D&D 5E Revenge of Iarno Albrek

[Agglomérante]

Well, as you saw in my other thread, our rogue stabbed him in the back after accidentally rescuing him from Cragmaw marauders. Oh, but the player was SO ecstatic. It was worth not saving Iarno for later. A fun way to wrap up loose ends.

Hey, link to your summary! It's a great idea for an escaped Iarno and other people might want to use it.

 

[Nebulous]

Hey, link to your summary! It's a great idea for an escaped Iarno and other people might want to use it.

yeah, i can do that. So here's what happened to Iarno in our last session:

https://app.box.com/s/dtzny9k8l8jjvvsyw606

 

[Astrosicebear]

OMG I've spent so much time thinking about how to make time travel work in D&D.

I'd want to have the historical game's climactic combat captured (miniature grid photographed every round, PC actions, movement -- as much as possible anyway), backups of the character sheets, even seating locations around the table -- so when my group revisits the past, it all comes back and the players actually experience a weird simulated time travel, watching the rounds unfold precisely as they did years ago. You could capture it all with an iPhone positioned over the combat grid like a hanging lamp and just show the video (edited) up to the point where Iarno shows up. Position the minitatures.

Here's the problem: during the climactic battle, modern Iarno shows up and blows them all away. The future we all experienced never happened! End of campaign!

Or maybe that's not a problem. What a way to end the story for a bunch of 20th level PCs: your legacy never happened. You all died in Phandelin in the basement of an old manor house at 2nd level. You all died unknowns.

Roll up new characters! Who's DMing this time? What? You don't want me in the group anymore?

What a twist!

Time travel is tricky by any means, fiction or rules. Im working on a large 5e module that is all about time travel, and handles it in the best way yet, or such that ive seen.

Just remember that going back doesnt mean you replace yourself, and even if you do, you replace yourself with your current copy. Or there are duplicates. It can be done, but what better motivation than "stop this mad wizard before he erases you from time!"

 

[Agglomérante]

Time travel is tricky by any means, fiction or rules. Im working on a large 5e module that is all about time travel, and handles it in the best way yet, or such that ive seen.

I hope you share it with the community when you're done. I'm surprised there aren't more adventures around.

Just remember that going back doesnt mean you replace yourself, and even if you do, you replace yourself with your current copy. Or there are duplicates. It can be done, but what better motivation than "stop this mad wizard before he erases you from time!"

That's true. Iarno might inhabit the body of his past self and be limited in the spells he can cast purely verbally and somatically since he won't have material components for high level spells. Or you could say that time travel prevents manipulation of the Weave with any more power than you could channel at your historical time (due to the yet undiscovered relationship between Time and Weave, say). So you have to operate within the constraints of your past character sheet. Puts the onus on the DM to collect character sheet backups.

My Iarno would always regret not having the balls to have grabbed that scroll of fireball and blown the party away. He doesn't need more levels or power. He just needs a second chance!

 

[jrowland]

I hope you share it with the community when you're done. I'm surprised there aren't more adventures around.



That's true. Iarno might inhabit the body of his past self and be limited in the spells he can cast purely verbally and somatically since he won't have material components for high level spells. Or you could say that time travel prevents manipulation of the Weave with any more power than you could channel at your historical time (due to the yet undiscovered relationship between Time and Weave, say). So you have to operate within the constraints of your past character sheet. Puts the onus on the DM to collect character sheet backups.

My Iarno would always regret not having the balls to have grabbed that scroll of fireball and blown the party away. He doesn't need more levels or power. He just needs a second chance!

Or EVERYONE is sucked back in time and the battle plays out, but now with 20th level characters...Win, Gain a Boon, Campaign Over. Lose, Campaign over and your characters died at 2nd level...nobody knows how such epic destruction could occur with mere apprentice's, but the battle site resonates with powerful magic to this day...

 

[jayoungr]

I was originally going to have Iarno Albrek show up in Cragmaw Castle, but then I needed a hook to get my players to Thundertree. So I decided that while in Cragmaw Castle, Iarno heard about Venomfang and decided to join forces with the dragon to try to take over the lost mine from the Black Spider. He stole Gundren's map and infiltrated the cultists while slipping away to negotiate with the dragon in secret. The only clue the PCs had was a slip of paper found under one of the beds in Cragmaw Castle, with the two words "Thundertree" and "Venomfang" written on it.

A more detailed account of how it played out is here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...oilers/page7&p=6457619&viewfull=1#post6457619

 

[Agglomérante]

Or EVERYONE is sucked back in time and the battle plays out, but now with 20th level characters...Win, Gain a Boon, Campaign Over. Lose, Campaign over and your characters died at 2nd level...nobody knows how such epic destruction could occur with mere apprentice's, but the battle site resonates with powerful magic to this day...

Ah, elegant. Now I really wish I could recreate that battle.

Intrigued, a sage one day investigates the mysterious site and, as he's learned in temporal theory (among many other theories) he detects a temporal distortion in the resonance. He speculates in his journal that this group, which he names individually, may have been visitors from an alternate future. And thus, in one learned man's private journals, the names of the characters live on.

Might as well throw the dog a bone

 

[jrowland]

Ah, elegant. Now I really wish I could recreate that battle.

Intrigued, a sage one day investigates the mysterious site and, as he's learned in temporal theory (among many other theories) he detects a temporal distortion in the resonance. He speculates in his journal that this group, which he names individually, may have been visitors from an alternate future. And thus, in one learned man's private journals, the names of the characters live on.

Might as well throw the dog a bone

Could even be the "big reveal" in a new campaign, maybe at level 5 or 10 (or between) they 'new' PCs learn how to "correct temporal anomalies" with a magic macguffin. When they do at this old ruin a battle erupts from (100, 200, 500 years ago) - hand the old 2nd level character sheets to "re-create the battle", lol!

The "Groundhog Day" campaign.

 

[Astrosicebear]

I hope you share it with the community when you're done. I'm surprised there aren't more adventures around.



That's true. Iarno might inhabit the body of his past self and be limited in the spells he can cast purely verbally and somatically since he won't have material components for high level spells. Or you could say that time travel prevents manipulation of the Weave with any more power than you could channel at your historical time (due to the yet undiscovered relationship between Time and Weave, say). So you have to operate within the constraints of your past character sheet. Puts the onus on the DM to collect character sheet backups.

My Iarno would always regret not having the balls to have grabbed that scroll of fireball and blown the party away. He doesn't need more levels or power. He just needs a second chance!

I will definitly be sharing... once an OGL is announced.

In any case, the trick to time travel is that it has to be pre-planned and executed. Its fun to DM because you get to jsut do random, off the wall , and explain it 3 levels later.

 

[Gilladian]

Yeah, Iarno escaped in my campaign.

I was going to just throw him into the mix in Wave Echo Cave, but I recently discovered a weakness in the party's future that he could exploit, deliciously.

You know how the party's supposed to get 10% of mining profits (which Mearls pegged at 500 gp/month)? I'm going to have Iarno be the mastermind behind the attacks on the party's quarterly shipment of twenty-four 100 gp mithral ingots' worth of mine profits to Neverwinter.

What are your plans for your escaped Iarno?

IMC the rogue came to Phandelin deliberately on Albrecht's trail. She hates him because she believes he deliberately sabotaged her "family" after she met him on the street and introduced him to them. He has now gotten away from them TWICE - once at Tresendar, and then again in Wave Echo Cave - I'd given him a room of his own, not far from the bugbear barracks. The PCs had circled around and run into Nezznar before the barracks, so he wasn't present at that confrontation; afterwards they retreated to heal, and the remaining bugbears plus Albrecht decided that whatever was capable of collapsing the ceiling of an entire room on their boss was too powerful for them to fight!

Albrecht and the bugbears retreated to Cragmaw, only to discover that it had already been assaulted, and the bugbear king was dead. So Albrecht is now attempting to take power, there, since he feels that the local kingdom is a little "hot" for him right now. What he doesn't know is that there's a young green dragon looking for a good place to claim to establish himself...since he feels that Thundertree is a bit too exposed, actually being "inside" the kingdom, while Cragmaw isn't.

So eventually, if the PCs ever have to go back to Phandelver (wonder what will happen when their 10% share fails to be delivered, one month?) they'll discover that they have a dragon, an evil wizard AND a pack of goblins/bugbears to deal with, all at the same time!