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. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else. Just say no to metagaming!

Our fifteenth session. How did that happen?

We were on player down this session due to life events.

The “Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook: A Complete Guide to Harvesting and Crafting in D&D 5e” was used a couple of times to harvest from fallen opponents. I thought they worked well from a DM’s point of view. I do need to get some player feedback on them at some point. But they do make a lot of sense both mechanically and thematically. I’ll definitely be purchasing the two remaining pdfs that cover the other two official monster books. I’d love it if they covered the Tome of Beasts series of books also. But sadly they don’t. Hopefully my work-in-progress will help on that front.

Most of the session was a combat encounter between an orc, four thugs, and two gnomes.

I don’t like fudging dice rolls. So it is very very annoying that I roll high on initiative for the monsters, but mainly low on combat rolls.

In the combat I did split the party using a portcullis that provided an extra challenge to the situation. But see the previous paragraph for why this just delayed things instead of making the situation more dangerous.

I did have the monsters walk into the trap that the adventurers set, not to just reward the party for thinking of it, but it also felt like something the monsters would do.

Our session was cut short when one of the group had life call them up and call them back to base. We could have continued however having just finished the combat we were at a natural break point.

Post Mortem

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. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else.

We were two players down this session. For one it was the second session in a row they had missed so I need to find out if they are still wanting to be in the group.

The second was due to illness. So instead of some-one controlling their character I made an excuse up that the character needed to rest after the previous sessions efforts and would catch them up.

Even so we started later than planned which meant a shorter session.

The party are still working their way through the endless warrens (or the Caves of Chaos map I am using for them).

This part of the campaign is a bit of a dungeon crawl. But not a slugfest for sure. They are getting encounters of some sort in most of the rooms on the map that are driven by the dungeon encounters deck.

I’d like to think that the players are having an interesting exploration of the dungeon that isn’t just a murder hobo slaughterhouse with a combat in each room.

In fact the only possible combat they could have had didn’t happen as the ogre failed the check and had to go off and eat the ogre corpse in a nearby room.

But the next session things are going to be more violent.

They still have no idea about the two fungi they are carrying. We’ll see what they will do with them. The temptation to say “just eat them for crying out” is just so strong sometimes during the session. But I resist and don’t give in.

Right I think that covers it for the session I’ll see you in the next session prep post.

A bit late. But better late than never.

The party woke up to their neighbour telling them that she was unable to find the jewelled idol she was planning to sell to pay them for getting rid of the rats. She suspected it had been stolen and had reported it to the authorities.

Further up the street there was a commotion and wailing when a dead body had been found in one of the houses. It was a mystery as to what had caused the death. But foul means were suspected.

The streets were also abuzz with the rumour that Rullus Hobb had kidnapped members of the Golden Council.

After a shopping trip to stock up on supplies the party headed off to the Endless Warrens in search of the hideout where Rullus Hobb was hiding with his hostages.

The party found an entrance to a cave that they suspect was the hideout. After fighting an undead drake, the party continued exploring the caves.

Post Mortem

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. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else.

Has it been two weeks already? Time flies by.

But it’s nice to be back to a regular time to meet up.

On a practical level our session was less than ideal with things being a bit cramped. As the photo below shows instead of our usual two big tables giving us space to spread out. We were down to small tables and using chairs!

This was a session that was very much made up as I went along.

I seeded some plot lines such as the Bagman. But the one the party decided to go with was pursuing Rullus Hobb. Especially as it transpired he now had some of the Golden Council hostage. Which might also mean that Adel is amongst the hostages.

This has seen the party enter the Endless Warrens. For this I needed a map so I used the Caves of Chaos map from the classic Keep on the Borderlands module. I keep an A3 copy of the Caves of Chaos in my DM folder along with a two or three others just for this sort of situation. The version of the map I use is the one by Dyson Logos.

Obviously I needed to populate the section of the cave they were exploring. For this I was using the Objects of Intrigue – Underground deck. Along with the fumbled searches deck.

I like these two decks a lot.

The Objects of Intrigue deck did allow me to fill the rooms with “interesting” encounters that weren’t all about combat. From this the party have ended up with two large mushrooms that they haven’t discovered are rather beneficial to them if eaten.

I didn’t get a chance or more likely didn’t need to use the Pathfinder NPC deck.

I did use the jewelled owl puzzle which seemed to work ok.

Before the next session I need to stat out the villain plus the Bagman.