Category Archives: D&D Grp2

D&D Grp 2 Session 8 Planning #2

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Session 8 had to be cancelled at the last moment.

Luckily everyone was so understanding.

So session 8 takes place next Saturday. But due to my work rota and a 3pm to midnight shift, it is taking place earlier in the day. Which means our usual venue will not be open. Luckily Shane has said he will host session 8 at his abode.

I had been thinking of changing my Checks Sheet with more useful information.

Which I finally did today.

I changed the orientation of the page, added some more info such as death saving throws.

I like to think between this and the DM Screen I have enough information in front of me in a session to minimise having to refer to the players handbook or the DMG.

I also have, thanks to the very kind generosity of Shane I was given a copy of the Giant Book of Battle Maps.

This is the giant version of the Big Book of Battle Maps.

I do really like these battle map books. I must do as the Big Book lives in my DM bag.

Anyway now to brainstorm ideas for the session.

D&D Grp 2 Session 8 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

So tired.

But I have a session to prepare for.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

The players have finished the haunted house adventure. At the end of I let them level up. So since the last session they have been busy working out what new abilities etc their characters will have.

I’ve given the players some “homework” before this coming Saturdays session. Basically I’m advancing the in-game calendar by a week, and the players have been asked to come up with what their characters did in that week to gain all these new skills/abilities they have gained going from level 2 to level 3.

Before the party entered the haunted house a guard of the Silver Talons did drop the following adventure hook to them.

“The back walls of one of the villas collapsed into a series of chambers appearing to have once been a temple to a dark bestial god. The family owning the villa has gone missing and the Silver Talons seek discreet investigators to enter the temple and find any survivors from the collapse.” Page 14, City of Arches by Mike Shea

However the party has taken at least a day to work their way through the haunted house. They have took two long rests and a short one.

So my plan in the next session is to have the streets a buzz with the story of how a different group of adventurers are being proclaimed heroes for rescuing the missing family.

I have some homework too!

I need to go through and work out with the Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventure just what the party have found.

Which give some great opportunities for adventure hooks.

I’ve had some great NPC cards by Monte Cook Games arrive.

As you can see they have some great art, and system neutral info about the NPC on the reverse.

I like these sort of things. I have some Pathfinder ones also. They are great for bringing NPCs to life for the players. But also for inspiration to while preparing a session.

I do feel this next session needs to see Adel’s rival being introduced and making an offer to the party for the artifact they have.

Adel will be a bit miffed the party took too long getting back to her with the artifact.

Not sure how both will play out.

I like the idea of the party having to enter into a “mega dungeon” to get the next artifact. But that will be a single possible hook for them to follow up.

If the party decide to activate the watch and go through the rift/portal I need to chose or create a realm of dread.

Another hook will be a Harengon looking for adventurers to rescue their family or maybe protect their “warren”.

All I know about this upcoming session is it’s going to be very by the seats of the pants, reacting to what’s happening on the day.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #7

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After the epic battle with the minotaur skeleton and zombies the party decided they needed a rest to recover.

So after setting up watch and closing the rooms door the adventurers settled down for a rest.

However a couple of hours in Vas heard a shuffling sound coming from the hallway.

With the aid of Draynol (?), Vas investigated the noise.

Much to their horror they saw a mummy shuffling down the hallway.

Returning to the room and shutting the door, they alerted the others and quickly prepared to fight the mummy now bumping against the closed door.

A fight followed with the mummy trapped in the doorway and on fire.

After defeating the mummy (now a pile of ashes) the party settled down again to recuperate.

Fully rested the adventurers made their way to the attic. But not before Vas demonstrated his ability to throw a grappling hook was equal to his searching skills. Very poor.

As soon as the party entered the attic they were attacked by a small nest of stirge. Which were quickly dealt with.

Further in the attic they came across a rift/portal and a watch. As Babs was examining the watch a red slaad emerged out of the rift.

During the subsequent fight Draynol (?) got injured by the slaad. There was a gash on his arm.

Our heroes managed to close the rift by breaking the watch up into five pieces.

It was time to head back to their lodgings to rest, and make plans on what to do next.

We leave the adventurers at their lodgings.

Post mortem

Before I pontificate my thoughts on the session I need to do that legal bit first.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

Much of the session was made up, sorry decided, as I was setting up!

It was in my index card holder that I had the pathfinder watch card, that struck me as I saw it and read the brief description on the back would make a great artefact to be the reason the rift was open. And by breaking it up into its five pieces a great way to deactivate the rift.

My original plan was to have shadows in the attic. But as I was getting the minis out that I needed for the session I saw my red slaad and thought I’m going to have the slaad come out of the rift.

The slaad worked well, plus it did land a claw on Draynol(?) which means he has been infected. A future plot point to explore. Definitely a ticking time bomb.

The stirge were part of the original Saltmarsh adventure. I hadn’t planned on using them. But on the spur of the moment I thought why not, especially as their hp were so low.

I threw the mummy at the party as a surprise and to show the players that taking a rest is not a safe thing to do. It was a spur of the moment thing decision. But it worked out well.

This session was nearly a full head count. Anthony couldn’t make it. So this initial encounter with the mummy was a good way for Luke, Mark, and Lizzy to get used to working together.

There was an unexpected plot twist that Shane came up with that I will probably run with. Shane playing Babs (as well as his own character Jeb) had the crystal orb that they found cause Babs to act strangely. Its effect broken when she lost possession of the orb. A nice twist I thought.

I thought considering the fact the party had taken on mummies, slaad, etc. that they had earned leaving up to level three.

Now to somehow plan for the next session.

D&D Grp 2 Session 7 Planning #1 

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

Well thanks to life finding a way to throw obstacles in the way we are finally going to be having our next D&D session in our City of Arches based campaign this coming Sunday.

Which means I have some planning to do.

But first I’ll give the boiler plate spoiler warning.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

With that out the way let’s get on with the show.

This session should see the attic explored within the haunted house. Which will be the final encounter of this adventure based on the Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Here the party will find a dreadful incursion (you can read more about adding these here on the Sly Flourish website) that is the source of the monsters they have been encountering, and needs closing.

So I can still use most of my prep notes from the previous sessions but I need to come up with hooks for what’s next. They had one at the start of this adventure. But will they remember it?

I finally caved and got a copy of The Wild Beyond The Witchlight.

The main reason is because I was after some Harengon (rabbit folk) NPC stats.

I’ve got the idea in my head that within the City of Arches is a community of Harengon. The only Harengon NPC stat blocks are for a brigand and sniper.

I want a stat block more in line with a commoner. I understand why there isn’t. However that doesn’t help me. Granted I don’t really need a stat block for an NPC unless they get into combat. So I might just try and come up with a generic Harengon stat block to have on hand.

The other advantage is that there are more monsters I can call upon, a fey trinkets table to roll against, and a feywild domain to visit!

I think with the monsters thrown against the party so far once this adventure has come to an end they will advance a level.

Anyway that’s it for now.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #6

D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

Our paid employees of Adele continued their exploration of the first floor of the haunted house. Where they came across the bound and gagged Drenol. Babs thought it was her lucky day.

Jeb was a bit suspicious of Drenol, and remained so after Vas freed Drenol.

In the next room the party searched Vas found Drenol’s missing gear. Despite Jeb’s gut feeling of Drenol, and growing jealousy he was getting from Babs.

In the final room to be searched Drenol took the lead in an attempt to earn the trust of the party. It was here that he disturbed a minotaur skeleton and three zombies hiding behind a four poster bed.

After the “minor” skirmish of which the party somehow escaped with minor wounds, we left the party deciding what to do next.

Post Mortem

It’s been a while since I’ve had to copy and paste the following into a post.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

Obviously with this post mortem only appearing now it’s right and proper to surmise that session six didn’t happen in July.

Life once more got in the way and only two players could once more make it. So that first attempt in July got turned into a Star Wars Outer Rim session.

Then the next scheduled weekend for it had to be cancelled due to work. I had a shift that day.

It was nearly the case again this time. I still have a shift today. However I was able to suggest we move the session to last night instead.

Naturally life decided a couple of players couldn’t make it. Plus we were getting a new member to the group.

Which meant I had to somehow find a reason for a new adventurer to suddenly appear and join the party. Along with the two existing players once again playing two characters.

I was going to have them come in through the front door for some reason. However the Ghosts of Saltmarsh haunted house map had a better solution for me.

In one of the unexplored rooms on the first floor bound and gagged in just their under garments is the owner of the haunted house. This got changed to our new player.

As I was prepping for the session before the others turned up I informed the new player how they’d be appearing in the house, and sadly they would have none of their starting gear.

The starting gear I would be placing in one of the other empty unexplored rooms on the first floor.

I also wanted a combat this session to kind of bond the new member with the rest of the group.

So in the remaining unexplored room I decided there would be some zombies hiding behind a four poster bed.

At the last moment I added in a minotaur skeleton. Just to make it “challenging”. This felt more like a mini boss and minions battle now.

I need to run zombies correctly. When they hit that zero hp I didn’t do the Undead Fortitude. They just died.

I thought this introduction of a new player to the group went rather well. It felt a natural part of the exploration of the haunted house.

I’m still concerned about these seemingly op Tasha abilities. I want there to be peril, challenge to encounters. Otherwise what is the point of doing them, or playing? Do I ban them? I want them to have them. But how do I handle them?

I really like the new spiral bound edition of the Lazy DM Workbook. Having that and the Companion at the table as part of my toolbox during the game is nice.

We didn’t finish the haunted house, the players still potentially have the attic to explore. Which means this will have taken three sessions to complete. Longer than I thought it would. I then need to decide if the players level up. It depends on how the next session goes.

Hopefully life and work allow the next session to go ahead as planned with a full house of players.

D&D Grp 2 Session 6 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

This coming weekend should see session 6 running.

If you remember the first time this session was due to be run I had to cancel it due to work.

At the moment this and a Friday evening gaming session are all good to go.

Luckily the party are still exploring the haunted house. So there is very little prep to to do. I might come up with some more adventure seeds to drop.

I was hoping the physical copy of The Lazy DM Companion and spiral bound Lazy DM Workbook would arrive in time. But there is no news of the fullfilament having started. Still time I suppose.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #5

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Our intrepid adventures continued to explore the ground floor of the house. Only to discover an alternative route down to the basement to a wine cellar.

It was in the wine cellar they found an armour clad corpse. Which Dotty searched and was attacked by a swarm of rot grubs. Luckily some quick thinking by Babs and her burning hands saw off the nasty litter critters.

With Dotty all clad in her newly acquired battered plate armour the party returned to the ground floor to explore the rest of the house.

Which saw them disturb a couple of swarms of spiders in one of the rooms before heading upstairs.

Upstairs they found some dirty laundry in the first couple of rooms they searched.

And it is here that we leave our party on the first floor looting what they can.

Post Mortem

Look I know this next bit is repetitive and boring as I included it in these posts. But I have to say it. It’s not here for the majority of those that read my ramblings and incoherent thoughts. It’s for that handful of people that are crazy enough to play D&D with me as their DM.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

I’d found out the night before our planned session about a football tournament taking place at the sports and community centre whilst we were going to play D&D.

So I warned the players that parking might be an issue. Plans were put in place to cater for this.

On the day despite the warning we didn’t have any problems parking close to the community centre.

However we did have two adventurers that couldn’t make the session in the end. Leaving us we two actual people there to play D&D.

With some last minute heroic actions Shane had got copies of the missing players character sheets. Which meant Shane and Anthony could play two characters. Well control the other one.

This seemed to work ok.

I did reduce the inspiration tokens to just two though.

The unexpected benefit of the football tournament was that there were burger and ice cream stands there catering to the crowd of supporters/parents and players. Which meant when we took a mid session break we could and did grab a burger.

In this session the players did encounter the swarm of rot grubs. This did have the potential to be a deadly encounter. If memory doesn’t fail me in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh there is no forewarning of what they are. Which for an adventure aiming at low level adventurers seems harsh. I had the party find maggot like corpses in the kitchen, some of which were burnt. Plus the party could see a mixture dead and burnt ones around and coming out of the corpse. Which might seem heavy handed, even clumsy sign posting. But it worked the players picked up on the clues how to kill them.

My prep for the session was very minimal. I didn’t get round to producing the list of items that could be found. I’ve found that the temporary change to my work shift has left me feeling a bit more knackered than expected. Luckily I could reuse my previous session notes. They were still very valid.

I am liking the Ghosts of Saltmarsh haunted house map. I have used a mixture of the included monster encounters (rot grubs, spiders) and ones I’ve added to it (shadows, mummy). I think it’s working well.

Our next session isn’t going to be for 4 weeks. Work has me doing nights for a couple of weeks. Which starts the Saturday of our next scheduled session. There are changes afoot at work that mean making enough money each month to pay bills isn’t a given. As you can imagine it’s a worrying time not just for me but a lot of people at work. So I have to take what hours I can get to make sure I can earn enough to keep a roof over my head.

On that cheery note I’ll see you in the next post

UPDATE 17/6/22: Since writing this post mortem one or two things have been mulling around in my head. The first is that once the party hits level 3 the rogue of the group might want to take the Soulknife feature in particularly the Psychic blades from Tasha’s. Will this be over powering, or become too over powering? Do I allow it?

The second thought I’ve been mulling is a character now with the plate armour having an AC of 20. Granted their AC was already 18. How does this change the balance of encounters now?

I obviously still have some more mulling on these two things to do before our next session.

D&D Grp 2 Session 5 Planning #2

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Our sponsor for this post insists that I issue the following warning.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

After having to cancel the last session due to unforeseen circumstances. This weekends up and coming planned meet up is on.

I still have the bit of prep to do for it that I discussed in that first planning post. The plan is to do that Friday on my next day off.

In the meantime there is a remote chance that the Lazy DM Companion and spiral bound Lazy DM Workbook might arrive by then. At the tail end of last week delivery addresses were locked. So the sending out of pledges should be any day now.

I was going to say I got nada at UKGE rpg related. But I did in fact get something. The Little Book of Battle Maps was being given away free by the publisher to attendees of the expo. Probably to the annoyance of one particular stand that was trying to sell it for £9.

I’m a fan of the Battle Map books. I have two already. The big dungeon themed one lives in my DM bag. My last two sessions have used it as a generic battle map.

I’ll write another update Friday once I’ve finished the prep.

D&D Grp 2 Session 5 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

Tradition and D&D law states that the following disclaimer has to be said. If it doesn’t apply just ignore it, skim read my ramblings and go find some more compelling, nay interesting content to read.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

A wise and clever DM/GM would schedule playing a completely new RPG system the week between their regular D&D session. Not the night before!

In my defence… no I have no defence I didn’t check before arranging. I just knew any new session couldn’t be on a Saturday. Which meant it could only in reality be a Wednesday or a Friday there is no gaming.

Luckily this next session is the continuation of exploring the haunted house. So not a great deal of session planning to do for it.

However there is a bit of house keeping to do, such as make a list of what the party found or could find.

Plus I need to start thinking of hooks to start hinting at. I quite like the one Mike Shea came up with for the Second Rise district.

“Hook. The back walls of one of the villas collapsed into a series of chambers appearing to have once been a temple to a dark bestial god. The family owning the villa has gone missing and the Silver Talons seek discreet investigators to enter the temple and find any survivors from the collapse.” City of Arches by Michael E. Shea

I can see a patrol of Silver Talons approaching the party as they exit the haunted house. Or even contact them via Adel.

I still need to decide how much Adel will reward the party for investigating the haunted house. What will her standard rate be?

While I’m pondering that I’ll end this post and see you next time.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #4

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The adventures woke up to find a note left for them by Adel, asking them to investigate strange goings on at a villa in the Second Rise district.

So led by Vas they made their way to the exclusive part of the City of Arches. The party stopped and asked a member of the Silver Talons (a private mercenary security force employed by the residents of the Second Rise) for directions.

Once at the villa the party made their way in, discovering foot prints in the hallway. Following the foot prints led them to a trap door.

Upon descending into the cellar the party is attacked by a mummy. After an epic battle they needed a rest to recover.

After an uneventful rest the party discovered they had been in a room next to some skeletons. Which they soon dispatched. During the brief combat a secret room was revealed.

Inside the secret room these dark figures attacked the group. Only to be repelled by Jeb, forcing the group to grab and thing not nailed down and run.

Back on the ground floor the group started exploring the rest of the house.

And that is where we left the party.

Post Mortem

And here is the necessary bit to tell my players to basically stop, and go do something less boring. Otherwise their future fun might be ruined.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

It was requested that we use two of the bigger tables for our D&D session. Which I’m glad we did. It gave me and the players more space to spread out.

Before the session started I made some quick last minute notes based on the Lazy DM Workbook (page 7, Quick Encounter Building) about how many of each creature I could use in an encounter. I’m glad I did this. Otherwise I might have thrown all 4 mummy minis at the party!

I again started the session with inspiration being given to the players. I think it worked reasonably well again.

My session 4 notes

Wow the mummy nearly took out the party by itself. Although to be fair I was willing on the party to defeat it. I did have to bite my tongue during the combat. They had identified how to do lots of damage to the mummy using a torch they had dropped into the cellar. But no-one picked it up and used it. Lizzy even suggested it a couple of times during the combat. I just wanted to say “just listen to Lizzy”.

The encounter with two shadows was over very quickly with the cleric successfully using turn undead on them. But this will not be the last time they will encounter shadows. And there will be no turn undead to get them out of the tight spot!

I’m glad I printed out the maps from Ghosts of Saltmarsh and it’s version of the The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh adventure. It made keeping the room descriptions and map together a lot easier for referencing during the session.

One thing I need to look up is how to handle information about a creature like if a player asks “is it undead?” I provided the information this session but should I be?

I do need to go through the adventure and make a note of everything found and likely to be found by the party.

Ok that’s it for this post mortem.