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Dungeons and Dragons
Oct. 3rd, 2020 08:09 amSo I realized I haven't actually talked about my Dungeons and Dragons campaigns here! With the pandemic and not working on the weekends for the foreseeable future, I'm actually doing four campaigns at the moment: one every Friday night, one as DM every Saturday, one every other Sunday, and one on the other available Sundays.
I've been having so much fun with them and have probably talked the ear off all my D&D friends at this point, so I thought I'd talk here too, haha.
Hollyella Lightouch (Trickery domain cleric of Tymora, gnome, level 3)
Hollyella, who goes by Holly, follows Tymora, goddess of luck. Sure, gnomes actually have their own god of luck, but Holly thought it would be funnier to follow someone outside her race's pantheon. She is a gambler and somewhat of a con artist, though she won't take all of a tourist's money, just most of it. She also may or may not have scammed one of the party members pre-game who doesn't realize he was scammed.
This is a Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign, but my party is a disaster and we've spent a whole year so far avoiding the main plot and getting embroiled in side quests. So far we rescued a woman from cultists, burned down the place where the cultists live, accidentally acquired a magical and haunted inn that no one in the party wanted but hey it was free, taught the goblins in the sewer underneath squatter's rights, rescued thirty-odd orphans who were being threatened by the cult and temporarily moved them into the inn, and now have pissed off some rich lady enough that she's willing to pay 500 gold per person for their deaths. We may or may not have made a bad bargain with the head of a local assassins' guild after trying to stroll in disguised as the people sent to kill us and offering their bodies as evidence of 'our' deaths, but that's a problem for another day.
Tomorrow we've snuck onto a boat with help of Holly's Pass Without a Trace spell and are going to try and rescue this rich guy who got into trouble with gambling, and then the party is going to try and attack the cultist lady who wants us all dead. Holly has some plans. We'll see how they go.
Tovia (Life domain cleric of Chauntea, firbolg, level 2)
Tovia is a very good girl who left her family and their struggling farm and went to the big city to make some money. She doesn't understand what's happening a lot of the time, but mostly puts it down to weird city customs and weird non-firbolg things.
However, this being Acquisitions Inc., she has accidentally fallen in with a group mostly composed of thieves and criminals and failed businessmen, all of whom kind of adopted her as the moral voice of the group. Most of them have aliases-- one has TWO aliases. Tovia keeps going by Tovia. She knew non-firbolgs were weird about names, she didn't realize they all had so many. She accidentally snitched on the one with two aliases last session because she forgot he was going by Squinty Pip, and now the other non-criminal member of the party, a monk who consults for the City Watch, is suspicious.
Right now the group is in Phandalin, investigating the disappearance of the former Acquisitions Inc branch set up there, and are investigating the cellar under the Tresendar Manor. Tovia has met quite a few pretty ladies so far, but also is all out of spell slots except for her Channel Divinity, and is a little concerned, especially since her party includes a very squishy wizard with a mere eight HP.
Yolov (Order of Scribes wizard, vedalken, level 3)
Yolov is my nerd wizard who loved his spellbook so much that he awakened it as part of the Unearthed Arcana Order of the Scribes wizard subclass. Es, his spelbook, is the jock to his nerd and is constantly disappointed in Yolov's refusal to learn fire spells. Yolov argues that a) Es is made of PAPER and b) fire spells often have collateral damage. Yolov is not charismatic or strong, but he does love books and magic and Es a whole lot.
Yolov is part of an amazing homebrewed campaign in which Yolov has recently graduated from his university having learned a lot of theoretical magic but not so much practical usage for it. He decided to go visit another continent and has been swept up in an adventure with a few other folks investigating the legend of a magical artifact that could be used as a weapon. The last huge war happened about 150 years ago, but it's still fresh in the elves' minds, so everyone wants to avoid that, and keeping this potentially magical weapon out of the wrong hands seems to be the best way to do that.
Last night's session was the first instance of the group fighting people and not just animals and monsters. My nerd wizard's favorite professor is the professor of magical ethics, so he was not having a real good time. Poor Yolov tried to persuade the bandits to lay down their arms, rolled a 2 with a negative 1 for Persuasion, and then cast sleep and knocked two of the bandits unconscious over the course of the fight. Now some of the party is exasperated at him because they have to take the captives down the mountain, and the captives keeps critiquing the group's hostage-taking techniques. Yolov is taking notes. "Take off the hostages' shoes at night so they can't run away. Thank you for the suggestion." Mercenary who was probably being sarcastic: "Oh, damn it."
Lost Mines of Phandelver
My first time as a DM! I've been having so much fun with this game. There are three players, two real life friends I've known for over a decade, and one of those friends' college friends. We'd played together with a different DM last year until real life sort of fell on her head, so I volunteered to run a campaign.
The campaign is currently The Lost Mines of Phandelver, in which the party had volunteered to bring supplies to Phandalin on behalf of a dwarf they'd helped in a little one-shot adventure, only to discover that the dwarf has been captured and that there are bandits terrorizing the town. Along the way, the party has adopted multiple NPCs, including a halfling cleric, a human fighter, three wolves, and a half-elf fighter that one of the party members is trying to flirt with. (Yes, three wolves. Our dwarf fighter kept rolling nat 20s or 22 Animal Handling rolls, I don't know what to tell you. Each character now has their own wolf they can sic on people on their turn in initiative.)
I am very proud of my party who went from session two of "the only good goblin is a dead goblin" to actually keeping this important goblin NPC alive and protecting him from "bullies" like the bugbears. I hope they enjoy my long-term plan, which involves throwing together a bunch of stuff from Dragon of Icespire Peak and the Tyranny of Dragons adventures in one unholy fusion. Look, two of the characters have dragon-relevant backstories. They want dragons, I will give them ALL THE DRAGONS. I've already got kobolds working with some of the main villains of Lost Mines to lead into what the Cult of the Dragon is up to.
The party just hit level 3 after clearing out the bandits, and are in pursuit of the wizard leader of the bandits. However, they have been told that the manor they're in is haunted by a ghost, and they might find that she causes them some unexpected difficulties tonight...
I've been having so much fun with them and have probably talked the ear off all my D&D friends at this point, so I thought I'd talk here too, haha.
Hollyella Lightouch (Trickery domain cleric of Tymora, gnome, level 3)
Hollyella, who goes by Holly, follows Tymora, goddess of luck. Sure, gnomes actually have their own god of luck, but Holly thought it would be funnier to follow someone outside her race's pantheon. She is a gambler and somewhat of a con artist, though she won't take all of a tourist's money, just most of it. She also may or may not have scammed one of the party members pre-game who doesn't realize he was scammed.
This is a Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign, but my party is a disaster and we've spent a whole year so far avoiding the main plot and getting embroiled in side quests. So far we rescued a woman from cultists, burned down the place where the cultists live, accidentally acquired a magical and haunted inn that no one in the party wanted but hey it was free, taught the goblins in the sewer underneath squatter's rights, rescued thirty-odd orphans who were being threatened by the cult and temporarily moved them into the inn, and now have pissed off some rich lady enough that she's willing to pay 500 gold per person for their deaths. We may or may not have made a bad bargain with the head of a local assassins' guild after trying to stroll in disguised as the people sent to kill us and offering their bodies as evidence of 'our' deaths, but that's a problem for another day.
Tomorrow we've snuck onto a boat with help of Holly's Pass Without a Trace spell and are going to try and rescue this rich guy who got into trouble with gambling, and then the party is going to try and attack the cultist lady who wants us all dead. Holly has some plans. We'll see how they go.
Tovia (Life domain cleric of Chauntea, firbolg, level 2)
Tovia is a very good girl who left her family and their struggling farm and went to the big city to make some money. She doesn't understand what's happening a lot of the time, but mostly puts it down to weird city customs and weird non-firbolg things.
However, this being Acquisitions Inc., she has accidentally fallen in with a group mostly composed of thieves and criminals and failed businessmen, all of whom kind of adopted her as the moral voice of the group. Most of them have aliases-- one has TWO aliases. Tovia keeps going by Tovia. She knew non-firbolgs were weird about names, she didn't realize they all had so many. She accidentally snitched on the one with two aliases last session because she forgot he was going by Squinty Pip, and now the other non-criminal member of the party, a monk who consults for the City Watch, is suspicious.
Right now the group is in Phandalin, investigating the disappearance of the former Acquisitions Inc branch set up there, and are investigating the cellar under the Tresendar Manor. Tovia has met quite a few pretty ladies so far, but also is all out of spell slots except for her Channel Divinity, and is a little concerned, especially since her party includes a very squishy wizard with a mere eight HP.
Yolov (Order of Scribes wizard, vedalken, level 3)
Yolov is my nerd wizard who loved his spellbook so much that he awakened it as part of the Unearthed Arcana Order of the Scribes wizard subclass. Es, his spelbook, is the jock to his nerd and is constantly disappointed in Yolov's refusal to learn fire spells. Yolov argues that a) Es is made of PAPER and b) fire spells often have collateral damage. Yolov is not charismatic or strong, but he does love books and magic and Es a whole lot.
Yolov is part of an amazing homebrewed campaign in which Yolov has recently graduated from his university having learned a lot of theoretical magic but not so much practical usage for it. He decided to go visit another continent and has been swept up in an adventure with a few other folks investigating the legend of a magical artifact that could be used as a weapon. The last huge war happened about 150 years ago, but it's still fresh in the elves' minds, so everyone wants to avoid that, and keeping this potentially magical weapon out of the wrong hands seems to be the best way to do that.
Last night's session was the first instance of the group fighting people and not just animals and monsters. My nerd wizard's favorite professor is the professor of magical ethics, so he was not having a real good time. Poor Yolov tried to persuade the bandits to lay down their arms, rolled a 2 with a negative 1 for Persuasion, and then cast sleep and knocked two of the bandits unconscious over the course of the fight. Now some of the party is exasperated at him because they have to take the captives down the mountain, and the captives keeps critiquing the group's hostage-taking techniques. Yolov is taking notes. "Take off the hostages' shoes at night so they can't run away. Thank you for the suggestion." Mercenary who was probably being sarcastic: "Oh, damn it."
Lost Mines of Phandelver
My first time as a DM! I've been having so much fun with this game. There are three players, two real life friends I've known for over a decade, and one of those friends' college friends. We'd played together with a different DM last year until real life sort of fell on her head, so I volunteered to run a campaign.
The campaign is currently The Lost Mines of Phandelver, in which the party had volunteered to bring supplies to Phandalin on behalf of a dwarf they'd helped in a little one-shot adventure, only to discover that the dwarf has been captured and that there are bandits terrorizing the town. Along the way, the party has adopted multiple NPCs, including a halfling cleric, a human fighter, three wolves, and a half-elf fighter that one of the party members is trying to flirt with. (Yes, three wolves. Our dwarf fighter kept rolling nat 20s or 22 Animal Handling rolls, I don't know what to tell you. Each character now has their own wolf they can sic on people on their turn in initiative.)
I am very proud of my party who went from session two of "the only good goblin is a dead goblin" to actually keeping this important goblin NPC alive and protecting him from "bullies" like the bugbears. I hope they enjoy my long-term plan, which involves throwing together a bunch of stuff from Dragon of Icespire Peak and the Tyranny of Dragons adventures in one unholy fusion. Look, two of the characters have dragon-relevant backstories. They want dragons, I will give them ALL THE DRAGONS. I've already got kobolds working with some of the main villains of Lost Mines to lead into what the Cult of the Dragon is up to.
The party just hit level 3 after clearing out the bandits, and are in pursuit of the wizard leader of the bandits. However, they have been told that the manor they're in is haunted by a ghost, and they might find that she causes them some unexpected difficulties tonight...
