D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[THEMNGMNT]

9th session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 2:

• Dwarf Warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom -- in this case, Dwarvenhearth, deep beneath Ptolus. His trinket is half of a treasure map.
• Elf Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, and Chaos.
• Goblin Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions.
• Changeling Magician. An awesome background: Outcast by her "adopted family" and looking for her "sister"--the child she replaced. Her magical themes are light and darkness, using the Celestial and Shadow traditions.
• Human Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the core god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His wife was murdered by undead and now he seeks answers.

This was yet another session with lots of social interaction and roleplaying where no dice were rolled. The lethality of low level SotDL is causing my players to avoid combat and focus on investigating the mysteries of the world. Not a development I anticipated when I was planning this campaign!

Fortunately, we had a couple big reveals this session that got everyone pumped.

The players have cleared the Broken Seal entry to the Banewarrens, but need to find a way through a magically sealed door deeper into the Banewarrens. They've begun investigating the origins of the Banewarrens. If they can understand how it was constructed, maybe they can understand how to get into and out of it.

In a lengthy scene with their patron at the Church of Lothian, Sister Mara von Witten, they discovered the Banewarrens had been built thousands of years ago by a high cleric called Danar. But, unknown to most, Danar had succumbed to an artifact called the Book of Inverted Darkness. It transformed him into Eslathagos Malkith, the Dread One.

This was a big reveal that crystallized the danger posed by the Banewarrens.

Further, they learned that Danar/Malkith had created keys that allowed him and his servants to navigate the Banewarrens. Sister Mara let slip that she possesses one of the keys. But she wants to hold it in reserve as a back up. Another key is rumored to be in possession of House Vladaam, the most sinister of Ptolus' twelve noble families. Sister Mara believes the key cannot be allowed to remain in the Vladaam's possession. The Church can't steal it. But the characters? That's another matter.

The characters agreed to take the job. They gave Sister Mara a list of the gear and magic they would need. She agreed to provide it but needed a few days to pull it all together.

Meanwhile, the players travelled to the Warrens -- the most wretched slum in Ptolus. There they met with an old washer woman who once worked at House Vladaam and bore them a grudge. When she saw the characters she was terrified of them. Of one of them in particular. The changeling. Because the changeling looked exactly like Navanna Vladaam, scion of House Vladaam.

This was a huge reveal. The player had conceived the character as looking like a beautiful woman that had once passed her on the street long ago. But he didn't know who the woman was. Well, now he does! Furthermore, the changeling had not revealed her nature to the other characters. So in this moment they learned that she was a shapeshifter.

This was a fun scene as I locked into my best old crone impersonation. She made the Vladaam's sound absolutely wicked, the epitome of evil, and her descriptions of what would happen to the characters if captured really got under the players' skin. One of my best moments.

Ultimately, the old woman agreed to provide a map of the nobles' estate, which is what the characters had come for. What the players don't yet realize is that the old woman is, in fact, Navanna Vladaam in disguise.

Next session: The Onyx Spider!

 

[Richards]

Wednesday night's "Raiders of the Overreach" campaign session had us taking down another of the ten Writhing Gates, this one having been sealed up centuries ago with seven members of a vampiric sect of the Seekers of Eternity, a group that was one of the major foes of our previous campaign set in the same homebrewed game world. The whole session was basically just one big fight between our five 16th-level PCs and seven vampires: four of them fighters in plate mail, two of them wizards, and the last one a sorceress. They were tougher than we had expected, but once we slew them all and started cutting off the ten dead tentacles that had comprised the Writhing Gate we found out why: they'd been feeding on the blood of the Dying One, an illithid Elder God whose ten tentacles had formed the working mechanism of the Writhing Gate, for the several centuries since they'd been locked up in the chamber.

We ended up leveling to 17th at the end of the adventure and now have only four more Writhing Gates to take down to prevent the eventual return of the Dying One...which would cause the death of the world if it were allowed to happen.

Johnathan

 

[el-remmen]

Session #33 of my Ghosts of Saltmarsh+ Campaign was kinda all over the place, and while fun, it was marred by the fact that one of the players and his family got COVID, and had to attend remotely. Furthermore, while he was asymptomatic for the first 48 hours by the time the session began yesterday afternoon he was feeling foggy and fatigued - so mid-way through the session he took a longer break than usual and then called it a day an hour early - which was totally fine (in fact, we told him repeatedly it was not a big deal and he could sit out the session entirely - but he was stubborn, which I also get).

Nevertheless, he was still able to contribute.

Most of the session revolved around discussion of various events and info-gathering during between session downtime (handled via Discord) and the party hiring various staff for their new lodge and the logistics for building more stuff on their property. They also discovered the lodge seemed haunted and at one point two shadows flew down into the house via the chimney during dinnertime and attacked. They made some progress in resolving the haunting (my hope it would be a one session side-trek before the next big adventure, but players never cooperate with timing ) and also made some other progress in getting confirmation about who sent assassins after them way back in Session #20.

We left off with one of their recent hires having gone missing, which made them reconsider the degree to which the "haunting" had been taken care of.

 

[Older Beholder]

Last session was fun.

We have a player trying out a campaign idea as a 1st time DM, about 6 sessions in.

It was a bit of an in-between adventure session, we hung out in a new town and did some role playing and some side quest type stuff. For example, we heard the Queen of the city has never laughed and that there is a great reward for any that can make her do so. We had to show our comedy act to the guards, and they picked one character for the attempt, which in the end was a failure.

We also did a bit of setting up for a couple of dungeons in the area we planning to explore next session.

I really enjoy these types of games, we had just hit level 5, and my barbarian had taken a level in druid after helping a unicorn in a previous session. I would have waited till I was at level 5 already before multi-classing (to get that 2nd attack) but it just made a lot of sense in terms of the story to do it now.

As a 'path of the beast' barbarian, I like the idea that when he rages and takes the beast form, he's actually trying to shapeshift into an animal. Lots of thematic cross-over with path of the beast and druid which I'm enjoying.

 

[Reynard]

I just finished my first session ever of Blades in the Dark as a player. I generally do not like Powered by the Apocalypse games but this was fun. It was a short session so we only got through the "opening heist" scene with a book and demon and a bunch of bumbling idiots (us), and I am excited to see where it goes when we reconvene next week. Most surprising for myself is I am actually interested in looking deeper into this game and even re-examining other PbtA games. Maybe I was being too harsh on them based solely on how "GM moves" rubbed me the wrong way?

 

[Vael]

Last night was the first session back from holidays in our Exalted campaign. I'm playing a Dawn Caste martial artist, who's become a prominent dancer and performer in the sultan's court. And things have gotten interesting; the session started with a falling star, or the body of a god falling to earth. And our party has been tasked with retrieving the body, but a veritable rush of treasure seekers and other groups are also on their way. In fact, I'm not with the rest of the party as the Sultan dispatched two of his nobles to lead an expedition and I am with their larger group while the rest of the party forges ahead.

We have magic items to communicate and this lead to a hilarious exchange where the advance group ran into a sandstorm. They're fine, but then I had to find a way to warn the nobles without betraying how I knew it was coming. So I faked that I'd read about danger with my tarot cards and had a horrible panic attack about being out of the city and now one of the nobles thinks I might be a prophet when the precautions he took to calm me down ended up saving our expedition.

 

[Richards]

In tonight's "Raiders of the Overreach" campaign, we teleported to the other side of the world to Jakura (a "fantasy Japan" analogue), where we helped fight off eight ogre magi (with fighter levels) who were attacking a temple, but not in time to prevent their two ogre mage sorceress leaders from stealing the five eggs in which Jakura's god will be reborn. (This stems from a plot hook from our previous campaign in the same game world.) So then we tracked down the ogre mage sorceresses to their mountaintop lair, fought and killed them, and rescued the god-eggs, returning them to the temple. We were then given instructions on where to find the local Writhing Gate, which is one of four left we need to destroy to prevent the resurrection of an illithid Elder God whose return would destroy the world.

And as part of the treasure, my lizardfolk PC was given the magical tail-band (like a ring you wear at the base of your tail) from the slain fox hengeyokai temple master, which allows me to make a full attack at the end of a charge three times per day. Sweet!

Johnathan

 

[Greenfield]

It was time to wrap up my adventure.

Backstory: D&D 3.5 game with six PCs, averaging level 13-14

Party had been advised, by an enemy, that a known assassin with a grudge against the party Wizard, had taken a contract to kill the Duke of Starfall. He planned to cause trouble first, specifically to draw the party in so he could get another shot at the Wizard. The enemy had said, straight up, that he didn't care who got killed, the Wiz' or the Assassin, he won either way.

In short, it was a trap, they knew it was a trap, they were told it was a trap, so of course they walked into the trap.

Bad guy did what the bad guys do. He caused disruption, the party helped hold things together, and in the process proposed a celebration, one that would involve the Duke, and thus make him available as a target.

So the bad guy's plan worked perfectly, in that he got his shot at the Duke, and managed to kill him at the feast. It was several minutes before anyone noticed that he wasn't moving.

That was the previous session(s).

Now the party had finally managed to Scry the Assassin, and thought they recognized where he was. They also know, or at least heavily suspect the cover identity he was using: Food taster for a guild master. They think he's hiding in the guild master's wine cellar.

So all they need to do is walk up the road, 10 or 15 minutes walk, and confront the Assassin before he moves on. The Scry showed them where he was, not what he was planning or where he planned to do it.

Party wanted to ramble into town to get diamond dust for Stoneskin spells, amd would have gone shopping for other stuff as well if I hadn't emphasized that that would take time.

They knew that he was a Dark Elf, and that he was sitting in a pitch-black underground chamber, a wine cellar. So when they hit they had 15 minutes to plan (I timed, real world time) and cast prep spells.

Nobody prepped lights or cast Darkvision or Low-Light vision spells. No elemental resistance spells. The Cleric tried to insist that they'd had Hero's Feast, which would make them poison-immune. I asked when they had done this, since it takes an hour to consume. Hero's Feast was out. Wiz had six alchemical Anti-Toxin draughts, each good for an hour. She drank one, offered two to others, who didn't take them, and hoarded the rest for herself, in case she needed them.

Party entered the house, no real attempt at stealth. Biggest, least stealthy character in front, they went down the stairs to the wine cellar. Half the room was dark, and at the far end was a door. No sign of the Assassin.

They approached the door and the Barbarian (big, non-stealthy guy) uses a staff to rattle the door, to set off any easily triggered traps. Did I mention that he''s not very stealthy?

No kaboom, so they went in and demanded to know what they saw. Which was nothing, since the room was pitch black, and the only light was what ever came in from the far end of the room behind them, past their bodies blocking the door (beautifully framed and backlit, from the Assassin's point of view).

They heard voices in argument (no one had bothered to listen at the door.) Faint shadows moving. No one spoke Undercommon or Drow, but I was nice: Two other Drow asking for proof that the Duke had been killed.

Small note: In our worlds, if a person with wealth, property or title is killed, the heirs inherit. Now. Even if the wealthy landowner/noble is brought back. Res' can happen decades later, after all. Marriages are ended ('Til Death do us Part and all that), life goes on.

So the Duke had died, but the party had hidden this fact and used Resurrection to bring him back. (In 3.5 an Assassin's "Death Attack" can't be reversed with a simple Raise Dead.) So he was still on the throne, which defeated the purpose of the murder-for-hire.

The other Drow had a few Troll Hunters (Trolls with Ranger levels, straight out of the MM.)

Should have been a good fight, fairly even. Bad guys out CRd the party slightly, but the party was larger and could/should have had some element of surprise. Buff spells up, defenses ready etc. (See previous comments).

Then a PC pulled a wild card out, a spell I didn't know he had. We accept some spells from Spell Compendium, subject to a group vote. I didn't recall this spell being voted on or approved. It's called Wall of Light, or something like that. Daylight bright, and can be set up as a curtain, or wrapped around an area as a dome. High enough level that it tops any Darkness spells my bad guys had.

That effectively took the other two Drow out of the fight. They were blinded for a full round, then dazzled (they have light sensitivity). PCs threw area spells into the middle of the mess, Drow threw area spells just as blindly (we had them roll a To-Hit to see if the Fireball bead accidentally hit someone before it reached the designated distance. Rolled a NAT-20 on the Barb').

Surprisingly, the lower level speed bumps, the Troll Hunters, lasted the longest. The Assassin got beaten down to 3 hit points in about two rounds (okay, one surprise action and a round), then manage to get off his one 4th level spell and D-Doored out.

The two Drow retreated into the secret passage they'd used to enter (Party saw it open for a split second as the Lightwall came up. Lightwall hid it after that.)

So now it's over, they won. Assassin is still at large, still hates the Wiz', and still has an open contract on the Duke.

So several party members decide to maybe settle here for a while. Including the Wiz'. Players want to shuffle things about and bring in different characters.

Yeah, the Wiz is talking about spending a few months of time here, in NPCdom, in the same city with the master Assassin who was in serious hate with her. <Tears hair> Does nobody bother to follow the plot lines any more?

Anyway, another DM is taking over from here next week. Same characters, though my Druidess will be exiting her NPC status and rejoining, while the new DM's character will fade to background for the duration.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

34th session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. At the end of the session they reached 7th level.

We opened with the PCs in the Sunrise Club, an exclusive private club that acted as neutral ground for the intrigues of Neverwinter's factions (most of which are my homebrewed variants of various Forgotten Realms factions).

The warlock met with a member of the Key -- the city's guild of honorable thieves. She gave the warlock two potential quests: 1) rob a griffon courier delivery from Waterdeep at the next full moon 2) neutralize a rival thieves guild of rogue drow.

The wizard met with members of the Sanctum -- a confederation of benevolent mages attempting to safeguard the Netherese artifacts scattered across the North. Opposing the Sanctum are the sinister spellcasters of the Tower Arcane from Luskan. The wizard learned that his old mentor had become disillusioned with the Sanctum, joined the Tower Arcane, and was now scheming to become its Archmage.

The Sanctum gave the wizard two potential quests: 1) steal a spellbook from the embassy of the Tower Arcane 2) enter the Mere of Dead Men to discover why a black dragon and its minions were searching the swamp for Netherese artifacts.

A pyromaniacal pyromancer named Sindar Brand approached the wizard and offered him a spot in the Tower Arcane. Like the wizard, Brand was a student of the old mentor, who held them in high regard. The wizard declined the offer. Brand was delighted -- he loves to destroy rivals.

And at the bar the paladin talked himself out of getting into a fight with a group of adventurers they had crossed swords with in an earlier adventure.

The following day, the paladin had a meeting at the Sunrise Club with a scheming noble called Lady Avaryx. Avaryx had blackmailed the characters in the previous session using a magic mirror. The characters were now intent on trying to get one over on her.

Things did not go as planned.

Avaryx and her brother Alaric now rule the lands that once belonged to the paladin's family. The paladin suspects them in the murder of his family. However, they deny it. In fact, they propose an alliance with the paladin. They believe he's not a ruler, but a warrior. They can rule the lands on his behalf, and he can battle against their common enemies. The paladin believes this is bull but for now cannot see a better option. For a retainer of 100gp a month he agrees to take on a mission -- recover a magical helm that is an heirloom of his family from an orc horde.

Meanwhile, the wizard and warlock snuck into Avaryx's manor in an attempt to steal the magical mirror. But when they pulled the mirror off the wall they found a note behind it. It was addressed to the warlock: "If you can read this note, you should know that we have kidnapped your cousin. Try anything funny and we'll deliver his head to you on a plate."

Dangnabit!

The characters had been checked at every turn by Lady Avaryx. The next day she returned the cousin along with the initial payment to the paladin.

Next session: The characters take on a guild of drow thieves with a mysterious backer.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

10th session of Monte Cook's 3E Banewarrens campaign run with Shadow of the Demon Lord on Owlbear Rodeo.

Five player characters at Level 2:

• Dwarf Warrior. Heir to a lost kingdom -- in this case, Dwarvenhearth, deep beneath Ptolus. His trinket is half of a treasure map.
• Elf Magician. Outcast from elven lands, raised in Ptolus, keeper of a dark secret. His magical traditions are Arcana, Teleportation, and Chaos.
• Goblin Magician. Responsible for the destruction of his tribe. Specialized in the Fire and Forbidden magic traditions.
• Changeling Magician. An awesome background: Outcast by her "adopted family" and looking for her "sister"--the child she replaced. Her magical themes are light and darkness, using the Celestial and Shadow traditions.
• Human Priest. Cleric of Lothian, the core god of Ptolus. His magical traditions are Life, Theurgy, and Battle. His wife was murdered by undead and now he seeks answers.

Characters spent this session preparing for the heist of House Vladaam. They travelled to the Onyx Spider, a decadent club managed by a charming aranea and her ettercap minions. There they met a representative from the Longfingers, a guild of (mostly) honorable thieves. They acquired some thief's gear. Then they inquired about a boggle they're searching for.

They learned that someone has been stealing from the Longfingers' safe houses. But the Longfingers had no clue who it might be. Now they have a suspect! The Longfingers proposed setting an ambush to capture the boggle. The characters discussed and agreed to terms.

The characters entered the Nobles Quarter and approached House Vladaam. We ended the session just as the heist was about to begin.

Next session: Breaking in!