D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[TheDelphian]

Started new 5e Campaign. Haven't run 5e in like 2 years so was bumpy.

2 players playing 2 characters each.
player 1 - Hobgoblin Bard Soldier and Dwarven Monk Hermit
Player 2 - Eladrin Warlock Noble and Wood elf Cleric of Umbril (Tempest cleric) Courtier

They meet in wooded hills while trying to avoid a goblin ambush, Goblin boss on Worg and two wolves.

Was tough fight Monk was only one to go down but did twice and got hit with a Nat 20 by Worg who did 27 hit points enough to perma kill the dwarf but I didn't follow through since It was the second roll of a new game ending in death was anticlimactic and merely a matter of luck. Players know I won't have any issue in character death's if they make decisions that lead to it but overly luck based ones I am usually more lenient.

Goblin boss runs away.

That night goblin boss returns with 4 goblins. fight occurs again an attempted ambush but high perception cleric sees it in time. Fight ensues dwarf goes down again but not as badly.

The Goblin boss successfully uses his reaction to hurl other goblins in his way and escapes again. Seems he may be developing into a repeat villain. The players are already planning on how to hunt him down once they get some money and grow slightly more powerful.

The arrive in a hill dwarf town with gnomes and halflings.

Good bit of Roleplay with locals and hobgoblin bard joins two halfling performers and rolls his 1 for the check to entertain. Is booed and made fun of.

They then join the caravan headed to the City of Silver Ridge a Hill Dwarven city.

Ended session since we started with session zero so this was session .5 so to speak.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

The heroes succeeded in finding the secret lair of the Cult of the Devourer...said cult being much more active than they initially surmised. After a pitched battle, they cut them all down, but found out that the Secret Masters of the Stone Thief were aware of them specifically; they were no longer faceless adventurers but now known threats that needed to be dealt with. Recovering from the fight, they set out to start gathering components to make a weapon to use against the living dungeon.

Eyes of the Stone Thief is one of the best adventures I've ever read. I hope to play it one day soon. How are you finding it?

 

[Zardnaar]

No combat planned mostly just skill checks and role-playing.

Until Paladin picked a fight solo and got himself killed.

 

[Blue]

I've had three different "last sessions" in three different campaigns recently.

I ran my "teaching campaign" with my kids and niece & nephew. They are exploring an fey "dungeon" designed to honor a contract to "keep my babies safe" from a dragon who hasn't returned for several centuries (was killed). The fey kept to the word - the dragons are safe, and are still babies. They are also feral and have forgotten anything about how to speak or the like that the mother dragon had taught them. Oh, their lifespan is still ticking, they just are staying babies. And this is from the "good" court of fey. (One of the characters is an Eladrin, and really into the fey, so showing some of the true Grimm's Fairy Tales sort of darkness. Oh, but the fey magic is fading (due to player actions), and the dragons will end up trapped and starving.

All of this made more fun because the dungeon doesn't attack Eladrin, and the magical defenses are somewhat confused about the half elf and the drow. And there's a dragonborn that the defenses try not to hurt and instead try to corral back to where the dragons should be. Which makes a high-threat dungeon just about right for the party of 3rd level characters. Amazing that.

Much fun, and they just found the three Brass wyrmlings. And fell in love. Hard. Now to try to get them out.

The other two weren't as good.

In our regular Ancient Greece campaign, we finally got a line on where to go to do what we want to do next, finally were able to start directing ourselves instead of baseless wandering, and then at the beginning of the session we come across a hook we can't ignore, and it's for a whole different plot thread (or at least not the one we're currently pursuing even if they connect later) so we can't actually follow up on what the players are interested in even though we FINALLY got enough put together to know where to go next, and it turned into 90% of the session was one huge sloggy combat that isn't finished and will carry over to next session with new villains we don't care about. With half an hour between actions.

Don't know what went wrong. The DM is normally much more on point than this, and we've never had a comabt that slow. 8-10 minutes before you action comes back around is about the limit with this group (we're 10th) and often it's quicker than that. Also the monsters were sorta naughty word. For example our sorcerer, badly hurt, jumped overboard and swam down 15 feet, heading down and explicitly not looking back up. (My cleric casts Waterbreathing every morning - I'm in heavy armor for a seafaring Act of this campaign, it's worth the slot.) There was some sort of Medusa (from Theros?) that without save can compel you to look at them, and then you get your normal chance to save vs. petrification. So the sorcerer, who declared he wasn't looking up, was no-save forced to look up and meet it's gaze, and then failed the save and started turnign to stone - while 15 feet underwater in the sea.

Sorry, I don't mind them getting turned to stone. It was that there was no save to force them to look even though they explicitly weren't that annoys me.

And the last was a friend who is practicing 5e DMing. It's a practice run with pre-gens, but the world was pretty interesting. But it was a bit of RP that couldn't change anything, and a bunch of combats vs. solo monsters with high ACs. Just bland.

 

[Eric V]

Eyes of the Stone Thief is one of the best adventures I've ever read. I hope to play it one day soon. How are you finding it?

It is fantastic, truly. It's so good at being the major backstory, sometimes coming to the fro, receding again...all the side quests, great NPCs, manipulations...it's awesome. It's been many sessions since they've actually been IN the Stone Thief, yet the presence of the living dungeon and all the attendant stuff is still a major focus. The adventure is a triumph, really.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

108th session of my Tyranny of Dragons/Scales of War/Lots of Made Up Stuff mashup. Player characters are 19th level. This session was a lot of discussion between the players, the characters, and NPCs regarding their next steps. They're in the end game of the campaign so there's a lot to balance.

It began with the elf arcane trickster rogue mystically merging with his sister and arch-nemesis. Together and whole, they are actually the elven god of trickery and mischief, Erevan Ilesere. To signal the slow return of his divine powers, I granted him three levels of trickery domain cleric.

Meanwhile, there was a major issue to be resolved with the halfling bard. Through an insane series of unusual choices and unpredictable rolls, the halfling's soul had accidentally ended up in possession of an archdevil, Glaysa. The halfling's body was secretly possessed by the soul of a rival bard, an immoral half-elf. Everything had come out into the open in the last session. The PCs were trying to determine if they should kill the half-elf or accept him as an ally. Oh, and there was a clone of the halfling that had joined the party last session, too. Because that's the kind of stuff that happens at 19th level.

They used plane shift to travel from their present location on the plane of Arvandor to the 6th layer of Hell of seek an audience with Glasya. Glasya is the one-time lover of the rogue and the mother of the tiefling shadow sorcerer. (Yes, it's weird.) She had just given birth to the rogue's child and now introduced the child and the rogue. I asked the rogue's player to select the child's gender, appearance, nature, etc.

Glasya agreed to release the soul of the halfling. In return, she wants the players to get Tiamat out of Hell. They agreed to the deal upon forfeit of their souls. The halfling's soul occupied the halfling clone body. He immediately confronted the usurper of his real body. A temporary truce was agreed to. The other bard cast true polymorph followed by wish to transform his halfling body into the form of a half-elf. So, that player is now controlling two bard characters who hate each other's guts. Fun times!

Finally, the Tiamat thing connects back into the main plotline. The players have learned that Tiamat is attempting to escape Hell, slay Bahamut with the mythic sword responsible for the original creation of both Bahamut and Tiamat, and absorb Bahamut's powers--thus becoming the one true god of all dragons. The PCs are now committed to helping Tiamat escape Hell. But they plan to flip the script by killing her and having Bahamut ascend to the one true god of all dragons. Time will tell!

It was a good session. It's satisfying to see long-running plots resolve themselves in unexpected fashion. I can't wait for the end--it will be amazing to finish my first ever 1-20 campaign.

Next session: The ranger attempts to rescue his mother--a silver dragon--from being sacrificed by cultists of Tiamat!

 

[Blue]

I ran the latest session of my Masks of the Imperium game, and had a very split reaction. Homebrew world, they are agents of the crown each chosen by artifact Mask of the Imperium due to compatible personalities that both is their badge of authority and will awake and unlock new powers over time. They are helping in new colonies cut off from the known world except by 3 month sail each way - no magic will cross, etc. And there's a lot fo issues going on in the new settlements.

One of my points as a DM is that put a bunch of hooks in front of the players and they chose what to run, and I weave plots together. You might find out a clue for X while pursuing plot Y. Oh, and encounters aren't necessarily level specific - there's a lot that's foreshadowing for later.

Two players lap it up, loving that they can fully decide what is of interest, how to respond, etc. Two players are a bit more passive in deciding, willing to go along with whatever. The last really wants a linear adventure and gets upset with the amount of time the group spends trying to decide what to do.

He runs like that as well - and he's a damn fun DM! - but he makes no bones up front that the player should accept the adventure put in front of them and keep the characters on track. Not that he doesn't improvise, but just scenes, and expects you to get back on plot when he dangles it in front of you.

He really seems dissatisfied with too many plots. He wants to pick one and stick with it. They found an important clue about the magical disease-ing of a new settlement's only well that caused multiple deaths and would have caused more, and even though others were arguing to investigate it as the more "clear and present danger", he wanted to keep going on what they chose last time. I think because last time had been another discussion and they invested time in it and he didn't want to go through all of that again.

If this was a character not wanting to follow up on it, I'd probably have that plot advance since they'll be gone for several weeks following up what they currently are doing. But right now I think he may take that more personally - that he was doing the "right" thing and following up on the plot they told the DM they were interested in, and being punished for it.

Both I and another DM in the same group of players have talked to him abotu it's okay to go "off-course" in our respective campaigns. I think he gets it, just that it's antithetical to how he's played/run in the past and he defaults to helping the DM by staying on target. Mind you, he's not a disruptive player, he's a joy to have at the table.

We've talked, it hasn't fixed the issue, and even with the issue I strongly want him at the table. So I guess I need to accept and adapt how I run for this particular group to find a different balance of "it's all under your control" and "here's the next adventure".

 

[THEMNGMNT]

My modified Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign is nearing the conclusion. Player characters are now 5th level.

In this short session, the white dragon did a flyby of Phandalin. On the dragon's back was the druid PC's evil twin sister. There's a magical McGuffin the PCs have been assembling. The evil twin demanded they give her the McGuffin or she would destroy the town. Then she flew off. The session ended with the PCs arriving at Icespire Keep.

Next session: Cryovain!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Mashup of Dragon Heist with the Deck of Many Things. Player characters have just reached 5th level.

In this session, they attempted a heist of the Margaster estate, a villainous noble family of which the orc fighter PC is a bastard child. The Margasters are devout worshippers of Siamorphe, the goddess of nobility's divine right to rule. The PCs believe the Margasters may have several cards from the Deck secreted in their estate. (I used the map of Cassalanter Villa from Dragon Heist.) The Margasters are putting on a lavish party celebrating Siamorphe known as the Divine Revel. The PCs used the cover of the party to infiltrate the estate using stolen invitations. There, the halfling rogue encountered his love interest, an officer of the City Watch. He tried to upstage her date--an old rival from his school days--and failed spectacularly. Meanwhile, the half-elf wizard was approached by a mage from the Arcane Brotherhood, claiming that the half-elf's murdered parents were secretly working for the Brotherhood, and offering him a place in the order.

The Margasters are basically my version of the Cassalanters. It's funny because in Dragon Heist the Cassalanters are devil worshippers who use their worship of Siamorphe as cover for their evil. But in fact the notion of a goddess who affirms the right of a few to rule undemocratically over the many is not exactly awesome.

Next session: "Mother, is that you?"

 

[Zardnaar]

Fun session last night. PCs returned to Sasserine, found out Red mantis assassin's were after them although they could offer up one of themselves.

They didn't and sailed on to not Manhattan as envoys to Arkhosia. They were after after aid vs the Elvish Imperium.

Nailed the persuasion check and secured a legion and ships to transport it.

Sailed back to Sasserine and got ambushed by a Red Mantis assassin.