That is all.
Wednesday, March 23
Monday, March 21
The second rule of being a Dungeon Master
People will die.
So last night we had our second session, and before our characters had even moved from their campsite, we had had a death. Amata, the Crystalboy, decided he had a better character in mind, and could he not be the shardmind anymore, please?
Sure.
So, having mysteriously died in the night due to a fright from the still twitching corpse of the rat-man, our adventurers briefly mourned the unexpected demise of Amata and promptly stole all his items.
After bumbling about the temple grounds for a while, the paladin had a vision from his patron deity of steamy hot springs. There were hot springs on their map, why not go there next? So they did, and were joined by a giant barbarian named Lowkeg. Oh boy. Lowkeg AND Kegslow? This will be fun.
While at the hot springs, our adventurers discovered that the slaying stone, the object of their quest, was in the possession of a young and petulant brass dragon. They were unable to convince her to give the stone over, as it was obviously an object of dark power and could be used against her, so she assured them of her ability to easily kill all of them and dismissed them from her hotspring.
What now?
Well, our paladin once again sought guidance in the form of prayer, and in return, received a vision of a mug of ale. In response, he set off for the ruined tavern, the travelers following only reluctantly, for perhaps our dwarf was only claiming that it was truly divine guidance pushing him towards a chance of ale.
Once at the tavern, our adventurers were met with the sounds of drunken singing. There was a nasty looking female orc inside, quite intoxicated, who our adventurers managed to convince to go back to the hot springs with some of her orc buddies, as they too were looking for the slaying stone. She waddled off, leaving the party free to explore the tavern, where of course they found nothing, other than a strange circle of blue runes on the floor.
Piers the wizard, after a bit of examination, recognized it as the back end of a teleportation portal. Wow, really blogger? You think teleportation is not a word? Take that stupid red line away, now! With a great deal of effort, our heroes managed to chip away at the runes, thus damaging the circle and preventing anymore whatsahoosits from coming through.
Our adventurers then made their way back to the hot springs, where they discovered that the young dragon had been killed by a band of 40 or so orcs. Luckily for our adventurers, about 32 of those orcs were dead now, killing by the raging dragon, and our adventurers only had to deal with the remaining eight orcs, who had the stone in their possession.
This proved to be one of the most difficult things to watch I have ever seen. Kegslow, the paladin, died more than once, but managed to save out of it every time. In fact, everyone died at least once. I really thought it was going to be a wipe. In the end though, our adventurers managed to defeat the orcs, with just the paladin left standing, and then, after slowing rising to their feet, our heroes discovered that Lowkeg, the giant, had fallen in battle and could not be revived. He had really and truly died. This was two characters now who had died, both owned by the same person.
After wearily collecting the stone and deciding to destroy it rather than give it back to the woman Treona, The woman was, needless to say, a little ticked off at their blatant non-compliance with her request, but she got over it and shoved them out of her tower, throwing a bag of money after them.
Level up! Hooray, with the completion of the quest, our characters ( the surviving ones, anyways) advanced to level two, and while reveling in their success, they met up with Meebo, the halfling sorceror. This was our unlucky player's third character, and everyone seemed to enjoy him. Hopefully he will stick around.
They journeyed together to the town of Winterhaven, where they restocked and rested, and where Kegslow decided to sell off all the brass scales they had collected from the dead dragon and use them to make a suit of wyrmscale armor. Lana was glad to have her bag of holding empty again. Piers, on the other hand, sold off all the interesting books and scrolls he had collected in the ruined library back in Kiris Dahn, and attempted to buy a better staff, but still lacked the gp, so he moped a bit, but got over it.
After asking around in town, the innkeeper informed them that the lord of the city, Padraig, was looking for adventurers to deal with a kobold problem. So, they set off along the road after meeting with Padraig, in search of the problematic kobolds. They dealt with the ones along the road with no trouble, and followed their tracks back towards their lair, where they fought a whole bunch of kobolds, mostly minions.
This fight would have been much more difficult if I, the DM, hadn't been so sleepy at this point and had remembered that the ten minions should have been attacking the whole time instead of just standing there. I didn't realize that they hadn't been attacking until there were only two minions left. Oh well. Our adventurers had just had a horribly difficult experience with the previous battle with the orcs, why not throw a couple easy fights at them, with stupid minions who don't know how to fight?
Anyways, with the defeat of the kobolds outstide the lair, our session came to an end and we look forward to the next session, when our adventurers will enter the kobold lair and discover what or who is behind the attacks on travelers to Winterhaven.
So last night we had our second session, and before our characters had even moved from their campsite, we had had a death. Amata, the Crystalboy, decided he had a better character in mind, and could he not be the shardmind anymore, please?
Sure.
So, having mysteriously died in the night due to a fright from the still twitching corpse of the rat-man, our adventurers briefly mourned the unexpected demise of Amata and promptly stole all his items.
After bumbling about the temple grounds for a while, the paladin had a vision from his patron deity of steamy hot springs. There were hot springs on their map, why not go there next? So they did, and were joined by a giant barbarian named Lowkeg. Oh boy. Lowkeg AND Kegslow? This will be fun.
While at the hot springs, our adventurers discovered that the slaying stone, the object of their quest, was in the possession of a young and petulant brass dragon. They were unable to convince her to give the stone over, as it was obviously an object of dark power and could be used against her, so she assured them of her ability to easily kill all of them and dismissed them from her hotspring.
What now?
Well, our paladin once again sought guidance in the form of prayer, and in return, received a vision of a mug of ale. In response, he set off for the ruined tavern, the travelers following only reluctantly, for perhaps our dwarf was only claiming that it was truly divine guidance pushing him towards a chance of ale.
Once at the tavern, our adventurers were met with the sounds of drunken singing. There was a nasty looking female orc inside, quite intoxicated, who our adventurers managed to convince to go back to the hot springs with some of her orc buddies, as they too were looking for the slaying stone. She waddled off, leaving the party free to explore the tavern, where of course they found nothing, other than a strange circle of blue runes on the floor.
Piers the wizard, after a bit of examination, recognized it as the back end of a teleportation portal. Wow, really blogger? You think teleportation is not a word? Take that stupid red line away, now! With a great deal of effort, our heroes managed to chip away at the runes, thus damaging the circle and preventing anymore whatsahoosits from coming through.
Our adventurers then made their way back to the hot springs, where they discovered that the young dragon had been killed by a band of 40 or so orcs. Luckily for our adventurers, about 32 of those orcs were dead now, killing by the raging dragon, and our adventurers only had to deal with the remaining eight orcs, who had the stone in their possession.
This proved to be one of the most difficult things to watch I have ever seen. Kegslow, the paladin, died more than once, but managed to save out of it every time. In fact, everyone died at least once. I really thought it was going to be a wipe. In the end though, our adventurers managed to defeat the orcs, with just the paladin left standing, and then, after slowing rising to their feet, our heroes discovered that Lowkeg, the giant, had fallen in battle and could not be revived. He had really and truly died. This was two characters now who had died, both owned by the same person.
After wearily collecting the stone and deciding to destroy it rather than give it back to the woman Treona, The woman was, needless to say, a little ticked off at their blatant non-compliance with her request, but she got over it and shoved them out of her tower, throwing a bag of money after them.
Level up! Hooray, with the completion of the quest, our characters ( the surviving ones, anyways) advanced to level two, and while reveling in their success, they met up with Meebo, the halfling sorceror. This was our unlucky player's third character, and everyone seemed to enjoy him. Hopefully he will stick around.
They journeyed together to the town of Winterhaven, where they restocked and rested, and where Kegslow decided to sell off all the brass scales they had collected from the dead dragon and use them to make a suit of wyrmscale armor. Lana was glad to have her bag of holding empty again. Piers, on the other hand, sold off all the interesting books and scrolls he had collected in the ruined library back in Kiris Dahn, and attempted to buy a better staff, but still lacked the gp, so he moped a bit, but got over it.
After asking around in town, the innkeeper informed them that the lord of the city, Padraig, was looking for adventurers to deal with a kobold problem. So, they set off along the road after meeting with Padraig, in search of the problematic kobolds. They dealt with the ones along the road with no trouble, and followed their tracks back towards their lair, where they fought a whole bunch of kobolds, mostly minions.
This fight would have been much more difficult if I, the DM, hadn't been so sleepy at this point and had remembered that the ten minions should have been attacking the whole time instead of just standing there. I didn't realize that they hadn't been attacking until there were only two minions left. Oh well. Our adventurers had just had a horribly difficult experience with the previous battle with the orcs, why not throw a couple easy fights at them, with stupid minions who don't know how to fight?
Anyways, with the defeat of the kobolds outstide the lair, our session came to an end and we look forward to the next session, when our adventurers will enter the kobold lair and discover what or who is behind the attacks on travelers to Winterhaven.
Sunday, March 13
A Day with the Loremasters: Horse Envy and Menial Labor
So Squid and I began work on Volume III the other day, and it didn't exactly begin as epicly as the other volumes had. It was all menial labor - as in the screenie to the right, where I am toting pumpkins for Butterbur. Silly innkeeper can tote his own pumpkins for all I care. We were also required to tote various other produce, but I didn't feel the need to record each and every step of the way, as soon after I finished playing carry-all, I met up with sis in the common room of the Pony for a pint before we headed out.
Silly elf was finding Barliman's benches way too comfortable and refused to move for a while. I felt the need to scold her while she took an inordinately long afk. I took this time to notice, as if for the first time, the messy state of the Pony. You'd think that all that time I spent carrying vegetables that the proprietor could at least wipe down a table or right a stool or something. Anything. But no, it's all a mess, and it's been a mess, and it will always be a mess, and all Butterbur will do is stand there saying "So much to do!". You're telling me. Go do some of it, you lazy innkeeper bum.
After Squid finally decided to move, we set off for the northern edge of Bree, where we had to fight off a ruffian who had been insulting Squid's sabercat, Ronon. Ronon took great joy in beating the tar out of this ruffian, as did Squid. Except she called down fire and lightning, like Taborlin the Great (sorry, had to put that in there) and he ran off squealing, much like a little piglet. Excuse my big head in this screenie, but I was awestruck by how awesome Lightning Storm looks when seen from the third person. I usually don't get that sort of view.
Then, Squid decided she needed to show off her newest horse, the Steed of Night. She managed to acquire it the day before it left the Lotro Store (forever?) and made no attempt at hiding the fact that she had a horse I did not. I have to admit, it's a nice looking horse, moreso when I don't have one myself. Le sigh.
One day I will have the most amazing horse in the game. I just need to decide which horse that is first.
Saturday, March 12
The first rule of being a Dungeon Master.
wall of text alert. You have been warned.
Last week we finally managed to get a Dungeons and Dragons group together (what, you didn't know that was something we have been trying to do for .... a year?) and the first foray was, without a doubt, hilarious. I have no idea how accurate our gameplay was, and I'm sure our newly established houserules would shock more experienced players (hey, I'm a new DM, my answer to almost everything was: "Sure! Of course you can do ___!").
First, for those of you who may be mildly interested (or at least feigning interest), let me introduce the cast of characters.
The DM (me!)
Piers Ravenwood, the human wizard (and my RL husband!!)
Raylana, the elven cleric (one of my coworkers. Ugh, day job)
Kegslow, the dwarven paladin (and Raylana's RL boyfriend)
Amata, the shardmind avenger (Raylana's RL brother)
Also two bystanders, who had never before witenssed D&D, and did nothing but laugh the whole time at our antics :)
Now that I look at it, the cast of characters sort of centers around Raylana. /shrug. Oh well.
Our adventure of choice (or rather, my choice), was to be The Slaying Stone, a prepublished adventure set for characters of the first level. On my first reading, it didn't seem too difficult, and I felt it could be something I, as a totally virgin DM, could handle.
First rule of DMing: the players will always do something unexpected, usually more than once.
We started out, did the first encounter with the wolves without too much hassle ( I say this figuratively, as most of us were still getting a feel for each other and how to actually play the game, as more than one of us was a total newbie and one or two of us were veterans. I'm not saying who), and then was thrown for my first loop when the players started to ask questions about the old woman, Treona, who was giving them their quest to fetch a mysterious stone with dark arcane powers. They were sensing doubt in this woman. Something shifty. Something not along the lines of lawful good. So after questioning her, and me giving her a shiftier side just to satisfy their seemingly insatiable curiosity (she really was fine in the book, THEY MADE HER EVIL), Amata, the avenger, decides he wants to attack her. Why? Who knows. Because he can. While I was frantically looking for random stats to assign this woman since she now had to fight them, Kegslow began to intercede and attempt to calm our randomly aggressive shardmind down. It's a good thing he succeeded with that Diplomacy check too, because I was about ready to throw a level 15 Hag on their level 1 tails.
That should have been my first clue. I have said it before (and if I haven't, I should have) and I will say it again, I do not always catch the obvious the first go-around.
The heroes started out on their journey, and came upon the forlorn ruins of Kiris Dahn, torn apart by goblins. I present them with a map of the city and show them their options for entering. 1, the front gate, but it is heavily guarded and they are attempting stealth as the goblins vastly outnumber them. 2, across the river to the north, but it is very wide. 3, the forest to the south.
Kegslow: "Why can't we go this way?" points to the eastern edge of the map
DM: "Because there is a lake there."
Amata: "How many goblins are at the gate?"
I really didn't want them to go that way, so I sort of railroaded them. "Fifty. Bad idea."
Amata: "How wide is the river?"
Kegslow: "You want to swim?"
Amata: "Well, I don't breathe, I'm made of crystal, so technically I can't suffocate. I say the river."
Kegslow: "Easy for you to say. Fine, how wide is the river?"
DM: "200 feet." It originally was only about fifty feet, but my realization that his class made it easy for him to get across, I decided to spice it up and keep it mildly difficult.
At this point ensued a hilarious round of watching them try to figure out how to get across the river, whether to carry each other across in the manner of that old children's puzzle, or to try and make a raft, or to .... then suddenly Raylana remembered she had 50 feet of rope in her backpack. Surprise, Piers did too. Did Kegslow and Amata? Sure, why not? So I made them roll strength checks for the knots, then athletics checks to see if they could manage to hold on for the entire 200 feet. Kegslow almost drowned, but they all made it in the end.
Then followed a hilarious episode where our heroes managed to sneak up on a lone kobold who was... attending to nature... and convince the kobold leader to create a diversion with the goblins so our heroes would be more free to search for the stone.
They then stole off through the library, where Amata, or Crystalboy as we had come to call him, managed to one shot the miniboss for this particular encounter. As I was still new to DMing, I didn't have the sense to send a horde of goblins down the stairs in retaliation, so I just sat there numbly while the goblin fell to the floor and then the rest of the party finished off the minions.
Next came the shrine of the moon, where they met a lone npc, who at first seemed non-threatening, if at least distant and mostly unresponsive. So when a horde of goblins burst through the doors, surprising our heroes, and the npc retreated to the corner to shake like a leaf, it is small wonder that the heroes ignored him.
It was not my plan for Piers to one shot the minions in one end of the room, leaving all the other players to run to the other side and deal with the other goblins and their evil boss. It was not plan for Piers to get left alone on that side of the room with the cowardly npc.
It was, however, my plan for that npc to be a wererat, so when he changed over into his more menancing form, and when he bit my husband's poor wizard in the rear, and when my husband contracted Filth Fever, and when he couldn't save out of it, I couldn't help but laugh. Until Piers started to make a very pitiful face at me because he thought he was going to die, and then I started to cry inside because I was killing my husband. I had the power to save him, but that would be cheating, so I let him fight that wererat alone, while we both waited desperately for the rest of the party to decide he was worth helping.
Eventually, and only after a very long and what was becoming desperate fight, they managed to kill the wererat and the goblins, and are now, for the sake of the story, sleeping peacefully in the now empty shrine.
Next time I won't go so easy on them. I will be bolder, and they will tremble at the sound of my dice.
Last week we finally managed to get a Dungeons and Dragons group together (what, you didn't know that was something we have been trying to do for .... a year?) and the first foray was, without a doubt, hilarious. I have no idea how accurate our gameplay was, and I'm sure our newly established houserules would shock more experienced players (hey, I'm a new DM, my answer to almost everything was: "Sure! Of course you can do ___!").
First, for those of you who may be mildly interested (or at least feigning interest), let me introduce the cast of characters.
The DM (me!)
Piers Ravenwood, the human wizard (and my RL husband!!)
Raylana, the elven cleric (one of my coworkers. Ugh, day job)
Kegslow, the dwarven paladin (and Raylana's RL boyfriend)
Amata, the shardmind avenger (Raylana's RL brother)
Also two bystanders, who had never before witenssed D&D, and did nothing but laugh the whole time at our antics :)
Now that I look at it, the cast of characters sort of centers around Raylana. /shrug. Oh well.
Our adventure of choice (or rather, my choice), was to be The Slaying Stone, a prepublished adventure set for characters of the first level. On my first reading, it didn't seem too difficult, and I felt it could be something I, as a totally virgin DM, could handle.
First rule of DMing: the players will always do something unexpected, usually more than once.
We started out, did the first encounter with the wolves without too much hassle ( I say this figuratively, as most of us were still getting a feel for each other and how to actually play the game, as more than one of us was a total newbie and one or two of us were veterans. I'm not saying who), and then was thrown for my first loop when the players started to ask questions about the old woman, Treona, who was giving them their quest to fetch a mysterious stone with dark arcane powers. They were sensing doubt in this woman. Something shifty. Something not along the lines of lawful good. So after questioning her, and me giving her a shiftier side just to satisfy their seemingly insatiable curiosity (she really was fine in the book, THEY MADE HER EVIL), Amata, the avenger, decides he wants to attack her. Why? Who knows. Because he can. While I was frantically looking for random stats to assign this woman since she now had to fight them, Kegslow began to intercede and attempt to calm our randomly aggressive shardmind down. It's a good thing he succeeded with that Diplomacy check too, because I was about ready to throw a level 15 Hag on their level 1 tails.
That should have been my first clue. I have said it before (and if I haven't, I should have) and I will say it again, I do not always catch the obvious the first go-around.
The heroes started out on their journey, and came upon the forlorn ruins of Kiris Dahn, torn apart by goblins. I present them with a map of the city and show them their options for entering. 1, the front gate, but it is heavily guarded and they are attempting stealth as the goblins vastly outnumber them. 2, across the river to the north, but it is very wide. 3, the forest to the south.
Kegslow: "Why can't we go this way?" points to the eastern edge of the map
DM: "Because there is a lake there."
Amata: "How many goblins are at the gate?"
I really didn't want them to go that way, so I sort of railroaded them. "Fifty. Bad idea."
Amata: "How wide is the river?"
Kegslow: "You want to swim?"
Amata: "Well, I don't breathe, I'm made of crystal, so technically I can't suffocate. I say the river."
Kegslow: "Easy for you to say. Fine, how wide is the river?"
DM: "200 feet." It originally was only about fifty feet, but my realization that his class made it easy for him to get across, I decided to spice it up and keep it mildly difficult.
At this point ensued a hilarious round of watching them try to figure out how to get across the river, whether to carry each other across in the manner of that old children's puzzle, or to try and make a raft, or to .... then suddenly Raylana remembered she had 50 feet of rope in her backpack. Surprise, Piers did too. Did Kegslow and Amata? Sure, why not? So I made them roll strength checks for the knots, then athletics checks to see if they could manage to hold on for the entire 200 feet. Kegslow almost drowned, but they all made it in the end.
Then followed a hilarious episode where our heroes managed to sneak up on a lone kobold who was... attending to nature... and convince the kobold leader to create a diversion with the goblins so our heroes would be more free to search for the stone.
They then stole off through the library, where Amata, or Crystalboy as we had come to call him, managed to one shot the miniboss for this particular encounter. As I was still new to DMing, I didn't have the sense to send a horde of goblins down the stairs in retaliation, so I just sat there numbly while the goblin fell to the floor and then the rest of the party finished off the minions.
Next came the shrine of the moon, where they met a lone npc, who at first seemed non-threatening, if at least distant and mostly unresponsive. So when a horde of goblins burst through the doors, surprising our heroes, and the npc retreated to the corner to shake like a leaf, it is small wonder that the heroes ignored him.
It was not my plan for Piers to one shot the minions in one end of the room, leaving all the other players to run to the other side and deal with the other goblins and their evil boss. It was not plan for Piers to get left alone on that side of the room with the cowardly npc.
It was, however, my plan for that npc to be a wererat, so when he changed over into his more menancing form, and when he bit my husband's poor wizard in the rear, and when my husband contracted Filth Fever, and when he couldn't save out of it, I couldn't help but laugh. Until Piers started to make a very pitiful face at me because he thought he was going to die, and then I started to cry inside because I was killing my husband. I had the power to save him, but that would be cheating, so I let him fight that wererat alone, while we both waited desperately for the rest of the party to decide he was worth helping.
Eventually, and only after a very long and what was becoming desperate fight, they managed to kill the wererat and the goblins, and are now, for the sake of the story, sleeping peacefully in the now empty shrine.
Next time I won't go so easy on them. I will be bolder, and they will tremble at the sound of my dice.
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