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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 7942460" data-attributes="member: 11760">I had set up Midwood as a sandbox, with lots of stuff to do other than just taking a crack at Green Mountain, which I inevitably envisioned as the "endgame" around level 5, after which we would start new characters or move everyone to Ptolus, once the Big Book arrived.The barony has three main settlements, and a fourth whose inhabitants mysteriously disappeared overnight. There was a haunted Lothianite abbey, the obligatory goblin bandits in the woods, and some other challenges, ranging from longer-term mysteries to one-offs.The players, of course, had different things in mind.I was running an unusually large group of player characters. The eight initial characters included Tock Chandler, a discontented bard who wanted to get out of this one-horse village; Ragglus Chaplin, a failed paladin turned fighter who mostly sees himself as a bruiser at this point; Tucker Gallaway, a fighter and the deputy to Maidensbridge's constable; Emmerson Grant, who's both a cleric of Lothian and a novice paladin, whose open-minded ways regularly provokes the ire of the more traditionalist Bishop of Midwood; Emus Graymullet, a Grailwarden dwarf berserker (barbarian) and apprentice to a hermetic druid; Renraw Kem, a wizard school drop-out and the scion of the village Southern Gothic family; Katadid Leach, the apothecary's boy and a diviner; and Hazel Sawyer, a ranger and the eldest daughter of a woodcutter.The group naturally split into malcontents and upkeepers of the status quo. After the very first adventure, where the group explored a barrow belonging to some of the wizards who had fled the wizard war in Kem, Tock decided to prank the others by pretending to intercept a communication from some bandits. The group then went and staked out a non-existent rendezvous ... only to have a band of kobolds wander onto the scene and get into a fight with the player characters. The player characters then got their first hints that the kobolds inside Green Mountain had their own dramas, with the Cult of Tiamat taking over the clan, which had previously worshiped Kurtulmak, and the cult had a scheme that could eventually threaten the entire barony.But before the group could come to grips with that, things spun out of hand at a dwarven celebration. The local dwarves -- whom I modeled on Appalachia, rather than faux Scots -- had two rival clans, one of which wanted to retake Green Mountain and one which just wanted to integrate into human society and not lose any more clan members. Alcohol and music got involved and party members got sucked into the fray. Punches got thrown, Tucker Gallaway -- an officer of the empire -- got assaulted, and suddenly, half of the player character group had committed a capital crime.And Tock, Ragglus, Renraw and Katadid fled Midwood, on the lam, outrunning imperial justice. The fugitives ran south, toward Kem, a wasteland destroyed by a generations-long war between wizards.(If you like this recap, and would like to help me get my Ptolus character -- Baeril Underhill, gnome illusionist-turned-detective -- illustrated in the new 5E and Cypher editions, click <a href="https://gleam.io/b0PST-jJSfMdCUSb" target="_blank">here</a> and complete at least one of the promotional activities.)</blockquote>

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