D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

25th session of my Dragon Heist/Deck of Many Things mashup. Half-elf wizard, half-orc fighter, halfling rogue. They started the session by leveling up to 6. The cavalier fighter took the Heavy Armor Master feat and has 70hp. He is getting pretty damn tanky. I keep forgetting what a big jump in power PCs experience in Tier 2.

This was a transitional episode. In the previous session, the players defeated one of the three factions attempting to gather the cards of the Deck of Many Things. In this session, they looted the faction's castle and returned to Waterdeep. But first, the cavalier fighter tamed a griffon mount, which will be a perk he can use as appropriate in future sessions. The PCs also regrouped on a ship with a captive they had previously rescued from pirates -- Avaedra Wavesilver, the heir to a noble merchant family in Waterdeep. Eager to show her thanks, she offered her estate as a place to stash a gaggle of NPCs that the PCs have been accumulating.

Anyway, the faction they defeated has an estate in Waterdeep. There they are holding the fighter's estranged mother captive. The PCs infiltrated the estate only to discover that the remaining occupants were all dead and the mother missing. We had to knock off early, but...

Next session: The dead walk!

 

[jasper]

They
Blew
up
the
Rocket
while
under
it.
Only
1
Died!

 

[cmad1977]

Shemshimes bedtime rhyme:
The battlemaster(and some NPCs) are charmed and out for blood!

Battlemaster held by cleric with Hold Person! Great! Battlemaster fails save after save! GREAT!
Cleric stops concentrating on hold person…. wh…whaaat?
Battlemaster runs rampant and the party scatters in terror. Night ends with Battlemaster near death, cleric and rogue badly wounded and the wizard low on magic when Magic(a campaign specific NPC who replaced gailby in our campaign) emerged from a nearby room with the book in her hand, one of its corners drenched in blood.

“I think I did something bad to the old man….”

 

[Weiley31]

Since our current campaign is on Haitus at the moment, my one other bud decided to start a game up with me and a first time new player. The "last session" (the week before last week) I think went fine despite the DM's old school mind set probably turning the one player off a bit but not fully. Unfortunately, last week, I was the only one that showed up. The other two players aren't probably interested while I'm giving the new player to DND the benefit of that doubt that his work schedule made it difficult to show up.

I have decided though, in case this particular campaign doesn't continue due to no shows, to purchase Beowulf: Age of Heroes so I can DM a campaign or a few one shots for my bud. He's a big Viking at heart and never heard of Beowulf: Age of Heroes until I told him about it last week so I think he'd enjoy it and it'll help me get practice as a DM.

I may fudge a few things or allow some things that normally aren't selectable in Beowulf: Age of Heroes to play up more the Mythical Hero aspect of it all, like ONLY allowing him to be a Human OR Half-Elf.

 

[Richards]

In our last Wednesday night campaign (where I'm a player and my grown son DMs), we were inexplicably shunted over to the Far Plane when trying to plane shift from Dwarven Hell (where we'd freed a lich during our previous session, back in January) and had to make it through the rigors of that very confusing place before ending up on a spelljamming ship headed where we want to go - but with time-frozen warriors from half a world away about to invade our allies. What with time being all quirky on the Far Realm, the war we thought was still weeks away is apparently happening right now!

In our Saturday campaign (which I DM), the PCs were woken in the middle of the night to deal with somebody breaking into a family mausoleum in the dead of night. They fought a necromancer (who they were pretty sure at first might be a vampire - nope, just a pasty-skinned human who doesn't see much sunlight) and various forms of undead they hadn't encountered before. Two of them in particular squicked the players all out immensely: the eight-year-old "slaymate," Eva Scarsdale, who just wanted to play with the PCs (and whose arms were covered in dried blood), and the boneless the necromancer freed from a water-filled urn. That boneless creeped them out so much it was a race to kill it-kill it-KILL IT before they could even see what it was capable of - they had no desire to learn anything about it but just wanted to know when it stopped moving. But the dwarven cleric got a new warhammer and the elven sorcerer a figurine of wondrous power (jade cooshee) that are intended as their "signature items" that will grow in power with them over the course of the campaign.

Johnathan

 

[darjr]

I used NewbieDM's splash screen idea. It was a modified version of the Strahd cover. A player in the game, a reborn who was killed viciously by Strahd, audibly blanched. He kept asking "Are we meeting Strahd today?!?" and when he did it was way cool. Strahd promised him his vengeance if he would only do one little thing for him. I didn't tell the player that Strahd didn't recognize him and had NO IDEA what his vengeance was for. It should prove interesting when they meet up again.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

The climax to my Marvel Heroic Roleplaying mini-campaign. Hulk, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Punisher, Wolverine. This was the eighth session. The heroes confronted Kingpin in the abandoned juvenile facility where his criminal career started. Kingpin apparently had masterminded the breakout at the Raft.

However, the Hulk deduced that the Kingpin (as well as several other villains during this event) was under the mind control of the Leader. That's a plot thread to be explored later.

For the fight with the Kingpin, I used the large scale threat die, so he was effectively as challenging as a whole team of villains. It worked well. He took out Ant-Man and the Punisher before he was defeated. The only reason Wolverine endured was due to his mutant healing factor. When the Kingpin fell, HAMMER arrived on the scene. The heroes fled, leaving HAMMER to arrest and imprison the Kingpin.

In the epilogue, the Punisher received a note from Wilson Fisk granting him control of the Kingpin's criminal empire. Fisk needs someone to fight off the rival gangs that will inevitably attempt to seize control of the underworld in his absence. So, when and if we get to it, that will be the plot of the next event...

The Punisher, Kingpin of Crime!

 

[el-remmen]

I knew it was going to be a good session when the players arrived as a group, having met 30 minutes early at one player's house to discuss their in-game plans before coming over.

The first part of the session was tying up loose ends in the village. Now that they have broken the cult's back in the village, they were doing the research and interrogation necessary to find the swamp lair of the LOAF cult, while going around and dealing with any cult converts left among the villagers. They rousted the people running the village store rather easily and deceived the smiths into giving themselves up by pretending to be part of the cult. Other cultists had clearly left town. They also found out some info that might help them deal with one of cult leader's (Explicita Defilus) many allies and minions. Eventually, they got one of their prisoners (Jason the one son of the village store owners who was not dominated, but just thought getting to beat people up was cool) to try to help them (and Sister Ottie) find the swamp lair. When they caught him he was fighting with his cultist brothers about going out there to find it and warn Explicita and the others about the PCs and report what had happened in town. But while he had been there and back once before, he didn't really know the way and was guessing. This led to a long journey through the swamp, getting lost, back-tracking, etc - but were eventually able to find the general area of the swamp lair's entrance with the ranger and druid doing their best to use their woodcraft and nature abilities to supplement Jason's incomplete knowledge. The gnome having a conversation with a local otter also helped them find their way. However, it took two full travel days instead of the one day and a little bit they were told it should take.

Oh and on the way they were attacked by a pair of grell that they named "BeakedBrainopuses!"

Using his wildform to turn into a panther the party druid scoped out the ruined foundation of some old structure where they had spotted sign of a fire. It was nestled into a cul de sac in a horseshoe shaped hillock that gave vantage of the entrance area. No one was there. It looked like the foliage had been cleared for 50 yards approaching the place, so getting their unspotted felt difficult. So he went back and they waited until just before dawn and went back and the gnome went ahead using his cloak of elvenkind - and still spotted no one, so the party risked racing across the clearing.

Unknown to them - and luckily - they had chosen the short period of time between when the undead guarded the approach to the area and when living guards took over at dawn. We left off the session with going down the trapdoor they found in the ruined foundation. They could hear the voices of men below.

We called it there. But I did inform them that the last time I ran this adventure (using 2E rules) six PCs had entered and only two emerged and one player lost TWO characters in there.

Oh and afterwards, we had everyone's SOs and family over and we had a cookout on the patio. It was quite lovely.

 

[ccs]

System: PF1e
The characters:
All 5th lv.
Jack - Human male, an ex-pirate, Rogue.3/Monk.2
Bree - 1/2ling FM, self-described awesome adventurer, Summoner.4/Druid.1
Heeb - Male Assimar, Heal Bot incarnate, Priest of Cayden Caylen, Cleric.5
{??? can't remember name as I type this} - FM Elf, Arcanist.5 (water based? Is that a thing?)

So our negotiations with the Water Naga has seen us agreeing to exterminate/drive off a small school(??) of Sahuagin that've taken up lairing in her territory....

This session was pretty much just a slow series of underwater combats. We've burned about 1/2 our resources & as the session ended were facing another 4 of the things. And though we took out a tougher one with a fancy trident & some armor, we haven't seen any actual "leader" types yet. You know, the nastier ones with extra arms.
I'm thinking we make a fighting withdrawal now before we do find one of those & then wipe them out a few at a time in a series of daily raids.

 

[el-remmen]

I just want to say that while I often found myself doing this when I maintained a story hour (which you should check out if you like my sessions reports - they are a much more detailed and developed version covering 104 sessions over 5 years' time), I was overjoyed to realize I could go back to my posts in this thread to confirm the order of past events as I was prepping future events. "How was your last session?" becomes tool for campaign continuity in itself!