Category Archives: RPG

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #7

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

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.

Paranoia One Shot Post Mortem

Paranoia, post mortem, RPG

It actually happened. It actually bloody happened.

After a couple of delays I finally got Paranoia to the table.

Since I started DMing (which isn’t long) this is the first none D&D rpg I’ve run.

So how did it go?

Firstly the players had fun. Which is the important bit.

I used the introductory adventure [YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH FOR THE TITLE OF THIS ADVENTURE] from the Mission Book that came with the Paranoia Ultraviolet edition.

Earlier in the day I went to the library and printed out the pregen characters, and the adventure itself (despite having it in the book).

I have been singing the praise of this adventure because it really does hold your hand through running your first Paranoia game. This adventure is probably my second published adventure that I’ve run. And for me it was quite fun.

It was quite refreshing to have so much less behind the screen. Compare what I have in the photo above to the ones I share from my D&D sessions.

At the start of the adventure you are told to do the following, “Pass them the Players Handbook open to page 14 and tell them not to read it.” Not once did the players touch it! That really did surprise me.

Combat was interesting. Very different to others. It’s real time for starters! Players have five seconds to select an action card. Fail to do so and you get no turn that round. It’s also very much simpler than other systems. I kinda liked it.

I don’t do voices. So there was no computer voice. Plus I don’t feel I hammed it up enough as the computer or even Roz. So my roleplay needs improving.

We did complete the adventure in a single session which I wasn’t sure we would do. So that made it a great one shot on that front.

The overall opinion was fun was had, and keen to play again.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #5

D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

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

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

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.

Paranoia One Shot Prep #3

Paranoia, RPG, session planning

Short post, and no warning!

I had to cancel the session for this evening. Plus also the D&D session tomorrow.

Life as we all know has a way of throwing a spanner in the works.

Which it did Wednesday when I got home from work.

I had just walked through my front door, when mum called out from the conservatory (her side).

She had just fallen over hitting the wall on her way down.

After lifting mum back onto her feet, and checking her over. I told her off for not using her walking frame.

Her actual injuries were some bruising above an eye, couple minor cuts above her lip, and a badly bruised finger.

There appeared to be no concussion or broken bones. So it was making sure mum rested and took things easy. Whilst keeping a close eye on her.

Luckily I had Thursday off.

But to give mum time to recover I thought it best to give her a break from looking after two very demanding little fur balls this weekend.

The bruising is starting to go down. Especially on the finger.

So there we have it. No role playing this weekend. I do have to set a new date for the Paranoia session. The D&D will roll over to our next scheduled session.

Paranoia One Shot Prep #2

Paranoia, RPG, session planning

Hi there.

Your security clearance may not be high enough to read this post.

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

The introductory adventure [YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH FOR THE TITLE OF THIS ADVENTURE] really does hold your hand. It’s been a joy to reread it.

I’ve dug out the cards I’ll require for this introductory adventure. Which as far as I can tell reading through the adventure just the four item cards that it lists. Plus the action card deck. Oh and the all important “Number One Troubleshooter” card.

As the photo above shows I’ve also located and put to one side the rather lovely chunky computer dice that I got in the last Paranoia Kickstarter. These are so much more nicer than the original puny red computer die that came in the original Paranoia Kickstarter.

I had entertained for a day or two the idea of creating characters for the players at the start of the session. With a longer session I very well might have gone with it. I love how the whole process is a group activity giving each player the chance to influence the creation of the other players characters, creating tension and links that hopefully carry over into the game in a safe, healthy way!

So instead I’m going with the pregens from the Mission Book. There are five in the book. Naturally I’m going to have to nip into the library to print these off. I will give the players the opportunity to spend some moxie and/or clones to improve the stats of their character.

Sorry no great insights or anything interesting. My security clearance doesn’t allow me to share anything more!

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.