D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[EzekielRaiden]

Had to skip a week due to a (non-playing) friend getting married, but last week went quite well. The players located a library appearing to have relevant information related to the strange temple-like building they had already found, and managed to get a superlative success in scouring it for information. They have, in effect, the entire "restricted section" of books from a (perhaps the) royal library of a lost genie city.

Now they just have to figure out how to leverage some elemental aspecting to see if they can enter the aforementioned temple-like building and do the thing....whatever "the thing" actually ends up being. But getting what they're looking for in the northern section of the caldera-city may prove more difficult than they expect!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

7th session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 2:

• Dwarf Warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom -- in this case, Dwarvenhearth, deep beneath Ptolus. His trinket is half of a treasure map.
• Elf Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, and Chaos.
• Goblin Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions.
• Changeling Magician. An awesome background: Outcast by her "adopted family" and looking for her "sister"--the child she replaced. Her magical themes are light and darkness, using the Celestial and Shadow traditions.
• Human Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the core god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His wife was murdered by undead and now he seeks answers.

The characters decided to return to the Broken Seal area, the entry point to the Banewarrens. They explored all the remaining areas. There were several sets of magically sealed doors they could not open. They also found a few doors that had been opened by the Pactlords and the rooms within were empty. One of those rooms obviously held the wight they encountered in the very first session.

The night's big encounter was fighting a horrifying ooze composed of a puddle of faces (yuck!) which nearly engulfed and devoured the dwarf before the party destroyed it.

The session ended with them hearing the menacing sound of a swarm of rats approaching from the entrance...

Next session: Ratlings!

 

[jasper]

No action just role play and skill checks. But I had fun coming up with either different accents or characteristics on the fly. Who knew evil toadstools are Scottish.

 

[el-remmen]

After a slow start because despite having four weeks to update their characters after recently hitting 4th level, there were some logistics and spell choices to go through, which ate up the first 40 or so minutes of a 3-hour session. That complaint aside, the session went well. Asked to hunt and kill the crocodile Thousand Teeth by Queen O'thok-ent of the Dunwatet Lizardfolk in order to sever the hold the ultra-orthadox high priest has on some of the tribe, the PCS found themselves ambushed by that priest and his loyalists. The battle then attracted the inconvenient attention of Thousand Teeth itself.

We left off, with one PC entangled, two flanking a lizardfolk scaleshield (a lieutenant) and the party paladin in the maw of the beast. . . Unfortunately, we won't be able to take this back up until late January.

 

[Older Beholder]

Last session was the third in a game I’m running for a group of new players. It was a combat heavy session as the party had to defend a magical pool against waves of undead. But there’s also been a lot of plot set up for further down the track.

 

[Blue]

Last session was a Session 0 - for a game that's been going on for a year and a half.

Two of my players are a married couple that are moving out of state and leaving the game, and with the holidays and some unforeseen circumstances they were going to miss at least one game so the ended up pulling out earlier than expected. We found two replacement players and had a session 0 to bring the up to speed with the world, the plot, and the existing character, talk about characters they are bringing in, and all that.

Yes, we lost a session, but for a long campaign where we're replacing 40% of our players in one fell swoop, I'd rather take the time and align expectations and make sure it's a good fit for everyone.

 

[Richards]

In tonight's game we were tasked with helping the Azure Glade take down the last remnants of the Seekers of Eternity who have been holed up in various locations. It was an "everybody gets teleported to their designated target areas all at dawn" blitzkrieg attack, so the five PCs were each separated from each other, fighting their own foes in individual combats all taking place at the same time.

The human sorceress ended up fighting an evoker and a fighter/wizard.

The dwarven fighter/psychic warrior was up against a diviner and a summoned Huge fire elemental.

The dwarven barbarian had to fight off four stone golems, then face a warforged in the next room containing the life-essence of a transmuter.

The gnomish cleric ended up against four dire wraiths, and then a lich in the room beyond.

My PC, the lizardfolk/barbarian/fighter had the easiest time of it, since I was up against an enchanter and his two servants, a female human rogue and a female human fighter. But since the sorceress had placed a magic circle against evil spell on me before we were all teleported in (besides a bunch of other buffs we heaped onto ourselves immediately before combat), when the two humans rushed me their enchantments wore off and suddenly they were all about helping me kill off the enchanter who had been dominating them against their will. So I ended up being the only one who gained "helpers" in his assigned task.

The sorceress killed her two foes off pretty early, then teleported over to the dwarven fighter/psychic warrior, helped kill his diviner foe, then she teleported them both over to help the other dwarf, then all of them teleported over to take out the remaining dire wraiths and take on the lich...all without me, since they knew I wasn't in any danger. (We had a Rary's telepathic bond spell active and the sorceress didn't want to waste two rounds to go teleport to me and then teleport us back to fight the undead. I can't blame her, either: she's our powerhouse on the team.) So I hung around with the two women, offering to share some of my dried dung beetles (it turns out neither of them was hungry) and getting snookered by them out of a bunch of coins as they taught me some gambling games ("Guess what number I'm thinking of." "Three." "Nope, pay up.") while we waited to get teleported back out of the room we were in.

Johnathan

 

[Blue]

Today was the first session with the two new players joining my ongoing campaign at level 8 after a Session 0 last week. One of them had had a fairly large life emergency and wasn't prepared, but real life comes first. Other than that it went fairly well. A quick but satisfying exit fo the two other characters and entrance of one of the new players, and the other one had a couple of minutes to pull things together. The timing wasn't perfect for bringing in new players - the break at the end of last session was ambushing members of a druid circle trying to tear down civilization and killing one while the other two escaped back to where they had captured elves they had implanted with a root heart to control them, so this session was wrap up and a big set-piece battle without a huge amount of context for the new players. But it still seemed to go fairly well.

One of the highlights was when the new rogue, just woken from being captured and having grabbed a weapon, made an attack vs. one of the druids who was out of line of sight of everyone else, no sneak attack or anything. I figured it wasn't going to be a big deal, and it wasn't a lot of damage - but the druid failed his Concentration check and the water elemental attacking the party went away.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

33rd session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three 6th level characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. The paladin hit 7th level during the session.

Previously, the characters were robbing the estate of a nefarious noble named Lady Avaryx during a high society party. They warlock was disguised as Avaryx herself, but that disguise unraveled when she found herself in the same room as the real Avaryx. The warlock was magically charmed by the noble. The wizard saved against the charm, but felt powerless to intervene. The paladin was in disguise and could only do so much without blowing his cover -- although he suspected Avaryx was on to him.

Avaryx took the warlock aside and asked her a series of questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you really look like?
• What is your friend’s name?
• Do you have any other friends here?
• What do you want?
• Where do you live?
• Who is your family?
• Who in your family do you love the most?
• Who are you most afraid of losing?
• Do you have anything that belongs to me?
• May I hold it for you so that nothing happens to it while you’re at the party?
• What do you most value?
• What are you most afraid of?

The warlock's player did a great job of roleplaying this scene and giving up a lot of really precious information that compromised her position.

After all the questions were answered to her satisfaction, Avaryx told the wizard that the conversation had been magically recorded. If the characters moved against her or her allies, she would expose them to the city watch and they would become Neverwinter's most wanted. Then she sent them home.

When the charm ended, the warlock's player shouted: "Now I have a nemesis!"

It was great.

The players immediately started scheming on how to steal the magical recording from Avaryx and give her a deserved comeuppance.

Eventually, their plotting led them to a private club known as the Sunrise Club, a sort of neutral ground in the city where favors are traded and no violence is permitted. The warlock met a contact in the local thieves' guild and picked up a quest to destroy a rival guild of rogue drow. The wizard went looking for other wizards to consort with. And the paladin spotted an old rival.

Next session: The skullduggery continues!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

8th session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 2:

• Dwarf Warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom -- in this case, Dwarvenhearth, deep beneath Ptolus. His trinket is half of a treasure map.
• Elf Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, and Chaos.
• Goblin Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions.
• Changeling Magician. An awesome background: Outcast by her "adopted family" and looking for her "sister"--the child she replaced. Her magical themes are light and darkness, using the Celestial and Shadow traditions.
• Human Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the core god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His wife was murdered by undead and now he seeks answers.

We had a short session. It started with the characters in the Broken Seal area of the Banewarrens, which they had finally finished exploring. They were blocked from further exploration by a magically warded door that prevented them from going deeper into the dungeon.

The Broken Seal is accessed through the city sewers, which are rife with ratlings -- humanoid rat creatures with a penchant for trash and flesh. Six ratlings and several rat swarms now entered the Seal. Leading them was an albino ratling sorcerer. The rat swarms were like piranhas, devouring the corpses of all the monstrosities that the characters had defeated in their exploration. When the ratlings spotted the characters, the sorcerer threatened to take them back to the nest and feed them to his queen.

The characters decided they would rather flee than fight. The goblin cast tongue rip, a spell that takes over the mouth of another creature. He commanded the ratlings to stand back and let the characters pass. Then he and the other players just kept rolling, making the sorcerer say a bunch of NSFW stuff that had me laughing so hard I was crying.

Upon return to the surface, the characters began investigating ways to get through the sealed door. Their investigations led them to an abandoned temple of a long forgotten god of good. There they found scrolls explaining how the doors and keys of the Banewarrens were created. Jevvica Norr, their wizard contact, told them a mysterious and ancient key was said to be in possession of House Vladaam, the most powerful and sinister noble family in Ptolus.

Next session: Vladaam?