This past week I had a lot of real life work stuff to take care of. Usually I like to prepare a day or two in advance, and then put some final touches on my plans a few hours before game time. But for this game, I had to wait until game day to assemble everything into a cohesive adventure plan.

The night before we played, I actually had a nightmare about being unprepared. In the dream, I was trying to run a game at a game store and I realized I had nothing prepared. The session starts and I was trying to make stuff up off the top of my head and it was terrible. I could tell the players thought it was terrible, too.

Modifications: I completely altered this adventure. Tales from the Infinite Staircase is purposely vague. The Iron Shadow is barely described, the adventures can be run out of order, and there's really no final showdown with the bad guy. In fact, half of the adventures have little or nothing to do with the Iron Shadow.

I'm adding in For Duty & Deity, which is a sort of 'crossover' adventure in the Forgotten Realms. I've tried my best to meld this into a cohesive story. I decided to add some major recurring villains.

The Devils: I made up recurring villains. The heroes have been sort of given a mission from the Lady of Pain - stop the Iron Shadow. The shadow is a piece of the Lady of Pain that was expelled from her when Bidam gave her the Heart of the Lady of Pain. Theran has this magic book which is aiding him. The Devils have been given the exact opposite mission by the Iron Shadow. Quimath the Kyton has a book, too, also aiding him.

The best thing about devils is that when you kill them, they just reappear in hell. The only way to truly slay them is to kill them in Hell. That means my bad guys can keep coming back.

Splitting up the Party: The general rule of thumb in D&D is "don't split the party." Everyone dies, or everyone gets bored. But I saw Chris Perkins do it on Dice, Camera, Action and it was the best session of his campaign so far. I decided to experiment tonight and see if it could work with my group.

It did work just fine, and it actually added quite a bit to the game. I think there are some key things to remember:

1. Make sure you jump between the players quickly. Keep your eye on the inactive plyers, and if they look like they are getting restless, jump back to them.
2. Allow meta-gaming. Let the inactive players make suggestions and brainstorm ideas. This will keep them involved, and honestly it is probably going to happen anyway. What that means is that when you design a scenario for a split group, assume the other players will chime in and plan for it in advance!

Hag Planning: I think I mentioned last time that I am planning a big hag-based adventure that should take place in about 7 sessions from now. During this past week, I started working on a Guide to Hags fr this blog. I dug up this gigantic article from a Dragon Magazine Annual called "Pox on the Planes." This article that has tons and tons of new information on hags, soul larvae, the Gray Waste and "Altraloths." I have never seen or heard of this before. Some of that material went right into this session.

Theran's Lament: I should mention that over the past few sessions, a weird thing began to brew. I originally ran Theran's apprentice as if she was interested in him romantically. Theran told her that he didn't want to sully the teacher/student relationship. So I had her take it to heart and she moved on, focusing on her quest for revenge against the rakshasa, Raja Khan.

But last week, George (Theran's player) piped up and asked me why Selinza wasn't interested in Theran an more. I was kind of taken aback. I told him that she had taken him at his word.

Since that moment, Theran has been messing around with all sorts of ladies in true Fafhrd and the Grey Mauser fashion.

What's interesting is that Theran's beliefs (which are very important in Planescape) are all about preferring learning and knowledge to making social connections.

I am thinking of trying to set up a situation where Theran has to make a choice between learning something of tremendous value, or of rescuing his apprentice from a very dangerous situation.

Maybe in each session I'll try to put in a subtle "test," to see what Theran really thinks of his apprentice and what he values more, learning or connecting with people.

Last Time: Bidam and Fall From Grace fell into some random plane, possibly never to be seen again! Theran and his apprentice, Selinza remained in the Infinite Staircase.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard
* NPCs - Fall From Grace (Succubus Paladin), Selinza ("Litorian" Wizard, level 5)

You know, it's funny. Selinza is a white tiger cat/human hybrid, right? I decided she was a Litorian from Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. She should be a Shifter, right? I can't believe I forgot about that race.

We start off with Theran and Selinza in the Infinite Staircase, looking down at the spot where Bidam and Theran vanished. George was still sure that there was some way to fix this. He thought about jumping in and following them, but the lillend nearby told him that he'd likely appear somewhere else entirely. He tried to figure out how to find them. Eventually, thanks to NPC nudging, he realized that maybe this Dream Well could help him find them.

He had dreamed about the Dream Well, and knew how to get to it. He and his apprentice ascended the stairs and made their way to a small landing made of gray-white stone. The door was made of burnished bronze covered in strange (githyanki) carvings.

Theran & the Githyanki City

The Githyanki City

They stepped through, and found themselves in a githyanki city in the astral plane. The city was on  floating moat designed to look like a person, sort of.

Because this was the Astral Plane, Theran and his apprentice were able to fly.

Looking down on the city from a tower, they saw that there were dead githyanki everywhere. They had been dead for days. Many extraplanar dogs (spectral hounds) roamed the streets, eating whatever they could scavenge.

The heroes began to wander, searching for the Dream Well. They spotted two strange winged creatures and avoided them.

Two spectral hounds sniffed out the heroes (Selinza is constantly fixing her hair, doing her nails and spraying perfume, thus she is easily scented) and attacked them. Each of them got bit once, but they were able to drop the hounds with magic missiles and a well-placed fireball.

The fireball explosion attracted the strange winged creatures. One of them said in a kind voice, "Greetings..."

Bidam & the Larva

Soul Larvae

Meanwhile.. Bidam and Fall From Grace had appeared in a strange realm with no sun. Everything here was gray and white. they were in a forest of dead trees.

A creature approached them from behind a tree. It was a five foot long worm with the face of a man. It was a soul larvae! Bidam used his breath weapon on it, and Fall From Grace finished it off with her sword.

Fall From Grace explained just what a soul larvae was:

• Whan an evil person dies, they become a soul larvae. Hags collect them and sell them to demons, devils and liches. The demons and devils love soul larvae, because they can turn them into imps and quasits. To them, soul larvae are "premium" souls that can start off their fiendish career at a higher rank than most other demons and devils.

Fall From Grace flew up in the air to look around. She didn't know what plane they were on, but she spotted a dusty settlement in the distance. They decided to head for it...

Theran & the Shedu

Shedu

Back in the githyanki city, The group met creatures called "Shedu." They were winged lions with human heads. They despised evil, and sensed goodness in Theran and his apprentice. They gave the heroes a pile of backstory:

• Four days ago, the city had been attacked by psurlons (worm-creatures). The psurlons killed all the githyanki here and moved on.
• The spectral hounds were pets of the githyanki. Now they roamed the city in a feral state.
• There were some githyanki still alive over in the building that contained the Dream Well.
• Some devils had arrived not long ago and headed for the Dream Well. One of the devils had a big iron book. The players gasped when I said this. They picked up on my idea immediately.

Theran and Selinza thanked the Shedu, and flew over to the building with the Dream Well. They quietly flew over to the entrance and eavesdropped.

This is where I got to introduce my recurring villains! I gave them German accents. Why? Because every time I make a bad guy with a German accent in one of my campaigns, the players love it. Every time!

Here are our recurring villains:

• Quimath: A kyton (chain devil). He has a book like Theran's, except his is iron. He runs a fortress in Hell called Panos Qytel. The bad guys job is to bring the Iron Shadow all throughout the planes, draining creativity and causing people and places to vanish.
• Feurina the Hell Hound Whisperer: A warder devil from 4e. Warder devils are females with huge flaming swords and a teleport ability called "Hell's Step." If you remember in Curse of Strahd, there is a vestige known as "Seriach the Hell Hound Whisperer." I thought it sounded cool, so I have made Feuria a disciple of Seriach. She has the ability to speak to and command hell hounds.

She has one hell hound with her...

Hell Hound

In future adventures, they will also bring a gorechain devil with them, which is basically an ogre/chain devil from a 4e book. I'm saving him to use as a surprise.

Theran and Selinza whispered back and forth, and decided to just watch the devils and hoped that they would leave.

While babbling in Infernal/German, Quimath the kyton climbed into the Dream Well and had an experience. After a few minutes, he climbed out and the devils headed for the exit. Theran and Selinza flew to the back of the building, and Theran told Selinza to make herself invisible.

Unfortunately, I rolled a perception and the hell hound smelled Selinza's perfume! Feurina and her dog flew over and spotted Theran. She called "Herr Kyton" over and after a brief discussion, Quimath told her to kill Theran. Quimath left.

Theran cast an ice storm spell which killed the hell hound and enraged Feurina. I had decided hat Feurina's big flaw was that she loved her hell hounds so much that the heroes could use that fact to their advantage.

Selinza flew above Feurina, became visible and started firing off magic missiles cast at a higher level.

Feurina teleported out of the ice storm and appeared next to Theran. Her huge sword burst into flames and she sliced into him. Within a few rounds, she rolled a critical hit and dropped Theran into negatives.

On her very next round, she teleported up to Selinza and rolled another critical! Selinza was down, too!

Feurina was down to just 8 hit points! It was an epic battle that actually works out great as far as making the recurring villains a true menace. The dice told the story on this one.

Bidam & the Hag

Hag

Back in the other realm, Bidam and Fall From Grace were traveling through the forest of dead trees. They felt like they were making no progress despite walking for hours.

They came upon a battle. Demon and devil soldiers were clashing. This was a battle of the Blood War, the eternal war between the lawful evil devils and the chaotic evil demons.

Most of the participants were dead. The last two demon spawn adepts killed the last two devils. The devils vanished in a puff of smoke.

This was an opportunity for me to have Fall From Grace explain that when devils were "slain", they simply vanished and reappeared in Hell. The only way to truly kill them is to slay them in Hell.

Bidam and Fall From Grace rushed the demons and killed them. They picked around the battlefield looking for loot, and they realized someone was coming.

It was a hag, leading a herd of soul larva. The heroes hid. Bidam's hag doll sprung to life and made happy noises.

Bidam decided to try to make friends with the hag using the hag doll. It worked. The hag doll has three "children" in her belly. The doll gave one to the hag, who was delighted.

This hag was Jenny Greenteeth, the NPC hag from the Curse of Strahd Adventurer's Guide. The hag agreed to help the group get to the settlement, if they would do favors for her (Jenny Greenteeth has a random chart of favors that I find hilarious). The heroes reluctantly agreed.

Jenny explained that they were in the Gray Waste, an infinite realm that was the embodiment of apathy, hopelessness and despair.

Traveling worked differently here. The heroes would most likely never reach the settlement. In order to truly travel here, you have to not concentrate on your destination. Lack of desire lets you travel ten times faster. The heroes tried it, and began to zoom toward the settlement.

The place has a sign that read: "The Grand Larvae Emporium."
  
Theran & The Dream Well

Back in the Astral Plane, Theran and Selinza had been left for dead. They were making death saves. They rolled a few. Theran rolled a one! He accrued two failures in a single roll. One more, and he was dead-dead.

Next thing they knew, they were getting mouth-to-mouth by the Shedu. Selinza barfed. The Shedu had saved them.

The group thanked them and proceeded to the Dream Well. The Shedu came along to guard the wounded wizards.

The well was 3 feet high, 12 feet in diameter and made of mortar and stones. It was 7 feet deep and had no water.. instead, a shaft of light rose out of the well. Theran climbed in and connected to the Dream Well, which gave him visions and abilities:

• Magic Book: Theran's book was enchanted. It could reverse the effects of the Iron Shadow, but doing so drained Theran's life force.
• Traveler's Ring: Theran learned the magic recipe to create traveler's rings, a magic item that allowed you to cast True Strike on yourself once per day. The players were underwhelmed by this. Hey, I thought it was cool.
• The Rakshasa: Theran saw Raja Khan's face, and a skull super-imposed over it. Theran thought that meant Raja Khan was dead. Not quite!
• Dabus: He saw a vision from his own perspective, of him being inside the legendary forbidden Dabus city. This is foreshadowing major stuff that will happen in the next two sessions.
• Memory Storage: Theran figured out how to give himself a power - the ability to store his memories in a ball of light. He was able to create a "pocket" in the side of his torso to store the sphere and other small things in. This ability was etched into his soul, so even if he died and was reborn as an angel in Celestia, it would still be there. I did not expect my players to point out that Theran had a vagina in his side. They hooted and hollered as I tried to explain that it was not a sex organ of any kind, it was merely an awesome little magic cavity for him to hide stuff.
• Grazzt: Theran had a vision of the goddess of love, who currently was walking the worlds as a mortal (I established this sessions ago) being wooed by Grazzt, the demon lord. This foreshadows For Duty & Deity, which I will be running for the next few sessions.
• City Vanishes: Theran saw the Iron Shadow causing a city in the Outlands vanish. This city is Sum of All, and the heroes will be going here in one of the final chapters of the Infinite Staircase.
• Devil City: Theran saw a brief vision of a city in hell made entirely of Chains. This is Jangling Hiter, the kyton city that is likely to be the setting of the final showdown between the recurring villains and the heroes.

Suddenly, the githyanki city rumbled. Theran heard faint shouting. He snapped out of it and climbed out of the Dream Well. Selinza had been calling for him.

Selinza pointed outside the building. The Iron Shadow was here, and she was godzilla-sized! She loomed over the city and was using her power to make the entire place vanish.

Bidam & The Grand Larvae Emporium

Fall From Grace

Back in the Gray Waste, Bidam and Fall From Grace went to Jenny Greenteeth's home. The favors: Fall From Grace had to give the hag a long, lingering embrace, which was creepy. Bidam was told to fill a container with his saliva.

You can probably guess that Bidam did something really gross to spite the hag. Yes, while the hag was hugging Fall from Grace, Bidam ejaculated into the container. I think it would be funny for the hag to use it in a ritual and have the ritual go wrong somehow. I'll have to mull it over. In fact.. I just had an awesome idea that will probably pop up when I run the hag adventure.

Bidam and Fall From Grace explored the Grand Larvae Emporium, asking around about how to get out of this plane. Everyone they met had been drained by the plane, and were apathetic. They told the heroes that it was hopeless. "What's the point in leaving? Why bother?" The heroes bumped in to a number of minor encounters:

• "Dead Poolers": Gamblers who bet on Blood War skirmishes. The main bookie had poles on his back that held up big banners.
• Clue: A group of blood war soldiers was by, led by a marilith. This is a very subtle clue to something that happens next session.
• A Hag Grooming a Nightmare: I wanted to associate nightmares with this place, as they will play a big part in my hag adventure. Bidam wanted to steal the nightmare, but backed down from the idea after considering it for a moment.
• The Halfling: They saw a halfling staring at them. He had color, unlike the other citizens, who were white and gray - drained by the Gray Waste. The group greeted him, and it turned out that he was a mute. He wrote on parchment to communicate. His name was Karagesh.

Risky Business: This halfling is crucially important to next session! I don't want to say more even though I know my players don't read this blog. I feel funny about spoiling it. So much hinged on this guy befriending the party. Thankfully it worked out perfectly.

Karagesh pointed out that the group was being followed!

Barbed Devil

It was true. A barbed devil named Tarnalak was following them. Long ago, Fall From Grace's mother Red Shroud sold her to the devils. For many years Fall From Grace lived in Jangling Hiter, city of the kytons. There, she was an agent of the ruler of the city, Pollus Windmane.

Tarnalak was one of many devils who met Fall from Grace during this time and wanted her as their consort.

Now, Tarnalak saw her in the Gray Waste of all places, and wanted to whisk her away to his home and make her his devil girlfriend or whatever.

Tarnalak greeted her and said some sleazy stuff. Fall From Grace flew into a rage and attacked! Throughout this battle, the halfling Karagesh did things to give the heroes advantage. He slapped a nightmare so that it kicked the barbed devil. He grabbed a banner from a "Dead Poolers" and covered the devil's eyes.

Bidam rolled a natural 20 with his sword of sharpness and the barbed devil got beat up really badly. In just a couple of rounds, he was slain and he vanished in a puff of brimstone.

Bidam loved the halfling and wanted to "keep" him. Which is exactly what I had hoped for.

He led them to a portal in the city. It was a giant, spinning translucent coin. To activate it, you needed to use a platinum piece as a portal key.

Bidam had plenty of platinum, and the group used the portal to head to the Outlands and from there, they returned to Sigil.

Theran & the Iron Shadow

Back in the astral plane, the Iron Shadow was draining all of the creativity from the githyanki city, causing it to vanish entirely. Theran, Selinza and the Shedu flew for the door to the Infinite Staircase.

I had a series of events planned, but there was a wrinkle. First, the Shedu began to vanish. Theran's book glowed. He could reverse the effects on the Shedu, but he'd have to give up half his hit points. Problem: He had one hit point!

Theran had to make a split decision. He decided to use the book. The Shedu were saved! Theran was unconscious! It was up to his apprentice to get him to safety!

Theran began to vanish. Selinza made some rolls, grabbed him and flew him through the door to the Infinite Staircase. Theran was safe, but one of his magic items had vanished forever - his ioun stone. The truth is that he forgot about it the moment he got it. He has never used it, and I have pointed it out to him more than once. It bothered me so I decided to use this to get rid of it!

Return to Sigil

The adventurers reunited in Sigil and told each other what had happened. Then they took a much-needed rest.

Theran headed to his bedroom in the office building. He realized someone was hiding in his wardrobe. He pulled out his wand of lightning bolts, and it turns out that one of his employees that he messed around with last session was hiding in wait for him.

This was Convivia Kettle, the "Saucy Tart" from the Gary Gygax harlot table. I decided that she really likes Theran and I wanted to see what he'd do. Theran had massive flaming sword wounds, and staggered to his bed. He protested, but Convivia bandaged his wounds and did the Indiana Jones "Where does it hurt" thing and Theran fell asleep. She stayed there with him.

Downtime Carousing

We burned through a bunch of stuff:

• Paladin Story: I gave the group an opportunity to do something with the 'paladin is destied to have a magic baby' story, but they didn't bite.
• Fall From Grace Origin: Fall From Grace told the group about her life among the devils, and talked about Panos Qytel, the fortress that is the site of the final adventure in the Infinite Staircase book.
• Plan is in Motion: Karagesh the halfling made himself useful, cleaning the festhall and doing errands. He went in and re-organized Theran's wizard lab, which I really had my fingers crossed for. Theran was wary but accepted the little fellow. And thus next session is set up and ready to go!
• Noice, Noice: Chad Menses and Dorpin No-Beard convinced "B-Slice and T-Slice" to party with them in Sylvania. A 4e skill challenge ensued, where the group met some women in Greek togas, fended off a muscly fellow named Testosticles who challenged them to feats of strength (the group mage handed Dorpin's vomit into the poor guy's face) and hooked Chad up with a lady named Romanticania. All of them woke up with a hangover each next to a different lady. Bidam's power kicked in and he gave a metal heart to a woman named Urethragoria.

Next time, I am going to shoehorn an adventure featuring Iggwilv into the set-up for For Duty and Deity and I'm pulling the trigger on the Karagesh the halfling mega-scheme.

You can watch this episode on Twitch here.

I think Chris mentioned last week that this session would be entitled "Nine-Tenths of the Law," but I'm not positive.

Nate is on a plane, so we are Paultin-less. Well, not really. You'll see..

No game next week. I guess I'll either review this D&D Meltdown thing or maybe I'll try an episode of Critical Role and write a summary.

I am so amazed at this D&D era we're in. These streaming D&D games fit right alongside gaming streams. Gaming streams are popular and just having a D&D stream on the same channel or whatever is enough to get people to try it. I think another reason people would want to check out a D&D stream is because most people in the "real world" have no idea how D&D works.

The number one question I get asked by people when I tell them I play D&D is, "How do you play that game?"

I think once people try out a D&D stream they see how much fun the game can be. Given a choice, I'd much rather watch a D&D stream because video games are static. D&D is frequently hilarious and the players are having a good time. In D&D, anything can happen.

In my experience, most of the time when real life people actually try D&D, they love it. Of course that depends entirely on the ability of the DM, and then you have to make sure your group of players are well-behaved.

Last Time: Diath died! The group brought his body to Krezk in the hopes of getting the Abbot to bring him back to life. Ireena and two NPC wolf hunters are with them.

The Party

The Waffle Crew

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue

We start by going back in time to last session, experienced from Diath's point of view. Diath is a disembodied consciousness. He sees himself hanging on the gallows. Hundreds of ravens descend on the town square. They attack and chase off everyone - guards, townsfolk, etc.

Diath watches his allies pull his body off the gallows. He senses that the mists want to bind him to this location forever. Diath blames all of this on the kid that was chucking rocks at him.

Diath is able to connect to Paultin's spirit. In fact, Diath realizes he can control Paultin's body and perhaps the bodies of other people! Wow, this is going to be fun. What a cool idea.

It takes Diath a long time to get acclimated to Paultin's body and we skip to the group riding to Krezk, which is where last session ended. The group has Diath's corpse with them and they want to have him resurrected.

Diath is now in control of Paultin. He says hello to the group. How weird is this: Evelyn has a thing for Paultin, but Paultin is Diath.

Diath tries to prove to his allies that it is him by doing kewl dagger moves. But it turns out that he has Paultin's stats! He rolls an 8. His dagger flops into a bush.

Diath goes to retrieve his dagger. As he does so, he spots a corpse of a peasant from Krezk who has been torn to pieces by wolves.

He spots tracks. From what he could tell, someone ran into the woods and the wolves didn't chase them. I think these are the werewolves from the cave to the north.

The group gets to Krezk. There are guards on the wall. The group wants "Paultin" to do the talking and it doesn't go well. Paultin/Diath ends up asking what the business hours are for the monastery.

The guards think Evelyn is St. Markovia and let the group in. We learn that the son of the "Burgermaster" of Krezk died. The Abbot brought him back to life, and then the son slashed his dad's throat. The Burgomaster is alive, but his vocal cords are cut and he can't speak. His wife speaks for him.

Then the son fled into the woods with a peasant lady. The peasant lady is the corpse the group found earlier!

This is a departure from the published Curse of Strahd adventure, which is very interesting. In the book, the Burgomaster is not hurt and he tells the group they can't come in to Krezk until they get the wine from the winery.

So apparently the kid is one of the children captured by the werewolves to the north.

The Burgomaster's wife tells the group that the Abbot is nuts, and that when he resurrected their child, the child was different and evil. Diath really doesn't want the Abbot resurrecting him.

Diath tries to access Paultin's memories. Opposed Charisma checks. Jared rolls a three and thus loses, so no memory access for him.

The group thinks about exploring the abbey. It's night, so they decide to rest and check out the abbey in the morning. They stay with the Burgermaster.

At night, it's cold. The group sleeps on a wood floor. They can hear the Burgomaster's wife taking care of her husband downstairs.

The Abbey of St. Markovia

Next morning, the group heads to the abbey.  Out of character, Chris asks Jared if he is comfortable in Paultin's body or if he wants to find another vessel. Jared says he's fine.

I wonder if Chris was going to give him the chance to posses a mongrelfolk? Or maybe the abbot was going to have a male flesh golem for Diath to inhabit?

The abbey has a confusing layout with buildings all over the place, so a fair amount of time is taken up with Chris describing the place.

As the group talks outside the abbey gate, a mongrelfolk woman with patches of fur and lizard scales on her body comes around a corner and offers to bury Diath's body for them. Chris does a heck of a monster voice.

Another mongrelfolk comes out, too. Strix gives them food she looted from the Burgomaster. I think this is Otto and Zygrek Belview.

The mongrelfolk let the group into the abbey. Evelyn is carrying Diath's corpse. Strix chucks a rock at a scarecrow. The group heads to the main building and knocks loudly. The only response is the sound of wings flapping.

Evelyn uses her boots to fly up and look over the wall. She sees fog swirling down there and she spots a creature chained to a post. It's a mongrelfolk with bat wings. It's trying to fly off but it can't (This is Marzena Belview).

Evelyn calls to the chained mongrelfolk. She asks it if it is OK. It asks to be freed before its enemies come and kill it. It warns that its enemies are watching.

Strix approaches the mongrel and tries to give it food, but it lunges and tries to attack her.
Suddenly, bells begin to ring, followed by monstrous cries of "food!"

The group hides. Strix turns over a horse trough and climbs underneath. Evelyn grabs Diath's corpse and hides in a shed. Diath/Paultin hides in the well, holding onto the wall.

The well is 80 feet deep... and he's not alone.

That's where we stop.

Timestamps

• (28:37) Diath tries to do a trick while in Paultin's body. 
• (37:57) The group still doesn't believe Diath is in Paultin's body.
• (1:00:47) Diath tries to act like Paultin
• (1:34:25) "Paultin" is a bit worried about Diath's corpse.

Overall

Chris Is Changing His Own Adventure: I really like how Chris makes changes to the adventure, although it's weird because he wrote it! I figured he was going to have Diath rise up as a revenant this week, but Chris came up with a different, fun idea. He also had the Burgomaster of Krezk get injured, and I'm not sure why he did that yet.

Maybe he is making changes partly so that the viewers of the show who have read Curse of Strahd still get surprised and don't get bored. I think the changes might also be due to ideas Chris has had about specific story ideas for each character. I wouldn't be bored if he ran Curse of Strahd "by the book," but I really enjoy seeing him make changes.

Mongrelfolk: I hate mongrelfolk. I always have. They just don't appeal to me. It was very interesting to see Chris run them. Each one is a unique character with their own traits and powers, and Chris was able to show that off. I see now that the appeal of mongrelfolk comes from the idea that you can create unique, monstrous NPCs that stand out. You could make them as a comical flunky or as a weirdly aggressive, creepy menace. I still don't want to use them but now I can see why Chris put them in the adventure.

NPCs Fading From Existence: The wolf hunters and Ireena are barely mentioned. Where are they in Krezk? It doesn't really matter. Forgetting the presence of NPCs is such a common thing in D&D. There's so much for the DM to juggle that animals and companions drop real low on the DM's priority list.

For me, the best way to avoid the NPC fade is to give the NPC a personality you enjoy and look forward to running. Remember to run them as "support" - the heroes are the stars. I guess in Star Wars terms, an NPC ally would be C3PO or Wedge Antilles. Maybe Chewbacca.

Using the Maps: If you read Curse of Strahd, you look at the maps and your natural instinct might be to run them like a dungeon exploration. This is why I was turned off by Argynvostholt - it looked like a boring "dungeon." But watching Chris run these sprawling locales I see that he doesn't use all of the areas in a location (unless the group goes to check them out). The group just navigates them in a logical manner.

In most cases, you go through the front door and meet the NPCs there. Like in the Wachterhaus. Strix was led around by Lady Wachter. Strix didn't creep alone from door to door, listening at each one and killing whatever was inside.

I didn't realize that Chris' Curse of Strahd campaign would unfold the way it has. This show really helps so much. When you see the adventure on paper, it can feel overwhelming. The buildings have so many rooms. But if you keep the mindset that this isn't a dungeon crawl, these are real people in real homes and towns, you can avoid the trap of turning the adventure into a slog.

Good Session: The group was in a good mood and they had a lot of fun with the Diath possession story. This was an easy session to watch.

I decided to check out Critical Role, a streaming D&D game played by voice actors. It's on Geek and Sundry. Just like with Dice, Camera, Action, I'm going to recap the show, give timestamps to my favorite moments and then weigh in on my overall thoughts.

You can watch this here on Geek & Sundry or here on Youtube.

We start off with a quick intro by the DM, Matt. He tells us that we are jumping in on a campaign in progress. From what the group said during the show, this campaign has been going on for two years.

They originally used Pathfinder rules but they switched to 5e. Matt warns us that there's a lot of house rules and that they aren't a "rules-y" kind of group. Fine with me!

The audio goes haywire in two instances on this episode, but it only lasts for about a minute each. You can still hear what's going on. It sounds like you're hearing robots.

We get some intro videos on each character:

• Grog: A Goliath who likes combat, women and ale. He used to travel with a violent barbarian clan, but that ended when he stopped them from killing a gnome. The clan turned on him, beat him and left him for dead. Grog was healed by a relative of the gnome, a fellow named Pike. Pike is part of the group, but Pike's player couldn't make the game this week.
• Keyleth: A druid loves nature and elemental magic. She is on a quest to discover herself.
• Percy: Nobles overtook his family's castle Percy and his sister fled, but his sister was apparently killed by archers. He wandered for two years. He had a vision and got to work creating.. a gun. Perscy is a Pathfinder gunslinger.
• Scanlan: A gnome bard who is searching for a true gnome to fall in love with. He's an entertainer who makes the females swoon.
• Tiberius Stormwind: A red dragonborn. He spent a lot of time in a library and made a list of artifacts. He told his people he was going on a mission of peace and diplomacy. but really he's hunting for the artifacts. He's a little scatterbrained.
• Vax'Ildan: A half-elf thief with a twin sister, Vex'ahlia. They left their father's elven settlement and wandered for a few years. When they came back, the place had been destroyed by a dragon.
• Vex'ahlia: A half-elf ranger. The sister of Vax. Neither twin was accepted by the elf community that they lived in with their father. She has a bear companion named Trinket.

The Party 

(Travis) Grog - Goliath Barbarian
(Laura) Vex'ahlia - Half-elf Ranger
(Liam) Vax'ildan - Half-Elf Thief
(Taliesin) Percy - Human Gunslinger
(Marisha) Keyleth - Half-Elf Druid
(Orion) Tiberius - Dragonborn Sorcerer
(Sam) Scanlan - Gnome Bard

Last Time: The group had saved the capital city of a human kingdom by thwarting a demonic insurrection. The group is asked to go find Lady Kima, a paladin who has run into some trouble at the dwarven city of Kraghammer.

OK, here we go. The players are really excited to do this and it is very charming.

The group are in the underground dwarven city of Kraghammer. They go to a bar and Vax buys everyone a round. The heroes ask around and learn that there are goblins causing problems in the Greyspine Quarry. The adventurers apparently will need to meet with Nostoc Greyspine.

The group talks with a tough dwarf named Balgus (aka Bulbous, aka Ballsack). He wants to sell the heroes ale to use as a gift for Nostoc Greyspine. The group offers him the blood of a dragon as trade. Apparently the group killed a dragon in a past adventure and they took as many pieces of its body as possible. The trade is made.

The players go off on a tangent and reminisce about past shenanigans. Apparently the heroes once put an ox in their bag of holding. They also cut off and kept a troll's dick.

Grog checks out the whorehouse, which mostly is staffed by dwarves. He hires an elf lady. Scanlan gets himself a "whoredwarf" and she mops the floor with him, metaphorically speaking.

As the half-elves explore the city, some guards get freaked out by Vex'ahlia's bear. She talks her way out of it by having her bear, Trinket, do tricks.

Tiberius tries to check out House Thunderbrand, home of a family that wields great magic. It's protected by runes. He is foiled by the runes and then guards come to apprehend him. Tiberius intimidates them, doing a great bellowing voice in real life. The guards back off.

The heroes regroup at their room in the tavern. The dwarves are trying to get Vexalia's bear to fight Balgus. Vex'ahlia runs into the ring and it ends up where Vex'ahlia and the bear are going to fight Balgus.

Keyleth casts a fog spell, runs up and polymorphs Trinket into a squirrel. Then she turns herself into a bear. She's swapping places with Trinket. What a fantastic idea!

Vax uses the fog to creep up and backstab Balgus. I wish he would have let them fight. That would have been fun to watch.

Balgus takes 26 damage and it doesn't even faze him somehow. Vax runs.

Keyleth, in bear form, decides to do a dance to calm the dwarves down. Scanlan plays some music. Keyleth rolls... a natural 20! The whole tavern bursts into laughter and they forget about fighting the bear.

The game pauses - the group takes about a 10 minute break.  

The next day, the heroes head to Greyspine Manor. Tiberius is magically disguised as a dwarf. The dwarven guards of the city of Kraghammer ask the mysterious dwarf his name. He introduces himself as "Tiberius Kraghammer" which sends the entire group into hysterics. These people really enjoy the game and it is very fun to watch.

Vax'ahlia show the guards the wine they traded the dragon's blood for. She's going to give it to Nostoc Greyspine. It turns out Nostoc isn't home. He's at the mines. 

We hear robots again at about the 2 hour mark, but it's fixed in a minute or so.

Scanlan creeps around the manor. One player suggests that he takes a poop somewhere. He doesn't find anything, so he rejoins the group and tells them people were farting in there.

The group goes to the mine and there's piles of talking and room descriptions. Basically, Nostoc says that Lady Kima went into the mines. The heroes get permission to go get her.

A bell rings and Nostoc tells the group to "shove off." The heroes try to con Nostroc out of some of the expensive wine but Nostroc is having none of it.

The bell is some kind of alarm. There are creatures 'coming through' down in the mines. The guards are happy to have the adventurers go with them.

Ten goblins emerge from the darkness. A dwarf guard is swarmed by goblins.

Tiberius drops a fireball and kills two dwarf guards with it as well.

Two ogres lumber out from some vine-choked area. It's time to roll initiative. The group freaks out in excitement. They are very fun people.

Heyy we get an overhead map. Awesome.

Percy shoots an ogre in the shoulder for 27 points. Vax'ahlia kills one ogre with a lightning arrow.

Grog notices more goblins, and they're running away. Not from the heroes, but from something bigger.

Here it comes.. a massive naga. It has five other heads (of different nagas) stitched to its' body! The group starts pummeling it.

Then the naga goes and it rolls multiple critical hits! Keyleth is bit by the naga, is poisoned and takes 31 poison damage. Looks like that head is a spirit naga.

Vax does a huge pile of damage with thrown daggers, injuring the naga greatly. Scanlan finishes it off with a lightning bolt and the group freaks out in excitement. Matt lets the player narrate its death throes. Scanlan carves an "S" into it's hide with his lightning. What a fun group.

Timestamps

• (26:29) Vax buys dwarves some alcohol
• (42:44) The heroes flirt with Balgus
• (1:15:55) Trinket the Bear's brief pit-fighting career
• (1:46:06) Tiberius tries to pass himself off as a citizen of the city of Kraghammer
• (2:24:55) The group is a little excited to roll initiative

Overall

The World: The campaign setting is really deep and it is extremely impressive. Matt is a very creative guy. Every character has a rich backstory and from what I can tell, the backstories all tie into the events of the campaign.

Roleplayers: It's kind of mind-boggling to watch voice actors play D&D. I've never seen such a theatrical group. It's fun to watch. Most groups I see out in the wild are of the number-crunching variety. The Critical Role people are pure roleplayers. In most roleplaying groups you hear really bad accents and overall you have a sort of clumsy back-and-forth with the players who don't want to roleplay. This is a really nice example for people to base their playing style on, and I bet it will improve people's overall D&D experience immensely.

Gateway Drug: I can just imagine people watching this and deciding to go play D&D. Particularly people who have never played before. I get worried that people will fall into one of the many traps of assembling a group but, hey, at least they are jumping in.

Pacing: This is probably just me, but I think this session ran too slow. The group spends over an hour sort of goofing around in the dwarven city. The show is three hours long and we got precious little done here. That said, it was this allowance to let the group wander that led to the whole bear fight thing, which was one of the highlights of the whole session. Also, nobody stopped to look up a rule one single time, which I greatly appreciate.

Big Group: Seven players is normally too many, but they are able to make it work. They let each other talk and they all pay attention.

Enthusiasm: The group is super-into the game. They pay attention, they have fun ideas and when combat rolls around, they freak out. I really believe that thousands of people watched this and decided they wanted to play D&D. What can be better than that?

Over the next week or two, I will be checking out different D&D streams/podcasts and reviewing them. Today I am doing High Rollers.

You can watch this episode on youtube here.

This show is very well done. They have a sweet technical setup and they even superimpose backgrounds behind the players. The sound and video quality are perfect and there are no technical hiccups at all.

The DM: The DM is a guy named Mark Hulmes and you can tell that he runs a lot of games. He's really on the ball, he's enthusiastic and he is more than ready to run this thing. 

New Players: Many of the players are new to D&D, but they have no problems picking the game up. Kim is a complete natural and she immediately shines. Chris Trott is a guy we've seen as "Falkon" on Dice, Camera, Action.

On that show, he was very serious. On this one, he is the straw that stirs the drink. Right from the start, he jumps in and says and does stuff in character that I think helped the other players have space to get comfortable. He broke the ice for them and he was pretty funny.

House Rule: No darkvision, just low light vision.

The Setting: The DM kicks off the campaign by explaining the setting.

Arrak was once a land of peace and prosperity. Arrak was blessed by a magic comet called Pelor's Light that passed through the material plane once every 100 years. The comet kept monsters in a magical sleep and helped crops grow, that kind of thing.

Then, in the 1300th year, something happened. The comet appeared as usual. Suddenly, crimson energy hit the comet and there was a massive explosion. The comet was shattered.

Shards of the comet fell on Arrak and destroyed cities and towns. Monsters woke up, and the world was plunged into chaos. This event is known as "The Lightfall."

The Party


(Kim) Jiutou Zhiji Jing - Tiefling Monk
(Chris) Cam Buckland - Human Rogue or cleric
(Katie) Elora Galanodel - High Elf Druid
(Matt) Trellimar Aleath - Drow

46 years after the Lightfall...

The group is traveling in a caravan. They don't know each other. We learn a bit about each hero.

Cam Buckland: Human "Trickster Cleric." He was found in the forest as a baby by a gypsy troupe.  He was raised by them and he traveled as one of them for many years. He left the gypsies for mysterious reasons. He's supposedly a cleric of Avandra (goddess of luck)

Trellimar Aleath: In this world, drow were driven up to the surface. They have an uneasy alliance with dwarves. He hears voices and his temple was attacked by creatures known as the Dalkyr.

Elora Galanodel: She's an elf druid that is friendly and naive. The elves retreated from the world after the Lightfall. They live in these scattered spires that slipped into the Feywild once the Lightfall happened. She is among the first of the elves to return and she wants to bring the other spires back to the world of Arrak. Her father leads her spire, so she has a noble lineage.

Jiutou Zhiji Jing: She's a tiefling monk. In this world, most tieflings are slaves of the dragonborn. They cut off the tiefling's horns when they enslave them. Jiutou lived in a village of free tieflings. It was discovered by the dragonborn, and they attacked. During the onslaught, Jiutou's parents were killed. Jiutou was enslaved. She escaped after a few years and hid in a monastery. She trained there and became a monk. Years later, she emerged and is now devoted to freeing all of her enslaved people.

We start out with the group imprisoned. The last thing they remember, they were on the caravan. A hooded figure knocked them unconscious.

They wake up. Their weapons are gone. Their hands are bound behind their backs with razorvine! Awesome.

Elora is able to free the group using her druidic powers to make the vines loosen and release. Trellimar uses darkfire to blow a small hole in the vine wall. The group's weapons are on the other side.

Jiutou uses her prehensile tail to grab her blade staff. The group cuts their way out and creeps down a hall to a room partly overgrown with vines. Cam starts schmoozing and bullshitting the group. Jiutou takes an instant dislike to him.

There's a creature in the room beyond their prison. It's a plant-thing with glowing eyes. We roll initiative. This is much snappier than the Critical Role episode I watched. The DM is keeping things moving perfectly.

Jiutou goes first. She's in the hallway behind two heroes. She runs up the side of the wall past her allies and hacks into the creature. That was a really cool idea.

Two more creatures grow up out of the floor. Elora casts entangle to immobilize two of them.

Cam kills one with a thrown dagger. Jiutou kills the others. The group took some damage here, especially Jiutou.

The symbol of Corellon is in the floor, slightly altered. It's a tree with stars, and some of them are gold. Elora can tell this place is ancient.

Jiutou very smartly checks out to see if the stars are part of some secret door or pressure plate. They're not, but she spots torch sconces that are some sort of secret lever. The group pulls each, then pulls them at the same time. They hear grinding noises but nothing happens.

The next room has a statue and a lot of fresh dead bodies. Cam heals Jiutou with a spell. Huh.. he's a dagger throwing cleric, supposedly. Weird. He has a ring that glows. Ahh... the ring might be giving Cam these spells somehow. Jiutou picks up on it immediately.

Cam creeps in there and sees the bodies are moving. They're other members of the caravan that the group was in. Trellimar goes in and checks out the guy who is moving. There's vines winding through his body and coming out of his eyes!

Combat number 2. Cam takes some damage but the group kills the vine zombie thing.

Then we take a break and there's all of these animated clips which are pretty cool.

The group finds some potions of healing and they take a short rest. The group wonders why they were separated from the other people in the caravan.

After the rest, the group checks out another room. There are more bodies, leaning against the walls bleeding. One is alive - Thomas the caravan master. He's got a number of gory wounds.

Cam bandages his wounds and re-sets his broken arm. He can't walk. Thomas explains that the caravan was attacked by these vine creatures. He had been held with the heroes, but they creatures came and dragged him out.

Thomas mentions that a ranger named Renwin was part of the attack, and that he was participating reluctantly. Renwin might be able to control the creatures.

The next two rooms involve a lot of talking. They meet a dryad who explains that the angry spirit of an elven queen is behind this. Then they meet the ranger, who has been forced to help the spirit.

Moving on, Cam steps on a pressure plate thanks in part to a low perception roll. Darts fire up at him and poison him. He's woozy and has vertigo.

Trellimar has hoarded the potions of healing and doesn't want to give one to Cam. Cam ends up trading his purple handkerchief to the drow for a potion.

The heroes creep into a cold chamber with a sarcophagus. Jiutou has had enough of Cam's antics and shoves him on a sarcophagus. Suddenly, a green ghostly entity - the elven queen - rises up from the sarcophagus and roars in rage.

That's where we stop.

Timestamps

• (1:02:45) How old is Elora?
• (1:17:47) Trellimar rolls the body over
• (2:09:20) Thomas is wounded
• (2:30:58) The dryad cleans urine for Cam

Overall

Good DM: Mark, the DM, is extremely well-prepared. He pre-drew a map and covered it with black paper, revealing map sections as the group explored. He does a real nice job of allowing banter but reminding the group that they can only say so much in a round.

He has clearly run a lot of games. He's got a lot of stuff worked out like immediately calling out the "floor dice" rule (His version: A die must be rolled on the table to count).

Some of the players are new to D&D, but Mark is able to explain things without slowing down the game at all.

Cool Setting: The whole Lightfall thing is really cool. It's a great idea and the DM really developed it well. He gave each race their own story within the framework of the Lightfall event.

Too Long: Three hours is just too long for me. Dice, Camera Action is usually a bit under two hours and I can barely get through it, even when it is a really good session. In this, the third hour really dragged for me. The section where the group talked with the dryad and the ranger was hard for me to get through. To me, that is the biggest problem with the whole idea of a D&D stream. Three hours is a major weekly time investment.

I think the time investment might be OK if you don't play in a game. Watching this could be a way for those who don't have a group to experience D&D. You could vicariously play through them.

Production Quality: The character art is phenomenal. The graphics are great. To me, this is how a D&D steam should be. It is a very professional set-up and it is much appreciated.

Grazz't & Iggwilv

We just had a big session of D&D. Tonight was the night where one of the heroes was going to die! I asked the player a few weeks ago if he was OK with having a lot of really crazy stuff happen to his character and he gave me the thumbs up. That means that in this session, there was a good chance of Theran was getting whacked unless the group figured out what was going on or made some good rolls.

I normally would never do stuff like this, but I saw what Chris Perkins did with Diath on Dice, Camera, Action and I thought I'd give it a try.

A lot of the Iggwilv section of this session is from material in Dungeon Magazine #149.

Preparation: I'm about to run For Duty & Deity, an adventure where the heroes have to rescue a goddess from the clutches of the demon lord, Grazz't. That adventure book is kind of a mess. There's a lot of pages, but not a whole lot of adventure contained in those pages.

So I dug up a 4e Grazz't adventure (Court of the Dark Prince, Dungeon Magazine #212) and I decided to add in Iggwilv to this thing. I love the whole Iggwilv/Grazz't story and I relish the opportunity to use these iconic NPCs in my campaign.

Raja Khan

The Rakshasa: Really, tonight was about Raja Khan's scheme for revenge. Back in Nemesis, the group attacked his home, stole his stuff, rescued his concubines and killed his boss, a marilith.

Raja fled and ended up working for another marilith who is part of the Blood War (the eternal battle between demons and devils). When Bidam and Fall From Grace were in The Gray Waste last session, they passed right by Raja's new boss and didn't know it. Raja saw Bidam and shape-shifted into a halfling named Karagesh. He pretended to be mute so his voice wouldn't give him away.

The group liked him and "kept" him. They brought him to Sigil, where Raja is now free to get his revenge.

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard
* NPCs - Fall From Grace (Succubus Paladin), Selinza ("Litorian" Wizard, level 6)

Downtime in Sigil

Karagesh's Deal: The promoter Harys Hatchis hired Karagesh to spy on those "fat cats" in the Clerk's Ward. He agreed to pay Karagesh in magic potions. Harys knows a guy. Karagesh went out each night, but he wasn't spying. He proceeds to kill Warrin Spellbinder, the clerk who failed him in Nemesis. He kills Thoebe, the other former concubine who now works in a gaming hall. He wants to steal back Midnight (one of the magic swords from Nemesis) from the Doomguard but can't figure out how to do it.

Whispering Motes: Theran made magic healing powder in his wizardly lab building throughout this adventure. It went like this:

1. Selinza would buff him with spells.
2. Karagesh would give him a potion of resistance to fire. This was key. He needed the group to get accustomed to drinking things he handed them. That way, when he handed them a vial of deadly poison, they'd drink it!
3. Theran would try to mix some ingredients and make an arcana check.
4. If he failed, there was an explosion, but Selinza's spell and arcane ward could protect him.
5. It takes three days to make a vial of whispering motes, so that's one check per day.

Then there was a knock on the door. Somebody left delicious elven food for Theran. This was the work of Conviva Kettle, one of his employees who has a thing for him.

Ravel Puzzlewell

Hags: The heroes wanted to find a powerful wizard who could explain what was going on with their strange powers. The hags Virinis and Zeraga reluctantly took them to meet the third member of the Sigil coven - Ravel Puzzlewell.

Ravel is a major NPC in Planescape: Torment. The hags have a "portable portal" that they activate with drops of blood from a vial. This portal takes them to Ravel's Maze.

Long ago, Ravel tried to kill everyone in Sigil by bringing in an army of devils. Ravel's plan failed and she was mazed by the Lady of Pain. Ravel knows the location of the portal that leads out of her maze, but she never leaves.

There's a whole bunch of conversation and much is learned:

• Bidam's Chosen: Bidam and the people he infects with iron hearts are going to help the Lady of Pain manage the void inside her. The Lady is the source of all pain in the multiverse. Bidam's chosen ones will help. Each of them has the power to cut people just by looking at them.
• Theran's Quest: Theran's job is to take out the Iron Shadow, who is a broken-off piece of the Lady of Pain. The Iron Shadow wants to end suffering, and thus she is pretty much draining existence away. Ravel warns Theran that the devils will oppose him every step of the way. She also tells Theran that he is destined to rule Sigil in the Lady of Pain's name.
• The Hag Doll: Bidam's little hag doll has three baby dolls. The doll is giving the babies to hags. If fed a live animal, the hag doll can allow the group to converse with one of the hags and they might even be able to cast a spell through the doll.
• The Strahd Doll: If you let the doll suck your blood, he gives you the ability to assume gaseous form or turn into a bat or wolf for a while.

Day Two

More Motes: Theran got buffed by Selinza. Karagesh handed him a potion of fire resistance. Arcana Roll. After, Convivia Kettle left him another delicious elven meal. I wondered if Theran would tell her to stop, but he didn't.

Aza Dowling: The heroes saw that Aza Dowling, the 'depression councilor' in the festhall, was now seeing Ignus to help him with PTSD. If you remember, Ignus was the guy who was on fire for seven years. Theran gave him an amulet that suppresses the flames.

The heroes don't know it, but Aza is a spy for Shemeska the marauder. Shemeska is in hiding because Ignus has incriminating evidence on her. Now Aza is in a position to find out where the evidence is.

Reave Masseuse: This four-armed lady is one of Bidam's Chosen. The heroes got her off of a murder rap, but she can't find someone who will hire her. The heroes gave her a job as a bartender in the Smoldering Corpse bar.

Adventurers Guild: I am using an 'alternate universe' version of the characters in Dice, Camera, Action. Just like in the show, the heroes think Diath is dead, but he's really inhabiting Paultin's body.

Long ago (in The Fortress of the Fallen Stair) Theran and Bidam stole some trophies of demon lords. The painting of Lamashtu ended up in the possession of Gonard Flumph who lives in the extravagant, golden Flumph Tower in Tradegate. Demons of Lamashtu have been attacking, trying to get it back.

These adventurers questioned Theran and Bidam. Evelyn scolded them. The players really get a kick out of Evelyn's southern accent so I hammed it up. Evelyn's group decided to return the painting to the fortress in the Abyss where it belonged.

The group learned that Gonard Flumph's son has hooked up with his father's wife, Melania. They were grossed out.

This week I had an idea. TRUMP: THE DUNGEON. It's happening! It's going to be huge and you're going to love it. It will be the best dungeon you've ever seen in your life.

Sensory Stone: Bidam's sensory stones are very popular down at the Civic Festhall. Now there's someone else making popular sensory stones: Jiutou (the tiefling from High Rollers). She made one of her riding a gold dragon over Celestia that makes grown men cry.

I just want to make sure that the PCs feel like they're in a living world. Also, I like Jiutou.

Big Choice: Vaimish Crasad (first met in session 3 of the campaign), a paladin lord who owns a fortress in the Outlands, met with the heroes. Two of his knaves had been killed by a mystery creature. The group had an important choice to make:

• If the group went to the Outlands, they'd battle an Eye of Shadow (a beholder infused with energy from the Shadowfell).
• If the group didn't, the Eye of Shadow would attack the paladins and blind Vaimish. There's only one person who can stop the beholder - the prisoner of the paladins, the greatest thief in Sigil, Ash Vodiran!

I gave the players a ton of chances to go with Vaimish. They did research on the monster but didn't go. They found out the next day that Vaimish was blind and that Ash Vodiran, the guy they love to hate, is free!

When the group found out, they groaned.

Day 3

I couldn't find a pic of a unicorn man that wasn't completely inappropriate.

Mote Central: Selinza buff, Karagesh potion, Arcana check. This time, Convivia Kettle left Theran a single Aelfengrape - a magic berry that gives you a day's worth of nutrition. Theran tracked her down and thanked her. We also learn that Convivia has a magic dagger to ward off creepy clients.

The Unicorn Guy: In around 2010-2012 (the halcyon days of 4th edition), one of my groups ended up doing a whole series of hilarious things with this race I made up - the unicorn people. They are elf/unicorn hybrids. They live in the magical valley of the unicorns in the Feywild.

Way back then, a unicorn lady named Gelda had a thing for a dark and brooding character in the party. A number of funny and disturbing events unfolded. The sweaty, sublime unicorn lady left such an impact on the group that when they stole the chaos ship of Orcus (in the E1-E3 path) they named it "Gelda's Fancy."

A year or so later, I had a player ask me if she could make a unicorn lady as a character. I said yes, and more hilarity ensued. Her character was named Aurora Brightbolt and she lived by The Unicorn Code:

1. Unicorns never cheat.
2. Unicorns always lend a helping hand.
3. Unicorns don't talk to strangers.
4. Unicorns respect the Earth.
5. Unicorns are never late.
6. Unicorns aren't conceited.
7. Unicorns don't judge people.
8. Unicorns always give 100%.
9. Unicorns graze on peace and love.
10. Unicorns don't do drugs.

She had an alternate universe counterpart - a nightmare person (black horse with flaming hair and nostrils). This villain's name was Shade FireStrife.

I decided I want a unicorn dude in this campaign. His name is Prince ButtonGleam and he is hunting for an evil nightmare guy named "BloodQuake." Apparently this fiend is in Sigil, up to no good. The unicorn people make me laugh, so I plopped this in and we'll see if we can do something with it. Right now he's living with the clerics in Deadbook Square.

The NPC Paladin Story: There's a paladin destined to have a special baby with an asuras, but he is in a relationship with someone else. The paladin was going to go on an adventure in an unexplored world, but both women stopped him. They're afraid he will die. Then the two women got into it.

Bidam broke it up and told them that Malweis is a grown man and if he wants to go, he can go.

An Audience with Iggwilv

Finally.. we got to Iggwilv.

Landerbold the dandy, an arcanoloth apprentice of Iggwilv, came to visit with the heroes. He told them Iggwilv wanted to meet with them. The group agreed and chatted with Landerbold a bit. Landerbold gave them the basic story of Iggwilv and Grazz't, and I made sure to have Landerbold drop a quote from a great article from Dragon Magazine #414:

"They loved nothing more than hating each other, and hated nothing more than loving each other."

One trip down the River Styx later, the group found themselves in The Gray Waste. As they got off the skip onto Iggwilv's dock, one of her pet linnorms (a linnorm is a norse dragon) attacked the heroes. I used a rain linnorm. It breathes boiling water. It did a ton of damage and the players got real nervous.

Then, suddenly, Bidam's power kicked in. He glared at the linnorm, and it was cut to shreds. Boy, does Jessie love that.

Landerbold the dandy showed the heroes around. The group saw a demon bound in a pentagram. The demon is Hochwier, an undead glabrezu who formerly served Orcus. I decided to put him here because he was a throwaway NPC in an old 4e Ashen Covenant article and he looks really cool:

The group met with Iggwilv and they went to her demiplane (from the 4e adventure). They had dinner with her.

She looked at all of the heroes magic items. She opened Theran's spellbook. She saw a pattern - a maze - forming on a page. The room started to shift. She shut the book and handed it back to Theran. She wouldn't tell them what she saw, but the book was about to send her to a maze!

Iggwilv's Quest: The goddess of love walks the worlds as a mortal! This was done by other gods to teach her a lesson. Grazz't has kindly offered to let her stay with him, you know, for safety's sake. Iggwilv has decided to have the heroes try to steal her away, just to mess with Grazz't.

I consider this their way of flirting. Grazz't was hoping she'd do this.

The group has a cubic gate that was damaged by an abyssal storm. Iggwilv said she could fix it, but it would take a few days. She is going to reconfigure it for their mission.

Iggwilv showed the group piles of her magic items (right out of Dungeon #149). She also mentioned Fiend's Embrace, a cloak that is the subject of an entire adventure in Dungeon Magazine #121.

Fiend's embrace is an incredibly bad-ass item. It is made from the skin of a pit fiend! But.. it's very evil.

Jessie really wanted this thing. I think I am going to modify it so it is usable. I think to start with, I'll have the spirit of the pit fiend speak into Bidam's mind. I can think of a lot of funny things to say.

Iggwilv's New Apprentice: Selinza, Theran's apprentice, was in awe of Iggwilv. Iggwilv offered to let Selinza stay with her for a few days. I thought the heroes wouldn't want this to happen, but they were fine with it.

Iggwilv is going to teach her some spells. Selinza had hit 6th level prior to this session, and I decided to give her Leomund's Tiny Hut. She's using all the spells I never take as a player. It's been fun, so far.

The group goes home. They rest for a bit, and go about their day.

Raja Khan

Theran goes to make some motes. Bidam does Bidam things. There was a commotion in a building. If you remember, drow had moved in to Deadbook Square a few sessions ago. These NPCs were lead by a drow possessed by the evil sword Craggis (who the group fought at the end of The Great Modron March).

These drow had gone through the portal to Crux and kidnapped/enslaved some ratatosks (squirrel people). As soon as the dark elves paraded their slaves through the square, the other citizens went nuts. Bidam rolled initiative.

Theran couldn't hear this, as he was way over in the wizard lab building. It was mote-making time! Selinza was away, studying with Iggwilv, but luckily good old Karagesh was here with a "potion of fire resistance." He handed it to Theran. Theran drank it.

This wasn't a magic potion. It was poison! Torpor, to be exact. It has a DC 15 Con save. Theran failed.

Theran couldn't take actions and poisoned for eleven hours! He was no match for Raja Khan. The rakshasa tied Theran to a chair and gave a villainous monologue. He told Theran that he'd killed Thoebe and Warrin Spellbinder. Now he was going to get revenge on all of the heroes, one by one.

As he spoke, Convivia Kettle crept up behind him. She had come to bring Theran some food and to tell him about the drow. She quietly held up her magic dagger. All Theran could do was watch.

She had advantage on her attack roll. Raja has an AC of 15. he rolled a natural 18 on one of the rolls! Raja spun around and she plunged the knife right into his eye! Raja is vulnerable to piercing from magic weapons wielded by good creatures so he took a nice little chunk of damage!

The rakshasa screamed, swiped her with a claw and sent her hurtling down the stairs. He placed a container full of elemental fire in the room with Theran, lit a fuse, and staggered out of the building.

The wizard lab exploded! Theran was dead! Or was he? We'll find out next week.

It was an awesome session. I kept wondering if the heroes were going to get suspicious of the halfling but he was able to soothe them with a steady stream of potions.

Next week we get to the crazy stuff!

That's a pretty sweet logo, right? Here's the deal. Keep in mind that I like a lot about this show and if I were running or playing a game online, I wouldn't want some random schmuck picking my game apart. That said, I had an issue with a few things and I am going to try and be as fair-minded as I can.

This three hour episode is broken into three parts. I watched the first two. Check them out on youtube here:

• Part One
• Part Two

AD&D 2nd Edition: The DM is a guy named Neal. He is running this campaign using AD&D 2e rules. This should be fun. There's a lot of weird, optional rules in 2e and the DM knows the system really well, from what I can see.

The DM is tracking ammo. He's on top of the weird "2 attacks this round, 1 attack the next round" combat system of this edition. He even does the "projectile recovery" rule. I think it goes like this: For each arrow you fire, there's a 50% (?) chance that it's broken and you can't use it again.

Technical Problems: The audio is out of sync. There's about a two second lag between video and audio. Also, Gen's volume is too low. They try to put a map on the screen but there's all sorts of problems with it that occur over the first two parts.

I am wondering if this is their first time using Roll20? The problems smooth out to a degree as the show progresses.

The Party

(Anna) Maribel - Half-Minotaur Fighter
(Jess) Algrund - Dwarf Cleric
(Trump) Bruno - Human Bard
(Gen) "Dark"Albert - Elf Mage

The Island: The heroes live on the island of Embershore. There are two mountains: Mount Goal and Phallusuvius. A few days ago, the volcano erupted and killed most of the island, including most of the people in the town.

The players explain their characters:

• Bruno aka "Bongo": Human Bard who plays the bongos. Has a dark beard.
• Algrund Strongaxe: Middle-aged Dwarf Cleric. He grew up to be a lumberjack, but he had a work injury - a tree fell on his leg. He dresses and grooms himself in the style of a human. The beard is closely trimmed.
• Albert aka "Dark Albert": Elf, a bit of an outcast. He's a self-hating elf. His fellow elves had imprisoned him for many years. Black hair, black eyes. Looks like a 40 year-old human. Eyepatch.
• Maribel: Half-minotaur/half-human. Her mom was a minotaur, her dad was a human. That's definitely different. She was a bodyguard for an abusive noble, but she ended up chopping off the noble's head. She fled to Embershore and here she is. She's 7'1" and she has a human body and face, horns and a cow-ish looking nose. She has fur in patches on her arms and hooved feet. Maribel is extremely literal and nna plays her that way through the whole adventure.

The Mayor is Donabella Trumpet (what an epic name). Apparently the group had a hand in making names for this campaign. The players protest, as it turns out "Donabella" is not the name they picked. The DM agrees to go with the original name they chose: Donalda Trumpet.

The group is tasked to go stop kobolds who are stealing goats. The adventurers will be accompanied by an elderly fellow named Mo Shepard. The goats are his. The town is going to need at least 30 of the 50 goats recovered for the town to persist.

2e kobold

We get into a big, amusing discussion about whether the half-minotaur is hot and whether there should be a roll to find out.

Albert starts trolling the old shepherd, trying to get him to bark like a dog and questioning if they really need that many goats.

They head off into the woods, following the trail. They come upon some kobolds that are about to cook and eat a goat.

Initiative. Wow.. 2e initiative. Roll a d10, lowest wins! And it's group initiative, so just one person rolls and the entire group takes their turn at once. 

If I remember right, a 2e round is one minute long and each round is an abstract series of feints, strikes and maneuvers.

Bruno attacks a kobold and rolls a natural one. He needs to roll a saving throw vs. death or, I assume, he gets some kind of critical miss effect. He succeeds.

Anna rolls a critical and does 20 points of damage to a 4-hit point kobold. The DM lets her tear through it and strike another kobold.

Algrund is surrounded. There's a really weird exchange with her and the DM. Basically, she tells the DM her character is lazy and didn't pray for spells that morning.

The kobolds end up running away after Maribel kicks the crap out of them.

Part Two

The heroes continue on their quest for 30+ goats. They spot four kobolds up in a tree, whispering and pointing at the heroes. The group kills one. The other three run toward a cave and shout a warning.

Maribel goes into the cave. It's pitch black in there. Maribel sees many pairs of eyes glinting in the darkness. She warns the kobolds that she will "lethal spank" them if they don't hand over the goats.

So it looks like we're going to have another combat here. Algrund never memorized spells. Jess, Algrund's player, wants to pray for them while the group fights..? She says that she only has two hit points and she doesn't want to be involved.

I know that 2e is really lethal. Is she really going to sit out of combat like that? I do not understand why she decided not to pray for spells that morning. I think she'd only have one or two spell slots for the day, anyway.

In this battle, she could hang back and fire off rocks from a sling, if nothing else. I think that 2e clerics are proficient with certain ranged weapons, depending on what god they worship. I'm guessing she has decent armor and a good melee weapon.

Two players take their turns. Jess has her head down, she's working on something. Then she says, "How long has it been?"

A round is one minute. That's the ultra-basics of 2e. The DM told you it would take ten minutes. Not even one round has passed!

I just stopped watching this stream and checked future episodes. I am kind of wondering if she gets kicked out after this one. Nope. She's still on the show and they have some nicer maps. Judging from the player reactions to her, they are not bothered by this behavior. I think I might be misreading her tone.

OK, back to the show. A few more players go. Not even 2 rounds have passed. Then Jess asks again how long it has been. She's not paying attention. It looks like she's actually doing other things while the group plays. I think she might be doing the technical stuff - maybe she is the one handling this Roll20 screen?

It is Bruno the bard's turn. He's wielding a spear. He calls out, "Where is that dwarf?!"

Algrund: "Me? I'm back here learning my spells."

Bruno: "We're fighting, you know."

Algrund: "I know no fighting! Fuck off! I'm trying to learn my spells!"

Almost any group I've ever been in would have a problem with this behavior. Again, maybe I am misreading this entire thing.

The kobolds flee. The goats are in the cave.

There's a ladder in the back of the cave that goes down. Algrund has finished praying for her spell - entangle. The group starts to descend the ladder and Bruno pipes up and says: "We found the goats. Why are we going down the ladder?"

Good point! Plus, if they go down there, the kobolds could come back, drop old man Mo and take the goats back.

Down below is an altar, broken tools and a pickaxe. There's also a painting of some hideous beast.

That's the end of part 2. I skipped through Part 3 and I actually landed on a moment where Algrund tries to cast entangle and the DM realizes that Algrund can't cast that spell - it's not on the list of spells available that he had sent to Jess for her to refer to when she made her character.

Now I'm skimming future episodes to see if the technical issues get resolved. I also want to get a sense of how the campaign progresses. I thought this show was going to be about heroes on a ship, but as far as I can tell that's not how it is on these early episodes, at least.

Episode 2: Sound is still out of sync. I swear I land on 21:10, where it turns out that Jess still hasn't looked at her spell list and the DM says he'll send the list to her again.

Episode 3: I click on 10:49. Gen's volume is fixed and we have background music!

Episode 4: 15:02. Pirate-y background music!  Sound still out of sync. Maribel breaks a wooden counter and glares at a general store owner. The owner tries to kick her out. Poor Bruno is so poor that he has to borrow copper pieces, wow.

Episode 5: 16:28. Sound is in sync! DM Neal shaved his beard, too.

It looks like the technical problems get fixed as we go.

Timestamps

• (11:36) Is the half-minotaur hot?
• (40:17) Anna demonstrates her real life halberd-swinging technique, with sound effects.
• (30:43) Bruno asks, "Where is that dwarf?"

Overall

The technical problems did the group a disservice. The battle was hard to watch because the map kept getting moved around and covering the screen. It is also very jarring to watch a video where the sound is so out of sync.

This bothers me because there are a lot of cool players in this group and the DM knows his stuff. I love the idea of watching a 2e game.

Also, Gen seems really cool and funny. But her audio is low, so it's hard to make out what she's saying.

I really admire how Anna consciously injects energy into the game. She is so good on these D&D streams. Not only does she play with enthusiasm, she tries to keep the atmosphere light and she even helps the pacing when need be.

I would say that this is an episode that is best listened to, not watched. There's too many distractions and if you're like me, you might have a hard time with it.

OK people, I'm checking out another D&D stream. Dungeons & Dragonites is a D&D campaign that incorporates concepts from Pokemon. Episode 1 is mostly a character-making show. I skimmed through it. You don't need to watch it! You can start with episode 2 and you'll not miss anything.

Watch episode 1 here.
Watch episode 2 here.

Pokemon and D&D Together at Last: I don't know anything about Pokemon, so this should be interesting. I have no idea what to do about art. Do you want to see a picture of a Zigzagoon? It's a squirrel or something:

I am thinking I will find fun ideas here to use for my game. I have absolutely no idea what to expect from this campaign. I can say that most of my players know a lot about Pokemon so I can see this show having a lot of appeal to the majority of D&D players.

Before we start, I just want to say that I think this might be my favorite D&D stream so far. It is the only one that kept my attention pretty much the whole way through. I'll elaborate more once the recap is done.

Interesting Notes:

• The DM actually has the players roll their stats using 2d6+6.
• In this world, farmers make less than two gold in a year.

The Party

(Logan) Standt Willow - Human Druid
(Steve) SBJ - Human Fighter
(Travis) Wendy Colecarver - Hill Dwarf Cleric
(Jeff) Emojis - Human Wizard 

The DM is Greg. He has a real low key style and gives the group lots of room to explore and develop their characters.

Character Notes:

• Standt has a Zigzagoon pet and wears a linoone pelt. A linoone looks sort of like a ferret.
• SBJ is a former wrestler. He has a sidekick named D. Pepper, which I think is a farfetch'd (a bird). 
• Wendy is a haughty noble. 
• Emojis (pronounced "Emojus") is one of quadruplets. His parents are married but his mom is seeing a woman on the side.

Episode One

The Tattoo

Each hero has the same dream..

You wake up. You are standing on a hill. There are other people around but you can't make them out. Beyond the hill is decaying grass and dust. Off in the distance is a giant crystal flower. It pulses with a strange energy. There is a creature flying in the air. A massive beam of energy comes out of the flower, hits the creature and washes over you.

When the characters wake up, they have a mysterious tattoo.

Each hero spends months researching their tattoo and they all come to the same conclusion: They need to talk to Ephraim Oakheart in Cerulean City.

From there we cut to the city. The group meets each other in a tavern. The DM is sitting back and letting them talk. Some of the players are brand new to D&D, so they need a little more guidance.

We learn that a week ago, there was a big festival in the city. Every year in spring, the goblins bring an apple that can cure any disease or injury. The apple is sold to the highest bidder.

SBJ notes that he wrestled at an Apple Festival. Throughout the first two episodes, he makes a lot of references to his wrestling injuries and "running the ropes" and because it makes him laugh, it makes me laugh.

This feels more relaxed and like a "real" D&D game. The players actually want to be there and enjoy each other's company.

The players are all extremely likeable and are all "characters" themselves.

Episode 2

The group has decided to go find Ephraim. As they leave the tavern, a girl runs up to SBJ. She is an SBJ fan. See, SBJ is a wrestler who had to retire due to multiple concussions and neck injuries. She gives SBJ two berry juices that act as potions of healing. So was D. Pepper his tag team partner?

The group walks all day. It gets dark. Should they make camp? They know it's a terrible idea to keep walking though the night, but they decide to make a bad decision on purpose just to see what happens. These guys are awesome.

So they keep walking and the ground gets rocky. The DM asks for survival checks. Their rolls: 11, 2, 2, 4. Those who failed fall on jagged rocks and take 2 damage. They thought they were going to fall off a cliff, which would have been hilarious.

SBJ's wrestling injuries kick in and he thinks the group needs to camp for the night.

The next morning, the group wakes up. They spot three tumbleweeds heading their way. They're some kind of corrupted pokemon monsters. Combat time. Wendy is hit and heals herself for tons - she gets bonuses to her healing spells.

SBJ has a pokemon guy - D. Pepper. I think they said Pepper is a Farfetch'd, which I googled.

I think this is a Farfetch'd

The DM has created special rules to handle pokemon stuff. He says that on his turn, SBJ gets to choose if he attacks or if D. Pepper attacks on his turn. D.Pepper can only be used like this once per day. I think that means he can summon D. Pepper once per day, as Pepper sticks around for the rest of the session.

D. Pep pummels some tumbleweeds and Wendy kills the last one. Standt sketches them. He does this for every pokemon he comes across, I guess he is cataloguing them or something. The heroes aren't sure what the deal is with these creatures.

The group travels for half a day and comes to the ravine. There's a rock with a rope tied around it. The rope drops into the ravine. They see claw marks in the rock, too. The group assumes that Ephraim Oakheart went down there.

The group climbs down. Wendy can tell this place was carved out by dwarves. There's stairs heading down into darkness. Three rat creatures creep up. They're called rattata. D. Pepper scares them off.

The group climbs down the stairs. There's a dwarven fortress down there. In the fortress, the group spots a pit trap in front of a door. Emojis creates an ice bridge with shape water - a cantrip I have never seen anybody use before (it's from the Elemental Evil Player's Companion).

The room beyond has dead goblins. One goblin is actually impaled and pinned to the wall by a spear. There's a word inscribed in the wall: "Dragonite."

Meepo!

The group investigates a few rooms. They find a magic barrel that can fill with drinkable water. They come upon a scared kobold. It's Meepo! Yes, Meepo from the Sunless Citadel, one of the more popular NPCs from 3rd edition.

Meepo says that goblins busted in here and stole his dragon. Meepo joins the party and that is where we stop. I wonder if Ephraim is the dragon? Is the dragon actually a dragonite?

Timestamps

• (1:12:51) The complicated family tree of Emojis 
• (14:04) Nice meeting you
• (22:50) The group purposely makes a bad decision

Overall

Awesome Group: This is a great group of players. They are just fun, nice people. Out of all the streams I've watched so far, this is the only one that kept my attention the whole way through. I have to say that I bet once they've got a bunch of sessions under their belt and understand the game, they are going to be a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

This Feels Like Pure D&D: On a lot of these streams, the group doesn't seem too comfortable. There is usually at least one player who seems like they don't really want to be there. I particularly get that vibe from Nate on Dice, Camera, Action. Do the players get paid for doing that show? Because with Nate, it sometimes feels like he's there 'collecting a paycheck,' so to speak.

On this show, everyone wants to be there and they are enjoying learning the game. They are there to have fun and it makes the show ten times better. They get pretty excited whenever a Pokemon concept enters the game. It only takes me a second to google the creature they are interacting with and I can follow along just fine.

Fortress Needed Some Punching Up: I'd say the dwarven fortress needed something more in it. It felt really empty. It's cool to have basic encounters like pit traps, but I think that it needed some more development. The group was clearly itching for another combat.

Unique Style: This campaign has a lot of charming light fantasy elements: The crystal flower (which I love), the cryptic tattoos, and the bright feel of the game really make it stand out. Most campaigns shoot for "Dark & Gritty," so it is really refreshing to see the opposite.

Available as Audio: This show is also available as an audio podcast! I think all of these D&D shows should be offered in an audio format, as it's easier to keep up when you can listen to them in the car or wherever.

This is a nice breezy show. They all seem like great people that I'd want to know in real life. Honestly, if I were running one of these D&D stream channels, I'd be keeping my eye on some of these players and snatching them up for my shows.

This is a recap/review of the live D&D broadcast on twitch where the new story was announced: Storm King's Thunder. There's also tons and tons of other announcements. At the end there is a live game run by Matt Mercer. I'm going to review that in a separate article. 
 
You can watch this here.

This event takes place in a hobby store in LA. 

Here's a quick list of the things on the show:

• Alcohol: Allison drinks D&D drinks.
• D&D Culture: Cliff talks to Nathan Stewart and Chris Perkins about the D&D brand.
• Storm King Game: We watch the Dungeon Bastard and Satine Phoenix play some D&D.
• Buddy Cops: Greg Tito and Trevor Kidd are best buddies. They chat with Liz Schuh and Cliff.
• Storm King's Thunder Details: Chris Perkins gives us tons of info. I wrote down a comprehensive list.
• Another New Book: Mike Mearls tells us about other products, including Volo's Guide to Monsters.
• Force Grey: Allison talks with Matt Mercer about his new D&D show - Force Grey: Giant Hunters. 
• Acquisitions, Inc: We learn about the new Acquisitions, Inc D&D show.
• Neverwinter MMO: We learn about Storm King's Thunder content.
• Force Grey: We talk with Ashley and Jonah. 
• Fantasy Grounds: Online play stuff.
• Virtual Reality: Jane Fang shows us some VR stuff.
• Force Grey: We talk with Utkarsh, Shelby and Brian Posehn.

Technical Difficulties: There are sound adjustment problems throughout this broadcast. It happens mostly when we cut from one thing to another. You can still hear what's going on but it can get annoying after a while.

Alcohol

We start off with our host Allison Haislip talking to a bartender who is making drinks in the store. He makes her a yogurt-based soft drink that has white peaches from Japan in it. She likes it. Then she tries three more drinks. I have a thing for bullet points, so try this on for size:

• Mimic Chest: Flavored ice cube in the shape of gems.
• Chauntea's Bounty: I couldn't hear what was in this drink. Allison is officially buzzed.
• Dragon's Breath: It's got cherries in it. The bartender sets it on fire as if it were a Flaming Mo. He uses some device to burn wood chips or something. Wow, it's got smoke coming out of it. She likes this one. I'll talk more about her in a bit, but Allison seems so perfect for this kind of job. She has such a big personality.

D&D Culture

Cliff Broadway is the "XSN Fantasy Host." From what I gather, he's a Lord of the Rings fan and is an actor/producer. He talks with Nathan Stewart, the guy who manages the D&D Brand. They talk about how D&D is becoming "cool" and Cliff likens it to being "rock & roll." Cliff has a great radio voice.

Cliff talks about his love for Castle Amber. Nathan says that he started playing D&D when he was 12. He played with his older cousin and his friends. Cliff is very touchy-feely with the people he talks to.

We cut to Allison outside. She is by some mountain dew stand. There's no sound. She gets a pudding with a D&D logo cookie on it. Still no sound.

We abruptly cut back to Cliff. He lets us know that Allison's microphone is being fixed. Here comes Chris Perkins. For a minute, our video is mirrored. The logos on everyone's shirts are backwards.

Cliff goes off again on how D&D is cool now. Chris explains that people who played D&D as kids are now very successful and they are defining our culture.

Chris talks about all the snazzy D&D stuff in the store. He says:  

"There's a whole room full of chocolate bars. I shit you not."

It always amuses me when Chris swears. I never see it coming.

Storm King Game

Back to Allison. She's in the store at a table where the Dungeon Bastard is playing D&D. How come he's not running this game? Ah.. because D&D employee Chris Lindsay is running the intro of Storm King's Thunder.

He drew a heck of a map. We watch them play. Allison has a lot of fun reactions. She's one of those people who was born to be in front of the camera.

The group is in a cavern and they're fighting with something that has short legs. The DM says it's a giant but there's no large mini on the map. Maybe it's a half-giant or something.

One player vaults over her allies and tries to grapple the giant..? She makes a bunch of rolls and chokes the giant out! Awesome.

We get a graphic that tells us that she is Satine Phoenix. Google tells me she is an artist and actress. Time magazine calls her "The Queen of D&D." She seems awesome. I want to watch this game.

Buddy Cops

We see Greg Tito and Trevor Kidd. These two are so much fun together. They tell us that Matt Mercer will be running a new D&D show. They talk about the pudding truck outside. There are also taco trucks.

We are joined by Liz Schuh. She's their boss. She seems like a nice lady. There's a virtual reality headgear thing in the store that people are using.

Our video goes out for about a minute. When we come back, Greg and Trevor run down the list of people playing in Matt Mercer's game tonight. They talk a bit about what they like to play in D&D.

Trevor likes playing warlocks. He plays in Mike Mearls real life campaign and gives us some details. In the Mearls world, elves are the bad guys. The good guys are devils. That sounds pretty cool.

Greg Tito likes playing haughty elves and wizards. His greatest character was a 22nd level half elf ranger in 3e. His name was Todhedron, aka "Toad." He had almond eyes and ears. I'll see if I can work this dude into my Planescape campaign.

Cliff joins us. We learn that Cliff is the West Coast Dragon Dice Champion. Wow. Apparently there are people out there who continue to play Dragon Dice.

Dragon Dice is the game that some claim put TSR in dire financial straits in the 90's. When TSR CEO Lorraine Williams saw promising initial sales figures while trying to decide how many sets of an expansion to produce, she supposedly cried out, "Order a million!"

I'm pretty sure Cliff could talk for hours. He talks about Dragonlance, the D&D comic, Grendel comics, you name it.

We cut back to the stage. Allison doesn't know we're live. She is telling the crowd about the time she was chasing a guy who stole her phone in Italy. She is quite a character.

Someone lets her know that we're live. She gives a big speech about D&D and how she didn't play it growing up. She says that when she played the game as an adult, she finally understood the appeal.

She brings out Chris Perkins and now we get to the good stuff.

Storm King's Thunder

Chris unloads tons and tons of information on us:

Levels: This adventure is for characters level 1-11.

The Setting: It's set in the Forgotten Realms and the villains are giants. The land was once ruled by dragons and Giants who were at war for centuries.

The Giant God is Angry: In Tyranny of Dragons, the dragons tried to bring Tiamat back. The giants did nothing. The giant god Annam the All-Father was angry that his giants didn't oppose the dragons. Annam broke The Ordning - the societal structure that defines giantkind. In the Ordning, storm giants are at the top and hill giants are at the bottom. Now that's all out the window.

The Bad Guys: Evil giants go out in the world and do terrible things so they can become the new kings of giantkind. We get a rundown of the bad guys:

• Hill Giants: They plunder farms. Their chief's name is "Goo."
• Stone Giants: Led by a religious zealot who is being duped by an earth primordial.
• Frost Giants: Frost Giant Jarl Storvald has a fleet of longships with sails made of dragon's wings. They are looking for the ring of winter. Storvald wants to bring about an age of everlasting ice.
• Fire Giants: Duke Zalto has an awesome plan. His family is at a forge, using slaves to dig up an ancient colossus to unleash on the world.
• Cloud Giants: Looking for ancient troves of dragon magic. They are capturing and torturing ancient dragons!
• Storm Giants: King Hekaton is missing. Nobody knows where he's gone. His court is in disarray and there's a power struggle between his three daughters.

Factions: There are giant allies as well. They want the Ordning restored. The group will have some options. Do they want to kill all of the giants or do they want to make an alliance with those giants who want the Ordning restored?

You Can Become a Giant: The scope is big. The locations are gigantic. The heroes will actually have the chance to become giants.

Mystery Villain: There's a mysterious villain behind the scenes who Chris says will be the death of many parties in the year to come. This villain traces it's origins to the beginning of the realms. Ed Greenwood created this bad guy. I have no idea who this could be.

Here comes Mike Mearls! I think that Mearls is really good at these presentations. He's very polished.

Rune Magic: The key to defeating the giants will involve rune magic. Runes can be used to get the giants to work together. I guess this helps explain the level range, which seems low for fighting giants.

Release Dates:

• Game stores get this book on August 26th.
• Wide release is on September 6th. 

Other Products Coming Out:

• D&D Storm King's Thunder miniatures from Wizkids.
• New Board Game: Assault of the Giants.
• Gale Force Nine is making unpainted miniatures.

But wait, what's this?

Another New Book

Volo's Guide to Monsters:

• Lore: This book will have expanded lore on mind flayers, yuan ti, and other monsters.
• New Monsters: It will have 100 new monsters!
• Races: It has stats for playable races including Tritons and Firbolgs.
• Experiment: Limited edition cover by hydro74 only available in game stores. That's an experiment, they're going to see how it does.

We cut to a taped moment between Perkins and Matt Mercer. Perkins loans Mercer his "evil dice." The red paint on them is actually the blood of players, says Chris.

Force Grey

Someone Check Pulses: Allison introduces Matt Mercer on stage. This crowd is killing me. Maybe they are just mic'd poorly, but it is coming off like they are completely silent. Everyone who gets on stage just dies a death. Make some noise, people! I swear I can almost hear crickets chirping.

Matt says that way back when, he had a bad DM. That's what made him become a DM. Matt has done voices for over 100 video games. He did a voice in Overwatch. One dude in the crowd comes out of his coma and is excited about that.

Force Grey: This new campaign he is running is called Force Grey: Giant Hunters. They kept saying the name, but I couldn't make out what it was. Forest Grey? Force Cage? I had to google it.

Force Grey are mercenaries located in Waterdeep. They are a special 'black ops' team that operates outside the law.

Tonight, the players of Force Grey will be playing through a prologue for a video series that will air throughout the summer. Matt hasn't run anything in the Realms for 15 years and he's a bit nervous.

Acquisitions, Inc


We talk with Jerry Holkins about a new upcoming show: Acquisitions, Inc: The Series. The adventure they play through will be a lead-up to Storm King's Thunder. The climactic session of this series will be a live game at PAX West. It will be right here on youtube.

Neverwinter MMO

Neverwinter time. Allison talks with the head developer, Rob Overmeyer. This freaking audience. Rob asks the crowd: "Who here plays Neverwinter?"

One guy claps slowly about three times. Then... silence. I want to die.

Here's the highlights:

• We see a trailer. There's giants in Icewind Dale.
• You can meet Wulfgar and Cattie-Brie.
• Neverwinter is going to be available on the PS4 this summer.

Force Grey

Allison talks with Ashley and Jonah, two of the players who are about to play through the first session of Force Grey. Jonah has tried a few times in his life to play D&D. Each time, the campaign fizzled quickly.

Ashley's character is named Dagny. She has a pet mouse with wheel legs. She's a tinkerer. She worships Gond, god of invention. Her holy symbol has another purpose, but Ashley won't tell us more.

Jonah's character Joppa is a monk and recluse. His character loves fishing. He does the special ops thing for the money.

Jonah is real loose and funny. So much so that the crowd lurches to life and actually laughs out loud a few times. This man has done the impossible! He seems like a real cool guy.

Fantasy Grounds

Allison talks with Doug Davison, the dude who run Fantasy Grounds. It is a site to play D&D online. They'll have all of the Storm King's Thunder stuff will be online there on August 26th. They'll have player's maps and DM maps.

Then we go outside and talk with a dude who made a mural on the outer wall of Meltdown.

Virtual Reality


Allison talks with Jane Fang, who works for this virtual reality company. Jane's enchanting demeanor is making me swoon. I'll do my best to continue to report this accurately. We see some footage of the VR. Here's a picture:

Yes, that is a dude with a sword floating in front of him. His legs and arms do not move. He slides around.

This company has been working with D&D and they're still refining the programming. Apparently you can buy these headsets right now. Forgotten Realms author R.A. Salvatore tried it and bah gawd, he loved it. He was sword-fighting with his fans.

They held a virtual reality comedy show with Reggie Watts. 1,200 people joined in to watch via VR, which is a world record.

This is so weird. They want you to use VR to play D&D at a virtual table. When I think of virtual reality and D&D, I think of you being your character and traveling in the campaign world! Not sitting at a table playing D&D in virtual reality!

I've always thought that pen and paper RPGs won't become obsolete until they have the ability to make video games that allow you to literally do anything. We're getting closer, but we're not there yet.

Elsewhere, we talk with a guy who works in movie design. The audio is low. He painted a Drizzt mini.

Force Grey

Allison talks with Brian Posehn, Utkarsh and Shelby. They are the other players in Force Grey. Brian says that he's been playing D&D with the same group in L.A. for 15 years. Chris Hardwick was one of the original players. Apparently Chris will be joining Force Grey in future sessions.

Shelby has never played D&D before. Utkarsh has never played before either. He thinks this game is "improv with wizards." Ohhh boy.

Posehn is Calliope, a female half elf bard. Wears leather armor, has a lute that can turn into a crossbow. Vision impaired, 19 charisma.

Shelby is a dwarf fighter. She says that her character has a lot of "body points." Ohhhhhhhhh boy. She has a flying shield but she's afraid of flying.

Utkarsh is playing Hitch. He's a rogue and he doesn't believe in god or taxes. Women love him, until they don't. He has daggers that never run out. He finds Calliope to be quite attractive.

My Unsolicited Opinion: I'm sure the Matt Mercer game will be fun, but wow did that last interview give me the heebie jeebies.

I'm going to have to be "that guy" for a second. There's a 95% chance that once I watch Force Grey I will be proven completely wrong. But these are my thoughts:

They decided to get Matt Mercer to run a game for celebrity types. That's cool. I assume each of these people has a following and that they'll attract people outside the RPG world to come check out the game. That's awesome.

But they brought in a number of people who know absolutely nothing about D&D. That rubs me the wrong way. I am worried that we're going to get some players who are here just to cash a paycheck. I get that vibe from some players on some of the other shows I've watched and it is really throwing me.

Don't get me wrong. New players are awesome. But when I see the Dungeon Bastard and Satine Phoenix right there in the building, I ask myself: "Why aren't they in the game?"

They play D&D! Heck, Satine Phoenix is the "Queen of D&D." Why am I not seeing her on any of these shows? The Dungeon Bastard has been around for years and he plays all the time.

I guess the thinking is that the people they chose have some kind of following or cache that will help the brand. In my opinion, you could have had a few of those types and mixed in some veterans.

Again, I am probably 100% wrong. That's just my initial knee jerk reaction.

I'm about to watch Force Grey right now, so we'll see how it all works out.

Force Grey: Giant Hunters is a campaign run by Matt Mercer, the DM of Critical Role. This "preview session" was run in front of a live crowd as part of the D&D Meltdown event in L.A.

You can watch this on twitch here.

Chris Hardwick will play next week. His character is a wizard.

The Party

(Ashley Johnson) Dagny Halvor - Half-Orc Cleric
(Shelby Fero) Katya Horn - Dwarf Fighter
(Jonah Ray) Joppa - Human Monk
(Utkarsh Ambudkar) Hitch - Human Rogue
(Brian Posehn) Calliope - Half-Elf Bard?

There are more details on the characters here

This session is the origin story. We get to see the group meet each other for the first time.

We start off with Brian Posehn's character. Calliope has a deep voice. She's apparently part of some wizard experiment that goes wrong. The guy in charge says: "Time itself should slow. Stand between those ivory pillars."

She does so. Calliope's vision goes dark. The last thing she hears is the guy saying: "Ohh shit."

That's all we see of Calliope. Brian just sits on the stage for the rest of the session. 

Matt goes into a detailed introduction of the Forgotten Realms. We are in the City of Waterdeep. We get a look at Jonah's character first...

Joppa brings a bunch of fish to his shack. He's an old, whiskery, lonely fellow. He notices that his door is ajar. He goes around to the back and peeks in the window. Someone is in there checking out his smutty novels. He is hoping it's a sexy lady in a robe to act out his fantasies. He goes in.

To Joppa's disappointment, it's a man. The man hands him a scroll. Joppa has been summoned to Blackstaff Tower. Blackstaff Ijira herself. I have no idea if I got the spelling right.

Joppa says he will go right after he gives himself a full release, if you know what I mean. The guy tells him there's no time for that.

Elsewhere.. Katya Horn the dwarf comes home from what I think is a construction job. Hitch, Utkarsh's character, is living on her couch. He has to pee so bad and someone's after him. He whoever was chasing him runs off. Hitch stole a bunch of gold off the guy.

They argue a bit and we get to see that these two have known each other for a long time. 

There's a knock at the door. Hitch hides under the couch. It is a robed figure - a woman with fair features. She immediately spots Hitch despite his high roll. She tells them that they have been summoned to Blackstaff Tower.

Hitch asks her if she's eaten anything. Hitch likes her and he quietly begs Katya not to screw this up for him.

We jump to a repair shop. There are piles of metal, scrap, gears and a partially completed grandfather clock. Also in the shop is a symbol of Gond, god of invention. A raggedy half-orc woman is working diligently: Dagny. This is Ashley's character.

A 6 year old boy named Sebastian, comes in. He likes to watch Dagny work. Matt does a great little kid voice. I don't think I know anybody who can pull one off, but he did it. The guy is amazing.

Sebastian's father comes in. He's Dagny's boss. Ogden has a big mustache. It's time for Sebastian to go to bed. The kid leaves after Dagny gives him some cool gadgets.

A figure in a hooded robe is at the door. It's a young man with long blonde hair. He has a scroll. Dagny is being summoned to Blackstaff Tower. She asks him if he's hungry. The players do a lot of playing off of each others antics for laughs. I'm pretty sure everyone asks a PC or an NPC if they're hungry by the end of the session.

The group meets each other in Blackstaff Tower (except for Calliope). Joppa wants to know if there is going to be an orgy. He sees Dagny and they bond over the fact that they both read the note and were told the exact same message by the cloaked person. Joppa asks her if she's hungry and blurts out how lonely he is.

Hitch asks him if it's Joppa with a soft J.

They meet a guy named Jorman. Hitch spots a floating gem and wants to steal it. Katya talks him down.

The heroes are led to a room with a red glyph on the floor. The group meet Blackstaff Ijira. She's short, has black hair and she has a staff with a wolf's head carved on it.

She has been tasked with creating a faction: Force Grey. This team will go on missions for the City of Waterdeep. In return, they will receive amnesty from the law, gold and respect.

Katya needs to know how much gold. Ijira magically summons a chest spilling over with gold.

The heroes will be on call. When needed, they must answer Ijira's summons and complete their mission. The group starts to try her patience with more questions and haggling. Her eyes and her staff glow blue.

Here's our first mission: The Sun Dragon, ally of the watchful order, has asked for aid. The group must travel to the Sword Mountains. There, they must find a "maiden statue" to summon the dragon.

That's where we stop. This show will appear on Nerdist.com.

Overall

Improv D&D: When I wrote about the Meltdown event, I expressed concern that there were too many new players who didn't seem to know the first thing about D&D. While it is true that some of them really don't know anything about the game, it doesn't seem to matter.

This truly is "improv with wizards" and it worked out fine. It's nice to see this style of game, where it's all about comedy. I don't know if future sessions will be in front of a live crowd or not, but I'm fine with it either way.

Some of the players did lean too much on improv to the point that they were grinding the game to a halt, but to their credit they sensed it and nipped it in the bud. It didn't really matter because there wasn't anything tangible to do in the session, anyway. It was literally just them meeting each other.

Every single character is distinct and each player brings something good to the table.

Matt's Voices: I realize that this is the guy's real job, but I want to talk about just how good Matt's NPC voices are. They all sound completely different. Here's some of the voices he did on this show:

• Crabby Old Wizard
• The Hero Voice: Matt does the hero voice, period. 
• The Gentle Woman: Not a lot of guys can pull off the soft woman voice without sounding silly, but he does it effortlessly.
• The Little Boy: I said it above, but I'll say it again. Very few men can do a little kid voice without coming off goofy or screechy. He does it just right. It's amazing.

When I do a voice, I almost always lean toward a comedic version of that voice to hedge my bets. I don't feel confident enough in some of my voices to deliver serious dialogue. I really admire Matt's skill in this department and I am going to try to learn from him.

Jonah: This guy is just hilarious. You get the sense that any show he's on is worth watching.

Force Grey is probably going to be very good, so check it out if you have the time!

Today we're going to check out another D&D show: DNDUI, which stands for Dungeons & Dragons Under the Influence. This is an audio show, though they are starting to branch out into videos like this one.

I didn't start at episode 1 because the first four seasons use 4th edition D&D. While I love 4e, I'm kind of done with that system. I asked the DNDUI guys what show I should do, and they suggested this one.

I started off listening to this recap show.

Episode 248 is right here.

I think this is the kind of show that you're either going to really like or really not. DNDUI is all about getting drunk and playing D&D. It's very chaotic and there's tons of foul language. You'll be hearing the phrase "blowing your load" a lot.

The shows are just an hour long, which feels like the perfect length.

There's some special rules we should go over:

Drunk Rating: If you look at the listing of each show, you'll see a "drunk number" next to it. That number tells you how drunk the group got in that session. 1-3 is not very drunk. 9's and 10's are pretty sloppy, I guess. 

Random Shots: The drinking gets underway at the start of a session. Each player needs to roll a d20. Their roll determines how many shots they have to take right then:

• 1-9 = 2 shots
• 10-18 = 1 shot
• 19-20 = none!

Special Numbers: In addition to critical hits, there are two other numbers on the d20 that have special effects. These numbers are determined at the start of the session. The effects:

• Pitfall of possible peril
• Gift from the gods of gaming

The group didn't roll these numbers in this session so I'm not sure exactly how it works.

The DM is Marco, who tries his best to corral the drunk and disorderly gaming group through the session. You can tell he has a passion for the game and puts a lot of work into the campaign.

The Party

(CJ) Milst the Organic - Dwarf Fighter
(Dan) Oz Alduin - Changeling Paladin
(Adriano) Dr. Sullivan Prince - Human Warlock
(Raff) Achoo - Gnome Wizard

From what I understand, earlier in the campaign the main group of heroes split off and formed their own sub-groups of adventurers. So each session jumps to a different group of characters led by a "main" character of the campaign. Oz is the main guy in this session.

Bios for the main characters are here.

These are the main characters of the overall campaign

Last Time: The group chased bandits out of their lair. This has lead to a situation where the heroes need to defeat seven deadly assassins right in a row. I think that's a really cool idea and I am going to steal it for my game! This takes place in some kind of tavern or club with a stage.

Drunk Levels 3-6

We start off with a quick audio intro and then the group does this bizarre live musical improv. It's really weird.

The DM recaps where they left off and tells the group that they will be facing the first assassin - Elantra. He immediately regrets naming the assassin "Elantra" as the group goes nuts coming up with a dozen jokes about the Hyundai Elantra, which has a hands-free smart trunk, automatic emergency breaking and is really giving the Toyota Corolla a run for it's money.

Elantra wears a creepy mask and has gold chains wrapped around her limbs. These chains come to life and are basically monsters unto themselves.

Milst charges the stage and does a pile of damage to the assassin. Elantra animates her golden chains. They coil around the room like live snakes.

We learn that Milst's greatest fear is fermentation. Elantra's magic mask taps into his fears. The mask becomes barley and hops - Elantra's face is fermenting before his eyes. Milst is frightened and runs.

Oz does 40 points of damage to Elantra, which injures her greatly. Dr. Sullivan Prince pulls out his hand axe and licks it. Then he sends purple voodoo skulls her way and curses her - she'll have to make a WIS save or do nothing on her turn. I believe this effect is forgotten on the next turn, but remembered on the one after.

Everybody is drunk, so throughout this show effects and conditions are forgotten. There's a point where one character is wrapped in chains, but on his next turn nobody remembers and he takes his turn as if he was free. Then the DM remembers but they don't want to rewind time, so they just roll with it.

I'm glad they didn't stop the game to fix it. I guess this is just something that is going to happen on this type of show.

Someone rolls a natural one and they roll on their custom critical miss chart. The result: The dwarf magically becomes smaller. The DM is able to flavor it by saying that one of Elantra's failed spell effects ricochets around the room and strikes him.

I was wondering how the magic critical miss effects work. I like that they find a way to explain it so it's not completely out of the blue.

Then we briefly can't remember the initiative order. Do they not write this down? The DM remembers after a moment and we resume.

Elantra somehow shuts the lights out in the room, which is a cool development in a battle that I think I need to do more of. The group points out that part of this place is on fire thanks to a fireball spell that went off earlier, so there's dim lighting, at least.

Oz squares off against Elantra, puts his fist through her stomach and kills her. Then he stands at the edge of the stage and spits.

That's the end of the episode. It's quite 4e to have an hour long combat. I do like the idea of having each session revolve around a 'set piece' encounter, as long as it is of consequence.

Timestamps

I don't think I can put in timestamp links so you'll have to manually scroll.

(11:35) The legendary chains of Elantra
(45:34) You have to take your next turn without moving your lips

Overall

Original Ideas: Most D&D shows are pretty similar to each other. This one is completely different. There is nothing else like it, as far as I know. The drinking rules add a lot.

Critical Miss Chart: I love this chart and I love that the group actually gets excited when somebody rolls a natural one. I think this is my favorite homebrewed thing anybody has made for 5e so far. You can get this chart for free here.

Shockingly Focused: You would think that the focus of the group is on comedy, but it really is about the game. Despite the copious amount of drinking, the group is still intent on playing the game and achieving their goals.

Looking Stuff Up: One thing I noticed is that there was a surprising amount of time spent looking up rules. I did not expect that. It happens on almost none of the other shows I have seen. I would say that this group should make themselves some cheat sheets that list their spells, DCs, bonuses to hit and special abilities so that way they can keep thing moving.

Trust Issues: I could be wrong, but judging from this session there seems to be a bit of tension in the group. I got the vibe that the players don't trust the DM completely to "play fair" and they questioned a number of his rulings. I always say that it is the player's job to know what their powers and spells do. When they don't, they shouldn't fault the DM for looking it up and making a quick, drunken ruling that may or may not be correct.

Challenging the Group in a Fair Way: On the flip side, I get the sense that in this session, the DM was determined to challenge his group and it came off a bit like he was cutting corners to do it. He might not have been doing that, but the group seemed wary of it.

I think the key to being able to challenge your players without making things too hard/easy is to know exactly what the party's capabilities are. If you know what spells they can cast, their bonuses to hit, their save DCs, how much damage they can do per round and their AC, you can craft villains in advance that are mathematically challenging and it won't feel arbitrary at the table.

Even then, you have to allow for the fact that the group might come up with a fun and clever plan that wipes out your bad guy quickly. In that case, just roll out the next assassin! That's D&D. You never know what's going to happen. The group certainly shouldn't steamroll every foe, but you should be willing to allow it to happen when things unfold that way.

"Pure D&D": What I am noticing when I watch/listen to these things is that there are two types of D&D shows:

• "Performance D&D": This type of show is very aware that people are watching and everyone is trying to be entertaining. Many players come off as reserved, too, as they know they're being watched and don't want to look foolish. I don't blame them!
• "Pure D&D": These shows don't worry too much about the audience. They play the game and work under the assumption that the game itself is entertaining enough. There's still some thought put in to pacing and keeping things lively for the audience, but in the end these shows are not "improv with wizards." They are D&D games, warts and all.

In my opinion, DNDUI is "Pure D&D." Yeah they know they have an audience and they talk about it openly, but these guys are still focused on the game and getting drunk.

I'm not saying that one type is better than the other. Honestly I haven't seen enough of either type of show to really form an opinion on that.

Admirable Dedication: There is a lot to admire here. These guys have been doing this for 3 years and they have a ton of shows under their belt. They have built a nice-looking site that gives you a lot of info. They even have a web comic!

I am happy to see people out there who are in it for the long haul. This group is driven by nothing more than a love of the game and possibly a passion for alcohol.

Yesterday I was a player again in my friend's monthly Eberron game. I don't like being a player, but I think it's important to do it because it helps me keep in touch with what it is like to play in someone's else's game. I have lost perspective many times as DM and it can lead to unpleasant things.

Last time we played, my character was killed by a troll. The group had me raised and now I have resurrection sickness. That means I have a -4 to most rolls. The penalty lessens by one each day.

I cooked up some special "sickness traits," which the DM approved. On of the traits will go away each day:

1. My eyes are totally black.
2. Animals stare at me.
3. No sense of taste.
4. I have a creeping shadow that has a mind of its own.

I don't know if I've told you guys about my character. I'll try not to bore you and give you some highlights. My guy is Endarian Nimbus, a level 7 sorcerer:

• He's tall and barrel-chested. Bald, has a big black beard. Very hairy.
• He talks a lot like Prince Vultan, the hawkman along with plenty of Sean Connery.
• Drinks a lot, loves to carouse. When he's happy, he does that cossack dance where you kick your legs.

Last session, I bought my own grave plot and planted a magic bean from my bag of beans in it. I rolled a 100 on the chart and a beanstalk grew out of it. Today's adventure was all about finding what was up there.

The Cloud Jungle

Cloud Giant

We climbed up, and found that there was a jungle on the cloud. It turned out this was the home of a cloud giant, who had elf slaves. The giant and his ancestors had been hiding up here to keep safe from dragons. Dragons and Giants had a huge war in Eberron long ago.

This giant was actually a warlock! We'd eventually learn that he ended up getting into trouble with demons of Lolth, the spider queen.

We'd also learn that while we were creeping around up here, an undead priest from the graveyard followed us invisibly and made our lives a bit more difficult.

Exploration commenced and we befriended a village of elves who explained what this place was. They pointed us toward the giant's lair - a big building with giant faces carved into it.

Exploring the Giant's Stronghold

We looked around the outside of the building and found a golden egg made of solid gold. I was amused. I assumed we'd end up running into a giant goose, like in the Jack and the Beanstalk. It turned out something else was laying these eggs.

We found a secret entrance in a nostril of one of the stone faces and climbed in.

Our group crept from room to room, freeing elves. We'd tell them to climb down the beanstalk and go to Sharn. We gave them an address of an NPC who could help them get settled.

To our surprise, our hireling was doing pretty well. Each session, we hire a hireling who dies a horrible death almost immediately. The last one was torn apart by gnolls.

The elves told us that in this place was the cloud giant warlock, his girlfriend - a hill giant, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex that laid golden eggs! I was pretty excited, as I don't think I've ever used giants in 5e before and I wanted to see what fighting them was like.

There was a room with magically-heated baths. Inside were two elves who were possessed or evil or something. They attacked us and we knocked them out with no trouble.

We tied them up. Unfortunately, the undead priest ended up killing them and turning them into zombie minions.

During all this creeping around, I looted all sorts of giant-sized stuff into my handy haversack - giant bottles of wine, giant coins, giant bottles of bath oils, etc. Our characters are building a bar in Sharn. I like to take stuff from our adventures and add it to the bar.

The Hill Giant

We fought some more possessed elves, and then we came upon the hill giant lady in her filthy bedroom. Our fighter ran up and immediately took a ton of damage. I dropped a fireball and a shatter spell on her.

Our fighter had a crazy day of rolls. He rolled at least ten natural 20's and about five natural 1's. It made things quite amusing.

During this battle, the zombies started coming down the hallway. We had put our poor hireling out in the hallway for safety, and the zombies thought she looked delicious!

To our shock, she survived most of their attacks and she ran to us. I gave her a potion of healing.

We killed the giant and the zombies. We could hear loud stomping from elsewhere in the complex. It was either the giant or the Tyrannosaurus Rex heading our way. Maybe both! Our fighter had lost over 40 hit points and all we had were some potions of healing. 2d4+2 hit points wasn't going to cut it!

We decided to leave, rest, and come back. We bolted for the front door only to find more zombies outside! Their leader was there, too - the undead cleric. He was a "high priest of The Keeper." Not sure what that is.

Our poor hireling almost got devoured again, but she survived.

We pretty much massacred the cleric and his zombies. I had used almost every spell slot. We fled to the beanstalk.

The Dinosaur

We decided to rest high up on the beanstalk leaves. To our dismay, the giant looked down from the cloud at us. He cast fly on his Tyrannosaurus Rex! The T. Rex flew down and got ready to devour us.

The party wizard got a big grin on her face. She cast dispel magic. The T. Rex plunged right past us and fell to it's death! It was pretty hilarious.

After that, the giant decided to leave us be.

The Inquisitives

During the night, an airship flew toward us. On the ship were Inquisitives, some kind of police in Sharn. The captain was someone my character knew from his days as an airship pilot in the Last War.

This NPC was shady. I trotted on board as they asked about the beanstalk. I schmoozed them with my 18 charisma and told them about the giant, and that we were handling it. The NPC gave me a sneer but told me to bring the cloud giant's head to the Inquisitives so they knew the problem was solved.

I didn't like this NPC's attitude, so I asked to use their bathroom. They actually sent a guard in the privy with me to watch me pee!  I 'accidentally' peed on the guard's leg. While he recoiled in disgust, I planted a bean from my bag of beans in a potted plant. After that, we got off the ship real quick.

We watched them fly away. I rolled the "pink toad" result again. When these toads are touched, they turn into animals - including bears.

The group scolded me for my hijinks, but hey, I'd take the heat if something came of it.

We Might Have a Lolth Problem

We got our rest and we crept back up the stalk. We re-entered the giant's home. We eventually found him trapped in a magic circle. The demons of Lolth had betrayed him. He was pretty much dead, but he could talk.

He told us that the demons of Lolth had possessed some of the elves.. the elves we sent down into Sharn. That's a problem!

We looted the place, destroyed an evil altar and got out of there. We used our griffon to come back and transport piles of loot. We got 6 golden eggs (1,000 gp each), 240 platinum, and a huge pile of cloud giant wine in giant bottles.

The group also found some magic items. There was a staff of thunder and lightning, a magic longsword, and a dagger of venom.

This group of people are very unselfish. The wizard politely offered to give me the staff. We ended up rolling for it. She won, but she seemed like she felt bad.

I honestly don't care if I get the item! I mean, there will be more. I'll just grab the next cool thing. It is very reassuring to play in a group where every single person is so thoughtful. Many times in D&D you'll have one or two people in the group who get real grabby when it comes to loot and things get intense.

In this group, there's none of that. It's nice.

Simple Doesn't Mean Bad

If you've read any of my campaign summaries, you might notice that there's an awful lot of stuff going on in them. I have a fear that my games will be boring and so I overcompensate to a degree.
I've been watching a lot of D&D streams. Here's some of the scenarios I watched:

• 50 goats were stolen by kobolds. The group went to a cave and got them back.
• A group needed to find a guy. They traveled to an ancient dwarven fortress and searched for him.
• A group fought an assassin with golden chains.

When making campaigns and adventures, I often try really hard to avoid making something cliched or straightforward. I don't want the players to be bored and I don't want the game to feel flat.

But watching these things and playing in this session, I was reminded that a simple plot is often best. It's really OK to make an adventure where a princess is captured and you have to go to the bad guy's castle to save her.

I think that is because that while simple adventures are basic and might come off as lazy on a TV show, actually playing through the scenario in a role-playing game is something different entirely.

On a TV show, the heroes will react in predictable ways. But in D&D, who the heck knows what the players will do. In an RPG game, the princess might die during the rescue! The group might all fall in a lava pit and die.

So the cliched scenario isn't boring because it's still unpredictable.

It was another good session! I think next time we'll be battling sahuagin. We got a card from the Deck of Many Things. We only need four more, and then we'll have assembled the deck.

Tonight we played through a bunch of huge stuff! We found out what happened after one of the heroes died, and then we began an old 2e adventure - For Duty & Deity.

This recap is ridiculously long. Here's a quick rundown:

1. Bidam confronted Raja Khan, the killer of Theran.
2. We found out that a special thing happened when Theran died.
3. We learned a lot of secrets of Sigil (homebrewed).
4. All of the people linked to Bidam's special power are in one place.
5. There's a new building in Deadbook Square.
6. The group still really hates The Greatest Thief in Sigil.
7. The heroes went to Grazzt's Triple Layer in the Abyss to rescue a goddess made mortal.
8. There were a lot of sleazy hijinks and the group "rescued" a whole bunch of creatures.
9. The group started traveling through the viper tree forest and ran into their devil rivals.

When I read For Duty & Deity, I was shocked at how little adventure content there was. Half of it is just reprinted material from Tales From the Infinite Staircase. I dug around and found a whole pile of material that I added. I used ideas from:

• The Fiendish Codex I 
• An awesome, massive Grazzt article by James Jacobs for Dragon Magazine #360
• "The Iggwilv/Grazzt Affair," Dragon Magazine #414
• Court of the Dark Prince (Dungeon Magazine #212), a 4th edition adventure all about Grazzt

Iggwilv summons Grazzt

Next session, the group is going to have to sneak in to The Argent Palace (Grazzts home), rescue the goddess made mortal and maybe check out the Library of Secrets (from the Dungeon adventure).

As far as I know, James Jacobs is the only person to detail any of Grazzts 66 ivory towers. That guy is an idea machine and I am so glad he took a stab at it. His work will be the foundation of next session.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard
* NPCs - Fall From Grace (Succubus Paladin), Selinza ("Litorian" Wizard, level 6)

Last Time: Theran the elf wizard died in an explosion! It was a trap set by the rakshasa known as Raja Khan. He had infiltrated the party by magically disguising himself as a mute halfling.

Raja had been stabbed in the eye by Conviva Kettle, a woman who had a thing for Theran. He staggered out into Deadbook Square (a cluster of buildings that the heroes own) and howled in pain. Having heard the explosion, Bidam ran over to investigate.

Conviva was lying at the edge of the inferno, dying. From the nearby shrine came Prince Buttongleam (the unicorn/man who lives by The Unicorn Code). He magically healed Conviva and told her: "Unicorns always lend a helping hand."

Convivia saw Bidam. She pointed at the halfling and yelled: "He killed Theran!"

Bidam was shocked and enraged. The halfling assumed his true form - the rakshasa Raja Khan!

Prince Buttongleam drew his sword and closed in on the villain.

Ignus

From the nearby Umbra Cathedral came Ignus. If you remember, he had been a crazy guy who was covered in flames until the group gave him the Amulet of Flowing Flame. While wearing the amulet he was a normal (if feeble) human.

Ignus looked at the wizard lab engulfed in flame. He realized that if Theran had been wearing the Amulet of Flowing Flame, it would have protected him from the fiery explosion. Ignus cast aside the amulet! He burst into flame and floated off the ground.

He hissed: "I live! Long have I slept! Dreams of flames!" He started launching rays of flame at Raja Khan.

Raja was bleeding from the eye socket. He cast fly on himself and took to the air and fled.

The square that the heroes live in is home to 99 gargoyles. Bidam had the option of having a gargoyle pick him up and chase Raja. Bidam looked around and decided that Raja would have to wait.

Ignus was now a flame-throwing machine. He set fire to another building. Bidam used mage hand to lift the Amulet of Flowing Flame and put it around the neck of Ignus. Ignus was back to normal and plopped to the ground, unconscious.

I didn't expect Bidam to let Raja go. I figured one way or another, Raja would be killed. But he's still around so I'll have to figure out his next move. No way is he coming back to Deadbook Square. The group has way too many allies for him to handle.

Theran's Fate Revealed

Dabuses

Meanwhile.. the last thing Theran remembered, he was caught in an explosion.

He woke up inside a dark stone coffin. He couldn't remember who he was, but he knew about Sigil, the Lady of Pain, all that stuff.

He lifted the lid and was greeted by a dabus (mysterious custodians of Sigil). This is the dabus who owns Ffazablur, the magic sword from Nemesis (I'll refer to this dabus as "Ffazablur" from now on).

Theran was... a dabus. Naked. He had no genitals at all. This fact caused my players to die laughing.

It turned out that Theran the Dabus was somehow inside the Secret City of the Dabuses.

Ffazablur taught him how to hover. Theran found that he could now understand rebuses (the symbol language of the dabuses) and he could make rebuses of his own.

The group had heard a rumor a while back that dabuses are the reborn spirits of people who die in Sigil. I decided I liked this idea and ran with it. So, Theran did die in the explosion. He has been reborn as a dabus with no memory of his former life.

Theran looked at his dabus body in the mirror. Ffazablur noticed something on his side... a strange tattoo. Back at the Dream Well, Theran had gained what the player called a "vagina" in his side - an effect etched into his soul. In this little opening/pocket was a ball of light that contained all of Theran's memories.

The group flipped out as they realized what was about to happen. Theran instinctively pulled out the light and put it in his head. He had regained all of his memories!

I told George, Theran's player, that he could now shift between his dabus form and his elf form. You might remember that Theran was originally a regular elf until the Slaad Lord Renbuu turned him into a dark elf. I gave George a choice of how he wanted Theran to look:

• Regular Elf Theran.
• Dark Elf Theran.
• Dabus Elf Theran: Theran had blue skin, white hair, and horns.

No matter which form he was in, Theran could hover and make rebuses. He also had the dabus ability to repair things.

George chose the hybrid form!

The dabuses were utterly stunned. Only the dabuses and the Lady of Pain were allowed to enter the Secret City of the Dabuses!

Ffazablur showed Theran around. I made up this secret city. I know the Planescape books urge you to leave the Lady of Pain as a mystery, but every single time I use her in a campaign the players love her and want to do stuff with her, so I end up doing all sorts of wacky stuff.

A Phirblas

Theran got a tour of the secret city:

• Hall of Regret: A room dedicated to remembering how Aoskar almost took over Sigil. The Staff of Aoskar that the heroes had recovered and given to the Lady was in here.
• Conduits of Pain: The walls had transparent tubes full of concentrated pain. All of the tubes led to a mysterious chamber that only the Lady of Pain could enter.
• Hall of Vigilance: Full of magic paintings that allow you to watch everyone who is trapped in one of the Lady of Pain's mazes. Theran saw Ravel Puzzlewell in a particularly big painting.
• Hall of Repairs: This room held dabus tools. Ffazablur gave Theran a hammer and clippers. These items are normal tools to most, but in the hands of a dabus the tools can mend (like the spell).
• Hall of Travel: Theran was stunned to see hundreds of portals to every area in Sigil. These portals are invisible and inaccessible to all but dabuses and the Lady. No key is needed to activate these portals. Theran can just fly through.
• Portal to Inphirblau: In Planescape appendix 3, there's a race similar to the dabus called the Phirblas. They have red skin and instead of rebuses, they have written words hovering above them. They live in "one of the first demi-planes," Inphirblau. The whole plane is one big city. The Phirblas are peaceful herbivores who don't age.

Ffazablur told Theran that the Phirblas is the final step of mortal evolution. Dabuses are the second-to-last. I made this up because it seemed cool. So yeah, in my games, when you die, you are reborn as different planar creatures and when your soul has achieved true content and enlightenment, you are reborn as a Phirblas.

The Lady of Pain

The dabuses gathered around Theran. They were baffled. No non-dabus was allowed in the secret city. It should be impossible! One dabus shouted: "You must never leave this city! Our secrets must be preserved!"

Suddenly, the doors to the Lady of Pain's mysterious chamber opened. The Lady hovered towards the dabus who complained. She brushed right by him, turned invisible, and headed into a dabus portal. The dabus saw this as a rebuke. Nobody said anything like that to Theran again.

The Lady went through a dabus portal to Deadbook Square, invisible. Theran was amazed to see that even when the Lady was invisible, he could still see her. This too is a power of the dabus.

Ffazablur said: "Do as you wish, Theran. I believe that the heart Bidam gave the Lady has changed everything."

Theran headed through the secret dabus portal and appeared in Deadbook Square.

Building to the Faction War

Factol Sarin of The Harmonium

Everybody freaked out when they saw half-dabus Theran. People gathered around.

As that happened, the dabus with the decanter of endless water hosed down the wizardly lab building, putting out the fire.

The Harmonium (the Sigil police faction, basically) arrived. The sorted out the whole mess with the drow slavers. The drow didn't have a "slavery permit" and so they were arrested.

The actual Factol (leader) of the Harmonium was here. Once the drow were taken into custody, he asked to speak with Bidam. Factol Sarin had heard of Bidam's exploits and his sword of sharpness. He wanted Bidam to join the Harmonium. He told Bidam that after a trial period, he could become a Factor - one of the Factol's right hand men!

The Factol is actually a lawful good guy. He's a level 16 paladin.

Bidam was really torn. Jessie loves being a member of the Sensates, but this sounded cool, too.

The real reason I did this is that after I run Hellbound ($10 is a steal, IMO), I am running Faction War. By that time, I want both Bidam and Theran to be running their own factions and go to war with other factions for control of Sigil. So I'm getting the ball rolling now.

Bidam told Factol Sarin he'd consider the offer.

Theran's New Power

The group looked at the wizardly lab. It was burnt to a crisp. It looked like it might collapse. A dabus smiled at Theran and handed him a hammer. Theran floated forward, about to see how the mend power worked.

Suddenly.. time slowed.. just like when Bidams power kicks in. Theran was shocked to realize he had the power to reshape the building in an instant! He repaired it good as new just by looking at it!

I added in a mechanic here. He rolls an INT check. This roll determines the level of exhaustion he gets (exhaustion chart is in the back of the Player's Handbook). He rolled bad, so his hit point max was halved!

Everyone in the square was shocked. They watched as the building repaired itself in seconds.

The Next Day

Smoldering Corpse Bar interior

Ignus: Ignus apologized to the heroes. He wanted to give Theran the amulet back. Then, out of the Zactar Cathedral came Umbra! The group hadn't actually seen her in about a year. Somehow in that time she grew to an adult woman with bat wings.

She told Ignus that he was a valued member of the Zactars and she touched him, removing his curse. She handed the Amulet of Flowing Flame back to Theran and warned him that Alzrius the demon lord wanted it back.

Bidam's People: Throughout the day, all of the women that Bidam had 'infected' with metal hearts showed up. They all had some kind of weird incident with their power to cut people by looking at them. They wanted to be 'quarantined. They included:

• Lady Thorncombe: A member of the Sensates who taught magic.
• Yulmanda: The demon lady from the Abyssal realm of Nephrax.
• Urethragoria: The Greek woman from the party town of Sylvania. 
• The Reave Masseuse: She was already in the square. She's a bartender at The Smoldering Corpse.

Fall from Grace said: "It's too bad there's not another building here in Deadbook Square."

Suddenly...! Yep. Theran had the power to create an entirely new building. He grew it right out of the ground. He made it into a kind of dormitory. Once again, everyone in the square gathered around. People were amazed at what Theran could do.

Sigil Scroll: The group checked out the Sigil newspaper. Two people who had crossed Raja Khan had been murdered - Warrin Spellbinder (the clerk from Nemesis) and Thoebe (the other cat lady concubine). The group rightly assumed this was the work of Raja Khan.

Convivia Kettle: It looks like Convivia is officially Theran's girlfriend. She has a permanent scar on her shoulder from Raja Khan's claw swipe. She walked up to Theran and handed him a snack. It was a berry tart. It had sauce on it. This is because Convivia Kettle is the "Saucy Tart" on the Gary Gygax harlot table. Yep. Never a dull moment in this campaign, no sir!

The Rival Dabus: As Theran flirted with Conviva, he saw someone on the street glaring at him. It was Fell, the fallen dabus! To my surprise, Theran hovered over and talked to him in rebus-speak.

Fell was angry because the Lady chose Theran of all people for a special honor - a non-dabus! And here Fell was, doomed to walk as a shamed and "de-frocked" dabus for all eternity.

Theran tried to smooth it over, but Fell backhanded him! I rolled a 19, a mighty slap. Fell stormed off. Theran let him go.

Day Three

Fall From Grace

Promotion: Fall From Grace was promoted to Factor in the Sensates. Again this is more faction stuff. I just want to get the players thinking about the factions so that the Faction War adventure won't feel abrupt. Once I read and prepare Faction War, I'll start foreshadowing it. I'm still working on Hellbound right now.

Fall From Grace was given a Sensate Amulet, which gives her +5 Max HP, a bonus to CHA stuff and an aura of protection.

The Greatest Thief in Sigil: The cranium rats tipped off the heroes - Ash Vodiran had returned to Sigil. A while back, Ash Vodiran broke into their home and stole their stuff (twice). The group ended up handing him over to a paladin lord, who kept Ash in a jail in the Outlands.

Well, last session a beholder attacked the paladin lords citadel. The paladins freed Ash and he killed it. During the battle, the beholder blinded the paladin lord with a magic ray. Ash went on a special adventure and found a cure for the blindness! How could the paladins keep him locked up after that?

The paladin lord rode with Ash to Deadbook Square. The lord gave the group an impassioned speech, telling them that Ash was a good man and he asked them to "..let go of any animosity between you and let this rogue live his life."

Bidam's response took milliseconds: "No."

They hate Ash so much. It is amazing. I run the guy like he is a 'cool' video game character. He's got quips, he fixes his hair a lot and he wears a red jacket with no shirt underneath. He's pretty much a parody of Dante from Devil May Cry.

The heroes started arguing with Ash. They ended up trading some fairly vile insults. The group demanded that Ash leave Sigil forever. Ash said there was no way that was happening.

Somewhere in there, Ash asked where the cat-lady was. He has a thing for Theran's apprentice. She's still off studying with Iggwilv the Witch-Queen.

Ash held his breath and turned insubstantial (that's his special power). Ash left.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with Ash now. He doesn't hate the group, he's just a guy who steals stuff and tries to be cool. While I was writing this, I had some ideas.. I think I'm going to give the group an opportunity to steal from Ash and see what they do.

The Orphanage: Long story short, the creepy kids that the group rescued in The Shadowfell aren't fitting in at the Lawful Good Orphanage run by angels. The were hanging dolls in nooses and doing drawings of cats being killed.

I got to use Wesley Powderbottom, the cherub. I wanted to do a thing where Wesley instantly hates the Strahd doll. It worked big time, it was very funny. In the end, the group let the kids hold onto the hag doll and the Strahd ventriloquist dummy. Wesley Powderbottom vowed to watch the kids like a hawk.

This orphanage is the place the group saved way back in the Great Modron March.

I have no intention of having anything bad happen here with the dolls. It's just a comedy thing. Basically I wanted to do a baby voice and a Barovian accent.

Day Four

Grazzt, ruler of the Triple Layer of Azzagrat

Warning: Grazzt's realm is very "adult." I tried to use polite language, but if you don't like sexual stuff in D&D you should stop reading now!

Incubus: Selinza returned from her stay at Iggwilv's manor. It was time to go to Grazzt's layer to rescue the goddess of love! Selinza handed Theran a bottle full of vapors. He breathed it in and he was partially possessed by an incubus named Ghavish. Ghavish is going to help guide the group through Azzagrat telepathically. He lives in Iggwilv's manor, so he can keep her updated on the group's progress.

Here is their mission:

1. Take the Infinite Staircase to Azzagrat.
2. Search the city of Samora and find Anna Greystockings. She knows how to navigate the city of Zelatar.
3. Pass through the Zrintor Forest to get to Zelatar.
4. Figure out how to navigate the portal/maze that is the city of Zelatar.
5. Break into Grazzt's Argent Palace and rescue the goddess of love.
6. Use the cubic gate to get the heck out of there.

The heroes traversed the Infinite Staircase without incident. They got to the door to Azzagrat. On the landing was a dead guy, killed by a flaming sword. Yep, the devil agents of The Iron Shadow were here. Apparently, the devils also have a mission in Azzagrat.

The adventurers go through the door and appear in the city of Samora. Here's what Samora is like:

• There's a blue sun in the sky.
• The entire first layer is gray and hazy. Everyone here has advantage on Stealth checks.
• There's a constant sound: Muffled wailing of either anguish or ecstasy.
• Lots of Blood War draft dodgers.
• A large portion of the demons who dwell in Azzagrat are Grazzts kids, grandkids, etc.

Ladies Man: Azzagrat is overloaded with beautiful demon ladies! Grazzt is quite the ladies man. I made a list of the different female demon and monster types that are here: Succubi, tieflings, yochlols, mariliths, harpies, lillitu (succubi with broken wings and four tails), ferroliths (4e monsters - ancient succubi covered in metal), erodaemons (Pathfinder monsters - basically the yugoloth version of succubi. Blue skin, third eye), and lots of lamias (woman top half, lion bottom half).

Exploring Samora

Brood Swarm

The group were attacked by a brood swarm (monsters from the Fiendish Codex). I thought they were really cool - a horde of little winged demons who can make string and sew your limbs together. Theran massacred them with a fireball.

The group explored the twisted city of Samora and searched for Anna Greystockings.

Pleasure Pits: Samora is full of these places. They are"...gaudy parlors and perfumed spires." I don't like to put torture or really dark sexual stuff in my games. I wracked my brain and came up with places that were more goofy than sinister.

The very first pleasure palace the group saw had exhausted demons staggering out of the building. The heroes learned that agents of the goddess of love were also in Samora to attempt a rescue. The agents came in here the day before and interrogated the demons in a sexual way.

Some other pleasure pits:

• Tottlers: A place for guys/demons who want to dress up like babies and have their diapers changed.
• The Areolaopolis: This is where you go to have stuff happen to your nipples. It is the ultimate destination for everything nipple-related.
• The Orgasmatorium: This place has a perverted fountain and glory holes. Bidam of course immediately paid 5 gold and stuck his junk in a hole. Some weird slimy tentacle vortex went to work on him.

Chastity Sermon: As the group left the Orgasmatorium, Fall From Grace scolded Bidam. I was thinking over the week that maybe, just maybe, Fall From Grace would end up having a thing for Bidam somewhere down the road. I learned this week that Fall From Grace really is a succubus virgin. She used her wits to avoid all romantic entanglements, even when trapped in Hell.

Bidam is the exact opposite. He's a "man whore," as Jessie puts it.

Fall From Grace gave him a big speech about how he was putting himself in danger and he was spreading these metal hearts that were ruining people's lives.

She told him he should get himself a "chastity codpiece." She offered to show him how to have "intellectual intercourse" (which is what she did at the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts).

Bidam expressed just how lame he thought that idea was, but I think Jessie was slightly intrigued at this development.

Anna wasn't at the Pleasure Pits, so the group checked out...

A Marilith

The Slave Plaza: Jessie loves buying slaves. Not to torture, but to be buddies with. It happens in almost every campaign we play in.

The demons had five slaves for auction. They were non-combatant joke-versions of the MissCliks: Seaborn heroes:

• Maribel the half-minotaur
• Algrund the dwarf
• Bruno, the guy who plays the bongos
• "Dark" Albert, the shady elf
• Donabella Trumpet, the haughty lady who demanded special treatment

I was pretty sure what would happen here, and I was right. Bidam bought them all for a bit under 1,000 gold.

The group now had a crowd of NPCs traveling with them. Bidam bought them clothes.

The Stockyard: This is an encounter right out of For Duty & Deity. The group spotted a stockyard full of herd animals: Cows, sheep, rothe, giant space hamsters and.. two unicorns chained to a post. The unicorns were sickly. Being in the Abyss was killing them.

Ghavish told Theran that the unicorns would be eaten at a feast. Their horns were to be used as toothpicks.

And thus a rescue was underway. Thanks to the stealth advantage in this realm, the heroes were able to pull off some serious sneaking.

Dark Albert picked the lock of the main gate. The group riled up the herd animals and created a stampede. As the herd rampaged out into the streets of Samora, they freed the unicorns and covered them in tarps.

Things were going perfectly until the final stealth check. They were spotted. I looked at my list of demon inhabitants and rolled for a random demon race. I rolled.. a marilith! Not good!

The marilith drew six swords and advanced on the group! Bidam pulled out his horn of blasting and blew. The force wave sent a cow hurtling right into and on top of the marilith. The heroes made their escape.

I made sure to point out how Fall From Grace stayed far away from the unicorns. She is afraid that even though she is lawful good and chaste, the unicorns will reject her because she's a succubus.

Finding Anna Greystockings

A 2e Planescape Tiefling

The party was now ridiculous: 4 heroes, 5 slaves and 2 unicorns covered in blankets. The whole center of town was in chaos, animals running around everywhere.

The group needed to find Anna fast.

Festhall: Yep, they came upon a demon brothel. Three ladies were outside the front door, beckoning to the group. What a terrible time for Bidam's power to kick in! He had to make a choice. Hit It and infect one of these ladies with the Lady of Pain power, or Quit It and have someone die  (the group doesn't know it, but a Zactar will die). The ladies:

• A sad harpy accustomed to shabby treatment
• An abat-dolor (black skin, 6 fingers) who loves attention
• A kinky tiefling

The players were meta-game curious, so I told them that basically if Bidam Hit It, the group would have to make a stealth check to avoid the Lady's Lancers while Bidam did his thing.

I was shocked. Bidam Quit It!

The group finally found Anna at a tavern called The Sodden Solar. Anna had one red eye and, yes, she was wearing grey stockings. Anna hated her dad (Grazzt). She was more than happy to help the heroes and her mother (Iggwilv). She also had a familiar power - she could hold her breath and turn insubstantial.

The group was intrigued. Anna had the same power as Ash Vodiran. They learned that many of the children of Grazzt and Iggwilv had this power. Ash was Grazzt's son and didn't even know it!

I have no idea what they will do with this information.

Zrintor Forest

The heroes, the unicorns, the slaves and Anna headed into the Zrintor Forest. It's full of viper trees. The group followed the River of Salt and saw plumes of smoke in the distance - the city of Zelatar.

They heard familiar German voices off to the right. The devils!

That's where we had to stop.

Good session! The players seemed happy with the Theran stuff. I love all this Azzagrat stuff and I can't wait for the group to get into the Argent palace.

There was a special D&D show the other day featuring Chris Perkins and the players of Dice, Camera, Action. It was part of Roll20CON, an online event to raise money for Cybersmile.

You can check this show out on Twitch here:

Part 1
Part 2

Alternate title for this Episode: Stinky Come Back

Today, James Introcaso of the Tome Show is going to run Chris, Jared, Anna and Holly through a DMs Guild adventure - Death in the Cornfields by Merric Blackman. Awesome, right?

James also utilizes his own DMs Guild product called Tarokka Expansion. I'll talk about this more below, but I love this thing and you should definitely consider buying it (it's a dollar) if you are running Curse of Strahd. 

Perkins on the Exhaustion Chart: Chris is operating on two hours of sleep. He has this look on his face like he can see through time.

Essential Part: If you watch nothing else on this stream, you should watch the battle with Elias. It is about an hour into the show. It is really fun and I like it when the group loosens up.

Alternate Universe: Today's adventure is not "canon" as far as DCA Curse of Strahd goes. The heroes are 4th level.

Chris is going to play Ireena Kolyana, one of the main NPCs in Curse of Strahd. She's the one who Strahd wants to be his bride. Chris calls her "the Bella Swan of Barovia."

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(Chris) Ireena Kolyana - Human Fighter
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue

Jared's in quite a mood today. In fact, everyone is. This is a very relaxed, fun session that is full of laughs.

The group comes to a cornfield. There's a guy tied to a scarecrow post. It is declared that Paultin the bard is drunk and passed out.

Evelyn pulls the guy off the scarecrow. Jared wants to know if he scared away any crows. The guy's name is Elias. He asks for water and falls in and out of consciousness.

The guy says his parents are possessed. His parents are the ones who beat him up and stuck him on the post.

The group becomes wary that evil is afoot. Perhaps the devil Strahd is involved! Evelyn points out the Strahd has a crush on Ireena. Ireena grimly confirms this and looks around. Ireena astutely observes: "Even the corn is watching us."

The group checks out a shed. They find some dead bodies. Elias weeps. Strix comforts him and lets him play with Stinky, her cranium rat. She also feeds Elias some of the gross lint-y bread in her pockets.

They find a dead couple. Their heads are cut off.

As we roll along at a decent pace, the DM is giving out piles of inspiration. It seems like he has made a habit of giving it out in his games. Inspiration is something that usually gets forgotten in most of the campaigns I've been a part of.

On this show, James is very generous with the players. I guess he's doing that because this is just a one-off kind of thing meant to be fun. Is this how people tend to run convention games?

The heroes come upon an outhouse. Ireena pulls Diath into the outhouse and makes out with him. Strix complains that no one ever wants her, so Ireena pulls her in too.

Chris is so funny. He has such a solemn demeanor but then he does stuff like this. I'd love to see how he acts in a home game. I wonder what it's like when he cuts loose.

The group creeps over to another building and hears talking. Diath sneaks up to a window and takes a look. It's a middle-aged couple.

Diath wants to do a badass diving roll through the window.

Ireena knocks on the door. The couple inside panics. They are worried and wonder aloud if it's "The Collector." The Collector is a vistani who crossed Strahd long ago. Now it is her job to fetch new servants for Strahd, who are usually turned into vampire spawn.

The door is opened and Ireena asks them why Elias was tied to the stand. The man grabs a bloody axe, approaches the group and begins ranting. Diath jumps in through the window. Diath gets surprise. He intimidates them.

Elias comes over and yells at his parents. Elias runs off. Elias has Strix's cranium rat. Strix calls out: "Stinky, Come back!"

Elias comes back and gives Evelyn a shove. His eyes are glowing red. Jared goes: "Yup, there it is. Dagger in his face."

Elias grows claws and fangs. He may be a vampire spawn. Diath stabs him.

So here's the deal. When you roll a critical hit or a critical miss, you draw a card from the tarokka deck. Then you check out this .pdf and it tells you what kind of effect happens. I think this is an awesome idea.

She draws from the Tarokka deck. She gets the Innocent card - she has disadvantage on her saving throws.

The father urges Diath to kill his son. Evelyn cries. Strix casts hold person on Elias and calls him an "edgelord." Chris points out that the guy has a right to be angsty - his own parents tied him to a post.

Diath gets a critical hit. He gets to draw from the deck. He draws Traitor, which means he adds another d10 to his damage. Diath does a total of about 35 damage total. Good gawd. His weapon is not magical, so I think he does half damage.

Evelyn says that Elias is going to taste Lathander's wrath. Holly speculates that Lathander probably tastes like lemon.

Evelyn rolls a crit. The card is Necromancer: Everybody gets to make a free attack!

Elias dies. Evelyn blesses him and tells him to walk into the light. Diath gives him one more stab in the back. Evelyn chops his head off at the suggestion of Strix.

You know, I think Chris should add this Tarokka crit stuff to the DCA game. Maybe they can't do that because they want to run a straight 'official' game, but I think they should. It's fun.

The parents of Elias are upset. Ireena points out that it's not too late to start a new family.

We are told that the trouble should be over now. The Collector only comes for those who those who are marked.

Suddenly, the voice of a woman reverberates throughout the house. It's the Collector. She says another has been marked by the vampire - Ireena. The Collector demands that Ireena be brought outside. Everyone else can go free.

Diath drinks a healing potion. The door bursts open. Hovering there is the image of a tarokka card: The Horseman.

I guess at this point the stream went down, and we jump to a new archived video.

The Collector and a pack of wolves attack. The group is spread out outside.

The Collector casts lightning bolt. Yikes! One of the parent NPCs is killed by this and Evelyn takes 15 points. Evelyn rolls a critical fumble and hits herself.

The group is able to defeat the bad guys and that's the end.

Post-Show

After the show, Anna, James and a guy named Nolan talk a bit:

• Anna says people have been telling her that you can't have a southern accent in D&D. 
• We talk about how sometimes people claim the Roll20 dice roller is rigged. You can actually look up the last 100,000 rolls in Roll20 games so you can see that it is not.
• Nolan talks about how people who watch and use Roll20 are really nice. They didn't even have a ban button in their chat forum for the entire first year.

I wish they would have talked about D&D stuff some more. I want someone to pick Anna's brain about DCA, and I want to hear James talk about what running the game was like for him.

Timestamps

(13:06:00) Outhouse shenanigans
(13:27:00) Evelyn consoles a troubled teenager
(13:52:19) Strix casts spells with unique gestures

Overall

Fun: I love Holly. I think she is hilarious. I don't know why, but she and the group are much tamer on Dice, Camera, Action. Too tame, in my opinion. Every session should be like this. It's more fun to watch when they are having fun.

James Sold me on Roll20: James seems like a nice, jolly fellow who knows his stuff. He knows how to use Roll20 extremely well, which helped a lot. He did a great job of showing us what it can do. Roll20 can handle all sorts of rolls, it can use nice maps, the DM can block off map areas that the heroes haven't been to, and it can even draw tarokka deck cards!

It's funny because just a few days ago my friend was telling me about an online game he runs every week and all of the problems he is having with it. He said that the main issue was that he was unable to "read the room," so to speak. He said playing live at the table is much better. But this show went a long way in convincing me that an online game could be worth doing.

Fun Adventure: I like how this adventure is located in one spot. It's a great idea to set a scenario in one locale and let the danger find the heroes, rather than vice versa. I also like that it is short, but it felt a little too short to me.

You can watch this episode here.

The Secret Episode: If you missed it, you might want to check out my review of the Waffle Crew's session at Roll20CON. Chris was a player and once it got rolling, the game was very fun to watch.

Nate's Music: Nate aka Paultin has an album that just came out. I have to say that it sounds awesome and I'm kind of blown away. He is extremely talented.

• You can sample Genesis here. 
• You can buy Genesis here on iTunes and here on Amazon.

The Party

The Waffle Crew

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard 
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue

Last Time: Diath was inhabiting the body of Paultin. The group was bringing Diath's corpse to the abbey. The Abbot has the ability to raise dead. The abbey was full of freaky mongrelfolk and when we stopped, the group was hiding from a horde of mongrelfolk. Diath hid in a well, unaware that something was lurking in it...

Alert: This is a really good session from start to finish. You might want to watch it first and then read this, because a lot of fun moments are about to be spoiled.

Diath's spirit is still in Paultin's body. Chris describes it as if they were two people in a car, both with one hand on the wheel. If they disagree, they roll opposed charisma checks. Paultin has a high charisma so Paultin's got the advantage there. A tie means no change.

A weird creature in the well is climbing up toward them. Paultin/Diath decide to cast sleep. It works. The creature falls 80 feet into the water way at the bottom of the well. It immediately wakes up due to the impact.

A mongrelfolk dragging a cauldron comes into the courtyard. It will spot Paultin if it looks in the well. Diath realizes he can leave Paultin's body and possess the creature with the cauldron!

He does it. Diath is now in the body of Clovin Belview:

He has a lobster claw and a second head. The other head is a baby head.

Diath tries to communicate with the creature he is possessing. Colvin starts mentally complaining about the other mongrelfolk. He wants to starve them. Diath pretends to be his conscience to get him to do what he's supposed to.

Clovin/Diath goes down a hall and spots a big creature. He offers it food.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group is in the courtyard. It's just them and the creepy creature chained to the post. The group gets together and Evelyn is finally convinced that Diath really is a disembodied spirit.

Evelyn immediately runs after Diath yelling "Yayyyy!"

Diath approaches the creature. It's a humanoid made from the body of many other creatures - a flesh golem. Diath tries to order it to feed the mongrelfolk. It picks up the cauldron and stands there. Hey, he should try to possess the golem!

I get confused without a map, so here it is.

Diath calls on the other mongrelfolk to come get the food, and he slips into a side room. In there, 4 mongrelfolk are brawling while a fifth one watches and cackles. He tells them to get food, bit they think he's up to something. He tells them to "grow some balls" and he leaves.

He goes to a room across the hall. More mongrelfolk are in there. They hold empty bowls up at him. He grabs a ladle and start feeding soup to the mongrelfolk.

Evelyn comes upon this scene. She uses her winged boots to take flight. She hugs the flesh golem and yells, "Diath!" So awesome.

The golem thinks this is awkward. Diath sets her straight. Diath leaves the mongrelfolk body and is now an invisible ghost. The group gets together, grabs Diath's dead body and explores the place. 

They come to a room (S17 Loft and Belfry) that contains a table holding a humanoid shape covered by a black shroud. There's also a huge bell in here. This is the bell Clovin rang before dragging the cauldron out for feeding time.

Evelyn yells out for The Abbot. To the group's shock, The abbot answers. He's downstairs.

Vasilka and the Abbot

Evelyn meets the Abbot. The Abbot is very handsome, almost like an angel. Next to him is the bride, "The Lady Vasilka." She bows.

Upstairs, Strix uses mage hand to see what's under the shroud. It's a creature made of stitched together parts. Somehow it has Paultin's head and some of Strix's body parts!

Evelyn talks to the Abbot. The Abbot agrees to raise Diath if the group will get a wedding dress. Evelyn congratulates the couple - she thinks the Abbot is marrying Vasilka.

Evelyn tries to persuade the Abbot to raise Diath now.

Heyy... Chris says that Strix and Paultin look again, and now they just see a pile of women's body parts. Barovia is messing with their heads! I had my fingers crossed for the Super Skrull of D&D.

Wow, Diath possesses the body of Vasilka. He slowly realizes that this woman isn't alive. There are seams on her powdered skin. Yes, Vasilka is a flesh golem.

Diath is in control of Vasilka, and he tells the Abbot he doesn't need a dress to marry him. Evelyn offers to perform the wedding.

The Abbot points out that she is actually a gift for Strahd! He wants to try to calm Strahd down by giving him a bride.

Diath/Vasilka tells the Abbot that his heart belongs to him. The Abbot gets.. an erection. What an epic episode. The Abbot is happy and flummoxed - he's at a loss for words.

Paultin spots a violin and plays it to enhance the moment.

Diath talks in a lady voice as Vasilka and tries to convince the Abbot to resurrect.. him. Jared cracks me up by trotting out the phrase "light-touched folk" and finishes off this tour de force by saying that the Abbot should: "...return their excellent and underappreciated friend."

Chris gives Jared inspiration! Maybe James Introcaso's use of inspiration in the Roll20 game got Chris thinking about it in the past day or two. It's such an easy thing to forget.

The Abbot agrees to resurrect Diath right now.

Strix hates the Abbot. She breaks a candle and gets into an argument with the Abbot.

Evelyn unfurls the corpse burrito on the table. Diath's corpse is gray and white.

Strix threatens the Abbot. She says that if Diath comes back crazy, she's going to destroy him. She makes an intimidation check. She rolls a natural 20! Ha.. what an awesome episode.

The Abbot casts raise dead. Vasilka staggers as the spirit of Diath enters the body. Strix watches closely and is certain that the Abbot used necromancy.

Paultin puts a hand on his shoulder and says: "Diath. You were inside of me." They share a moment.

Strix demands to see his spellbook. He says he doesn't need a book.

Chris asks Jared to roll a d100. He rolls a 29.

I don't want to spoil it. If you're dying to know, check out the left column on page 260 of the DMG.

Chris decides to direct message Jared the information on twitter right now.

Evelyn decides to use her paladin power of divine sense. Awesome! Check this out:

How about that?

Evelyn realizes that the Abbot is a celestial. She bows to him. Strix tells Evelyn that even celestials can be bad. I love that she knows this. In Hellbound, one of the central figures in the three adventures is a celestial who is giving weapons to demons and devils.

Clearly Holly knows a heck of a lot about Planescape. She constantly uses the slang, which is really hard to keep straight. There's so much of it. She's got it down pat.

Evelyn decides to detect evil on the Abbot. She senses the presence of powerful evil coming from the Abbot and tells him so.

The Abbot gives a speech. He declares that there is no way he is evil. He tends to the mentally ill, he helps people, etc.

Evelyn says that sometimes good people inadvertently walk the wrong path.

To prove he's a good dude, he gives Diath a potion that can heal for a whopping 8d4+8.

There's a bunch of back and forth. Strix hates this guy. Things are getting tense. The group seems uneasy about attacking a guy who just raised their friend from the dead.

Paultin notices somebody watching them in the distance. She's got one wooden leg. She looks like this:

This is the woman that Madame Eva told Paultin about in the fateful Tarokka reading. That's where we stop!

The group hits level 5. Next week is Origins and E3. No game next week. Son of a dang.

Chris asks where the group will head next. They say the Wizard of Wines.

Timestamps

• (42:02) Evelyn realizes Diath is alive and runs after him like a maniac
• (50:42) Evelyn hugs a flesh golem 
• (1:18:12) Diath wants to marry the Abbot 
• (1:31:56) Strix threatens the Abbot

Overall

Let's Heap Some Praise: I'm not sure what else to say except that this was an awesome episode. Everything was good! The whole group was fantastic. These last few sessions have been Jared spotlight episodes and he took the ball and ran with it in a major way. Anna is completely unselfish (one of the traits I most admire in a player) and Holly is hilarious. All of them had their wits about them, too. They utilized their abilities in a clever way and every player had a classic line somewhere in there.

The Perkinsonian Institute of DMing: Chris was so smooth jumping between the characters. I think I would have gotten clumsy as a DM when Diath went off with the golem and Evelyn ran after him. You don't want players to be sitting there watching the others do stuff for too long. Chris has an awesome sense of pacing and a really light touch as far as giving clues and details.

The Absorbing Men and Women: On just about every single D&D stream or show, there comes a point where I have a hard time paying attention. I'm just done and it becomes a struggle. Sometimes I have to leave it and come back the next day. Two or three hours is a long time to watch people play D&D. This episode is one of the only ones where I was completely sucked in and the time flew by. 

You can watch this episode here.

I am going to write a summary of this show, provide a few timestamps for what I think some of the best parts are and then I'll give some overall impressions.

I'm sure a lot of you know this, but I want to be thorough:

A Brief History of Acquisitions, Inc: Acquisitions, Inc. started when Chris Perkins ran some 4th edition games for the makers of Penny Arcade. I think the first podcast was in around 2009. You can access the old shows here or on this backwards list on the D&D site.

They started doing live games in front of an audience. The first one was in 2010 at PAX Prime. It was a success and it has just been getting bigger ever since.

Since 5th edition hit, they do about two games per year. Each adventure is linked in some way to the current D&D storyline going on.

You can find the live shows here.

A good quick way to bone up on the backstory is to watch the animated intro of each live episode. They tell you what happened last time and they are, in my opinion, hilarious.

Run Time: This show is only 30 minutes long! Most of these D&D shows are 2 or 3 hours and even the good ones can be painful to get through. This episode was real breezy and left me wanting more.

Warning: If you have any intention of watching this show, do so before you read this. It's an awesome session. There's no sense in having me spoil the cool stuff. Please come on back and read my thoughts when you're done!

The Party

(Jerry) Omin Dran - Half-Elf Cleric
(Mike) Jim Darkmagic - Human Wizard
(Scott) Binwin Bronzebottom - Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian
(Patrick) Viara - Human Rogue

We kick it off with a fantastic animated intro which already makes the whole show worth it. It's a whole VHS/'80's cartoon kind of thing.

OK, here we go. We have a sweet camera set-up.

Jim has gotten to know Omin's sister, Portentia. She is part of a rival adventuring group called Dran Enterprises.

While canoodling with Portentia, Jim found out that Dran Enterprises is being paid a lot of money to acquire 2 pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts. Holy crap. This is going to be awesome.

Portentia is something of an underling of a woman named Auspicia, who runs Dran Enterprises. Auspicia already has one part of the rod. She stashed it in a vault in a dwarven enclave run by Clan Horn. This vault is loaded with treasure.

Chris points out that Dran Enterprises is trying to buy out Acquisitions, Inc. The best way to prevent this would be to diminish their funds.

The group realizes that Jim is a sleeper agent. Portentia is unhappy at Dran Enterprises and she seems like she knows more than she's saying.

Omin, Binwin and Viara take her out for drinks to try and get more information out of her. They offer Portentia control of the Waterdeep Acquisitions, Inc. franchise. They get drunk.

We learn that Auspicia looks like an older version of Omin. We also learn that if Auspicia buys Acquisitions, Inc. she's going to fire Jim Darkmagic. She has another Darkmagic on the payroll! Jerry flips out over this.

The group is able to learn that this other Darkmagic is none other than Percival Darkmagic. The group last ran into him in a past adventure and lost sight of him when a flying mansion they were all in split in half.

Jim runs to the tavern. He is worried about the Darkmagic brand name. Apparently it was not trademarked.

Binwin knows that the Horn Enclave is full of Shield Dwarves. They're great builders.

Jim rolls to see if he has rod knowledge. He sure does. Here's what we learn:

• There was a war between Law and Chaos.
• The Guardians of Law are the Wind Dukes of Aaqa.
• The wind dukes made the rod to try to make the universe more stable.
• The rod was shattered when it struck Miska the Wolf-Spider.
• The seven pieces of the rod are frequently scattered on many worlds and assembled, only to scatter again.
• If the pieces are on this world, something momentous is in motion.
• Each rod piece has magic powers, and when they combine they have more powers.
• Viari heard a fragment of the demon lord has infected the rod. Ancient runes can help keep the rod from coming apart.
• The person paying Dran to get the rod pieces is someone named Stratovan.

Portentia gives the group a map of the enclave. The players get maps and hey, we get a good look at it too:

To get in, they are going to have to somehow bypass four portcullises. To get access, they're also going to have to play a specific set of bagpipes that a dwarven guard there has.

Timestamps

• (19:02) The Horn Enclave
• (22:43) #NotAllShieldDwarves

Overall

Really Good: This is the easiest thumbs up ever. This show is great. Everyone is funny. It's laid back. The story is awesome. I am severely fired up to see Chris run some stuff with the rod of seven parts. I know that an entire episode of talking and backstory might sound craptastic, but this is very good.

Quality: The production values are really great. We get an epic animated intro, there's a bunch of cameras and we even get graphics that break down each roll. To top it off, we got a high quality view of the map. What a great set-up this is. It's nice and simple.

Scott Kurtz: It's funny, on these shows everybody else talks more but I always end up watching Scott. If you watch his face, you can see him reacting and kind of read where he's at. He's a very interesting guy. He's so inherently likeable.

The Rod: This show involves the rod of seven parts. If you want to brush up on your rod lore, I wrote up a Guide to the Rod of Seven Parts right here.

I was thinking about Storm King's Thunder and this Chris Perkins quote from reddit:

That underlined part says:

"The core rulebooks contain lots of clues about the stories we intend to tell going forward." 

I decided to go through the core rulebooks and see what we could find. I'm sure I missed a million things, but I figured I'd take a stab at it.

I am also trying to figure out if the standing stones that appear in every adventure are connected and leading to some kind of crossover or mega-event or something.

Here are the topics I will discuss, in order:

• Storm King's Thunder Clues
• Campaign Settings
• NPCs & Places
• Classic Adventures
• Factoids
• A list of the NPCs Quoted in the Monster Manual
• 5th Edition Standing Stones Conspiracy Theory

Storm King's Thunder

Let's see what clues we can find about Storm King's Thunder. We learned quite a bit about this adventure at the Meltdown event. I made a nice long list of what we learned right here. 

The Ordning: The Ordning is a big deal in Storm King's Thunder. The Monster Manual goes into great detail on it. The Ordning is the caste structure of giants. In Storm King's Thunder, this system is purposely destroyed by the giant god, Annam.

(MM page 154) Annam: There's a big sidebar about the giant gods. Annam, the father of all giants, has been waiting for the giants to reclaim the world. In Storm King's Thunder, he punishes them for not fighting the dragons in Tyranny of Dragons.

It's funny because I know there was one piece of art from Tyranny of Dragons of a giant fighting a dragon, and it didn't appear in the book. Maybe the giants were involved in Tyranny at some part of the process and then this giant storyline took shape?

There's a note in the Monster Manual that some giants pay homage to Baphomet or Kostchtchie, and that's a sin against the Ordning. But now with the Ordning sundered, maybe that is not such a big deal. I am wondering if we'd see Kostchtchie in this adventure in some form. Maybe we'll see some giants with demonic assistance

(MM page 246) Orcs: In the orc entry: "As well, orcs respect and fear the size and power of evil giants, and often serve them as guards and soldiers." Considering that this adventure starts at level one, it makes sense for there to be orcs in the mix.

(MM page 259) Remorhaz: "Frost giant hunters scour the icy wastes for remorhaz nests and eggs." Maybe the heroes will have to face off against a frost giant and their pet remorhaz.

(MM page 261) Rocs: "In the ancient days when giants battled dragons for control of the world, Annam, the father of the giant gods, created the rocs so that his worshipers might challenge the dragons dominance of the air."

Cloud giants and storm giants tame them, other rocs actually hunt giants for food. You could definitely get a wacky encounter out of this. Maybe a roc plays into the chapter where the heroes look for King Hekaton, who has gone missing.

(DMG page 218) Wave: Wave is one of the three artifacts from White Plume Mountain. It was created in a place called Thunderforge. A sea god imprisoned a family of storm giants there, and the giants forged Wave in an act of devotion to - or rebellion against - that god. Maybe we'll see Thunderforge in Storm King.

So yeah, nothing earth-shattering. Maybe I am missing something.

Campaign Settings

The core books talk about past campaign settings a lot. Obviously, the Forgotten Realms is discussed in great detail. When describing how to make a character, the Player's Handbook uses Bruenor Battlehammer of the Forgotten Realms as an example.

Many other settings get plenty of lip service throughout the books. This might tell us which settings are on the D&D team's radar.

Here's some setting stuff I found interesting:

(DMG page 68) Known Worlds of the Material Plane: The book describes a list of worlds and settings. It goes like this: Toril (Forgotten Realms), Oerth (Greyhawk), Krynn (Dragonlance), Athas (Dark Sun), Eberron, Mystara and.... Aebryinnis, home to the Birthright setting. Huh. 

Curse of Strahd Clues: Curse of Strahd had an NPC who is from the Greyhawk setting. The vestiges in the Amber Temple included an entity that appeared in the Savage Tide adventure path (also set in Greyhawk). Another vestige in the temple is Tenebrous, the villain of the Planescape Dead Gods adventure book.

The Dusk Elves: For some reason I keep thinking the dusk elves in Curse of Strahd are from Mystara (I think I'm thinking of the Shadow Elves), but apparently that isn't the case. From what I understand, the dusk elves are from Dragon #382 and simultaneously appeared in the Ravenloft 4e adventure, "Fair Barovia" (Dungeon Magazine #207).

(DMG page 300) Planes of Existence: "The best-known worlds in the multiverse are the ones that have been published as official campaign settings for the D&D game over the years - Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Dragonlance, the Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Birthright, Dark Sun, and Eberron, among others."

Wow, they mentioned Blackmoor. If I remember right, it's been set both in Mystara and Greyhawk.

Let's check out things from each setting that are mentioned in the books. Eberron and Dark Sun are mentioned a lot, but I just want to focus on a few. What is mentioned may indicate the areas of interest of the designers and could clue us in on what we might see:

Dragonlance:

• (PH page 20) The "...debased Klar of Krynn."
• (PH page 20) The "...noble Dewar clan of Dragonlance."
• (PH page 23) The "...silvanesti of Dragonlance"
• (PH page 24) The Kagonesti
• (PH page 35) Draconians  
• (PH page 37) Tinker gnomes
• (PH page 121) There's pages of talk about Tika Waylan.
• (MM page 48) Lord Soth: Soth gets an interesting feature. He is literally the death knight in the Monster Manual. He gets a big sidebar that explains his origin.

Greyhawk:

• (PH page 81) Monasteries dedicated to Zuoken and Xan Yae 
• (PH page 81) Evil monks of the Scarlet Brotherhood
• (MM page 167) Mordenkainen has a quote about Maure Castle in the Monster Manual. The quote is, I think, not quite a direct quote from the article reprinted in Dungeon Magazine #112. Gary Gygax wrote about when he played through Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure with Rob Kuntz as DM. Mordenkainen was turned to stone by this huge iron golem's whip. Bigby turned him back to flesh, but Yrag - Gary's first D&D character - was killed and Bigby was turned to stone (he got better, as far as I know). 
• (DMG page 41) There is a mention of the Barrier Peaks of Oerth and the wreckage of a space vessel.
• (MM page 56) We get an Iggwilv quote in the Monster Manual. She points out that demons are difficult to control.

Ravenloft:

(DMG page 40) "Novels and game products set in Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread, explore dark-fantasy elements in a D&D context."

(DMG page 51) Domains of Dread: "In remote corners of the Shadowfell... horrific demiplanes.. best known is the valley of Barovia. Beings of the Shadowfell called the Dark Powers created these domains as prisons for these 'darklords', and through cruelty or carelessness trapped innocent mortals in these domains as well."

(MM page 296) Vampires: There's a huge quote in the Monster Manual from Strahd talking about his origin. This quote is taken directly from the Tome of Strahd in the original AD&D Ravenloft adventure.

Kesto Brighteyes

Planescape:

• (PH page 302) We get a mention of the gate-towns of the Outlands, the Spire and Sigil, portals, etc.
• (DMG page 45) A discussion of Sigil's portals.
• (DMG Page 67) Lots of details on the Outlands and Sigil. They actually list all of the gate towns of the Outlands.
• (DMG page 68) The Lady of Pain: "Is Sigil her prison? Is she the fallen creator of the multiverse?"
• (MM page 147) There's a quote from Kesto Brighteyes, who is an NPC from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. He tells a story about a wish gone wrong. Of all the NPCs in Planescape, why did they pick him? He owns a bookshop that supposedly contains every book there is.
• (MM page 313) Shemeshka the Marauder has a quote about power. She's a pretty big deal.

NPCs & Places

Corellon vs. Gruumsh

There are some NPCs and places that get quite a bit of attention.

Gruumsh, God of Orcs:

There is a lot of talk about the orc god, Gruumsh:

(PH page 123) "Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc god Gruumsh and are thus inclined toward evil."

(PH page 41) The Mark of Gruumsh is built right into the half-orc race description. Even half-orcs hear Gruumsh whisper in their dreams, calling on them to unleash their rage.

(MM page 245) Gruumsh vs. Corellon: There is a lot of info on Gruumsh in the orc entry. We get a big explanation as to why he hates elves and dwarves. We learn that Corellon, god of the elves, half-blinded Gruumsh by firing an arrow into his eye. Since that time, Gruumsh gives divine might to orc champions who pull one of their own eyes out.

(MM page 245) Go Forth and Procreate: Luthic, the orc goddess and wife of Gruumsh demands that orcs "procreate often and indiscriminately" so that their hordes swell.

You get the vibe that we could see some kind of elf/orc war somewhere down the road. Speaking of the god of elves...

From the 1e Deities & Demigods sourcebook

(PH page 121) Corellon's Gender: "The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic." It goes on to note that some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon's image. This is something that was established way back when in the AD&D 1st edition Deities & Demigods book.

I think having these elves battle an orc army would make for a really cool adventure.

Demogorgon

(MM page 133) Ettins and Demogorgon:  Apparently, Ettins are orcs who were transformed by the power of Demogorgon. Orcs treat them as distant cousins.

(MM page 220) Merrow Origin: Merrows were merfolk that became tainted by an idol of Demogorgon. They went to the Abyss and were warped further. Now Demogorgon sends them to mortal worlds to wreak havoc.

Acheron:

Acheron

Weirdly enough, the plane of Acheron gets mentioned a lot. This is the plane where there are eternal wars on giant floating cubes that smash into each other.

All these mentions could just be because a lot of gods live on Acheron, but they went out of their way to mention the plane over and over. Acheron is awesome and I hope it gets used in a future adventure.

• (MM page 34) Bugbears: Hruggek is god of bugbears. He lives on Acheron.
• (MM page 166) Goblins: Acheron is mentioned again in the goblin section. Maglubiyet has a goblin army on Acheron, and the goblins fear his tyranny more than death.
• (MM page 187) Hobgoblins: In the hobgoblin entry, there is more talk of Maglubiyet. It says hobgoblins don't fear death because their spirits battle on in Acheron under Maglubiyet's banner.

Factoids

This is just a quick list of things that took me by surprise while I was going through the books. Lots of interesting little nuggets in here:

(DMG page 10) The Raven Queen: They do list the 4th edition Dawn War deities. The Raven Queen was very popular so I'm interested to see if they will ever do anything with her.

(DMG page 11) Zehir is Set Renamed: I had no idea. I used Set when I ran Dead Gods a few months back, should have switched it!

(MM page 191) The Origin of Hydras: Tiamat killed a god named Lernaea. Her blood sprayed into the multiverse. Each droplet of blood became a hydra, full of hatred.

(DMG page 49) The Fey: Queen Titania and the Queen of Air and Darkness have a jealous rivalry.

(PH page 163) Gary and Dave: I never noticed that our two example players are D&D creators Gary (Gygax) and Dave (Arneson). That's pretty great.

(MM page 19) Weird Solar Story: There are only 24 solars in existence. Most of them rest in a state of contemplation, "...waiting for the time when their services are needed to stave off some cosmic threat to the cause of good." That sounds ominous! No idea what this could be part of.

(MM page 311) Serpent Gods:  There is a big sidebar in the yuan-ti entry in the Monster Manual. It lists a few serpent gods. An entity that calls itself Sseth is claiming to be an avatar of Merrshaulk and is trying to get the yuan-ti to build a new empire. Some think Sseth actually devoured Merrshaulk, who has thought to have been "slumbering" for a long time.

(MM page 312) Yugoloths Were Made by Hags: Asmodeus had some night hags make yugoloths. The hags made the four Books of Keeping, which hold every yugoloth true name (except for the General of Gehenna). 

(MM page 195) Kenku had a Mysterious Master: The kenku actually stole the secret of how to speak from their mysterious master. In retaliation, this person took away their wings and forced the kenku to beg forever. I know that in earlier editions, the kenku had a god named Quorlinn. I had a player who was obsessed with Quorlinn. According to the above wiki page, Pazuzu might have had a hand in their creation.

Classic Adventures


I'm not dying for a remake of anything, but I noticed that quite a few classic adventures are mentioned by name in the core rulebooks.

Here are some references that I thought were notable:

(PH page 181) "Delving into the ancient Tomb of Horrors, slipping through the back alleys of Waterdeep, hacking a fresh trail through the thick jungles on the Isle of Dread - these are the things that Dungeons & Dragons adventures are made of."

Tomb of Horrors:

(MM page 49) Epitaph: There's a quote - Acererak's epitaph. I was wondering if this quote was right out of the original Tomb of Horrors adventure, but I don't think it is. The only quote I could find on a quick flipthrough is from room 28. There's glowing letters on a wall:

"You who dared to violate my tomb now pay the price. Stay here and die slowly of starvation, or open and enter the door to the south, where certain but quick death awaits. Whichever you choose, know that I, Acererak the Eternal, watch and scoff at your puny efforts and enjoy your death throes."

(MM page 50) Demilich: Acererak gets a huge sidebar on page 50. It tells his origin and stats out his trap the soul power. DC 19 Charisma save or your soul is sucked into one of his gems.

Temple of Elemental Evil:

(MM page 62) Rufus and Burne: There's a quote from a half-elf wizard named Nelume. She says her group went in, saw body parts everywhere and fled back to the village of Hommlet. Rufus and Burne laughed at them.

White Plume Mountain

• (DMG page 216) Blackrazor: "Hidden in the dungeon of White Plume Mountain, Blackrazor shines like a piece of night sky filled with stars." 
• (DMG page 218) Wave: This artifact was created in a place called Thunderforge. I mentioned this up in the Storm King section. 
• (DMG page 218) Whelm: Whelm was made by a dwarf clan known as the Dankil or Mightyhammer clan. 
• (MM page 281) The Riddle: In the Sphynx entry, the actual riddle that the sphynx of White Plume Mountain tells is reproduced here. My group guessed the answer in milliseconds.

Gates of Firestorm Peak

(DMG page 302) The Far Realm: "Ancient elves once pierced the boundary of eons with a vast portal to the Far Realm within a mountain called Firestorm Peak, but their civilization imploded in bloody terror and the portaI's location - even its home world - is long forgotten."

The Isle of Dread

(DMG Page 56) The Isle Moved: The isle is now located on the Plane of Water. I think in 4e it shifted between the Feywild and the world. Here, ships from the world sometimes end up wrecked here.

Rod of Seven Parts

This one is interesting because apparently the rod of seven parts is involved in both the Acquisitions, Inc. series and Force Grey: Giant Hunters. It looks like each group will get a chance to obtain at least one piece of the rod.

(DMG Page 53) Aaqa: In the section about the plane of air, the book talks about Aaqa, a shining domain of silver spires. The wind dukes of Aaqa are dedicated to law and good, and they maintain a vigilant watch against elemental evil.

(MM page 13) Aarakocra: These bird-people serve the wind dukes of Aaqa. It tells the story of the rod of seven parts here and says that the aarakocra are hunting for the pieces while keeping their eyes peeled for Elemental Evil.

Vaati: Both in the DMG and in the MM, it says that the Vaati are a separate race from the wind dukes. I'm pretty sure in the 2e Rod of Seven Parts boxed set, "Vaati" was just another name for wind duke. There were a bunch of castes. It seemed needlessly complicated. The Wendeam was the caste in charge of finding the rod parts.

Monster Manual NPCs

In the Monster Manual, there are tons of quotes from different NPCs. Some are "famous" like Baba Yaga and Emirikol the Chaotic. Others are obscure. I made a list of most of them and tried my best to figure out who they were. I'm sure I missed a lot.

There are a lot of great NPC names in this list that will really help you out in a pinch.

Throughout the Monster Manual, there are a bunch of "dungeon survival" tips from a guy named X the Mystic. I compiled them:

X the Mystic's Rules of Dungeon Survival:

1. Trust a flumph
2. Before you Drink from a fountain or pool, toss a copper coin into it. It's a small price to pay for your life.
3. Sometimes a chest is just a chest, but don’t bet on it.
4. No one carves statues of frightened warriors. If you see one, keep your eyes closed and your ears open.
5. ?
6. Keep a few gems in your pocket. A hungry xorn is a helpful xorn.
7. Before opening a sarcophagus, light a torch.

The NPC List:

(MM page 15) Vaqir Zekh'r - githzerai philosopher: Wrote a book about the Far Realm

(MM page 21) Levity Quickstitch - Halfling Rogue: Got a scar from the animated sword of a pirate.

(MM page 23) Arakses Al-Saqar - Efreeti Pasha: Loves Azer slaves and thinks they do great work.

(MM page 26) Lludd the Behir: Lives in the Lost Caverns of Tsojacnth and can eat a lot. Wow. I just looked it up. Lludd really is in that adventure. Room 3, page 21. Lludd is smart and can speak a bit of many languages. The actual behir monster debuted in this module. That makes Lludd the first behir ever.

(MM page 29) Valkara Ironfell - Dwarf Sage: Thinks beholders are narcissists with low self esteem, basically.

(MM page 30) Jastus Hollowquill - Explorer of Undermountain: Apparently survived an encounter with a death tyrant.

(MM page 243) Jaster Hollowquill: Ran afoul of a gelatinous cube. Is this a typo or is he/she Jastus's brother or what?


(MM page 39) Batley Summerfoot - Halfling Adventurer: Thinks centaurs are good mounts.

(MM page 45) Evangeliza Lavain - Necromancer: Makes crawling claws from dead criminals. She appears again on page 170. Evangeliza hates it when her grave diggers get caught and hanged.

(MM page 47) Ethelrede the Fighter: Not a fan of darkmantles.

(MM page 78) Harobaal the Pit Fiend: Tries to corrupt someone.

(MM page 97) Pelios of Ersoth - Silvanesti seer: Spots the dragon Cyan Bloodbane corrupting a king.

(MM page 121) Pellanistra the Drider: She failed Lolth once. She's a character from some Forgotten Realms novels.

(MM page 129) Nelar Autumnwell - Elf Cleric: Doesn't like drow.

(MM page 150) Captain Dwern Addlestone: Talks about giants laying siege to Sterngate. This is in Eberron. The fortress of Sterngate protects Breland from invaders.

(MM page 152) Eler Zelane of Istivin: Talks about Angerroth the barbarian, who died in the Giant Wars. Istivin is in Greyhawk and was caught in Lolth's Demonweb for a time. The city was detailed in Dungeon Magazine.

(MM page 160) Aristul the Yellow - Master of Planar Lore: Talks about how the mind flayers have done great damage to the psyche of the gith races.

(MM page 166) Stalman Klim - Slave Lord: Thinks goblins are dumb. Stalman aka Mordrammo is a bad guy from the actual Scourge of the Slave Lords series.

(MM page 192) Qorik El-Slurrk - Mindflayer: Likes brains.

(MM page 195) Endroth Knag - City Watch Corporal of Waterdeep: Is on to the tricks of the kenku.

(MM page 198) Malfeore Serrang - Pirate-mage of Tethyr: Knows a lot about krakens.

(MM page 200) Sabal Mizzrym of Menzoberranzan. She was a character in a Forgotten Realms book by Richard Lee Byers.

(MM page 212) Thornstaff - Elf Druid: Not interested in fighting werewolves. Somebody wrote some fan fiction that includes Thornstaff and the Company of the Black Moon.

(MM page 214) Marthok Uldarr - Dwarf copper merchant: Wary of manticores.

(MM page 226) Kwint Stormbellow - Rock Gnome adventurer: Thinks the Great Modron March is madness. Thazin Stormbellow was a villain in one of the earliest Acquisitions, Inc. podcasts. I think it was this one.

(MM page 235) Explictica Defilus - Spirit Naga: Talks tough. What a great name. It turns out this monster is from Against the Cult of the Reptile God. She isn't exactly a god, but she does run the cult.

(MM page 238) Riddlefiddle the Satyr: Thinks ogres can't dance. Don't listen to this guy, ogres. Follow your dreams.

(MM page 250) Xarshel Ravenshadow - Gnome professor at Morgrave University: Is not a fan of Owlbears. Morgrave U. is in Eberron. I could have sworn I'd seen that last name in Seekers of the Ashen Crown, but I don't see it.

(MM page 251) Tyllenvane d'Orien - Dragonmarked Scion: Thinks a pegasus is faster than a dragon. House Orien is from Eberron.

(MM page 254) Rivergleam - Pixie fashionista: Trendy.


(MM page 263) Brawn Thunderstones - Dwarf Paladin of Dumathoin: Almost killed by a rust monster. Dumathoin is a dwarf god of mining. He is the patron of shield dwarves. There's quite a bit of stuff involving shield dwarves and the Urdunnirin in these books.

(MM 291) Arlax Hammermantle - Dwarf spelunker: "Smells like an orc's loincloth in here!"

(MM 206) Kelesta Hawke of the Emerald Enclave: Knows a yeti when she hears one. The Enclave is a Forgotten Realms faction.

(MM page 317) Fonkin Hoddypeak: Turned Beek into a zombie. Beek Gwenders and Fonkin are pre-generated characters from the AD&D Against the Giants/Drow series. The names were cooked up by Gary Gygax and have weird meanings. This group included Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter, Flerd Trantle, Frush O'Suggil and Cloyer Bulse.

The Standing Stones

I know I read this theory somewhere online. It goes like this:

There are mysterious standing stones in every adventure so far. They could be connected to some overarching plot to be revealed in a massive future storyline.

I checked and it is true. Every published 5e adventure has a set of mysterious, ancient stones.

We'll go from newest adventure to oldest.

Curse of Strahd

Two sets of stones, both near hags.

The Megaliths: In Curse of Strahd, there are these weird standing stones by the Old Bonegrinder that are never explained.

Check out page 128 of Curse of Strahd. It says each stone has a crude carving of a city, each associated with a different season. The heroes can learn the legend of the Four Cities, said to be cities of paradise where the Morninglord, Mother Night and other ancient gods once dwelled.

More Megaliths: On page 165, there is another set of megaliths in Berez - the home of another hag, Baba Lysaga.

This Note Seems a Little Sly: "A couple lean inward as if to share some great secret with their inscrutable neighbors."

The Stones are Old: "- one of the oldest structures in the Balinok Mountains - older than the Amber temple and much older than Castle Ravenloft..."

It actually says that the Berez menhirs were raised by the same ancient folk who carved the megaliths near Old Bonegrinder.

These Berez stones have glyphs that represent different animals: bear, elf, hawk, goat, owl, panther, raven, and wolf.

Heroes can learn weird things:

• Druids can sense that powerful gods once blessed this site.
• Creatures within the circle are protected from divination and scrying.
• When a druid wild shapes, gains max hp.

Out of the Abyss


Check out page 106: There is a circle of stone menhirs predating Blingdenstone in a small cavern. The gnomes think this is a cluster of ancient galeb duhr, venerated as manifestations of the gods.

There's another stone thing nearby on page 109 - part of a quest:

Place a spell gem into a socket in one of the menhirs. This causes an earth elemental to burst out of the wall. Galeb duhr pop up to defend against them.

I'm not sure if the steadfast stone is part of the weird menhir thing. It could be that the gnomes originally built the temple there because of the standing stones, and then years later they modified and enchanted the steadfast stone.

Princes of the Apocalypse

If you played Princes of the Apocalypse, you probably remember this place. Here's what we learn:

Page 153 - The Moving Stones: These tunnels and chambers beneath the town of Red Larch contain giant stones which mysteriously change positions.

Page 157 - The Petrified Ironstar (?) Dwarf: Near the stones, there's a petrified dwarf discovered in year 1459 in Red Larch West Quarry in broken condition.

Area 6 - Another single stone nearby: There's a hovering stone. It's a normal rock that floats "because of ancient magic."

Page 158 - Chamber of Moving Stones: "An odd array of stone monoliths - some upright standing stones, and others arranged in three-stone arches..."

Page 159 - Dwarf Involvement: The dwarves of Besilmer carved this place out thousands of years ago. They enchanted the floor so you can stamp on it, causing the stones to hover.

Those stones throw me off a little because they hover. It just seems weird.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen


Page 62 - Ancient Portal: "The portal is one of several that predate the Cult of the Dragon."

Page 63 - More Stones: The group uses a portal in Castle Naerytar to appear next to two ancient stones outside a hunting lodge. In the boxed text, it says: "Within sight are more standing stones."

There are three other sets of stones, each "re-tuned" by the cult of the dragon to suit their own ends. There are grooves that spell out words in the language of Netheril that talk about where the portals can be used to go to.

"Over time, the stones have been used to reach many sites within the realms."

Who is Xonthal?

I started thinking about other random, unexplained things in these adventures. The thing is, when I first read this I assumed that all of this stuff was just references to old Realms products that I know nothing about.

But there is a wizard in Rise of Tiamat named Xonthal. As far as I can tell, Xonthal has not appeared in any products before - at least, not under this name.

Here's what we are told about Xonthal:

• Xonthal traveled everywhere on Faerun, including Zakhara, Maztica and Kara Tur.
• He focused on conjuration and elemental evocation.
• He kept elementals and genies for company.
• Nobody knows what happened to him.
• Xonthal was trying to bend or trick an efreeti into service when he disappeared. The efreet is Taraz the Fair, still trapped in Xonthal's Tower.
• Xonthal studied dimensions and time.

So is Xonthal just some made-up wizard to explain the existence of a cool magic tower and the hedge maze? Or is he connected to the stones in some way? In his tower, there's a weird sort of outer space realm. He was dabbling in powerful stuff.

3e Adventure: I googled for more. There was a 3e adventure called "The Standing Stone." I don't know if it's in any way connected to this. A wizard used the magic of the stones to replace people with animals transformed into humanoid form, loyal to him.

The Megalith: Google shows me that there is a D&D thing called a Megalith - it's a living planet, basically. The Megalith is part of the Mystara setting. Again, not sure if that has anything to do with it. I guess the stones could be pieces of a "dead" megalith.

OK. We're done. I don't know if we learned anything but I got a kick out of it. This took me a lot longer than I thought it would.

Feel free to let me know if I missed anything important. Feel free to send me any of your own pet theories about future storylines.

Links

Merric Blackman has a great recap of a talk Chris Perkins gave on future storylines here.

You can watch this episode on youtube right here.

This show was posted at the crack of dawn, which is handy for us nocturnal people.

The title sequence is shorter this time with some new art.

More Planning: This is another "planning" episode which I know might sound like a bad time. It turned out to be a ton of fun in my opinion. All of this build-up makes me really excited to see what happens.

The RPGA is Driving me Nuts: At the very bottom of this, I'm going to talk a bit about how I am going insane trying to find certain old RPGA adventures, especially "Cutters" by Chris Perkins. If anyone knows anyone who has a copy, please let me know. I am losing my mind.

Last Time: The group hatched a scheme to steal a piece of the rod of seven parts from a dwarven stronghold.

The Party

(Jerry) Omin Dran - Half-Elf Cleric
(Mike) Jim Darkmagic - Human Wizard
(Scott) Binwin Bronzebottom - Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian
(Patrick) Viari - Human Rogue

This bagpipes thing was mentioned last time and it is mentioned again at the start. It seems like it is important so I'm going to give you a direct quote:

"Stationed outside the gate at all hours is a horned dwarf with a set of bagpipes. When he wants to allow somebody admittance inside he will play the song of the day. "

The group learns more about this dwarven fortress from Portentia. Portentia is the sister of Omin Dran and Jim Darkmagic's love interest.

Portentia says that when the group is allowed admittance into the place, a pair of stone golems will open the doors and usher the group into the hall of war. If the golems don't like the look of the group, they will attack.

Chris tells the group that the rod is in the "vaults," and we actually zoom in on that map area. The star indicates where the rod is. Chris admits he made this map. Here is the vaults section:

Keys: The outer vault has a pair of keys and a combo lock. We learn who has the keys:

• One key is held by the horned dwarves. 
• The other is held by the vault's current user - a member of Dran Enterprises. That person is in the guest quarters, north of the main hall.

Magic Mouth: The second door of the vault is guarded by a magic mouth that will ask for a command word. The command word changes often. Portentia knows there are secret entrances in to this complex, but she doesn't know where they are.

Jim Darkmagic thinks he can cast suggestion and make the horned dwarf play the bagpipes.

Binwin has a Plan: Omin Dran can pretend to be a noble who wants to store something in the vault. What's the item being stored? A dwarf in a box. Wow. Binwin will open the door from the inside.

The group loves the idea and bounces some other stuff around. Omin says his sister looks like him and has her head shaved. He might be able to pose as her.

Scott slips Chris a secret note, which makes him chortle. Hmmm.

Zardak Thane: Once they enter, the group will probably have a meeting with Zardak Thane, the ruler. Then they'll be able to wander around as they like. Zardak is half-blind.

Viari has a great point: It's better to fight on the way out then fighting in and than fighting out.

Two-Person Box: Jim Darkmagic wants to be in the crate, too. We discuss air holes. "Don't worry, nothing can go wrong with a dwarf in a box."

If this plan goes south, they can explode out of the box and get surprise. If they get caught, they will do like in Sneakers - they will say that they were hired to test the security of the fortress.

Jim can use rope trick so if anyone opens the box they won't see the heroes. They'll put a phony crystal/decoy treasure in there. They later decide to use invisibility, as apparently rope trick won't work.

Lock-Picking Practice: Viari goes out to find the best dwarven lock money can buy. He wants to see if he can adjust his lockpicks to get a bonus when it comes time to pick the locks in the vault. He pays 500 gold for this practice lock. This is the first time in 9 years they've spent any gold.

Jim heads to the Darkmagic lab to concoct a magic brew that will knock out the dwarves. He spends 500 gold for the ingredients.

Crafting the Box: They are going to get a big, heavy gem and a large fancy box with meaningless designs on the outside. There's a special exit from the inside that opens right away. Opening it from the top is purposely complicated to give the guys inside a moment to react.

The vault is managed by a wizard named Ironbeard. He was bribed by Auspicia with a spell book.

Viari still has Guenhwyvar, Drizzt's panther. Jim has a magic whistle that lets him summon a unicorn named Andehar. This whistle is linked to Mielikki, the Forgotten Realms goddess of nature.

Wand of Wonder: Viari gives Binwin his wand of wonder so he has ranged capabilities. Chris says normally the wand can only be used by a spellcaster but he decides to waive that for this particular wand.

As they make preparations, the group hears rumors about giants stomping around. The group wants to build a wall and make the giants pay for it.

Another idea is to give use Drizzt's panther as a bribe. They were told that Drizzt is not worried about anything like that. The legendary drow will just come back and take his panther.

Portentia mentions that if things go south, the dwarves will cordon off areas of the complex with portcullises. There are a few rooms with levers that control them.

We're about ready to do this thing! That's where we stop. This should be really awesome. I am tempted to write this up as an adventure to post on this blog but I'm not sure if that is legally OK to do. Maybe they'll release it in adventure form once it is finished.

Timestamps

(3:08) Dwarf in a box.
(15:06) The secret note.

Overall

30 Minutes is Good: I love the half-hour format. It is kind of weird in the sense that we're only seeing one long session over the course of many weeks, but this feels so refreshing compared to the other shows which are much longer. I feel that both lengths have their merits.

Is This Adventure Inspired by an Old Adventure? Is this in some way linked to Frank Mentzer's "Dwarven" Quest for the Rod of Seven Parts? I think last session Chris mentioned a guardian maiden, a thing that is part of Tinker's Canyon. Mentzer also had a scenario called "The Fiery Fortress" which might have inspired this version.. maybe? Probably not.

Speaking of the RPGA: I am really dying to get a look at a lot of old RPGA adventures, especially these:

• The Dwarven Quest for the Rod of Seven Parts by Frank Mentzer
• (Planescape) Cutters by Chris Perkins
• A Simple Errand by Skip Williams

If the DM's Guild put those up on their site, I'd buy them. I know that it is possible that these scenarios are basically just ugly dot matrix printouts, but I am dying to use them.

Check out this site to torture yourself by looking at the titles of adventures you can't buy.

There is one RPGA scenario that is available on the old wizards site..

Dragotha's Lair by Bruce Cordell

I'm pretty sure that there was a Chris Perkins adventure linked to the 2e Warriors of Heaven book that was available, but I don't see it now.

You can watch this episode on youtube right here.

This is the D&D game that blends Pokemon concepts into D&D. I covered episodes 1 & 2 here.

I really love that this show is also in audio form. I've been listening to pieces of this episode while I am out driving or doing stuff.

I don't know anything about Pokemon, but I like this show because it is relaxed and it flows smoothly. There are almost no pauses to look up rules, each hero has a distinct persona and I just really like everyone involved.

The Party

(Logan) Standt Willow - Human Druid
(Steve) SBJ - Human Fighter
(Travis) Wendy Colecarver - Hill Dwarf Cleric
(Jeff) Emojis - Human Wizard 

Standt Willow

Logan drew his character, Standt. I didn't know he was an elderly fellow. That little creature is his pet zigzagoon, named "Breakfast."

Last Time: The group was searching for a guy named Ephraim Oakheart. They ended up creeping around in an old dwarven fortress and they met Meepo the kobold.

We learn that Meepo is very popular among the Pokemon podcast fans. Apparently a number of people made Meepo twitter accounts.

Meepo takes the group to meet the kobold queen. It turns out that kobolds and goblins both live in different areas of this fortress and they don't get along.

A Kobold Urd

The group is brought to a great hall. There is a throne carved in the shape of a dragon and in its mouth is a brass key. Behind it is treasure - gold and scrolls.

The Queen sits on the throne - she has wings (she's an urd, I think) and she has gold and silver scales.

Her name is Queen Nikki.

Wendy sucks up to her in a one-noble-to-another kind of way. The queen asks the group to find her missing dragon. SBJ somehow sandwiches a D. Pepper reference into the conversation.

Standt asks what the sex of the dragon is because, uh, he wants to draw it. The entire group cringes and the queen has a "who farted?" look on her face. Wendy makes the save by jumping in to butter up the queen some more. The heroes learn that this mysterious missing dragon is not dangerous. Apparently it has a leash.

Meepo

Meepo leads the group to a dark, cramped hallway. Meepo warns the group that they are entering goblin territory. They spot a lot of rattata tracks (rattata are basically giant rats).

They come upon a dragon statue with a basin. They read an inscription out loud and liquid oozes out of the mouth and into the basin. It's a potion of fire breathing! What an awesome idea.

The group nabs two potions. I'm surprised that they don't load up on these. I think most groups would hoard as many potions as possible, but in this group some players just pass up on the potions entirely.

As the group messes with the statue, Wendy casually points out that she's a better person than Standt. We learn that Wendy doesn't have many friends but seems kind of oblivious as to why.

The group comes upon two sets of tracks - human-sized feet and smaller feet. The group really wishes they had asked more questions about Ephraim back at the bar. They know absolutely nothing about what he looks like or anything. SBJ can't even remember his name. He calls him "Eekram Lionheart."

The heroes ponder the idea of just ditching the dragon quest if they find Ephraim. Emojis sets them straight with some wisdom - finding the dragon will likely lead to finding Ephraim.

What's a caltrop?

They explore for a bit and come upon a door held open by a caltrop. The DM explains what a caltrop is. I once had a player who thought they were called "cow traps." I imagine a cow trap is much, much bigger.

They open the door and set off some kind of bell/alarm. Beyond it is a long hallway filled with caltrops. At the end of the hallway is a makeshift barricade.

I had to look up what caltrops do. Basically, you either move through them at half speed or else you need to make a DC 15 DEX save or take 1 damage and stop moving.

Emojis has an awesome idea to use thunderwave to blow the caltrops away, but he doesn't want to waste his last spell.

Standt spots three creatures behind the barricade. Goblins!

The goblins fire arrows at the group. Standt gets hit with a critical. SBJ calls dibs on his gear if he dies.

SBJ unleashes the mighty D. Pepper, who flies over and does a "leak slash" on a goblin. Emojis decides to use a firebolt to set fire to the barricade.

A goblin gets a critical on D. Pepper. D. Pepper gets all messed up and is reduced to 0 hit points, which sends him back into SBJ's pokeball thing. D. Pepper can't be summoned again until a long rest. SBJ is devastated.

Standt advances and jumps over the barricade. He hits a goblin with his club. From there, the group is able to defeat the goblins.

They continue on, deeper into goblin country. SBJ creeps ahead, peers around a corner and spots another barricade. Standt and Wendy go to check it out. More goblins! They fire a volley of arrow at the group and Wendy is nearly killed.

Emojis kills one with a firebolt. The other two goblins try to fire arrows - both roll natural 1's. Their bow strings snap.

Wendy heals herself and the group takes down the goblins.

This group is funny. They are so new to D&D that they don't even loot the bad guys. The DM has to sort of nudge them to do it. They find a silver key and a dwarven flask.

They hear somebody whistling behind a locked door. It's a sailing song, reminding Emojis of his youth, rowing in the early morn with his quadruplet siblings.

Emojis uses the silver key on the door. In the room is a hanging cage. In the cage is a little gnome, whistling. He says, "Hello." It's Ephraim Oakheart!

The group lets him out of the cage. He's wearing a robe with a symbol that looks exactly like the mysterious tattoos that the entire party has.

That's where we stop!

Timestamps

• (36:30) How many friends does Wendy have?
• (1:11:15) D. Pepper is defeated!
• (1:17:28) Wendy has flashbacks to her tragic past.

Overall

This show is such an easy listen. It's amusing the whole way through. I'd say the first half hour is a bit slow, but once things get rolling it's a fun episode. I really like the old school vibe blended with the Pokemon concepts. This is a nice, simple, iconic dungeon location. It has a bit of a "Dragon Mountain" vibe, where low level creatures are using terrain and tactics to challenge the adventurers.

Travis is Hilarious: There were a bunch of times where something visual would happen and Travis would use a radio voice to say something like: "For the listener at home, I just gave the 'thumbs up' motion." It cracked me up every time. 

Encounters to Lift for Your Home Game: I love DM Greg's ideas. I think the potion-dispensing statue is really cool and I love the caltrop hallway encounter. Nobody uses caltrops! They should. Most of the time, players buy them and then forget about them. Caltrops are very classic D&D.

You can watch this show here at the Achievement Hunter site.
You can also watch this episode on youtube here.

Heroes & Halfwits is a brand new D&D show from Achievement Hunter, a very popular video game site.

As usual, I'm going to recap what happened, provide time stamps and then give my overall thoughts and observations.

High Quality: This show has professional graphics and a really great set-up. The DM is sitting on what looks to be a throne. They've got a massive table with an electronic map screen. There are multiple camera angles, including an overhead view of the map. This is one of the best-looking D&D shows out there.

The Party

(Gus) Bor Ealis - Human Paladin (Lawful Good)
(Ryan) Albus Cumberbatch - Half-Elf Warlock (Chaotic Neutral)
(Michael) Mogar Jones - Dragonborn Paladin (Lawful Good)
(Griffon) Orma - Half-Orc Barbarian (Chaotic Good)
(Geoff) Mr. Bo Jingles - Tiefling Bard ("Chaotic")

A few of the players are fairly new. Others have been playing for a long time. Apparently Gus is integral to their group. A comment is made late in the show about how when Gus is done with a campaign, the entire group is done, too.

It's interesting that they go out of their way to tell us the alignment of each hero. Two lawful good paladins in the same group! That's pretty rare.

Everything is very loose in this session. There isn't much tension between the lawful good people and the chaotic people. 

Frank, our dungeon master, kicks the campaign off by reading a lengthy intro. Normally I'd be bored out of my mind listening to a long pre-written diatribe, but in this case it is awesome. Frank put together one of the coolest campaigns I have seen in a long time.

Here's the basics:

Six months ago, the adventurers were conscripted into the army of King Maximilian the fourth, ruler of Einland. The king is invading the heathen city of Jackalheart, located on the Opium Sea. Does the Opium Sea get you high? Sort of.

The heroes have spent three months sailing across the sea with the armada. Their ship is massive and is armed with ten cannons. The crew poops off the side of the ship into hanging nets. Later in the adventure, we learn that the group is so used to pooping in nets that they have a hard time going to the bathroom without one.

The cannons are powered by "dragonpowder." They can shatter magical barriers!

The group is a special unit who will have to make their way through enemy territory and construct a campaign of disruption. The king's spymaster, The Kumian, infiltrated Jackalheart a year ago. The group needs to find and collaborate with The Kumian.

As the armada nears Jackalheart, a storm hits. Water elementals attack! Huge water spouts rise out of the ocean, destroying the ships and causing barrels of dragonpowder to explode.

The group survives the assault and washes up on the beach.

Crazy, right? The DM needs to write this campaign up and sell it.

Our heroes get their bearings. Jackalheart is 20 miles away. There's a cave in the side of a hill nearby. They spot a village or compound close by.

The group debates what to do. They decide to check out a wrecked ship to see if there are survivors or supplies to be looted.

They battle a giant snake that is lurking up in a tree. More snakes jump in. Bor Ealis is apparently a racist human, who looks down on dragonborn, orcs and others.

The group kills the snakes and thinks about eating them. They inspect the snakes and see that they are covered in sores and have cataracts.

The DM actually hands out XP. It's weird how few of these shows dole out actual experience points. Maybe they do it off camera.

There is a ton of chatter and cross-talk. It's hard to watch when everyone is talking at once. I actually feel drunk just watching this. 

The upside of this is that the players are relaxed and having a good time. There are quite a few pauses to look up rules, but the group is so rambunctious that those moments are not boring.

When you look at the professional set-up of this show, your first thought might be that this is going to be like Critical Role, where they are very aware that they are on a show and tailor the game accordingly. This is literally a 'real' d&d game, with all of the warts included.

I really think they should edit this and cut out the discussion of bonuses and rules clarifications. I think that kind of thing will erode viewer interest, but who knows. This show has a ton of views on youtube already so I'm not sure if I should argue with success.

Albus ends up with his crotch on fire somehow. Bor Ealis was the culprit, I think. Albus wants to put it out by rubbing his crotch on Bo Jingles.

The group is attacked by stirges, and the group wipes them out in another chaotic battle. That's where we stop.

I almost feel like I am doing these shows a disservice by writing about their first episode. They haven't had a chance to work out the kinks. From what I am told, Critical Role really tightened up as it went.

The problem is that I want to watch every D&D show from the beginning. Campaigns are very complex and I don't think a one minute recap is going to help too much. Plus, if I like the show, I'm going to go back and start from the beginning anyway.

Timestamps

• (7:29) The amphibious boat has one flaw
• (55:48) Orma has a wineskin and she was popular on the ship

Overall 

Epic Setting: Good god, what an awesome setting. You should watch the first ten minutes of the show just for that. DM Frank came up with a ton of great ideas. I've always wanted to run a D&D campaign that is entirely set in a war with the characters as soldiers. I really liked the setting of Lightfall on High Rollers and this one is right up there with it. Fantastic!

Decent Run Time: One hour and twenty minutes seems like a good amount of time for a show. Unfortunately, in this episode the group didn't accomplish much at all. They fought snakes and stirges.

The Group is Loose: The players drink throughout this show, which is good and bad. It is good because everyone is lively and ready for hijinks. It is bad because there is a fine line between buzzed and sloppy.

The game devolved into a bunch of people blurting out whatever came into their mind at the same time. They're pretty funny people, but this show is unwatchable at points. Some of the players get pretty obnoxious.

Missed Opportunity: I would have liked to see the DM start this session with the group on the boat as it is attacked. We could have had some low-level elementals attack, attempts to rescue crew members trapped in a burning room, maybe a dive in a submerged section of the ship and a thrilling escape as the ship is destroyed by the water spout.

Once this session got underway, it contained a few encounters with wandering monsters. I feel like the DM didn't capitalize on his own awesome ideas.

I think the most accurate thing to say about this show is that it has potential. For now, you might want to listen to this show while you do other things. I get the feeling that they are going to iron things out over the stretch of a few episodes. The setting alone makes this show worth keeping an eye on.

Earlier this week I bought the Dead Gods 5e Conversion Guide off of the DMs Guild site. I wish this was out 6 months ago! It has a bunch of stuff that's useful for my campaign, especially the write-up of the warp sense spell.

It also got monster stats, including barghests and cranium rats. The cranium rats are really good. I will try to work them in to a session or two somehow. I just gave them a mind blast power that grew stronger as the swarm grew. This guide gives them spells all the way up to ninth level in extreme cases.

This conversion guide is pay what you want. The suggested price was fifty cents. This thing is fifty pages. That's one cent per page! I paid $2.00. The guy did way too much work for a measly fifty cents!

Monster Stats: Bodaks play a big part in this adventure. I found these 5e bodak stats right here and they were perfect!

Sensory Stones: I forgot something about Sensory Stones. When they are taken out of the Civic Festhall (headquarters of the Sensate faction) they don't work and are drained. That kind of messes up my story a few sessions back, where the group recovered sensory stones that held incriminating information about Shemeska the Marauder.

So tonight I explained that those stones are kept in a special box full of the ashes of a dead Sensate Factol. That preserved the magic of the sensory stones and is extremely rare and probably can never happen again. My players were amused by this backpedaling.

Level Up: The group is level 9. They leveled up prior to this session. George is thinking about multi-classing and adding a level of fighter. He might do that when the group levels next.

I purposely kept the group at level 8 for a long time. Too long! I guess I was a little worried about the heroes becoming too powerful, but I realized that was silly. They'll be heading into the Blood War soon battling demons and devils. They need to be more powerful.

I'm also really interested to see what high level 5e is like. I did it in Tyranny of Dragons but it was a game with a lot of kids. They didn't use their big powers and spells much.

The NPCs leveled as well. Selinza is catching up. She's now level 7! She is dropping fireballs and buffing the heroes with her abjuration spells. 

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Half-Dabus/Half-Elf Wizard
* NPCs - Fall From Grace (Succubus Paladin), Selinza ("Litorian" Wizard, level 7)

A Viper Tree

Last Time: The goddess of love walks the worlds as a mortal and Graz'zt has her in his palace for "protection." Iggwilv has recruited the heroes to break into Graz'zt's palace to free her!

We missed last week, so we got in a slightly longer-then-normal session this week. I went way overboard in preparing and had far too much material, but it was a pretty awesome session.

The group were in Graz'zt's abyssal realm, making their way toward his palace. They had bought five slaves and freed two sickly unicorns. Anna Greystockings, one of Grazzt's thousands of rebellious children, led the group through the Zrintor forest to the city of Zelatar.

Zelatar, Capital City of Azzagrat: Zelatar exists on three planes at the same time. Our heroes had to navigate the maze-like city by finding portals that linked the different layers together. They needed to go all the way to the Argent Palace, Graz'zt's home.

There's a ton of great material on Azzagrat in Expedition to the Demonweb Pits.

The group crept through the town, keeping the unicorns covered. Anna led them to the Planewalkers Guild, a home of those who wander the Infinite Staircase and explore the planes.

The group paid them off to get the slaves and the unicorns back to Sigil.

Children of Graz'zt

The heroes learned about a homebrewed thing I concocted. The children of Grazzt and Iggwilv are known as "The Witchborn." Many of them have similar powers.

There are other kids of Graz'zt and a different mother called "The Bonesunders." Back in around 2011, I ran a 4e Temple of Elemental Evil game. There was a legendary character in that campaign - Fayte Bonesunder. She was like Conan but three times more badass. She was a parody of that type of hero, but she was also extremely legit.

Fayte ended up hooking up with Grazzt (his avatar was creeping around the temple in disguise in my game). Since romantic skill challenges were a huge thing in my games at that time, Fayte snuck off with him and made some rolls. Every time she messed around with Grazzt, she rolled natural 20's. It was crazy. She eventually vacationed with him, sailing a yacht in the plane of ooze.

Since the end of that campaign, Fayte splits her time between making babies with Grazzt and riding off on her skeletal steed SkullStrider to conquer a different mortal kingdom wielding only her blade and her trusty mancatcher.

400 years have passed in my campaign universe since that campaign. Fayte lengthened her life magically. There's a lot of Bonesunders out there.

The Demon Fighting Pit

Graz'zt

Anna led the group through the streets to the first portal. They came upon a fighting pit. Long story.. basically, a popular pirate NPC from my Skull and Shackles game was here fighting demons. She was part of the effort to free the goddess of love, but her group had been separated.

Bidam ended up fighting for the NPC against Skole Bonesunder, son of Fayte! He had tattoos on his chest of skulls with skulls in their eyesockets! He was a feared Blood War soldier currently on leave.

The battle commenced. After a round or two of combat, Skole used his cambion powers to command Bidam. Skole commanded Bidam to give him the sword of sharpness. Bidam gave it to him by plunging it into Skole's mighty groin!

Jessie wanted to know exactly where the groin stab landed, so we rolled for it. The roll was low. Bidam was disappointed to find that Skole's member would have a scar on it, and the scar actually looked really cool.

Bidam made his save and activated his ioun stone (it does damage to those who strike Bidam). He pulled his sword out of Skole's junk. Skole tried to use his spiked nunchucks to pound Bidam, but the aura kicked in and dropped him to less than 0 hit points.

When Skole died, he and his steed NekroHoof vanished. Fall From Grace told the group Skole must have had a demon amulet.

That means that instead of dying, Skole reformed wherever his amulet was stashed. Fall From Grace dropped a subtle clue that she had a demon amulet, and Bidam picked up on it right away.

New Powers

Lady of Pain

In this campaign, we're doing a storyline where the heroes are gaining the powers of the Lady of Pain. Bidam can look at people and cause cuts to appear on their body. Theran can create buildings in the city of Sigil.

While making their way through the labyrinthian streets of Zelatar, the group encountered a pillar of severed fortuneteller heads. Normally, it only spoke to Grazzt and his consorts, but when it saw the heroes it turned and made cryptic comments. This shocked all of the demons in the streets into silence.

It told Theran he had mastered the Chains of Carceri (a hint about Theran's new power that debuted later in this session). It hinted at Bidam's other new power, which will debut next session.

As part of the agreement for this mission, Theran was possessed by an incubus ally of Iggwilv. It guided him to the secret tunnel entrance to the Argent Palace. The group bid Anna Greystockings farewell.

The incubus repeatedly dug into Theran's mind for information with opposed Charisma checks. He eventually got what Iggwilv wanted - information that will come into play next session.

The secret tunnel led to Iggwilv's tower.

The Argent Palace

Here's the deal with the Argent Palace. It has 66 ivory towers, all connected by "The Hundredfold Hall of Silver," mirror mazes full of bodaks (undead who have a death gaze attack).

If you die in the Argent Palace, you rise up as a bodak under Grazzt's control. So, your character is done for, basically. The incubus repeatedly warned the heroes about this.

When doing research for this, I was shocked to see that only one game designer has tried to detail any of the towers: James Jacobs in Dragon #360. I used the ones I liked and made up some of my own.

Easy Mode: I should note that Graz'zt has pulled most of his guards out of the palace prior to the arrival of the heroes. The demon lord is hoping Iggwilv will send in agents to abduct the goddess of love. The group is caught in the middle of some dysfunctional flirting between two incredibly powerful entities.

Iggwilv's Tower

The group explored Iggwilv's tower. One whole floor was Iggwilv's closet. Ghavish, the incubus possessing Theran, said that Selinza was allowed to keep one of Igwilv's expensive robes.

In almost every single piece of art, Iggwilv wears the same dress. So now Selinza the cat lady is dressed like her friend Iggwilv, who she calls "Wilva."

The incubus told the group to put on cold weather gear. The mirror halls were extremely cold and they'd need protection.

The group found Iggwilv's key, which opened almost every door in the palace. The key also deactivated the finger of death traps on every door as well.

The heroes found lockboxes. There was one for each of Iggwilv's children. Inside were legacy items for them. The incubus told Theran that each child had the key to their box. The group spotted the box for Ash Vodiran - the greatest thief in Sigil. They hate that guy. He robbed them twice, stealing over 20,000 gold and the Wand of Orcus!

After some debate, they took his box. Next session I'm basically going to hand them Ash on a silver platter and see what they do with him.

The group found a pile of clothes and an earring. Apparently some interloper had been in this tower recently. Bidam cast identify on the earring and learned that if you wore it and said the word "gold," 33 gold appeared in your hand. Bidam kept it.

This mystery person arrived in the tower, loudly shutting the door downstairs and walking in. The group were in Iggwilv's bedroom and hid under her bed, which was funny.

The Secret of Rule-of-Three

Rule-of-Three

The 'intruder' was Rule-of-Three, a major Planescape NPC who the group had bumped in to a few times before. He came upstairs and immediately smelled Selinza's perfume, the scent of which is "Achievement" by Gonard Flumph.

Selinza alone crawled out and talked to him. The rest of the group huddled under the bed, hidden among boxes full of unmentionables. Selinza made some rolls and did a fantastic job of making up a story as to why she was there, and then extracted information from him. The group learned a few of Rule-of-Three's secrets:

• He is a son of Grazzt. He stays in Iggwilv's tower when he visits.
• He says he's trying to end the Blood War. He wants peace between demons, devils and yugoloths.

The group didn't learn the whole truth. Rule-of-Three is trying to unite all of the fiends so they can take over the planes! Graz'zt is in on this plan. Rule-of-Three is a very evil guy.

Selinza distracted him by trying on Iggwilv's dresses and asking him his opinion. The group hilariously crept right by him, making high stealth checks. Selinza met the group at the tower exit door and together they wandered the Hundredfold Halls.

Exploring the Hundredfold Halls of Silver

A Bodak

So basically, the heroes needed to make a roll to successfully navigate the mirror maze. The group failed the check and ran into a bodak.

In combat, each hero needed to make a perception check to weed out the bodak from the reflections. Failure meant disadvantage on the attack rolls.

The bodak hit Theran with a death gaze, which did 22 points of damage. Theran and Selinza both dropped fireballs on it, incinerating the abomination.

From here, the group had to make their way through a succession of towers and the mirror mazes between each one. Here are the towers:

The Spiral of Storms: This is a James Jacobs creation. Graz'zt collects storms! As in, hurricanes, hailstorms, etc.

The group entered and a lone vrock guard looked at them, eyes wide. The room was circular and held quite a few doors. He uttered a magic word and all of the doors opened.

Vortexes tried to suck each hero into a different room. In each room - a quasi-plane with a storm in it - the individual adventurer had to snatch a key from a bodak lashed to a statue to get back into the tower.

Bidam made his save! He did not get sucked in. The rest of the group was not so fortunate. The doors closed, and Bidam destroyed the scared Vrock with his sword of sharpness.

Theran had serious trouble. He was in a thunderstorm. The bodak inside hit him with a death gaze. One more hit like that and Theran wold be deep in negatives! He tried to make his way to the bodak, but the storm winds were too strong.

Luckily for him, Bidam opened the door and got Theran out. The NPCs did fine in their rooms and escaped.

Throne Room: The group came to an opening that allowed them to look down into Graz'zt's throne room. This was a chance for me to use material from the 4e adventure "Court of the Dark Prince," in Dungeon Magazine #212.

I just wanted the group to catch a glimpse of the cool stuff in here to kind of put over the idea that Graz'zt was a big deal. I decided his voice was deep and evil like the bad guy in Legend. They peered in and saw a bunch of things:

• Succubi were painfully encased in amber, singing hideous songs. 
• "..lithe, nude dancers" danced for Graz'zt.
• There was a hovering globe crackling with energy (It blocks teleportation).
• Two mariliths guarded him.
• Grazzt sat on a throne on a dais with ruby steps.

Grazzt said in Abyssal to the singing succubi: "Your suffering pleases me." The heroes got the heck out of there.

A Balor

Demon Roosts: This is an encounter from the 4e adventure, modified. The group needs to cross a walkway that is actually outside, connecting two towers high up in the air. There is a lone demon guard the group needs to bypass - a balor!

After some quiet, nervous debate, the group decided to try to sneak by him. He only has a passive perception of 13. Bidam went first and... failed his stealth check.

The balor turned and roared! Bidam decided to try using his power to cut people. It worked! But he rolled low. He 'only' did 50 points of damage to the balor (who has over 250 hit points total).

Suddenly, Theran's new power kicked in! He was shocked as energy washed over him. Theran focused on the balor and sent it to The Mazes! George loved that.

Now Theran has two Lady of Pain powers. He can create buildings in Sigil and he can Maze people.

I introduced a new rule for these powers. When the heroes use them, they suffer levels of exhaustion. The only way to remove this exhaustion is to spend a certain number of days living by their beliefs. So what that means is:

• Theran has to isolate himself and read.
• Bidam has to be hitting it and quitting it.

Prison Tower: I made this tower up. In here was a devil being 'tortured' by a corrupted angel. The angel was purposely organizing an encyclopedia out of order, which really bothered the lawful, orderly devil. I don't like to use 'real' torture in D&D, so I usually go goofy when possible.

On another floor, they found the other agents of the goddess of love. They'd been captured. These are more NPCs from a prior campaign. They were trapped by "unbreakable chains."

After some prodding from Fall From Grace, Bidam realized that his sword of sharpness could cut these chains like butter. The NPCs were freed and joined the group.

I set this room prior to the slaughter.

The Velvet Realm: Another James Jacobs tower! I changed this, running it before it became a slaughterhouse.

This place is where Grazzt keeps his 'harem' of the most beautiful people in the multiverse. Every single one of them ha a charisma of 20 or higher.

There was a guard here. He assumed Selinza and Fall From Grace were new additions to the demon lord's "collection" and went back to chatting up a lady.

The goddess of love was here, secured in a special room guarded by three magic traps.

The group talked with some of the consorts including Grazzt's first wife, Ela Zalag, Queen of the Abat Dolor. She was smoking a long pipe and looking around bitterly. I get a kick out of the idea of an angry demonic ex-wife. Unfortunately the heroes didn't approach her.

A "succubus"(actually a lillitu in disguise) pumped the group for information. The group didn't know it, but she was a spy for Malcanthet. Anything the group told her went right back to the demon queen of succubi. They spilled their guts, to the spy's delight.

Everything was going well until Bidam's 'curse' kicked in. He had to choose someone in this room and "hit it," or else he'd have to quit it (and back in Sigil, a Zactar priestess would die).

When I told Jessie the power was kicking in, I worded it in a way to suggest he had the option of 'hitting it' with a member of the party. I want Jessie to start thinking about Fall From Grace and see if anything comes of it.

I rattled off the list of people in The Velvet Realm. I immediately regretted putting a bugbear woman in here. In our last campaign, the group made friends with Bugsbear Bunny, the goofy NPC from the parody Castle Greyhawk adventure.

In that campaign, the group did incredibly foul things with Bugsbear Bunny. The players could sense that we'd finally found the line with the dirty stuff and they could see that it made me cringe in a comedic way. So of course, they kept pushing my buttons with Bugsbear.

Don't get me wrong, it was funny. But there was something about getting Bugs Bunny in Bugbear form to do dirty things that just really repulsed me.

The group did explode with laughter when I read "bugbear" out loud and slowly realized my mistake. Thankfully, Bidam didn't choose the bugbear.

Bidam picked a drow and the seduction rolls commenced.

Three Deadly Traps of Graz'zt

Once Bidam was done, the group was ready to brave the trapped hallway. Someone would have to brave each magic archway. Once someone set it off, the other members of the group could follow safely.

Archway 1: This was craved to look like Graz'zt's head. You had to walk through his mouth. Bidam passed under it and failed his save. He was frozen in a block of ice. Because of the fact that in this plane, fire is cold and ice is hot, Bidam was scalded but not taking actual damage.

Theran and the NPCs were shocked and unsure of what to do. They finally decided to just slide Icy Bidam through the second arch (with Jessie's approval).

Archway 2: This archway was full of carvings of Graz'zt embracing various consorts. A succubus spirit passed through the ice block and kissed Bidam. He failed his save! He was reduced to 0 hit points.

Theran realized that he could teleport past the arches to the door. He did so. But the other NPCs needed to get through.

Archway 3: Fall From Grace volunteered. I did not expect this! She failed her save. Her gender changed. Fall From Grace is now a man!

I think that a succubus can shift into an incubus form, but this is a special demon lord trap that locks you in to a certain form. Fall From Grace is a guy. I was very shocked, as were the players. This was meant to be a "how will the players react?" kind of thing. There are ways to get it reversed.

Theran used some spells to free Bidam. It was a little confusing. Bidam is stuck in a block of ice that is hot. Ray of frost does fire damage. Does it melt the ice? Or does scorching ray do cold damage and somehow melt the ice? Wasn't sure... didn't matter. One of those spells worked and freed Bidam.

Fall From Grace used her last three points of Lay on Hands to bring Bidam to consciousness.

So the traps are dealt with. The group goes in the room and finds the goddess of love reclining in luxury. Her agents had a way to get her back to her home plane and they use it.

Iggwilv's Rewards

Now it was the adventurers turn to leave. Their cubic gate had previously been broken by an abyssal storm, but Iggwilv partially repaired it. The group used it to teleport to Iggwilv's manor. There, they received their rewards from Iggwilv:

• Fall From Grace got a scroll of Lover's Call. Casting it successfully summons an avatar of Graz'zt for one hour to do your bidding!
• Selinza got a pearl of power.
• Theran got a ring of spell storing.
• Bidam got Fiend's Embrace, the cloak made from the skin of a pit fiend. My version is less evil than the 3e version.The pit fiend can talk to Bidam, and the cloak has a bunch of traits, including bonuses to spell attacks and saving throws as well as a +1 to intelligence.

Overall it was a great session!

The Deadbook Square Financial Report

This next graphic has some 'adult' content in the text, so don't click if it's not your thing...

I had made a "spreadsheet" or list in photoshop. It breaks down the group's monthly downtime income. They own a bunch of buildings in Deadbook Square and they collect rent.

They also own a brothel. I ranked each employee as far as who makes the most money, and how much the group makes off of them. The rankings were determined mostly by charisma checks for each employee.

George is really into finance in real life, so he was all over this. The group wants to spend part of next session trying to maximize their profits. I am really interested to see what kind of real world financial tricks George uses.

I had a ton of ideas for rival brothels and ways to make more money, so it should be really fun. I want to have a session where the group is in the driver's seat.

Chris Perkins gave some advice on twitter that got me thinking. Someone asked him what the most important thing for dungeon masters to do is. He said:

"Talk less. Listen more."

I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I'll save it for another time.

Next session, I also want to squeeze in a thing I am making called Trump: The Dungeon. I'll probably write more about this in the next few days. I am guessing that we might have multiple sessions in Sigil before we get to the next chapter of The Infinite Staircase.