So, since I’m not DMing for awhile and last game we realized we had a 6-man group now and need a dedicated healer instead of an off-healer, I’m switching to Shaman and doing the post-game write-ups. Since I want to be able to share the write-ups with my group, I moved the “player perspective” posts over to http://rt2r.wordpress.com/ and will be doing the write-ups there while I continue to use this blog for planning.
K?
This is part three of my write-up of my dungeon & dragons group’s first adventure. You can read the previous section here.
There were two sarcophagi in the room. The party elected to open the one to the left of the entrance first. Conan insisted that, as the strongest, he should be the one to open it, but Surina was quick to point out that she was every bit as strong as he, goliath barbarian or no. Smirking after he failed to open the lid, she gave it a try. With Ty’s help, she got the lid to move.
They crowded around the sarcophagus, peering inside. There was nothing of immediate use, though the armor and weaponry adorning the skeleton appeared intricate–and valuable. They would be able to sell it later.
They moved to the remaining sarcophagus and heaved it open. Dust exploded from it when the lid came off, paralyzing all three. From behind, they heard movement, but couldn’t turn to confront whatever was approaching. It attacked Surina first, for she not only had the weakest health of the three, she was the only one with any signs of injury.
Conan shook the effects of the dust first and leapt to attack Surina’s undead attacker. Ty and Surina remained paralyzed as the zombie attacked again, but Ty recovered next and joined the fray. Surina, still paralyzed, couldn’t heal, but the zombie was dead by the time she overcame the paralysis.
They investigated the sarcophagus–warily. Beneath a layer of dust, gold and diamonds were visible. Surina, though, was more interested in the dust itself. She audibly bemoaned the lack of an adequate container to contain it for later use as a weapon. Predictably, Conan was unwilling to let the treasure go. Not even paralyzing dust was enough to keep him from valuables.
Talking with Surina inspired him to backtrack the cave. He returned with a goblin corpse, slit its throat, and let the blood pour into the sarcophagus, mixing with the dust and congealing into a form that was no longer as dangerous. While Surina carefully saved some of the blood, in hopes that when it dried the flakes would be as effective against future enemies as the dust had been against her, Conan recovered a set of magical armor that suited him perfectly.
This is part two of my write-up of my dungeon & dragons group’s first adventure. You can read the previous section here.
In the next chamber, the group was confronted with a huge spiderweb. No one had a torch, but that didn’t stop Conan from setting it on fire using the flint and tinder from his pack of adventurer’s gear. Surina and Ty took care to stand well back, just in case something horrible happened, like noxious smoke or the fire spreading to the stone itself, but it burned without incident. Surina breathed a quiet sign of relief.
Then, of course, the spider attacked. It came from the north and was about the size of a horse. Enraged by the destruction of its web, it attacked Conan. In short order it was bloodied. It fled further into the cave, and again the avenger took advantage of his bond of pursuit to give chase, as he had promised the huge creature. He managed to find the spider, but had only limited options, for the spider had climbed to the ceiling of the cave and was out of range of melee weapons, even those wielded by the huge goliath. The radiant vengeance the Raven Queen allowed him to call down, transferring the pain of his wounds to those of his foe, was the only effective way he had to continue the fight.
Conan had not even that much, and took the time to focus on healing his minor wounds.
Only Surina bore a ranged weapon, and she used her throwing hammer to strike their foe. It came down to attack, charging at Ty with the full force of its bulk–and ran straight into the wall beside him.
After that, it was relatively simple to dispatch the spider.
They elected to continue down the corridor. Confronted with another fork, the party of adventurers elected to, again, head right.
“All right turns is the best way to get out of a maze,” Conan asserted once he had finished searching the immediate area for the loot they’d been promised by the town drunk.
Surina wasn’t so sure, but she was disinclined to argue. Though they weren’t in a maze and all right turns was a great way to walk in circles, she too was inclined to head right this time, in hopes of avoiding the horde they’d heard through the wall after their first skirmish.
This is the post-game write-up for the February 26 game run by my boss for my boyfriend, father and I, as with our characters — Ty, Conan, and Surina, respectively. My boyfriend played d&d 2e ages ago, my father maybe played ad&d once, and I’ve played eberron on ventrillo about once. That was the sum total of our experience, which led to some confusion at first (“A d20 and then I add what?”). Our DM was playing via skype and we used openRPG to facilitate the game, though we rolled real dice and had real character sheets, using the map and minis on the computer was a lot more efficient.
In any case, here’s the write-up of the adventure:
Surina stood facing a cave entrance, feeling very much like what she was–a seventeen year old woman about to embark on her very first adventure She wasn’t totally sure how she’d ended up where she was, just a bit behind a barbarian even taller than her dragonborn frame and an elf with a gleaming longsword. The three barely knew one another, but each had heard the rumors of a vast treasure protected by mysterious dangers that had destroyed all of the previous tomb raiders.
They hoped to claim the treasure, and went inside the cavern.
It was illuminated by crystals in the rock and, as the group went deeper into the passage, they saw that it forked.
“Which way?”
The elf, Ty, shrugged. Almost simultaneously, the others indicated their desire to take the right fork. The goliath led the way, as the most likely to survive an unexpected encounter. At that point, the group knew better than to expect anything.
Surina brought up the rear, a throwing hammer in one hand and a warhammer in the other. She felt ready for anything.
Their forward progress revealed two goblins–one, a hulking creature, the other much farther back and wielding a bow. The big goblin charged Conan, and the two small groups fought.
Once the goblin fell, the adventurers turned their wrath upon the archer. After a single successful hit bloodied his nose, he fled. Ty immediately chased, while Conan, who was too far to reach the goblin quickly–being still where his melee opponent had fallen–moved headed away from the archer in hopes of discovering that the tunnel looped around, allowing him to cut off the archer’s means of escape. The goblin was hemmed in from the front and behind. Surina elected to join Ty, but was unable to get passed the goblin’s defenses.
Rather than stand and fight, the archer continued his attempt to flee. Unfortunately, he tried to run past Conan, who took the opportunity to attack, killing him with one mighty blow.
Surina shook her head, amazed at the creature’s mindless cowardice. It would have better off trying to stand and fight. It was suicide to flee an avenger like Ty… particularly by running past a seven foot five goliath with a greataxe as long as her leg.
She flopped to the ground to rest for a moment while Conan searched the corpses for some kind of treasure. Then she whispered a few inspiring words to Conan, trying to help him recover from his wounds. They sat resting for about fifteen minutes all told, recovering and investigating. While they sat, they heard shuffling and grunting through the wall. It sounded to Surina like there were a lot of goblins on the other side of the cavern wall.
Surina wasn’t a coward, but she wasn’t a fool, either. She recommended that they avoid going that way if they could. Simple tactics, she protested when the others teased her about the dragonborn reputation for bravery and honor.
I’m alive, scheduling conflicts with my boyfriend’s work caused a postponement of our game. However, we managed to have it last Saturday, run by my boss, who DM’d for us because my ex couldn’t make it due to a birthday party he had to attend. After the game, a friend went with my boyfriend and I to a local strip club, which was a lot of fun.
I’m working on typing up the adventure and how it went (from my character Surina‘s point of view), so that will come later, but I wanted to mention that my first crush will be joining us on Sunday’s game, which brings us up to 5 and the DM, who will be running a whole campaign before it’s my turn–which is totally fine with me!
I also splurged in a 3-month subscription to D&D Insider, which took awhile to activate and I kind of hate their browser-based programs, but I mostly got it for access to the magazines. While skimming, I found The Room of Pools, which isn’t really a whole adventure but it’s a neat little room to add to a tower or dungeon. It’s apparently based on one of the very early d&d adventures from like the first edition, but it looks like a lot of fun and I want to stick it somewhere in an adventure sometime.
I’ve really been enjoying the Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard series by Shelly Mazzanoble. This is my first magazine subscription other than the World Wildlife Federation magazines I steal from my father when they come in the mail, so I’m kind of excited.
Just wish I could read it on my phone!
As mentioned previously, I had an idea for a d&d adventure [“THE ENCHANTED PRINCESS”] based on the sort of archetypal fairy tale storyline that’s been popping up in movies lately:
There is a princess in an enchanted sleep at the top of a mountain, guarded by a dragon. Her existence is almost legendary, for many adventurers have died trying to defeat the dragon over the many years. Little is known except the location of the mountain, which is avoided by most.
That’s really all I had, and it was inspired by a combination of SHREK and the FIVE HUNDRED KINGDOMS books by Mercedes Lackey. I was a bit leery about the dragon bit because it’ll be awhile before the party is ready to face anything truly badass, but I came across a level 3 young white dragon in the Adventure Builder Tools thing from Wizards. There are two, but the one I noticed first was Khekolak, from the Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons.
From reading about Dragonborn when I was making Surina, I had an idea that it would be cool if the princess was a Tiefling, a princess from the actual Empire of Bael Turath who has been slumbering for ages (a la Sleeping Beauty without the other trappings). I thought she might make a really cool NPC and have access to some interesting information, be a cool plot point, and the jewelry just on her person would likely be suitable for a treasure/quest reward.
And I liked the idea of the encounters around the mountain being with dragon-esque creatures, things you might see around a big dragon, like perhaps a clan of dragonborn in service to a dragon, which is relatively rare but does happen. There could also be wyrmlings maybe, or dragonkin, or something otherwise reptilian and appropriate. I was sure I could find something.
So then I decided to sit down and read that book about dragons, because to have my Turath Princess, the dragon would have to be old, and I had a weird feeling that dragons guarding princesses might not make too much sense. And I was pretty much right that none of this was likely to work in this game’s setting without quite a lot of tweaking, but then I came across the brown dragons, and this line:
Brown dragons revel in the comfort of sand-covered lairs filled with treasure they have filched from desert tombs. Browns also like exotic live food kidnapped from far lands.
Aha! My Tiefling Princess could be an adventurous younger daughter, kidnapped by an adult brown dragon for food. Given the history between dragons and the Bael Turath Empire, it even makes a political kind of sense. Only this would have been so long ago that the dragon would be ridiculously powerful. There’s no way my party could deal with him… and besides, I’d kind of had my heart set on it being a mountain.
I did remember something I read about elder dragons, though, namely how they might:
…take on strange or surprising hobbies, passing the years by studying select periods in history, mastering rituals, or researching other planes.
Maybe the brown dragon was at the cusp of adult and elder, and used the Tiefling Princess to perfect a new kind of sleep spell (in the draconic ritual sense, at least) — one deeper and more powerful than the kind mortals are used to, that almost acts more like a stasis. Or a refridgerator, to keep gourmet living food around longer, a truer part of the horde.
The brown dragon, being around at the time of Arkhosia, would likely have had dragonborn underlings or minions. The clan could have continued, feral, even after the brown dragon’s death, serving the desires of the dragon and keeping the lair protected, including the vast horde, like a cult. Eventually, the landscape might have changed, and the weaker rocks fallen away to have a mountain, cliffs at the edge of a sea. I’m not a geography expert, but this is D&D and there are any number of possible fantastical explanations for how a desert could have become home to a mountain.
Centuries later, the dragonborn cult slash clan still protecting the horde faithfully, a young blue dragon in search of a lair could have stumbled upon the location, appropriated the horde and the cult (happy to have a dragon to serve at all), and settled into high style. Blue dragons, after all,
enjoy both the opportunity to command others (thus showing their superiority) and the accomplishment of goals without having to exert themselves.
And the location doesn’t even need to be particularly stormy, because blue dragons aren’t all that picky and given the fact that he’d basically be inheriting another dragon’s horde and minions, I don’t think this one would mind too much.
As long as it has its own territory, a blue dragon might locate its lair on a mountaintop, in a jungle, in the Underdark, or in a desert—anywhere except perhaps the coldest of arctic climes—but any blue living in a location that lacks frequent storms thinks of that location as temporary, even if it ends up dwelling there for a few hundred years.
Because the blue is relatively young, and young dragons tend to be indiscreet, this change in ownership could result in the area becoming better known again, and old tales about the dragon and the cult and the lair could start resurfacing… which would serve has a hook.
As to why the young blue wouldn’t have already eaten the Tiefling? Well, he hasn’t been desperate yet, and they don’t actually prefer sentient prey. Besides, she’s technically part of the horde. And he has plenty of time to learn the shiny secrets she represents.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m looking for a good follow-up adventure to my “THE LORD’S MISSING HEIR” storyline. I read the “STORM TOWER” write-up a few days ago when I looked up what the heck YELLOWSKULL BANDITS were. I was looking at bandits in the Adventure Tools program, for a roadside encounter and really didn’t like the “STORM TOWER” plot all that much, at least partially because the artwork seemed somehow off. But I thought about it, and thought about it, and while I’m still not a huge fan, I think it’ll serve as adequate inspiration for an adventure after”THE LORD’S MISSING HEIR” Here’s the summary of the Dungeon #166 adventure:
The fortified town of Fallcrest faces many threats, among them encroaching monsters from the borderlands, where civilization meets the harsh, untamed wilderness. Goblins and giants are of particular concern. To hold them back, the Lord Warden of Fallcrest ordered the reconstruction of a damaged tower that once kept watch over the Witchlight Fens to the south and the Ogrefist Hills to the west. He hired a team of dwarf stonemasons from the stronghold of Hammerfast and sent them to the tower. Nathan Faringray, a captain in the town militia, was assigned to protect them. A week ago, Faringray was summoned back to Fallcrest to help train new recruits for the town guard. He left his retinue at the tower and rode back to town, believing that the stonemasons were adequately protected. But he was wrong.
Obviously that’s not the political situation my party is dealing with, but this adventure looks like it can be tweaked relatively easily. In their first adventure, the party did an adapted version of “MENACE OF THE ICY SPIRE” which conveniently enough dealt with a tower, which happened to be on the way to an enemy territory. The party left it unoccupied, in need of repair, and filled with useful information. It would, I think, make perfect sense for the local lord to send a group there to see what can be done with the place and recover anything that the players missed or left behind, and then rebuild the tower (still using dwarf stonemasons, which can serve to broaden the world a bit for my players) into a fortification that can protect the countryside (instead of menace it!) and perhaps serve as a base for a unit of the army that can sally forth against the LORD’S RIVAL.
With that change in background and hook, most of the adventure still makes sense in the context of our storyline, though I’ll likely have to change the map a bit–I should use the “MENACE OF THE ICY SPIRE” map and tweak it to represent changes that the stonemasons made before being overrun by bandits.
Most of the “STORM TOWER” revolves around a missing artifact that bandits have been sent to retrieve, which is problematic if I’m using the same tower as “MENACE OF THE ICY SPIRE” since it has a completely different history. However, it shouldn’t be too hard to strip all that and just say that the bandits are trying to use this as a base of operations, add in a bandit leader and a badass dark mage or cleric, and have their accumulated treasure have been moved into a hidden cache here.
I caught one of my old DMs online and talked with him a bit about my plans for the upcoming gaming group (he’s in another state now, so can’t take part, unfortunately) and as we were talking, I realized that my current three-adventure arc order makes sense, but that I really need something to break up the monotony of having a rescue the heir! lead straight into rescue the princess! even if one is a kidnapping, rival lord arc and the other is a more fairy-tale esque climb the mountain and defeat the dragon type deal.
So I was reading through Dungeon #155 trying to find a good inspiration for an adventure or two to slot in between them, and came across “SLEEPER IN THE TOMB OF DREAMS” (which is actually available as free content), which is designed for a level 8 party.
The PCs are traveling down the road and meet a pilgrimage of Raven Queen worshipers. Although ignorant of the import of their actions, the faithful of the god of fate are taking the bones of the evil paladin, Sir Malagant, to the site of his death to perform a ritual that uses his soul to seal a Far Realms entity out of the world for another century. An attack on the pilgrims and theft by bandits propels the PCs into the Warwood and to the Tomb of Dreams. There, cultists are attempting to awaken the Sleeper, the general who killed Sir Malagant and was killed in return. In the tomb, the PCs must face myriad traps and foes to interrupt the ritual and retrieve the bones for the Raven Queen’s faithful.
As of right now, the Raven Queen happens to be my favorite of the 4e deities, and I like the idea of an adventure I can have in my back pocket as an option when the players are on the road, so I’m definitely going to make a note of this one even though I don’t have a good place to insert it into my arc yet (which is fine–innovation and quick-thinking are important tools for a DM, right?).
Hopefully by the time the party is around level 8, there’ll be a way to slide this into the storyline!
The idea for this adventure is that it would begin at the border crossing between the two lands, though there may need to be another adventure for the party to get to this point (for example “MAGE ASSURED DESTRUCTION” or something based off of “THE MENACE OF THE ICY SPIRE“)… which means that it’s unlikely this would be the first adventure the players do, even if its the one they select, so it’s unlikely they’ll be level 1 for it. Also, I won’t have any idea how many people will even be in the party. As such, this is just a rough outline of the idea. Specifics would have to be arranged a few hours before the adventure.
There are four primary stages to THE LORD’S MISSING HEIR:
And that’s really all I’ve got, but I think it’s enough to where it should be pretty easy to fill in appropriate monsters and NPCs once I know what level the party will be.
I’m not totally comfortable with DMing the first day the d&d group meets, because I feel like I’ll be a better DM if I play at least one game with this group, see how my ex DMs so maybe I’ll get a better idea of what he wants (though I’m pretty sure he’s the hack’n’slash type) and get a better feel of the mechanics from the player’s perspective, since I’ve never done an in-person tabletop game, though I’ve played a few sessions of an Eberron campaign over voice-chat.
However, I’m sure I’ll end up DMing a bit, since the ex has already said he probably won’t do very story-based campaigns–either that, or he’ll use pre-made ones. Which is fine, but I’m a writer, a creative type, and I’ve already got ideas for an adventure I’d like to run.
My plan is to sketch out the adventure–nothing too railroaded, but with enough detail that I’ll have a clear direction and be able to fill it in as we go and get a feel for everything and learn.
I want the party to start out in a location with a strong Adventurer’s Guild, which the players would be members of–I think that makes the most sense as a reason for them to be together and as a medium for getting story hooks out there. Given that it should probably be a relatively urban environment that they’re based out of, but probably a city-state rather than a true city in a strong land with the attendant villages and whatnot, so that there’s appropriate wildernesses and dungeons and such in relatively close proximity.
With that established, I want there to be some kind of pamphlet or news board (a la the Chantry Board in Dragon Age) or officer of the guild gossiping to give out the following information:
I was actually sifting through the Adventure Tools program and came across a creature that led me to an issue of Dungeon magazine that was surprisngly similar to what I was going for in the “MAGE ASSURED DESTRUCTION” adventure lines; Dungeon #159 has a Forgotten Realms adventure called “MENACE OF THE ICY SPIRE” where the idea is that a mage about 50 years back built a tower in a magical hotspot he tried to use, but he was stopped by some fey who didn’t like what he was doing. They encased his tower in an ice ritual, but some other creatures recently found the tower and expanded the effect of the ritual, which is turning the surrounding landscape into an early winter, e.g. crop failure and other problems. It has the same feel of “something a mage did is causing problems for the countryside!” that I’d wanted, though it’s totally different and designed for a completely different campaign setting than what I’m doing.
Still, I’m sure I can adapt it easily enough… or I might just use it anyway, wholesale; if the party has to go through that area in order to “break through” to the rival city-state in THE LORD’S MISSING HEIR making it a sort of necessary precursor.
Anywho, this is my beginning point.
Warlord at Will 