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.