The Session

So, if you need a quick refresher, Barrai, Kip, and Bokken had all just come back from the 6th layer of hell. Narduk had been swapped out with Barrai’s sister who now looked like Narduk and was running her shop. This was all after Barrai the previous session had been killed, turned into a puddle and brought back as a gnome, a blue gnome.

Thrain joins the group quickly. He didn’t know where they’d gone but after his day of resting he figured they had likely gone to the tower. Of course, there was a bit of an issue as he came out in the courtyard through the trapdoor that Barrai had put a trap on. The group isn’t too worried about him, instead they are worried about what happened to Karl and the cloak that Bokken had previous and had traded for the sun sword, because, well, Karl was still in the cloak.

Kraig is sent up to scout and spots the cloak and someone talking to it. They look elf-like and have antlers or branches coming out of their head. Kip sneaks up and hears a conversation between Karl and this fey creature. He hears that Karl is basically telling the fey creature of his exploits, Karl’s not Kip’s, and that Karl wasn’t sure what had happened to Kip and the others.

Kip makes himself known to the fey who turns out to be The Oak Lord, third in command in the Summer Courts. Bokken soon steps out as well. They talk for a little bit and the topic of the tower, the sphere of annihilation and more comes up in the conversation.

The biggest thing is that the winter courts do not like the three ravens of the crescent moon. That is the organization that Addrus and Nahzir belong to. Mainly because Adanac, the nation that the Three Ravens of the Crescent Moon are based out of won’t work with the winter courts. The fey realm is being drained, slowly, of energy and the same with other realms. That energy is going into the tower. And the fey can’t go into the tower themselves which causes an issue with them trying to get rid of or figure out the tower.

The Oak Lord decides that the group of the four of them were fairly competent. And that since they have had dealt with the winter court, rainman, an arcane stalker and more. He offers them a 15 year contract at a gold a day, 5 silver while they are in school). They won’t be assassins upon graduation, so much, they’ll be adventurers of the tower in employment of the Summer Court. And that’s where we ended.

Behind the DM’s Screen

I’ve known that I wanted to tie in the fey somehow. Mainly because I have the Fey Monster book from Cawood publishing. It’s a really fun book. I normally don’t recommend third party books for players or GM’s because there is so much content. But as a big fan of the Dresden Files where the winter and summer courts play an important role, I wanted to give it a whirl in a game. It is a good book with a lot of different characters I like. I think you’d be able to play a Dresden Files-esque game with it. And while in this case the Tower is obviously the McGuffin for the game, I can still play around with it.

Do you have any third party D&D books that you like to use?

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The Session

The group, Kip, Barrai, and Bokken decided to head off in search of Narduk, but going to the bar. Which, it actually works out for them. The bartender doesn’t know Narduk but the older man who runs the fights does. Narduk was an adventurer who used to go into the tower. But after some accident in the tower she stopped fighting and adventuring, but set-up a shop that buys curios from the tower and sells them.

They head over to her shop and find a sign on it that says “buy something or stay out”. Looking around a little bit, most all of the items cost a ton of money. They eventually try and buy information on the man they were following and Nazhir. Turns out that she had sold Nazhir an amulet that would control a sphere of annihilation. And that the man they were following was actually keeping an eye on Nazhir because he didn’t trust him. They are able to get this information by Bokken trading his cloak of the Arcane Stalker for a Sun Sword and the info, hinting that he didn’t know it’s full potential.

They slipped up with something they said and pushed her too hard. I forget exactly what they were trying to get from her that she felt threatened. She dropped two high level spells on them before they could react and ended up banishing them to Malbolge, where Barrai had been from. The group ends up in Barrai’s old cell which is thankfully unoccupied.

With no better plan, they decide to try and see the ruler of that level, Glasya. They spend some time sneaking around before they find a few high priority prisoners. They bust out an elf with thoughts that they might use him as a distraction and the same thing with a half-giant. But they are surprised to see Barrai’s sister there as well.

Glasya meets with them at this point. She is annoyed that Narduk basically messed up her plans with Barrai. So Glasya pulls Narduk from the mortal realm and sends all of the characters back. As well as Barrai’s sister who now kind of looks like Narduk, but with a few tiefling traits still hidden about her to run Narduk’s shop and aid in Glasya’s plan for Barrai.

Behind the DMs Screen

This was generally another wing-it session because I didn’t have time to prepare. But I thought it that it worked well. There was no combat really in the session just some good role playing. I think it’s useful to create some sessions that are really for role playing. They could have fought in Malbolge, but that wasn’t their best plan. I thought it was likely they would though, so I was finding the correct devils for them to fight.

Would you play in a game session like this one? How have you used the different layers of hell before in your games?

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The Session

So, I didn’t have much time to plan anything for this session I was kept busy with a toddler and making dinner before people showed up but it was still a fun session which changed some things up again. You can catch up on what happened in what I called Session 22. But the players immediately jump back into it filling in Assendial on more of what had happened.

They were also curious about what was going on with the Winter Court. It turns out that the member of the winter court has been trying to broker and agreement with Strawgoh to use some students to deal with a Rainman. The group, Barrai, Bokken and Kip immediately volunteer. And try and broker a deal which the school actually takes care of for them. They wanted 60 gold for it but ended up getting 250 which they do agree to split 4 ways with Thrain.

They kill a little bit of time with Bokken getting another fight scheduled at the bar and Barrai wrote a letter to his patron. But Kip puts the time to good use and researches what Rainman are. They are fey creatures who hide in the rain and aren’t fully corporeal. But more so, they try and drown you with their aqueous form and that will turn you into a puddle.

Going over to the embassy of the Winter Court in the town they set-up a trap for the Rainman. They make it look like the powerful fey princess of the Winter Court is standing out in the courtyard talking. Bokken spots the Rainman who is watching what is going on, but has realized that something is off. Mainly that the rain is still rain not snow like it’d be turning into surrounding a member of the winter court. So the Rainman is looking around for someone who is controlling this illusion. Bokken charges and the group gets into battle.

Things didn’t go completely as plan. Barrai does a great job opening up a barrage of magic missiles on the one of the Rainmen. And that’s where the issue really is, while the Winter Court had thought there was one Rainman there win in fact two that had been stalking the embassy. They initially focus on Kip because he looks like he’s the smallest and weakest. But when Barrai uses his magic missiles which is way more effective against them, the second one switches it’s focus to try and drown Barrai. Unfortunately for Barrai he rolls a 0 (1 with a -1 modifier) when it grapples him and he gets hit hard with a lot of damage. Eventually he becomes a puddle.

Bokken finishes off the last Rainman and feels very guilty about letting Barrai die. Some of that also due to the fact that one of his attacks had dealt damage to Barrai while he was trapped inside the figure. Kip and Bokken manage to get the puddle that was Barrai into a water skin and they rush his puddle to Assendial whom Bokken had seen use the reincarnation spell before. She is able to use it on him, but he comes back not as a Tiefling but as a forest Gnome.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Like I said, this was a lightly planned session. When they started asking about the member of the Winter Court, I knew that is the direction that I’d been taking the session and two Rainman were going to make a hard/deadly encounter for the three of them. Turns out it was in fact deadly.

And Barrai, and the player, actually got to pick between two different races. Normally you just get whatever you roll but because Kip had used prestidigitation to help get the puddle form of Barrai into the water skin. I decided to make it more interesting than just a straight roll. The player could have picked between human and forest gnome. Thematically they decided that it made more sense to be a forest gnome after all the torturing of Dorin that he had done over the school year.

Have you had a character die and become reincarnated in a game before?

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Recap

After getting their first level and class by doing the test of the tower, or group joined up to a school to get more training and more access to the tower where they can level up. In the school there were two spies they were supposed to try and find, but it turned out one, Addruss was actually just a spy.

They managed to find both of them but then when Addruss’s cover was blown things went sideways. Since that happened the group has been tasked to try and figure out what is going on with these scarabs that attracts dragons and Addruss. They found his contact Nahzir and stumbled across an Arcane Stalker who was waiting for Nahzir to show back up.

This is the point where they then found the person who was keeping on eye on Nahzir’s apartment who led them down into the tunnel beneath the city that runs oddly enough from the Tower to a bar at the end of town.

The Session

The group decided to follow the person into the tunnel finding a few stops along the way. One was a bathhouse which they took note of, one was between two outhouses near Nahzir’s apartment and one led into the courtyard where they went after going into the tower. But there was another option as to where to go, they could go back into the tower.

What they found there was a way to shortcut into the training level of the tower. That is the level that when you go through it, you end up leaving with a class, or at least that is what it did before. They realized that this maybe wasn’t the best plan as they had to go through everything again. Now, at a higher level with their gear this level of the tower was nowhere near difficult. It was built to be a challenge for level 0 characters and they were level 5.

However, what was interesting, is at the end, they had to drink from one of six chalices again. And these chalices were something that influenced what class they went into. Now, the tower took into consideration what the players want to play, but also added in some randomness. And this time, with the players having levels, it begged the question, did the players remember what they had to drink from before.

One of the tricks of the tower is that you kind of forget what is going on. And that was the case, the players forgot that there had been a a fourth, named Steve, with them the first time. And then there was a question as to how to get past the monster in the last room which had them drinking tea or fighting. Could they have taken this monster in a fight, maybe, but tea was a safer bet.

I think that two of the players did end up drinking from the chalice that they did before, but this time, the chalice only went based off what was in the chalice. It didn’t take into consideration what they had gone into before. So Bokken drank from one that was white and fizzy and ended up getting a level of Paladin. Thrain drank from the same one as the first time, so just got another level of Warlock. Kip, whom hadn’t as a player gone through this process since he joined part way through drank the red smoky one and got a level of Sorcerer. And finally, Barrai drank from a clear and calm one and got a level of Cleric.

They got out of the tower, found themselves in the courtyard, and decided to head back to the school with their new abilities. Also to take a long rest. They find Castillia just waking up in their barracks and Bokken talks with her. He fills her in on some of the details because they’ve always been able to trust her before. So he doesn’t think it’s likely to have changed, and that’s where we ended the session for the night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

They had a couple of options here. Firstly, a bit of investigating would have told them that the person didn’t go into the tower. While the courtyard wasn’t obviously the route that he went, because there were tracks, recent, still leading into the tower, they could have checked it out more.

In the tower, I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do. So I decided to do a callback to what had happened the first time. There were opportunities for things to be different. There were rooms they hadn’t seen before they could have gone to. They also could have gone into different areas than before, but they don’t know how to do that yet, or what might be different with skipping the whole first room.

Then, I thought it’d be fun to give them the option to multiclass. Now, I say option, if they picked wrong they were going to multiclass. And three of them did, though Kips player correctly guessed what the two classes were for one of them, so he knew to avoid it.

So it was a weird session, but is it one that you’d want to play in?

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The Session

At the end of last session the group had just killed off the Arcane Stalker, found another scarab, and found that someone was keeping an eye on Nahzir’s hotel room. So, they had a lot of things to take care of. They started out by heading out and taking the scarab, in a nightstand drawer, and the Arcane Stalker, in a trunk with them. Kip sent Kraig, his raven familiar, to follow the guy.

Thrain catches up with them as they have ditched the hotel and are trying to figure out their next move. They decide to split up with Barrai and Kip following after the person keeping an eye on Nahzir’s hotel room. Bokken and Thrain would take the drawer and the trunk to the school and Assendial.

Barrai and Kip track the mysterious figure to the bazaar where he seems to be meeting up with random people. They sneak up close enough so that Barrai can cast read thoughts. He basically finds out two people whom the guy is interested in finding and that this person, while they seem to be working with Nazhir is also frustrated with Nazhir. Things go really well for them and they are able to snag a couple of notes of the guy before spooking him. Kraig follows but loses him in a dark alley way, but the guy never comes out.

They light up the alley way in just enough time to see some dust settling. They find a trapdoor that reminds them of the one on the school. They fail to pry it open so they send for Bokken, being the strongest by sending Kraig to find them at the school.

Meanwhile, at the school, Bokken and Thrain see Tormin and Daedelous talking to a familiar looking figure to the one Bokken had seen in a flower shop, in fact, the same wispy and pale looking elf dressed in finery who had tried to buy him. Bokken goes and talks to them for a moment. She is a bit confused and they make some connection to the flower shop though Bokken denies being the display. It ends with him asking where Assendial is, and Tormin lets them know and to send her out to join them.

They show Assendial everything and she is more interested in going through everything in the drawer and studying the scarab than going out to meet someone She sends them to find out who it is and it turns out that the woman is a member of the Unseelie Courts which rule over Autumn and Winter. And the Arcane Stalker was part of the Winter court. So now they have another issue.

Assendial has them take Nazhir’s trunk to their barracks in order to avoid suspicion or make it obvious they’d murdered a member of the winter court. Kraig catches up to them there and gives them directions to the alley way where Kip and Barrai are. Bokken doesn’t have to pry open the trapdoor like Kip and Barrai were trying to do, but finds the spot that releases the trapdoor. They realize that the tunnel they are about to go down into leads from the school to the tower. But towards the school no one has gone recently. The tower on the other hand, there is definitely more traffic that way.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Not much to talk about behind the DM’s screen. There was some made up on the fly and some that I had been planning. The person the roof was always going to work with Nahzir, not be Nahzir himself. And the Lady of the Winter Court, that was something I decided to add. Some of it is because I don’t know all the answers to everything myself, so this allowed me to add in more things I can use.

Players also are now level 5, so the fighter has his extra attack, we’ll see how combats go now.

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The Session

There was a little bit of shopping as the players headed out of Castleveinea. Barrai picked up a few tinkered little toys, including a spider that jumped and a bird that toddled around as it walked. And Kip bought studded leather armor. Things were uneventful on the way back to the school, city, and tower, as they didn’t run into any more goblins. But Bokken did pick up some nice whiskey for sipping in the evenings.

Back in the town they picked up on the last lead that they had. They knew the address of Nahzir, the wizard whom Addruss had been working with. After spending a little bit of time looking around and asking about him, they end up at Moody’s Bar, where Barrai finds out some disturbing information, in the week they have been gone, Zaphir, who hates Barrai and Thrain has undergone a transformation of sorts, and still really hates them.

They do get a better idea of the location of Nahzir’s place of residence. It is a long term stay hotel sort of location. Barrai and Kip scope out one side of it from a restaurant just down the street, and Bokken disguises himself as part of a display at a florists. Kip uses his familiar Kraig to fly up to what they surmise to be Nahzir’s rooms window and Kraig doesn’t see anything inside, but sense that there might be something there. Bokken spots that there is a side entrance that some of the residence seem to be using.

As it gets dark outside, the group decides to break into the building through that side entrance. The lock is normal and they are careful, so Kip is able to pop the lock no problem and get inside. It is just a normal hotel and they make their way to Nahzir’s room on the third floor. They check the door for magical traps, but there aren’t any. Opening it up, Barrai lets his little bird toddle through and nothing happens. Bokken goes in first.

There is a flash and a bang as some explosive concussion is triggered. A figured wearing a cloak that obscures all of his body in shadow leaps out at Bokken nailing him with a couple of slashes. A fight ensues and Bokken has a rough go of it after taking a lot of damage to start and then missing on a number of attacks. Kip, unfortunately for him, casts a spell drawing the attention and ire of the cloaked figure who changes his target taking down Kip. Barrai and Bokken are able to do enough damage to taken down the being and they revive Kip as well.

They figure out that the creature is from the Fey Wilds and is an Arcane Stalker, more about them later. Getting the corpse into Nahzir’s room, they ransack it. Kip finds another coded book as well as two books on the Fey Wilds and one notebook full of notes on that subject as well. They also don’t find any clothes that would fit the Arcane Stalker, they just find clothing for Nahzir in there. The most interesting find, though, comes when Barrai opens up a dresser drawer, and in there, there is a scarab.

And that is where we ended.

Behind the DM’s Screen

So the main thing to talk about here is using supplemental materials. I picked up through Drive Thru RPG and Cawood Publishing a book of monsters and in particular Fey monsters, this came when I was reading a ton of Dresden Files and was thinking about a Fey based campaign, that is still on the table. That is where the Arcane Stalker came from. It was fun to use a different monster. I built them up with their movements and their description to make them feel more unique.

The Arcane Stalker is an elite warrior from the Winter Courts who is basically used to kill magic users. They have some magical abilities of their own, such a teleporting or dispelling magic. So I got to play around with that, I knew that they were there waiting on Nahzir for some reason, TBD for the players, but also they were going to be after any magic user first. Even though the tank Bokken is a big threat, the Arcane Stalker is all about taking out magic users. It gave it a logical priority that the players could figure out.

So grab some supplements from other companies. While I do have mainly Dungeons and Dragons books, I am also a big fan of looking for new things, and from some of the established 3rd party creators, like Cawood Publishing and others, you can find a lot of other cool things to use.

As always, does the session and campaign sound interesting as one to run or play in? If you use third party published stuff, do you have a favorite?

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A quick recap of what is going on. The party has finished up their first year at school and after breaking Dorin, they decided it would be good to help him. This was after they had helped investigate two dragon attacks on the school. Kip was left behind to clear up a few details. Things went sideways on the trip as they were attacked by goblins multiple times, but they did get an Owlbear that Bokken named Fukuro Kuma.

The Session

Things started off not being as restful as the group would have hoped. The lands in which they were camping didn’t turn out to be too nice as the sunset and they were attacked by four specters. Things actually go really well. Even though Bokken can’t hit spirits the hardest, Barrai enhances his abilities and Thrain gives him protection from good and evil.

Now, I say it goes pretty well, Barrai is still knocked unconscious after taking down the first of the specters and drawing their ire. But Thrain is able to stabilize him with spare the dying and that worked out. Kip hearing the fight is able to join up with the party who are camping off the road. He has taken care of what he needed to in town and hurried to catch up with them. He joins as Dorin, who has his hands tied behind his back is taking off running away from the spirits.

Bokken sends Fukoro Kuma after Dorin to fetch him, but realizes that something might have been lost in translation between him and the Owlbear. This is in fact the case and Thrain, Bokken, and Kip, riding on the back of Bokken take off after Fukoro Kuma. With some dexterous grace, Kip launches off of Bokken getting into range to cast sleep on Fukuro Kuma, but it doesn’t work, he does manage to put both his bird Kraig and Dorin to sleep. This makes Dorin way easier for Fukoro Kuma to catch and he just destroys Dorin to the point that Dorin is starting to bleed out.

Thrain, being the slowest of the group, makes it up there after Bokken has distracted Fukoro Kuma with some rations. They get Dorin back to the unconscious body of Barrai and decide to settle in for the night. Bokken takes Fukoro Kuma with him to make sure that no one finds them and that the owlbear won’t eat Dorin.

The next two days were a whole lot more uneventful with Kip trying to teach Dorin how be a better pirate. Teaching him how pirates love treasure and booty, which Dorin of course will take the wrong way. They untie him to bring him into town and find out that his family actually own a textile wholesale company. This works out decently well for the group as Bokken is able to get help making armor from the goblin’s leather for Fukoro Kuma.

They send Dorin out so that they can talk to his father running the shop. They get some information including that this textile company is the one that provides the fabric to the shop where they bought their fancy clothes and where they got the clue on that wizard whom Addrus was working with. Things seem to be settling down when they hear some noises from down the street. Dorin has found his way into a bar and has picked a fight after harassing a patron. Fortunately, Bokken can squeeze into this gnome only establishment, at least built for that, and that basically does the trick.

The night ends with them finding an animal handler that Bokken leaves Fukoro Kuma with. He pays for a few months of training for Fukoro Kuma so that there won’t be a situation where the owlbear will try and kill someone in their party again. They send Dorin back off to his family and settle in for the night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

The person playing Kip was back this week. The question that came up with that is how do you get him back to the group. I’d narrated that he’d spent the day before dealing with stuff at the school. The sirens from the previous night could have been Kip had the player been able to make it to that session. So the plan was, with the amount of time wasted on finding Dorin, that’ll give Kip time to catch back up. And it worked, I just needed a reason for him to be able to find them off the main road. Having specters scream seemed like a simple solution.

Then Dorin’s home town of Castleveinea. I’m not sure that we’re done with everything that is going on there. but I’ve been dropping more hints about this textile place or really driving home the point that they gave them the address for Addruss’s friend, the wizard. So we’ll see if they go down that route or what their plan is, I feel like they are going to leave Castleveinea next session and probably think about picking up that thread (all cloth puns intended).

What do you think of this session? Have you played a game where you’ve needed to do an escort mission before? Or as a DM, have you played where the players have picked up a pet that can fight in combat. What did you do with that?

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The Idea

This is something different, normally I pitch campaigns, this time I want to do something different. This would be three one shots that all come together at the end. I would put together three groups of two players, maybe three players, and take them through the opening part of the race. Let them get to the tower, but when you can see the tower, that is when you end the session. Then you get all three of the groups together and let them fight over and all the way up into the tower.

The trick for running this will be timing. It’s pretty unlikely that all the groups would arrive at the tower at the exact same time. In fact, I think in the one shots you’ll have to be keeping track of timed elements to figure out who makes it to the tower first. Of course, getting up the tower won’t be easy, and you can do things to delay the first group more than the other groups. Then that last session, you have the groups arrive at different times, tell people to start at different times. So if one group was fast, they get there and get an hour to get as far into the tower as they can. Or maybe half an hour, then the other groups show up. Of course, now that the first group has cleared the tower to a point that makes it really fast for the other groups to catch up with them. Now it’s a question of, will any of them survive to the top. Will they work together or will it all fall apart?

So that first session, what would be the plan for that? I think that it should be about finding where the Wizard’s Tower is. create a general map of the lands, and create some points of interest, different ones for each group that they have to get through. One should be focused on combat, give them a number of small missions and then a clue for where the tower is. The next one could be about puzzles and riddles, again getting a clue for where the tower is when they complete it. Another could fall more into skill challenges, and you guessed it another clue. I think that three things would be solid for a one shot, you want them to do enough and lose some hit points, spend some resources, but not have so much to do that you’d need two or three sessions leading into it. The wizard’s tower is magical, so it can get hidden anywhere, so the whole race, I think, makes sense to take place in a day or at most two, so that the players are a bit resource poor leading into the final session.

Then that last session, we’re going to be staggering when people arrive to the table, like I said. The fastest group will do the job of clearing part of the tower. And then it can be a free for all as players and groups try to make it to the top of the tower. I would make this session as crazy as possible. Make nuts puzzles with high checks for things like dexterity and strength. Give really open ended challenges and just see what the players decide to do to solve them. Let PvP happen if the players want it to happen. Or they can work together. Because when they find the top of the tower, there will be a giant monster for them all to fight or get devoured by. I’m thinking like how it’s a monster in the vault in Borderlands that you need to fight. Let them spend resources and just have a blast with it. Who knows, maybe no one will make it to the top.

Challenges

Now, I think this could be a good game to run. However, this is a very challenging game to run. You need more buy in from the people playing in the game. In a normal campaign, you can pivot a little as you realize what the players are really looking for in the game. But with this, it’s going to be harder, the game is almost on rails, though stuff like picking which spot to checkout first is going to be up to the players. If they fight the other groups, that’s going to be up to the players. But this would be more coordinating. How I’d probably do it is that I’d run the first session on the way to the tower over a single week and then that weekend, Saturday afternoon, I’d plan to meet up at a local FLGS that has food and drinks and make an afternoon and into an evening out of it.

Timing everything up as well is going to be interesting as well. I think that getting 30 minutes off of another groups time makes sense, so if one group is really late, they start an hour later than the others in terms of making it to the tower. Now, you could have everyone arrive at the same time, but it’d be kind of fun to have the groups show up to that last session at a staggered times to kind of create more of the feel of what happened in the game. Again, that makes it a bit trickier as you are trying to coordinate times.

Would You Run This Game?

Even for me, this game is a hard sell to run or play in. I like the concept a lot, but of all the people I have ran D&D for locally, I don’t know that I have enough to pull off a game like this. I’d really like to do it with nine people, three groups of three, and I could maybe make that work, but getting schedules to work together, that’d just be tricky. Even for six players, three groups of two, that is tricky. And I thought about this maybe at a con setting, but to commit to two sessions of a single game is a lot for a lot of players who really want to just get to trying as many things as possible.

How about you, would you run a game like this? Would you play in a game like this?

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The Session

Things don’t go like they hope during the night. After dealing with two parties of goblins they were hoping that it would be an uneventful rest, but they still had Fukuro Kuma, the owlbear that the goblins had previously used and who Bokken had since adopted. And the goblins wanted it back. Using the distraction of a siren the goblin boss and two goblins sneak up on the camp and try and take down Bokken. It doesn’t work, but they do manage to get Fukuo Kuma knocked out again.

The battle doesn’t go well for the goblins. Barrai, near death yet again, thunderwaves the three goblins who were creating the ruckus sending them flying through the air and to their deaths as they wonder why they had done this in the first place. Thrain casts darkness on the Goblin Boss’s armor and with only Thrain really able to see through that darkness, he just slowly Eldritch Blasts him while Bokken and the Goblin Boss swing wildly at each other in the dark and generally missing.

Once that battle is over, the rest of the night is quite restful. At the morning they continue to the ford. On the way they cross paths with a group of four gnomes who said they had camped at the ford that past night. They had seen a trunk go floating by and one of them who had been quite drunk that night and was suffering for it this morning, claimed to have heard the trunk singing something about a “pirates life”. It had continued to float down the river towards the waterfall they said.

The group rushes to the waterfall and they see the trunk, battered and broken, but still floating, not too far down the river. They surmise that it had gotten stuck on some rocks for a little bit and was now drifting further. Since there was a cliff to climb down, Bokken uses a rope to let Barrai and Thrain down while he watches Fukuro Kuma, the donkey, and the wagon.

Sure enough, they find Dorin in the trunk. He has thrown up in a corner of it from his bumpy ride, and now firmly believes that he is a feared pirate captain. But his old ship no longer meets his needs or sanitary requirements. So he gives the trunk a proper sendoff pushing it into the river, borrowing Barrai’s crossbow, and shooting a flaming rag into the side and watching it burn as it floats down the river.

They head back up the cliff with Barrai grabbing Dorin as he starts to fall while climbing the cliff. At the top Dorin knights Barrai his first mate and claims the cart as his new ship in his quest to become the terror of the seven seas. They had over to the ford and it isn’t too bad, they are making a plan when Dorin, still standing in the cart like a captain of a ship decides to send it ahead into the water with the donkey still attached to it. Bokken is able to stop it as the donkey isn’t too keen on swimming while attached to a cart. At that point in time they decide to go to the ferry. There is also a mutiny as Dorin is slapped in the manacles that Barrai has.

They make it to the ferry with no problem and get passage around 5 in the evening. It is an uneventful trip, through Dorin tries to get Barrai to do another mutiny so that he can get the ferry as his new ship to sale the seas in. Barrai instead uses words of terror and causes Dorin to become deathly afraid of krakens that might be living in the water. So much so that he’s afraid to drink his own water. That helps them get across safely. Dorin also decides that the sea has too many pirates, so he’s going to become a land pirate.

The group pushes on further until they find a spot on the road that they think is a camping spot, it turns out to be a scenic overlook. But it doesn’t have many entrances and they decide it’s probably a pretty solid spot to camp anyways. They settle in for the night and Bokken sends Fukuro Kuma off to hunt for their dinner. They bring back a deer which Dorin wants to eat the heart of because he thinks it’ll give him powers if he eats the heart of a deer that he killed, which he didn’t. Then they settle in for a peaceful night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

We were down Kip again this week. The whole siren thing at the end of last session was actually a way for me to bring Kip back in if the player could have made it. Kip previously has made the siren be attached to Bokken. So the thought had been that the players would recognize it. Instead, it worked nicely as a goblin distraction. Since I didn’t ever say it was Kip, I had the possibility to change it up.

The goblin battle was interesting. Thrain used darkness to very good affect and definitely changed the dynamic of what happened. I like a good use of a spell like that.

And a lot of the Dorin stuff was made up on the fly. I decided that I wanted to make it obvious that Dorin was in the trunk. I think had he been looking out of the trunk, those who saw him would be likely to try and rescue him. But having a drunk gnome claim to hear singing, that worked. The pirate song made sense and then I just decided to run with it. It turned out to be really goofy and now Dorin is scared of dragons, dragonborn, and kraken.

What is something weird in a campaign you’ve played in that you have just run with?

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But this idea, it isn’t that type of game. The world is peaceful and the characters lead normal lives. No one goes out adventuring to stop anything, there are no wars that need to be broken up. Goblins are nice, Chromatic Dragons are peaceful, deomons aren’t even a thing that cross people’s minds.

This, however, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And it kind of needs to be that way, because otherwise it’s a boring game. If there is no danger, what is going to push the players out adventuring? What is going to keep them going out instead of just starting a nice little school for adventurers? Where do you get even the skills for adventuring?

The Perfect World

The lands of Calagathra are beautiful. The crops grow and there is always enough food. While people get old and pass away, no one has died of an accident or illness. There are no wars between the neighboring rulers. Everything is amazing.

The players start out in the capitol city of one of the lands, and everything is amazing. They are part of a school which is focused on teaching about the history of the lands. But the lands of Calagathra only seem to go back about 1000 years. Before that, besides the creation story, there is no information. But there are rumors of ruins, at the edges of the Silver Mountains, in the middle of the Swamps of Carthak, and deep below the blue waves of the Estidial Sea.

That is the jumping off point for the campaign. The players, either because they are required to or because they want to, will pick one to go investigate. What they find is going to be a world that doesn’t match the rest of Calagathra. Going to the place is not a sanctioned activity, but a Professor can ask them to assist or investigate something if they need motivation. But the ruins are banned for people to go to, for some reason. But everything else is so perfect that no one cares. Most people who study are doing so because technology, magic, and knowledge of the natural worlds is growing at an amazing rate.

The Ruins

The ruins should tell the players that something isn’t what it seems. Which ever one they pick, it is going to be the first spot they encounter danger. The further they go into the ruins, the more danger there is. We are talking skeletons in some areas, traps in other areas, but also just injury, checks they need to make to avoid accidents. If you make a trap, maybe make it a poison or a disease.

With that, though, the player characters learn about the world as well. They find out that the perfect lands of Calagathra might not have been so perfect before. The ruins contain signs of battles, they find remains, unanimated, of people, they see ghosts and specters who either attack or beg for help. And the characters should be unprepared for this. I would let the characters buy weapons, but when they start, roll for gold instead of letting them pick equipment. Weapons outside of something like an axe or knife don’t exist in this world or are just toys.

The further the go into the ruins, the more weird that they find, like I have said. But what’s in the middle? I think there needs to be something that captures their attention. The adventure is kicked off by whatever they find. Bind a spirit of something powerful and hide it away deep in the ruins.

Break The World

That spirit, that is a good spirit. Or it was a good spirit anyways. The spirit tells a lie about why it was trapped and some of the truth when pressed. It was trapped along with three of it’s kin to create almost a protective field around the lands of Calagathra. Nothing bad is allowed to come through, no murders, no robberies, no diseases, no accidents, nothing of the sort. The players, by stepping foot into this area, are now free of the compulsion to be good, however. In fact, anyone who steps into the ruins, any of them will lose that compulsion.

The spirit asks to be freed. Basically talking about all the pain, suffering and agony that it is taking on, the stuff that could be happening to the people. Not that will, but that could happen, all the possibilities, and how it is slowly tearing it apart. The spirit promises to help them, promises to try and keep as much calamity at bay as it can, in exchange to being freed. It should only promise twice though.

Now, there are a few things that can happen. The players can free the spirit. If they don’t, someone else can free another spirit. Maybe have the professor leading one team and the players going on another. Either way, when one spirit is freed, you can either have the other two freed or all the pain and everything can crash into those two causing them to explode or something along those lines.

Either way, when the players come back to town, or come back to the world of Calagathra, things are going poorly. People are getting sick and something like a common cold is now a big deal because no immune system has had to deal with anything for years. People break a leg and that does them in because no one knows how to heal. The weather starts to become unpredictable versus a light shower most mornings and then sunny in the afternoon with a mid 70’s high. Basically the world is breaking up.

Where To Go From There?

There are so many ways you can go with this. Villains arise, dragons start to horde again and attack, demons could even show up. And of course, the players will be blamed at least in the capitol and at their school for what happened. So put the players on the run. Also, the good spirit, make it fey, and it didn’t promise three times, and it said it’d help as much as it can. However, the other two spirits did not. So even the helpful spirit, which should bounce between our realm and the fey realm needing to recharge, shouldn’t be that helpful.

The decision or the players asks if they should capture, basically torturing the spirits again, or if there is another answer. As well as they should be on the run, and they need to try and stop some power hungry people who happen to be ahead of the curve when it comes to being the ones in control.

At the end of the campaign, I think the players will face a decision that can go a few ways. They can capture spirits again and learn to trap them. Or they can do a never ending job of stopping power hungry wizards or dragons, but there will be a big bad who is going to try and destroy the world. That can be the one they focus on at the end of campaign and need to stop.

Heck, even make it their Professor who is stepping in wherever they create a power vacuum by stopping someone else, pretending to be good. Make it their scheme that set this all in motion. The Professor can monologue about how they had gone to the ruins before and been enlightened. They knew that they need a fall person to free the spirits, someone who everyone would blame. They could then be the good person coming in after, but really, they wanted to destroy it in a way where they ruled everything.

And that is the Perfect World campaign. Is this one that you’d be interested in running? As a player would you want to play in a game like this? Now, it hits some traditional things later on, how would you role play in the perfect world?

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