D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

Session 0 of my next D&D campaign. Well, technically, it's not D&D. It's Shadow of the Demon Lord. But to me SotDL feels more like learning a new edition of D&D than an entirely new system.

I'm playing with my core group, which finished a 1-20 5E campaign earlier this year. Since then we've played a series of short arcs in a variety of systems -- Star Wars d6, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Night's Black Agents. But we've started to get the itch to get back to D&D. So here we are.

The adventure I'll be running is The Banewarrens. Banewarrens was written for 3E and covers levels 6-10. It was originally published in the 2000s by Monte Cook. It was the first published introduction of the Ptolus setting. I'll be altering it to cover SotDL's level 0 through 10.

The Banewarrens is about an expedition into an ancient underground vault stocked with evil magic and artifacts. 3E had some mechanics built around alignment that created consequences for player characters interacting with these evil artifacts. 5E lacks any similar mechanical support. Fortunately, SotDL has mechanics for Corruption that will make the danger represented by the artifacts more than apparent. That's part of the reason I selected SotDL over 5E -- that and SotDL just looks like a cool system to take for a spin.

I chose Banewarrens for a variety of reasons. First, one of my players backed the 5E reprint of Ptolus. I own the 3E version. This gives us an excuse to crack these beautiful, epic tomes. Second, when I first read Banewarrens 15 years ago it blew my mind. The amazing high concept, combining urban investigation and dungeon crawl, along with site- and event-based encounters -- all add up to a focused but non-linear campaign. It's become the template that I've internalized for my own adventure and campaign creation. I've wanted to run it for a long, long time. Third, after spending over three years running a 1-20 campaign, I want a shorter campaign that's still complete and satisfying.

The setting will be a mashup of Ptolus and the default setting from SotDL. There's a lot of overlap between the two -- both have analogs to the Catholic church, a grand empire on the cusp of anarchy, firearms, devils loose in the world, etc. However, the world surrounding the city of Ptolus is vaguely defined and mostly uninteresting. In contrast, the default setting for SotDL is interesting and flavorful -- but it lacks a singular location that embodies the essence of the game. Looking at both of them, I realized I had chocolate and peanut butter. Putting them together is easy.

At Level 0, SotDL player characters do not have a class, only an ancestry. Mechanically, they are extremely simple. But the random tables provide a ton of inspiration and really ground the characters in the setting. They're great for DMs and PCs alike.

Some of the players already have a really clear idea of their character -- for others it's still a work in progress. For purposes of this description I'm including the class/paths the players intend their characters to take at Level 1. Here's what we've got so far:

• Human priest and gravedigger. His wife was murdered by raiders stealing the tithe from his church. Now he wants revenge. His trinket is a locket with his wife's likeness. This player has his character already planned up through Level 10.
• Dwarf warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom -- in this case, Dwarvenhearth, deep beneath Ptolus. His trinket is half of a treasure map. This player always goes for support characters, so I'm intrigued to see him play a warrior.
• Magician. Either an elf or a halfling. Further details to be confirmed. This player is a natural leader and often ends up as the party face. He played a paladin in our 5E campaign so it'll be fun for him to take on a wizard.
• Goblin. His background states he's responsible for the destruction of this tribe. This player is leaning toward some sort of rogue, but he played an arcane trickster in our 5E campaign, so he's reluctant to trod the same path again. He likes to play social outcasts taking on the rich and powerful.
• Changeling. Right now, that's all we got. This player is almost always the brooding loner. So he's off to a great start.

This is a great mix of characters well-suited for this adventure. I'm excited for Session 1!

 

[Hexmage-EN]

In the most recent session I ran, the (Hasted) monk ran down a tunnel to scout it out at the behest of the party sorcerer. I mentioned there was a pile of treasure in the chamber at the end, but three very large openings in the ceiling. He approached the treasure anyway and got ambushed by a behir that dropped directly in front of him, triggering a surprise round that allowed the behir to bite and constrict the monk. The behir also rolled higher in initiative, but missed with the bite attack to try and swallow the monk, who fortunately was able to escape the grapple, attack once to trigger his Mobile feat to avoid an opportunity attack, and ran for his life.

 

[Quickleaf]

I ran a one-shot today for 6 complete strangers online, and it was a whole lot of fun. Great character concepts, players dove right into it, some twists and turns, and an ending with some surprises that helped bring the character stories full circle. I could have provided a bit more direction to get them out of the tavern faster, but overall it was a real success. Definitely building my "one-shot muscle" and I'm excited to run another one around the winter holiday.

 

[Hex08]

Non-existent unfortunately. I should be playing right now but one of my players got stuck having to work really early tomorrow and had to bail. This is the third week in a row where someone had something come up that caused us to cancel. With most games I'll still run the game if we are down just one player but in the current campaign it would be a pain to do.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Awesome fun. My level 8 Berserker Barbarian grappled an Aboleth and dragged it out of the water onto dry land. The Aboleth tried to mind control me and...IMMUNE! My barbaric yawp echoed from the grotto walls.

I currently have one level of exhaustion and totally worth it. What a fun subclass.

 

[Zabalorf]

My players are in the middle of Wildspace exploring an abandoned ship. Using a 5e Spelljammer conversion.

Running a premade adventure called Conneths Barge, he created a Animated Wand that gained sentience and well… it’s fun crazy shenanigans.

 

[The Green Hermit]

Since the cultists ditched us on the wagon train, when we got to Waterdeep, we were at a natural crossroads. The group decided to turn Trollkeep Manor back into an inn again (our reward from Leosin) and then retire.

I need to look at the list of best campaigns that this site has generated (assuming I can find it). We'll also be at Barnes & Noble tomorrow, so we might see something there that intrigues everybody.

We only made it into Tier 2.

 

[Blue]

We fought Strahd. The descriptions were cool. The DM did a good job of giving each of us spotlight time. We won.

But he also had leveled us to 10, gave us two sunswords (one 1H, one 2H) for our two front-liners, a pair of holy-spike chucking hand crossbows for the rogue, we had the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind and our whip wielder had a custom anti-undead whip. And we had a friend from a previous campaign who dropped in for the last couple of sessions and his character was a 15th level barbarian with the Sword of Avernus. And this was the definitively the last session, which meant that Strahd retreating was off the table.

There was no tension.

We had two people go down, and one was because they were charmed and we took them out ourselves. The other was our cleric whom I dumped 50 poitns of lay-on-hands into and then he stood up and healed us all. We put out ridiculous amounts of damage, much of it radiant. First round our cleric of Pelor paralyzed a bunch of Strahd clones with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. And we just went to town.

The DM is normally fantastic, but you could tell he was tired of running and these last three sessions in Castle Ravenloft itself you could tell he just wanted to end it. Didn't help that we lost most of the summer to various people on vacation so it dragged longer.

He gave us an epic fight ending where we each were important and got to really show off what we did, which would have been a triumphant end of a one-shot, but for this many months of building up Strahd to defeat him so easily kind of let down the premise of the campaign.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

28th session of my Neverwinter campaign. 6th level half-orc vengeance paladin. 5th level drow evoker wizard. 5th level genie warlock.

In the previous session the players were on a boat on the Neverwinter River that got attacked by a kraken. The boat was destroyed. The wizard was carried off by the kraken. (None of this was part of my plan; it all occurred thanks to the dice.)

This session started with the wizard waking to discover that he was a captive in a strange, ovular room. He was held fast by a horrific creature -- a gibbering mouther, in fact. A nothic and a mind flayer asked him the same question over and over again: "Who else knows about the elder brain?" But the wizard himself didn't even know about the elder brain.

Meanwhile, the paladin and warlock pulled themselves from the wreckage and waded ashore. Using a local contact, they discovered the kraken was a legendary monster that menaced regional shipping. It resided in a lighthouse miles offshore called the Queen's Beacon or the Lady's Light. (I'm using a Pathfinder dungeon as visual inspiration for this adventure.)

After some discussion, the paladin and warlock decided they wanted to approach the lighthouse by air rather than by sea. I gave them the choice of trying to hire, persuade, or steal a ride from a griffon courier service, wyverns trained by dragonborn, or an airship invented by an unpredictable gnome. They chose the gnome. (This was all figured out on the fly.) I hammed up the gnome, Ichabod Zord, as a vain-but-insecure inventor convinced of his own genius. The players took to him immediately.

In the dead of night, they flew the airship to the lighthouse. A pair of miniature beholders called spectators guarded the aerial approach. There was a fierce battle that paralyzed the paladin. But ultimately the players prevailed.

Next session: Into the lighthouse!

 

[Richards]

So we were in the city of Revin, a place where we had been attacked by assassins the last time we were there. As we half expected, we were attacked as we walked through the streets. But after we killed one of them and were pretty close to taking down a few of the others, the leader (a disguised drow) teleported away and the others surrendered. They had no idea they had been hired by a drow and had been told lies about how we were vicious killers. And they weren't really assassins, just a neutral band of adventurers. So we let them live and moved on.

Eventually, we found the drow, his sister, and a chained mind flayer trying to activate the artifact we had depowered and were to take out of commission altogether. The mind flayer cast suggestion on my lizardfolk barbarian/fighter and told me to go take my aggression on the drow. The trouble was, our gnome cleric had cast spells to make himself look like a drow so he could try to bluff his way into getting close to our enemies. So once the drow siblings had been slain, I went after the disguised gnome thinking he was a drow. He could tell I was about to attack him but instead of canceling his magic disguise he decided it would be funnier to cast a mislead spell, turning himself invisible and leaving an illusion of his "drow" self in his place. My PC wore himself out attacking this illusory drow, hitting it again and again but never seeming to be able to kill it. Once they tired of that game, the dwarven barbarian lent his hat of disguise to the dwarven fighter who has a warhammer that allows him to earth glide through solid stone, and he used the magic hat to make himself look like a drow, who then kept ducking down below the ground and popping up again several feet away, while I tried clobbering him with my battleaxe. It was the D&D version of Leonard Hofstadter trying to catch Sheldon Cooper in a McDonald's kiddie ball pit while he kept popping up, saying "Bazinga!" and then popping back down again. My poor lizardfolk wore himself out chasing after the little bugger - but I'll bet he sleeps well tonight after all that exercise!

Johnathan