D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

23rd session in my Deck of Many Things/Dragon Heist mashup. Three PCs: half-elf wizard, half-orc fighter, halfling rogue. They are 5th level but obtained enough XP to level up to 6th...if they survive long enough to get a long rest.

The PCs are in Thornhold, a coastal fortress north of Waterdeep, to disrupt the plans of the nefarious Lord Margaster. Margaster is infused with the divine power of Siamorphe, a demigoddess who embodies nobles' right to rule. In core Forgotten Realms it's a benevolent power, but in my Forgotten Realms it represents everything that's wrong with The One Percent. Margaster is on his way to Thornhold in hopes of resurrecting one of his adult children that the PCs killed previously. The PCs want to steal the relics needed for the resurrection and get out with their hides intact.

The session started with the PCs interrogating a captive in a stairwell. Turns out he's the former high priest of Siamorphe, kicked to the curb when Lord Margaster wanted to install his lover as the new high priestess. He's there to oversee the resurrection ceremony, which requires a human(oid) sacrifice and the powers of the Silver Chalice, a holy relic of Siamorphe. The PCs offer him a deal: help us disrupt the ceremony and we'll eliminate the high priestess so you can regain your former position. He accepts.

The PCs sneak into the upper floor of the fortress. Through impersonations and various shenanigans they manage to separate the high priestess from her entourage. The rogue poses as a herald of Margaster and goes full on bridezilla over the resurrection ceremony. Meanwhile, the wizard and fighter fumble their attempts to subdue the high priestess and soon discover they're dealing with a CR 9 War Priest.

The rest of the session turned into an extended fight sequence with the high priestess and her entourage. It culminated with the dead priestess plummeting from her apartments to the courtyard below...and landing right at the feet of the recently-arrived Lord Margaster. Margaster picks up the Silver Chalice, looks right at the PCs, and swears revenge.

Next session: Margaster Strikes Back!

 

[THEMNGMNT]

My main group and I are taking a break from D&D after having finished a 5E campaign that ran from level 1-20.

Currently we're trialing Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. This was our second session. The Cortex system is utterly strange (and often very cool) and so there's a steep learning curve. As a result the session was at times painfully slow. Nevertheless we're enjoying ourselves. We're starting to see that there's an ebb and flow to the game, where each setback produces a later advantage and vice versa. As the Watcher (aka "game master") I'm digging how the doom pool gives me narrative control without having to bend or break the rules. It's a great mechanic.

We're playing the "Breakout" event from the core rulebook. Inside the super-powered prison called the Raft, the Hulk fought a mind-controlled Doc Samson. Ant-Man is struggling to contain Zzzax, who zapped all the SHIELD agents manning the Raft's control room. Spider-Man and Wolverine kept the sabotaged power core from overloading, webbed up Vermin, and took out a horde of SHIELD scientists possessed by Venom symbiotes.

Next session, the doom pool hits 2D12 and the heroes are likely to end up captives of SHIELD, framed for masterminding the prisoner breakout at the Raft.

Good times!

 

[Quickleaf]

I struggled with pacing in the last session. I think it had to do with the fact that we started using Roll20 (as opposed to just Discord Video & some Owlbear Rodeo as necessary) and stopped using video. Without that visual feedback, it was much harder for me to keep a pulse on the group.

Players made a choice between two paths a few sessions ago which led to a very dangerous side dungeon – relevant to the big picture of the campaign, but side quest unrelated to their more immediate mission. Due to their unorthodox tactics & a bad roll, the side dungeon ended up becoming a 3-session spanning combat. It was a brutal 23-round combat, interspersed with a dash of comical roleplay with a ghoul "butler", a bit of exploration, and thwarting a nasty trap.

After all that, we were all pretty tired of combat. One player has dropped off due to scheduling, another couldn't make it that day, and there were connectivity issues (playing online). Players had another choice about where to go – this time entering a canyon watched over by skeletal giant vultures in order to reach a tomb. They had camels, so sneaking wasn't possible. They opted to make a mad dash for a minor crypt entrance (not their destination tomb - it was a necropolis), and for the cleric to cast Turn Undead to cover their butts.

If I'd been more alert, I should have adapted some quick chase rules, but instead I resorted to throwing up a map & tokens on Roll20 and calling for initiative. Even though my initiative variant (players without monsters between their turns can take turns and intermix turns as desired) helped somewhat, it still took probably twice the time it would have otherwise, and really didn't add a lot to the scene.

 

[The Green Hermit]

We haven't played in a month and a half due to fun things like concussions, so it isn't surprising that we had a short session. It was fun, though. Two of our characters hatched a plan to investigate a suspected cult wagon. The decoy character was supposed to set their horses free and cause a ruckus "trying to help." Instead, she almost got caught, never reached the horses, and had to send the guards to sleep. The other character still used the ruckus to search the wagon, and (out of all the mundane things I had prepared) managed to find a vicious sword before fleeing. They didn't get caught, but the theft was discovered in the morning.

The wagon can't raise a fuss, since they are supposedly only freighting cooking oils and perfumes, but they are staring at everybody suspiciously. Plus, the adventurers still don't know for sure if the wagon is a cultist wagon, or if they are just smuggling goods.

It is still a month until Waterdeep.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

3rd session of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Hulk, Punisher, Ant-Man, Spider-Man. Wolverine was a no show for this session, but that character has a tendency to go rogue, so it was easily explained. We're playing through the "Breakout" event from the core rulebook, which I'm spinning off into an expanded story that explores the ramifications of a massive superpowered prison break next door to Manhattan.

This was the first time the Punisher's player, well, played. So we jumped into Frank infiltrating the Raft to spring an informant who could give him a lead on the Kingpin. He infiltrated the prison, got to the cell, and found Typhoid Mary inside. At that moment, the prison's power core blew and all the cells opened up. Dozens of superpowered convicts stepped into the corridor. Directly across from Mary was Bullseye, who started throwing sporks he'd stolen from the commissary. Hoping to keep Mary alive, Punisher tried to fight his way through the mob of convicts.

In the Raft's control center, Ant-Man was struggling to bring down Zzzax. Fortunately the Hulk and Spidey showed up to take out the electrical monstrosity. We flipped to a quick transition scene as Ant-Man patched himself up with the help of the Hulk, which allowed us to test the recovery rules. Spidey used his spider-transponder to call Nick Fury. Fury said he was trying to send backup to the Raft but was getting some kind of shady interference from the higher ups in D.C. "This thing smells fishy. Watch your back, kid."

Things were looking grim for Punisher, but fortunately Hulk, Ant-Man, and Spider-Man arrived to save the day. With this fight we finally figured out both the mob rules and how to properly use complications.

At this point, the Doom Pool had reached 2D12, so I used it to end the scene. I narrated the arrival of armored commandos from HAMMER, the nefarious corporate version of SHIELD. The heroes were captured, accused of aiding and abetting the breakout. The truth, of course, is that they were trying to stop it. But HAMMER isn't interested in the truth.

It's still slow going as we try to grok the rules, but everyone is enjoying the game enough that they gave me the greenlight to play more.

Next session will start with the heroes as prisoners in transport planes flying over Times Square. We'll have a mid-air escape sequence. Should be fun.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

My last session was for an Eberron campaign where the party just got back from doing a fairly dangerous fetch-quest for House Kundarak (it involved getting some money stored inside of a bank inside the Mournland that the dragonmarked house needed some people to get access to). They ventured out of the Mournland with just a few combat-based random encounters (the most difficult of which involved a magically-warped T-Rex that attempted to eat the party). The party is currently level 5, and consists of a Firbolg Way of the Open Hand Monk (who simply goes by York), a Mark of Making War Wizard (Neirena d'Cannith), and a Warforged Battlesmith Artificer (Lucky Laughter) and his Steel Defender in the shape of a boa-constrictor (named Slither), and a "tame" Displacer Beast (Maggs).

After exiting the Mournland, the party hopped on a lightning rail near the border of the Mournland and took it back to Sharn, where they delivered the bags of holding filled with the money that they retrieved (around 1 million gold pieces in total, which the party got one-tenth of for getting the money, along with a replacement prosthetic limb for York, who lost his leg during the trip, and a casting of resurrection paid by House Kundarak due to Neirena's untimely demise on the journey).

Lucky Laughter decided to take some downtime in order to replicate an Incineration Beam that he found on a Warforged Colossus inside of the Mournland, and was able to put together some blueprints of a smaller-scale prototype version of the weapon, but failed to perfectly replicate it, leading to it quickly overheating and occasionally exploding upon use. In order to perfect it, Lucky approached Neirena and asked her to aid him in getting a meeting with a high-ranking member of House Cannith in Sharn, which they eventually got after a week of waiting. Neirena and Lucky went into the meeting alone, discovering that the person they were meeting with was Zayra d'Cannith, who they met briefly on one of their previous adventures and had a "strange" run-in with. Zayra was not too fond of the fact that an outsider was trying to replicate House Cannith's technology, and at first refused to give him the assistance he needed to perfect the Incineration Beam, until the topic turned towards Docents, which Lucky revealed to have 3 of. Zayra explained that Docents are extremely rare and that no one has been able to replicate them, and that all known docents on Khorvaire originally came from Xen'drik when House Cannith's missions to the ancient continent granted them the ability to create Warforged. Zayra then told Lucky that if he could deliver 5 Docents to her, she would then grant him the information that he was seeking and convince the rest of House Cannith to overlook Lucky's replication of their technology. The session then ended with Lucky agreeing to the deal and beginning to prepare to head out to Xen'drik.

 

[el-remmen]

It was our first in-person session, now that we are all fully vaccinated and waited two weeks, and it was great! The only issue was getting used to the logistics of in-person play again and losing about the first hour to BSing about life and stuff (which was frankly needed after so long just communicating electronically).

We took up where the last session ended, and finished exploring the temple's lower level. This included finding Sister Ottie as a prisoner in a torture chamber (remember her from two sessions ago?), who joined their cause, Father Abramo the former elder priest of the temple who have been driven mad by being fed drugs and dominated multiple times (they had to fight him, but they defeated him with some ease), and a young girl being kept in a cage, who was to be fed to some monster, after her own family of cultist converts turned her in for only pretending to be charmed by what she called a "beautiful woman. Terrible. Infinite."

They saved the natural tunnels they discovered leading away from the temple and into the side of the bluff for last, certain that way led to danger and not being sure what to do with the girl or their prisoners (they were still carrying around a tied up and unconscious priestess - Misha- that they fought on the ground level). They spent a lot of time bogged down trying to decide what to do.

But things got complicated before that. In one of the chambers they discovered a stone orb, crystal ball thing. It was covered in a sheet and when the tiefling ranger/sorcerer uncovered it, she heard a voice questioning her from within, so she covered it back up. Later, when the druid and bard/wizard decided to check it out, Thron the druid touched it. From the gnome's PoV he just heard Thron talking but no one answered, but from Thron's PoV he was being drawn into the LOAF and was now dominated by some mysterious power with a woman's voice.

I took the druid's player into the next room and explained what happened. The being dominating him instructed him to not alert his companions but to encourage them to come to her (even if it meant leading them into an ambush to be captured) so that they too might learn "the glory of the LOAF." I also explained that he need not attack his friends, but just encourage them to leave the temple or slow them down if they try to make a choice "against the ways of the LOAF." "We will all be family in the LOAF soon."

The players knew something was up of course. But as their characters, they began to get suspicious when the druid began to advocate for the opposite of what he argued for before to get the party to leave. But since he didn't do anything outright evil or detrimental, they let it go for now. The gnome wizard/bard covered the stone back up and put it in his pack for now.

It was decided they would bring their prisoners back to the upper level and leave Abramo outside to be found in the morning (remember, at this point it is about 2 am) and send the girl to safety while the party explored the lower tunnels (still carrying Misha Devi). Unfortunately for them, the prefect's guards, his daughter and the constable (about 10 people total that they could see) were waiting for them out there. Rather than surrender as ordered (and despite the druid in dog form getting in the way "playfully") they barred the doors and ran back for the lower levels (though not before throwing Abramo out to them).

Oh and one other thing that happened was that Misha the priestess started to come to, but before they could question her, Thron hit her in the head with his staff and nearly killed her. He claimed to not want to hear the priestess's voice defiling the temple anymore, but in truth he wanted to keep her from being questioned. This led to tensions with Ottie, who was very upset about striking (and nearly killing) a bound prisoner.

In the lower tunnels they fought more trogs including a Troglodyte Meatseeker, and after defeating them found tunnels out of the temple that let out beyond the temple walls. Dropping the prisoner girl with a family they trusted, the party found an abandoned farmhouse to hole up in. The druid is still dominated, so there will be some between sessions shenanigans as he tries to alert the bad guys as to where they are, but I did award XP and everyone hit 5th level (except the NPC, who remained 3rd).

 

[jasper]

Got my 100th kill and felt bad about it. IT was Shemshine Bedtime Rhyme. Had fun as one person murdering half the clues. One person refused my prop, so no more props for him. But it was understandable as he is retired and needs to downsize.
Mostly died in the homebrew campaign but was not a goober to another player. Even thou his pc has ticked off my pc. And he has ticked off me.

 

[Blue]

WARNING: Contains minor hidden spoilers for Curse of Strahd.

Normally I update about the games I run, but I need to talk about last session I played in.

We're running Curse of Strahd, and I've had concerns about the DM pulling their punches. Early in the Death House, at one point my character was down and making (well, failing) death saves and I whisper texted to the DM (we're using Roll20+Zoom) that if I die I'm fine with it - it would really set the horror tone. His response was "don't worry, that won't happen". And the party did finally heal me after two failed death saves, but it sort of felt like he wouldn't have let me die from the pit trap even if they were slower.

Several of the other battles in there it really felt like he was pulling his punches, like not having the ghouls use their paralyzing bite, and the monster in the basement begging somewhat defanged. But we were 1st level back then, I wrote it off as just adjusting to our level.

I need to give a little background for the next part. During character creation the DM had worked with each of us to give us a secret flaw/benefit. My paladin of the moon had been infected with magically weakened werebear blood. I could do a partial transformation but it put me in a fury against foes and took away all sense of self preservation and I needed to make WIS saves to come out of it. The DM also has a 1 is a critical failure, and counts 1s and 20s as auto-failure/success even on skill checks and saves.

Anyway, let's talk about last session. We're following clues from the Troika card reading, and ended up somewhere well beyond the 3rd level we are now. We had killed two and driven off the third inhabitant of the mill, (which probaby was also him pulling punches), and we now enountered that last person in their lair.

We had one character die in the first round to massive damage - they were brought to zero and then hit for 42 damage which is more than their HP max. My character was yelling at everyone to run, and attempted to pull other characters out of an Evard's Black Tentacles. I failed, even with advantage from Inspiration, and the DM said that if I hulked out I could succeed, which I did. So everyone else in the party got away, and I made a WIS save to see if I could revert and do the same. Natural 1.

We could see our opponent through the sliding viewport on the door, and I did exactly what the fury against foes and lack of self preservation dictated - misty stepped (from Fey Touched feat picked up as vHuman) inside to fight them. Mind you, while "that's what my character would do" is often used to justify bad play, I had spent my last action making sure everyone else was safe, and it was my own character only I was killing. I shouldn't have the extra bonuses if I was going to ignore the balancing drawback - I was okay with it. Anyway, a horror module like Curse of Strahd having a character die just adds to the ambiance. And I told that directly to the DM on the chat.

Anyway, the DM just backed out. The foe was nowhere in their hut even though we had just seen her there, the hut stopped attacking, I was fine and we got all the loot in the hut, and a random NPC none of us knew about stopped by to resurrect the PC that died from massive damage. The DM explained that that NPC was to when the party is in over their head as a "get out of jail free" card, but only once.

All in all, I've lost all fear in this game. I'm playing a tank which now feels like a redundant role because it seems we are protected by plot armor. What's supposed to be a horror campaign no longer holds any of that. I need to talk to the DM, but I did mention multiple times to him previously that I was okay dying, and protested in front of everyone during the session. The feeling I got is he feels he did us a favor, as we've put a lot into creating and RPing these characters and there's a lot of good inter-party RP about their relationships. But there's now no fear of loss, which means there's also no reward in win, and I wonder if that's just his DMing style.

This is my main group I get to play with, as him an occasional DM runnign a hardcover book campaign when the main DM wants to take a break from runnign his homebrew. But we are pretty early in CoS and have likely months and months more of this. The DM is also a player in a game I run and I wonder if this is what he expects if his character would die there.

 

[ericstephen]

It was our first in-person session, now that we are all fully vaccinated and waited two weeks, and it was great! The only issue was getting used to the logistics of in-person play again and losing about the first hour to BSing about life and stuff (which was frankly needed after so long just communicating electronically).

We took up where the last session ended, and finished exploring the temple's lower level. This included finding Sister Ottie as a prisoner in a torture chamber (remember her from two sessions ago?), who joined their cause, Father Abramo the former elder priest of the temple who have been driven mad by being fed drugs and dominated multiple times (they had to fight him, but they defeated him with some ease), and a young girl being kept in a cage, who was to be fed to some monster, after her own family of cultist converts turned her in for only pretending to be charmed by what she called a "beautiful woman. Terrible. Infinite."

They saved the natural tunnels they discovered leading away from the temple and into the side of the bluff for last, certain that way led to danger and not being sure what to do with the girl or their prisoners (they were still carrying around a tied up and unconscious priestess - Misha- that they fought on the ground level). They spent a lot of time bogged down trying to decide what to do.

But things got complicated before that. In one of the chambers they discovered a stone orb, crystal ball thing. It was covered in a sheet and when the tiefling ranger/sorcerer uncovered it, she heard a voice questioning her from within, so she covered it back up. Later, when the druid and bard/wizard decided to check it out, Thron the druid touched it. From the gnome's PoV he just heard Thron talking but no one answered, but from Thron's PoV he was being drawn into the LOAF and was now dominated by some mysterious power with a woman's voice.

I took the druid's player into the next room and explained what happened. The being dominating him instructed him to not alert his companions but to encourage them to come to her (even if it meant leading them into an ambush to be captured) so that they too might learn "the glory of the LOAF." I also explained that he need not attack his friends, but just encourage them to leave the temple or slow them down if they try to make a choice "against the ways of the LOAF." "We will all be family in the LOAF soon."

The players knew something was up of course. But as their characters, they began to get suspicious when the druid began to advocate for the opposite of what he argued for before to get the party to leave. But since he didn't do anything outright evil or detrimental, they let it go for now. The gnome wizard/bard covered the stone back up and put it in his pack for now.

It was decided they would bring their prisoners back to the upper level and leave Abramo outside to be found in the morning (remember, at this point it is about 2 am) and send the girl to safety while the party explored the lower tunnels (still carrying Misha Devi). Unfortunately for them, the prefect's guards, his daughter and the constable (about 10 people total that they could see) were waiting for them out there. Rather than surrender as ordered (and despite the druid in dog form getting in the way "playfully") they barred the doors and ran back for the lower levels (though not before throwing Abramo out to them).

Oh and one other thing that happened was that Misha the priestess started to come to, but before they could question her, Thron hit her in the head with his staff and nearly killed her. He claimed to not want to hear the priestess's voice defiling the temple anymore, but in truth he wanted to keep her from being questioned. This led to tensions with Ottie, who was very upset about striking (and nearly killing) a bound prisoner.

In the lower tunnels they fought more trogs including a Troglodyte Meatseeker, and after defeating them found tunnels out of the temple that let out beyond the temple walls. Dropping the prisoner girl with a family they trusted, the party found an abandoned farmhouse to hole up in. The druid is still dominated, so there will be some between sessions shenanigans as he tries to alert the bad guys as to where they are, but I did award XP and everyone hit 5th level (except the NPC, who remained 3rd).

Sounds awesome. Was there a save for the domination of the druid?