Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 8019857" data-attributes="member: 467">Session 1 of the new Eberron Q'Barra campaign.I have the players doing a lot of the work in coming up with details and NPCs for the starting town, both to give me a chance to focus on adventure creation and to get them invested in the place since it is going to be the HQ of the campaign. It's basically an Old West dragonshard boom town and the PCs include the de facto sheriff and his go-to posse for solving problems. While I am generally aiming to have a "3 plot hooks at all times" structure for the campaign overall, the first adventure is intentionally more directed. I think of it as a pilot for a new TV show and want to make sure it gives a sense of what the campaign is going to be about as well as make sure every PC has a chance to shine.The game opened with a goblin prospector named Kadj coming into The Leaky Keg (the town's one tavern) and starting to get drunk in celebration. But the sheriff PC notices that while Kedj drinks he looks around the tavern in an increasingly anxious manner. The sheriff questions him and finds out the three brothers -- dumb trouble makers that work cheap -- Kedj hired to port his most recent and significant cache back to town have not shown up. It's getting dark and Kedj is worried they ran off with his shards. Sheriff gathers up the posse -- a early generation warforged, a crazy druid, a lizardman monk, and a goliath wizard we call "Naked Hagrid" -- to go looking.Our table uses 4E style skill challenges pretty extensively with varying degrees of success and failure. They decide to travel up the route they think the brothers would have come down to town and find out what happened or where they deviated from the path. The party is successful so they find the bodies of the brothers before they have been devoured by crocs (but did not get a complete success so an additional encounter element is present). The party has to defend the bodies from the crocs and fight off a trio of miremal fey that had been tracking them (the consequence of their imperfect success). Naked Hargrid goes down during the battle and nearly dies but luck breaks their way and they win.Another new rule we have instituted is using Inspiration differently. Any player can call for Inspiration at any time and get a reroll, but doing so puts a "DM Inspiration" in a pool for my use.Once the fight was over the Party was able to examine the scene. It looked on the surface like a local lizardfolk tribe attacked and killed the brothers, but there were enough strange clues to point toward someone pretending to be members of that tribe. The party is set to follow the tracks of the attackers and see where they came from.It was a good starting session overall. Like any good TV show it will take a few sessions for both the characters and the "show" to find its footing but I am optimistic. These days I am disinclined to faux medievalism and bog standard fantasy in general, so Eberron is a good choice of settings. Some players have more knowledge of the setting than others, but we are going to play fast and loose with lore anyway and I am going to lean toward saying "Yes" to the players as much as possible.</blockquote>

Verification