D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[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).

Did they like their item cards?

 

[el-remmen]

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

He had to save at disadvantage because he willfully looked in the orb (which is a power of the item).

Did they like their item cards?

Yes! For once the ranger remembered to use her magical scimitar's poison power because she didn't have to flip through many pages in her binder to find it.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

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.

This sounds like the sorts of expectations to address in a Session Zero.

 

[Blue]

This sounds like the sorts of expectations to address in a Session Zero.

Agreed. This was our primary DM burning out and us taking a break from his long-running home-brew and playing this in the slot the following week. Because we had all played together we didn't do a formal session 0, and I expected that death would be on the table, just like in the main game. Again, my take is that the DM feels he was doing us a favor, saving these characters we've put work into.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Agreed. This was our primary DM burning out and us taking a break from his long-running home-brew and playing this in the slot the following week. Because we had all played together we didn't do a formal session 0, and I expected that death would be on the table, just like in the main game. Again, my take is that the DM feels he was doing us a favor, saving these characters we've put work into.

Makes sense. Sometimes we don't know what we know until it emerges in play. Last year I had some light skullduggery happen between player characters. Half my players loved it. Half my players hated, hated, hated it. We didn't discover that until it happened.

 

[jasper]

I PLAYED IN THE OPEN LAST NIGHT. Yes I played at my FLGS and DM. Had a new person, a person on their second game. One of my Bob players and his father. His father has not played at my table in two years. And Bob surprise me by not only doing math in his head but also helping the new person! Bob is one my special needs players. The only two bad things. I FORGOT MY BOOK. So I had to phone it in. I had the book on my D&D Beyond app. Also Forgot my throat spray and my voice is a little rough this morning. The BS session after the game and store closing went to almost midnight.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

4th session of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Hulk, Punisher, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine. Previously, they'd been captured and framed for masterminding the breakout at The Raft, a superhuman prison offshore from Manhattan.

This session started with the heroes shackled inside VTOL aircraft, flying over Times Square on their way to H.A.M.M.E.R.s new private prison for superhumans. All the heroes were bound with shackles that neutralized their powers. This had no effect on Punisher, but was a definite hindrance to Hulk, Ant-Man, and Spider-Man.

Wolverine had avoided capture and had hitched a ride on the landing gear. He cut his way inside the aircraft holding Punisher and Spider-Man, then ambushed the two high-tech armored guards in the transport bay. He nearly took out both...but not quite. Mayhem commenced as the three heroes fought the troopers for control of the aircraft.

On the second aircraft, Hulk escaped his shackles by transforming into Bruce Banner. The oversized shackles clanked to the floor. But Banner couldn't transform into the Hulk again unless someone made him angry. So Ant-Man used his turn to hurl insults at Banner, inflicting the necessary "emotional stress" to trigger the transformation. Meanwhile, the guards opened fire on Banner, hoping to take him out before he could Hulk out. Close but no cigar. When his turn came around again Bruce transformed into Hulk and KO'd both guards with a single hit.

The troopers in the cockpit responded by opening the bomb-bay-like doors. Hulk managed to find a handhold but Ant-Man plummeted toward Times Square one thousand feet below. Falling, he could see the news coverage on the Jumbotron -- and he and the other heroes were public enemy number one. Unfortunately, he still had not managed to get his shackles off. At the last minute, Spider-Man swandived from the other aircraft, swooped him up, and swung them both back to the aircraft holding the Hulk. There the Hulk ripped off Ant-Man's shackles.

The three heroes then weblined back to the aircraft that the Punisher was now piloting. They had an aerial battle with the remaining two VTOLs. Hulk leapt from his aircraft onto one of the pursuing aircraft and ripped it apart. Wolverine leapt into the other pursuing aircraft, punching straight through the cockpit and tumbling into the cargo bay. Spidey webbed a crane, swung it around, and flyswatted Wolvie's VTOL. K-THOOM!

At that point, the Doom Pool had reached 2D12, so I called the scene and let the players narrate their successful escape and evasion from H.A.M.M.E.R.

That was as far as we got. The players are really digging the Cortex system and how the narrative elements allow them to focus on being badass superheroes and not worry about counting 5' squares. They loved how powerful they felt during the mid-air escape sequence. But the system plays slow, presumably because we still have so much to learn.

Next session: Transition scenes with MJ, Microchip, and more!

 

[el-remmen]

My "Revenants of Saltmarsh" game got back on track, as the group put two sidetrek adventures behind them (things I adapted from old issues of Dungeon) and undertook the assault on the Sea Ghost. We left it with reinforcements arriving from below deck while the majority of those top-side were still alive and kicking.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

24th session in my Dragon Heist/Deck of Many Things mashup. Half-orc fighter, half-elf wizard, halfling rogue. They started at 5th level but hit 6th level by the end. The entire session was a continuation of the fight that started the previous session. The players managed to defeat the evil Lord Margaster, who is the bastard stepfather (is that even a thing?) of the fighter. They used chokepoints in Margaster's castle to whittle down his guards and then eventually killed the man himself. Lots of trash was talked. Fun was had by all (of those who survived). We're rounding the corner on this campaign and barreling toward the end. I'm guessing it will last about 40 sessions total.

 

[jasper]

My Saturday session was a first. NO COMBAT. I pushed the Price of Beauty was spa trying to hold on to it four star rating. 3 of the player took the treatment. And the group decide to go sneaky and steal the mcguffins. Only spoiler was a person brought a level 10 to level 5 AL session.