling's body. After this session was over, the bard's player and I decided that just before the lyre was thrown away, the rival switched places with the halfling. Now the rival's soul is in the halfling's body, and the halfling's soul is in the lyre. So when the erinyes take the lyre back to Hell, they're actually taking the soul of the halfling bard to hell.

None of this was planned. I had the devils offer to help the characters just to see how they would react with absolutely no expectations where it would lead. It just got crazier and crazier.

After the devils depart, the characters solve a riddle to unlock the portal that will take them from the Eye to Skyreach Castle. A massive statue of Annam, the giant god, animates and begins to speak to them. It tells them that the Zhentarim has subverted his divine will by brainwashing the high priest Hekaton. Annam charges them with breaking the Zhentarim's control by rescuing or even killing Hekaton. Either option is acceptable to Annam. Then he gives the characters several powerful magical boons, including the ability to grow to giant size.

Finally, the players step through the portal and arrive at a storm-lashed Skyreach Castle.

Wow, that was a lot.

I feel really lucky to have such great players who keep the game a surprise and delight.

 

[The Green Hermit]

We almost had a TPK. I somehow managed to kill the last of the bad guys, but all but one other character was killed -- and he was left unconscious. I paid some hunters to help me drag my unconscious friend (and the one who magically resurrects after a long rest) to our campsite and make a pyre for our dead comrades.

Tomorrow, we will brave the dungeon again -- after my daughter's new PCs join us. That will be interesting, to say the least, because she has decided to make them both drow. I warned her that this may cause more difficulties for her than being a tiefling was -- especially since one of our existing characters is a dwarf.