A quick recap, Bokken, Barrai, and Thrain took the test of the Tower and ended up with new powers, and got into Strawgoh, a school of assassination and dark arts. There they were told that there were a couple of spies in their class that they could find and get extra credit if they properly identified them. After messing around with that, they came at odds with the fourth person in their group, Dorin, a halfling and fought to get him out of the group and another person in. That fight just went okay but they ended up with Dorin leaving the group.

That took us to the first half of the first semester, before midterms. They studied well with Barrai spending too much time with watching Dorin and struggling in classes but Bokken and Thrain focused pretty well and Domon was the top of the class. Barrai does find out that Dorin is really concerned about getting kicked out of school.

Thrain and Barrai worked together to scam over a few bars and their patrons taking money in staged fights as Thrain wants to save up to get plate armor and Barrai wants to get studded leather armor, they made some progress but it was slow. They also got kicked out of three bars and made an enemy, Zaphir. Barrai also goes to some fights, which are the entertainment in the area, and notices two of the top competitors, Esmelda Dean and Sanphire, whom he starts to think that he might right ballads about.

Bokken spends some of his time breaking into teachers offices and trying to track down who might be a spy, but doesn’t find out much information on them. Instead of finding out who the spies might be, he does find some information, that while the people who were spies did go through the tower just like and at the same time as everyone else, they were recruited ahead of time.

Then comes the first part of midterms. So midterms takes place in the Tower but not in kind of the training section, where they were before, but on the first floor, which doesn’t change, and where the monsters respawn every night. So after going through a couple of empty rooms with their class, they are brought to a larger circular center room. The three barracks are brought to spots around the center, equally as far away from each other and are given instructions. They are to race to an island at the center of the room, whichever team gets there first gets the best grade, but grades can go down, depending on how much the party is damaged.

At the sound of the horn all of the groups take off, and Thrain, Barrai, Bokken, and Parrag, the fourth in their group, take off into a dense forest that surrounds the lake. They decide to stealth their way through, but Parrag does horrible on his stealth and stumbles across a couple of giant rats and three smaller rats. They manage to just about take him down, but Barrai is able to cast a spell to heal him. Meanwhile, Bokken and Thrain are chopping the rats with an odachi and blasting them with Eldritch Blast. Thrain keeps backing up and stumbles across a swarm of rats. Just as Bokken finishes off the last of them by Parrag, Thrain gets swarmed over and goes down. Bokken and Barrai go to help with Parrag following behind. Then they get close, Bokken starts hacking away and Parrag fires off a healing spell bringing Thrain back to his feet and then helps finish off the swarm of rats.

To make up for lost time, the group starts booking it through the forest as fast as possible, and they are making good time, when a group of three flying snakes drops out of the trees and takes down Bokken. Parrag casts another spell getting Bokken back to his feet. Barrai casts a spell making the sound of a predatory bird and scares off one of the snakes. Thrain and Bokken then make quick work of the other two and they are off running again. This time stumbling across some elk who don’t want to tangle with them and take off running towards the lake as well. Bokken angles the barrack group slightly to avoid the elk and they make it to the shore without further incident.

When the hit the shore, they see an island about 40 feet out into the water with two teachers on it. Busting through the edge of the tree line as well is Castillia’s group with Narius in it as well. Thrain immediately takes a potshot with an Eldritch blast, but on the run, the blast goes wide, and Castillia notches an arrow on her bow and pulls it back aiming at Thrain.

That’s where we ended do to internet troubles. And that’s one of the downsides of playing on Zoom instead of in person, but it worked well for the most part and we got a lot in.

Behind the DM’s screen a little bit, I was actually using a website to just generate random encounters for me in the tower. I had one picked out ahead of time, but the rat swarm, flying snake, and elk were all randomly picked out. It worked well for the most part, and the party while having a couple of members go down, actually was in pretty decent health by the time they reached the shoreline.

Some of the stuff that we did at the beginning was just narrated. I had asked the players to send me things they wanted to do, so stuff like the money making venture that Thrain and Barrai did with staging fights for people to bet on was part of that.

Finally, the first floor of the Tower is the test basically for the midterm. So next session the players will be leveling up, so we’ve basically had one session at level 0, and now three plus part of one coming up, at level 1.

What do you think of the game thus far?

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Quick reminder of our characters:
Thrain the Hill Dwarf who became a Hexblade Warlock
Bokken the War Forged who was granted the ability to become a great Fighter (Samurai)
Barrai the Tiefling who now gets to use their musical and story telling skills as a Bard (sub-class to be determined)

At this point in time, they are all level 1.

Upon leaving the tower they were given what basically was an exit interview to gather what their powers they had been granted. A runner took all of their skills around to the various schools, but the characters (players) were given a free choice of what school they wanted to pick as a group.

There were eight different schools:
School of Spying and Espionage
School of War and Combat
School of Charm and Seduction
School of Wisdom
School of Business and Money
School of Order and Government
School of Nature and Raw Emotion
School of Dark Arts and Assassination

They went with the last one, though they did debate for a little while around some other the other ones, The School of War and Combat made sense and they were also interested in Nature and Raw Emotion. At that booth they spoke to Tormin, a recruiter and one of the teachers at the School of Dark Arts and Assassination and had to explain why they wanted to go and what skills they had that would be useful for the Strawhog – Ye Old School of Darkness and Magic. Tormin told them that they’d be in a barracks, bunk house, type set-up with another person who had gone through the trial of the Tower at the same time as them, a Gnome named Dorin.

Then I gave them two weeks of time to do whatever they wanted, Barrai practiced the harpsichord, Bokken picked up work at a warehouse and made a bunch of money moving boxes non-stop for that time. Thrain went to brush on his fighting and sparring at a local combat focused gym.

Showing up at the school, Strawgoh, they met Dorin. He was a pompous little gnome who clearly had a chip on his shoulder and was trying to be important. Barrai made friends with him by bribing him with a gold piece, but Bokken really didn’t acknowledge him, and Thrain constantly referred to him as a halfling, as a goof, though the best part was when the player, not the character, forgot that it wasn’t a halfling. They dropped their stuff off in the barracks and then joined the other nine students for their introduction to the school.

Head Mistress Assandial told them about the school, about how hard it was going to be, about how they still might die, even in the school and if anyone wanted to leave now they could. But everyone stuck it out. She then told them what became the focus of the rest of the session, there were two spies in their midst, two of the people had been recruited prior to the test of the Tower and already had some training. Those two would get extra credit if they could stay hidden for the year. But if someone correctly figured out who they were, they could get those extra credit points. But wrong guesses, there was a consequence for that.

Bokken immediately began investigating and looked for the people who stood out the most, the richest, the prettiest, whatever caught his eye. He spotted a halfling who looked rich and spoke to Narius. While Narius was a bit of a pompous jerk, Bokken didn’t get the feeling that Narius was likely a spy at that time and decided to offer to work for him if he had a job. Which, Narius said he would consider it once they graduate and he started his own assassin’s guild.

They talked to a bunch of other of their classmates, Domon a Tiefling Warlock who wasn’t that smart. Thrain interjected himself into a conversation between Cordin a Dragonborn Wizard and Sadran the Aasimar Wizard who Bokken had noticed earlier. Sadran was nice enough, but Cordin treated Thrain fairly rudely. They talked to Addruss a Human Fighter who had gone through the Trial of the Tower with Castilla a Wood Elf Rogue.

Barrai used his ability to cast the message spell to get information from Domon that he’d gone through the tower trial with the Aasimar, Sadran, and an Elf whom the players haven’t talked to yet.

At one point, Dorin, appointing himself, or trying to appoint himself, leader of the barracks decided to confront the party and see if they’d just tell them that they were spies. However, the party turned it on him pointing out that he was the only to survive the group of four, which seemed fairly suspicious to them.

Finally, the party talked to Edzial, a Dwarf whom they don’t know what class she has yet. However, she says that she went through the trial with Domon, Sadran, and the elf that they didn’t talk to. And the characters call her out on that. She gives a reason that they is investigating to see how much they know, but the players note that she, like Dorin, is the only one who didn’t have party survive the trial of the tower.

The players, since they decided that they could trust Castilla, spoke with her about their suspicions as to who might be the spies, but they really didn’t have all that much proof and they didn’t want a wrong accusation on their record. Barrai, since he is also a Tiefling and Domon had made a big deal out of that earlier, leveraged that friendship to convince Domon, not the brightest character, that he should go and accuse Dorin for them.

And that’s where I ended the session with Domon off to do that.

The DM Notes portion, if you don’t want to see behind the screen don’t read further.

There were only a handful of rolls in this session, once they started talking to people, they rolled for several insight checks but that was about it. I’ve run sessions like this before with little rolling but it wasn’t planned.

So about the planning itself, I had all 8 schools determined and I had the cast of characters, teachers and students whom they’d meet at whatever school they went to. Would they have always been paired with Dorin, no, Barrai asked early who they were going to be paired with, and I had him roll a D10 to determine which out of 11 students they’d be paired with, yes the math doesn’t work.

Also, for preparing for something like this, don’t come up with a new batch of teachers and students for each school, my four teachers (two of them met so far), and nine students were going to have the same names no matter what. Now, the fact that Dorin is a Gnome Rogue and Castilla is a Wood Elf Rogue, those things could have changed.

I was also potentially prepared for combat in this scenario. Only because they went to the school of Dark Arts and Assassination did they end up being a test and students. It was going to be a school who was going to send in some spies that the players would have had to have fought and figured out what they were after instead. But it worked well this way for the school.

Strawgoh is Hogwarts backwards and because of that Bokken now has a commanding officer, mentor named Rettop Yrrah as well, Harry Potter backwards.

This session went really well and I had a lot of fun with it, even though it wasn’t dice chucking combat or an epic set piece of massive story, it was a bunch of different smaller social interactions, some funny, some normal that the players had. Even with the funny ones probably being the most entertaining, the players have already gravitated and made Castilla someone who is going to be important later because they trust her, you never know who they will pick.

Feel free to steal ideas from this for your own game and let me know, what would you have picked for a school in the players shoes? Do you think they are right and Dorin is a spy (I should say, spies were set before they got Dorin as a bunk mate)?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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