Power Score

Episode 29: Dark Horses

Sam Witwer plays the Mad Mage today. Sam is an actor who has done voice stuff for Star Wars Rebels, he was on Smallville, he was in The Mist and piles of other stuff. He knows what he's doing and clearly has played a lot of D&D. He makes references to Tenser, Lord Robilar and everything. I thought he was a D&D guy until I looked him up.

According to wikipedia, he's played RPGs for years. Apparently he's really big into the Star Wars RPG, which is pretty awesome seeing how now he does so much Star Wars work.

The Party

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

Last Time: The adventurers are in Argynvostholt, a ruined mansion that was once home to a band of holy warriors. They just obtained the Icon of Ravenkind.

Everybody is really fidgety today. Evelyn examines the icon of ravenkind. She can tell it contains sunlight. She loves this thing.

The group isn't sure where to go next. Diath suggests going to Castle Ravenloft. Strix notices that Diath smells like decay.

The group goes outside. They hear wolves howling and a large black carriage pulls up. Everyone hides except for Evelyn. It's empty.

They get in and the horses take them down the road. There's wine in there for Paultin. Diath spots a bundle of 4 potions of healing and four vials of holy water. Diath finds the holy water repulsive.

The stuff is from someone named "E." Either Escher or Ezmerelda. Hmmm...

The horses abruptly stop. There's a mysterious person in the road blocking the way. It's the Mad Mage. He has an invitation to Castle Ravenloft, too. The group lets him in.

He tells them his real name - Mordenkainen! Jared's eyes pop out of his head. If you're newer to the game, Mordenkainen was Gary Gygax's actual character in real life D&D and he has been in a billion published D&D products, including Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure.

Strix realizes that this guy is the one from the spell "Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion."

The carriage is heading through Vallaki. Somebody jumps onto the coach. It's Izek Strazni! He is Strix's brother. He smashes his demon arm through a window and grabs Diath.

Strix casts enlarge/reduce to make him tiny, but he makes his save. Paultin casts fear and Izek runs.

They arrive at Castle Ravenloft and outside of it is a dead body - Falkon.

Sam makes a bunch of jokes about how the group doesn't have 10 foot poles and isn't tying themselves together. Being a veteran of Castle Greyhawk, Mordenkainen is expecting an old school dungeon complete with sloping passageways that need to be detected, a mapper and a caller.

Evelyn humors him by tying her wrist to Paultin's wrist, which makes me laugh.

There's a flash of lightning. Paultin spots someone in the window and then they're gone. Escher?

The Tome of Strahd

Diath is eating Falkon's corpse! Wow. He took a bite out of his arm. Mordenkainen thinks they should kill him. The group does not vote for that.

Diath pulls Evelyn aside and tells her she might have to kill him. She tells him that won't be necessary.

The group is surprised... by ASS SMEAR! He tells the group that he wants the Tome of Strahd.

Kasimir reveals that his name is actually Rahadin. Diath says, "We're still going to call you Ass Smear."

Rahadin points out that Paultin has been to the castle before. The group is shocked. Paultin kind of stammers.

A bunch of gargoyle statues come to life. We roll initiative.

Diath tries stabbing Rahadin with the hag pin, hoping it will kill him. It does 1 point of damage.

Paultin hits him with dissonant whispers and Mordenkainen destroys almost all of the gargoyles with a cone of cold.

Strix shirnks Rahadin. He's 3 feet tall. Tiny Ass Smear!

Rahadin drops Diath and then Strix kills him with a hellish rebuke. Evelyn heals Diath and smartly saves 15 points of her lay on hands... she'll probably need them later.

Paultin decides to use his sword for one of the only times in the whole campaign. He rolls a 10, nothing happens.

Mordenkainen says he's going to go find the Heart of Sorrow. He uses a spell to look like Rahadin. That's where we stop.

Overall

Good episode. Something was off, and I'm not sure what it was. The heroes were really lollygagging and Chris had to pull them from one spot to another.

Mardi Gras: It's nice to finally see Mordenkainen in the game. That was pretty great.

No game next week because of Thanksgiving. They should make some kind of special or something. Too many off weeks!

Today I'm going to dole out a review of Volo's Guide to Monsters, a new D&D 5th edition book that has a pile of monster stats and new character races in it.

You can buy Volo's Guide to Monsters on amazon here.

You can buy the lair maps very cheap right here. I love the hag maps and the mind flayer lair.

There is also a limited edition cover. Those are only available in game stores.

I'm going to over the good stuff, then the bad stuff, and the end I'll give my overall view.

Short version: It will be very helpful for any DM to own, but it won't change your life or anything.

The Good

This book is broken up into three chapters:

Monster Lore: We get huge amounts of information on classic D&D monsters.
Character Races: You can now make aasimar, firbolgs, tabaxi, orcs and more.
Monsters: Tons of new monsters and variations on existing monsters.

New Ideas

This book takes the previous lore from old editions and adds to it. I love that. Here's some of the stuff I liked the most:

Beholder Dreams: They took a weird turn with the beholders. Beholders now dream other beholders into existence. In other editions, they barfed up an egg to make new beholders. This is fine with me, but it feels a little vague. I would have liked a few more examples of how it works.

Goblin Society: I love the goblin caste system and I think people could really expand on it and do some fun things.

Here are the goblin castes:

Lashers: Trained in battle
Hunters: Wolf riders
Gatherers: Get berries
Pariahs: Do hard labor, cleaning, menial tasks. Oversee slaves, if there are any.

Mind Flayer Thralls: I loved the section discussing how mind flayers create thralls and how you can "De-program" a thrall. It involves a lot of very high-powered spells.

They also did a fantastic job of giving an overall view of how mind flayers live. They serve their Elder Brain and each of them is a repository of knowledge that the Elder Brain can draw from.

Raxivort, God of the Xvarts: They update/revise the story of Raxivort. In 2e, Raxivort is the god of the Xvarts who tried to steal from Graz'zt. He was hiding in Graz'zt's city of Zelatar.

Now we learn this stuff: :

He stole the Infinity Spindle from Graz'zt, which made Raxivort a god.
Raxivort created a realm in Pandemonium called The Black Sewers.
Graz'zt got revenge by telling many dangerous creatures that Raxivort had the spindle.
Raxivort created Xvarts - doubles of himself - so he could hide among them.
He wandered the planes, spawning more xvarts.

That's really great.

Full of Fun Details

If you dig through the book, there are all sorts of fun things that can add to your games, especially on the monster-making charts.

Here are some of my favorites:

Gnoll with a vestigial twin embedded on its back.
Bugbears form gangs. Their god will enchant severed heads of mighty slain foes.
Some hags turn into other types of hags over the years.
Mind Flayer Flaw: "I have a memory that is not mine."
Orcs don't have romantic relationships. "Mating is a mundane necessity of life."
The Hierophants of Annihilation: 7 bodaks who serve Orcus.

Spellcaster Stats: I love that they made stats for wizard specialists. There's an abjurer, a conjurer, an enchanter, etc. That is really clever and incredibly useful.

The Cow of Doom: Check out page 207. We get cow stats. I know they are meant to be stats for bison, rothe and etc., but you know a lot of people are going to use these stats for regular milking cows, too.

A cow has 15 hit points, +6 to hit and 7 damage! There are going to be quite a few level one characters who will be killed by a cow. That just cracks me up. +6 to hit! When they charge, they do an extra +7 damage!

DMs the world over will entice the heroes with a drunken bar bet involving cow tipping that goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Nods to Other Settings

Mind Flayer Nautiloid

The book has a lot of fun little easter eggs and mentions.

Tzunk, the guy who had the codex of the infinite planes and attacked the city of brass, has a quote in this book.

Spelljammer: There are repeated spelljammer mentions. There is a lot of discussion about nautiloids, which are mind flayer ships right out of the Spelljammer boxed set. There's also talk of Neogi mindspiders, the neogi ships. That is greatly appreciated!

The neogi are really underused, in my opinion. Way back when, I played in a Spelljammer campaign where there was a recurring villain who was a neogi. I love how they have umber hulk bodyguards and they're slavers - they are easy bad guys that anyone would love to hate.

Planescape: We even get cranium rat stats, who are heavily associated with Planescape. I would have liked one more stat block for a massive horde of cranium rats, but this was a really awesome surprise.

Linking Monsters to Major NPCs

In this book, they go out of their way to link most monsters to a certain deity or demon lord. I think that's cool because it helps people get familiar with the different D&D entities and it gives the monster another dimension that makes them more interesting.

Some examples:

The kenku once served a powerful entity, possibly Graz'zt or the Wind Dukes of Aaqa.
Orcus is linked to bodaks and devourers.
Babau sprang up from the blood of Graz'zt when he fought the archdevil Glasya.

Lairs

Maybe the best thing of all about this book is that in chapter one, there are a bunch of sample lairs. The lair maps by Jared Blando are really, really detailed. I liked them so much that I bought two of them. You have a complete mind flayer settlement in this book all ready to be used.

As always with 5e, you are going to have to dig through this book to populate and detail your mind flayer lair, but the map is great and the monsters seem really cool. Elder Brains really don't get a lot of attention in D&D. I guess it's because they are a very high level threat.

The Bad

I don't have too many major beefs with this book. It's more of an overall "eh" feeling to some of the content.

The Races

I didn't really care for the character races. There's only two that are interesting to me: The aasimar and the goliath. It's so weird, this feels like an end-of-the-edition pile of character races. In 4e they really rolled out crops of cool races in clumps.

Bottom line, I don't know too many people who want to play a triton.

The Art

I think a lot of people will disagree with me on this. A lot of the art is professional, but it doesn't grab me, if that makes sense. In any other edition of D&D, there would be a few artists that would really stop you in your tracks. In this edition, there's not.

I do like some of the art. The yuan-ti abomination and broodguard are really good creations. The abomination here looks a million times better than that abomination that had a 4e mini with the cobra hood.

The mind flayer art is good, the gnoll art is good and I love the gnoll witherling.

Whoever did the Shoosuva worked a miracle. I never liked the shoosuva but that picture is awesome.

I guess part of the problem is that a lot of the monsters in this book are goofy looking, so it's hard to get a cool picture out of them.

Poor Monster Selection

This book is full of what I consider to be goofball monsters. Nilbogs, boggles, redcaps, catoblepas, grung, flail snail, etc. I decided to sit down and look through older monster manuals to make a list of monsters that I'd have preferred to be in this book.

While doing so, I realized something. This book has:

Very few undead.
No dragons.
No devils.
Just a couple of demons.
Very few planar creatures.

The more I thought about it, I decided there is a good chance that those monsters are being "saved" for their own books. If you remember, in 4e, that's what they did and it seemed to work really well. In 4e, we got:

Open Grave: Book of undead, awesome book.
Draconomicon: Two books! One full of chromatic dragons, the other metallic. There are a million types of dragons in D&D worth putting in a 5e book.
Demonomicon: A book full of demons. Fantastic book, there is so much demon stuff out there that they could have made three more Demonomicons and they would all be awesome.
Plane Above & Plane Below: Two great planar books full of planar monsters.

Devils? As for devils, they always get the short end of the stick. They are really cool, but demons are a little more fun. That said, the 3e Fiendish Codex 2 (which has nothing but devils) is IMO one of the best 3e books ever made.

Devils are awesome and they are perfect villains. It is entirely possible we'll see a devil book at some point. The city of Dis alone could fill a book.

So, after having all of those thoughts tenderizing my brain, I realized that if you take all those monster types out, it is really hard to fill a second monster manual.

The monsters that I came up with after you take out demons, devils, dragons, etc. is a very underwhelming list. Here's what I got:

Spellweavers
Umber hulk variants
More drow stuff
Oozes - This is a big one. They should have done a whole section on oozes in this book.
More golems - There are a million types of cool golems in previous editions worth updating.
Eldritch giants and other giant types.
Other hydra types - If you're not going to have dragons in the book, why not some hydras?
Gargoyle variants - Runic gargoyles, Obsidian gargoyles, etc.

After close examination, if they held off on certain monster types for future products, then I think they did the best they could with the crop that was left over.

Overall

Volo's Guide to Monsters is a decent book that I think will help DMs, especially those who run homebrew stuff. You can take those dungeon maps in chapter one and go nuts. In general there's just a ton of material that you can inject into your game.

This book is definitely worth getting. If you keep in mind that there are not any dragons in this thing, then I think you'll be satisfied.

I collected all of the pdf previews of this book here.

We played some more Eberron last night. I am a player in this game. My character is a big, hairy 8th level sorcerer.

Playing Online: My DM is moving away, so we tried playing online last night using Google Hangouts. I'd never done this before. I had heard it sucked, so I wasn't overly optimistic.

It turns out that it worked perfectly and it was awesome. I think I liked it just as much as playing in real life. It really opened my eyes to new possibilities.

In google hangouts, you see all of the other players in little thumbnails in the bottom of the screen. The person talking takes up the rest of the screen. It is constantly shifting from person to person.

Getting Lost: I guess many of you already know how this works, but I thought it was very cool. It's so weird to see yourself on screen. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I spent a good portion of the session staring at myself like a dog that just saw a mirror for the first time.

The Art of Conversation: The one thing that is a little different is conversation. You really can't talk over each other. This makes jokes very tricky. You see it on Dice, Camera, Action. You can't slip a joke in - everyone has to stop talking and give you the floor.

If a joke falls flat, it falls really flat. If you take a machine gun approach to humor and just fire off whatever pops into your brain, you are going to kill a lot of time and bomb right out of the room.

Future Experiments: I absolutely loved using google hangouts. I would also try roll20 although that looks more complicated. I am definitely thinking about giving it a stab. I kind of like the idea of joining some random game, playing, and then writing about it.

The Magic Castle

Sharn, City of Towers

In the campaign, we are trying to rescue the soul of a warforged. It is trapped in this magic castle that we actually "built" last session. That means we know the layout of it and have a full map of it to navigate.

Black Market Potions: Our group has an ongoing healing issue. Worse, the city of Sharn has outlawed healing potions to discourage adventuring (the ruler didn't like it when we carelessly let a floating island fall on the city).

Before we went in the dungeon, I decided to walk the streets and see if I could find a black market potion dealer. I did spot one, but thanks to a good insight roll I realized they were an undercover cop.

After some internal debate, I decided to try to get those potions anyway. I'm chaotic good. Worst case, I'd flee with greater invisibility and turn myself in to the police later for what hopefully would be a slap on the wrist after we finished the dungeon.

The party fighter was with me, watching on a rooftop. I charmed the halfling/undercover cop. I got the sack he was holding. There were no potions in it at all! Just a crossbow.

Worse, since this was a set-up, a bunch of guards sprang out of hiding. I can't believe I didn't think of that.

We started laughing. I cast greater invisibility and ran. The guards chased the fighter on the rooftops. I tried to help him by using my wand of wonder, but all it did was send a nearby carriage to the ethereal plane.

We got away and went back to our home. The party wizard loves books and she hates these types of shenanigans. We nervously told her that nothing weird happened whatsoever while we were out. Nothing at all. A carriage vanished, which was odd and random, but that certainly had nothing to do with us.

Our Old Foe: Then we went into the dungeon. Of course, the front door was locked. We are stymied by locked doors every single session and every time we laugh that I swapped out the knock spell levels ago when we need it so desperately.

So we ended up just knocking on the door and hoping for the best. A drunk butler opened the door and said really bizarre things to us. My character had bottles of Frostmantle fire, an Eberron liquor. I convinced the guy to drink more and was able to get him so drunk that he passed out.

Portrait Gallery: We went into a portrait room, which seemed to be a locale that was designed to teach us the backstory of this place. There were two cambion women who were apparently married. They had four children somehow. One of the women had a father who they didn't like. His portrait was on the floor, face down.

After that. we went into a library, which the party wizard always loves. We were attacked by shadows.

The Perils of Strength Drain: This battle really reminded me of just how dangerous 5e can be. They drain strength. There were 6 shadows. The shadows surprised us, and I was down to 5 strength before I even got to go once!

It is very alarming and made me wonder how we would survive this dungeon. There's a lot of rooms in here and this one fight really hurt us badly. We're meant to finish this without a long rest and I just don't see how this is possible.

In my Planescape game, I always marvel at how the heroes feel too weak. Now I am seeing this is probably just because 5e is so swingy. I like it, but it makes creating dungeons like this very tricky.

Tanya: From the books in the library, we learned more. There's this succubus named Tanya who we've repeatedly met over the campaign. I like to think of her as an 80's video vixen like Tawny Kitaen. When I hear the name "Tanya" I envision big hair, lots of gum chewing and pink miniskirts.

It turns out that Tanya stays here sometimes and that she's sort of conflicted about whether she wants to help us or not. We also learned that there is a shadow dragon in this place. A shadow dragon!

Immediately I was wondering how the heck we were going to fight this thing. I'd be out of spells by then! I realized I was going to use my wand of wonder a bit so that I could save my spell slots. The wand is scary - there are plenty of bad effects that could happen.

Koko B Ware: We went into a ballroom and inside it was one of the cambion women. It turns out she was crazy and making jackalweres dance together. Somehow we started rattling off dad jokes about how these creatures took us "unaware" - Una-were. Then I proclaimed that I am just glad we haven't run into a Were-house yet. I mean, if the full moon hits and you're indoors, that's just a structural nightmare.

We tried to talk with this cambion lady but she sicked her lycanthropes on us. She repeatedly tried to charm us and thankfully we made our saves. That would have been really bad.

I pulled out the wand of wonder, pointed it at her, and fired. I rolled on the chart and got... a 100. She was instantly petrified!

It was awesome. That's where we stopped.

Overall

The big thing from this session was the experience of playing online. It worked really, really well. Maybe it's just because everyone I play with is so nice and accommodating, but there were just no drawbacks at all.

Sometimes dungeons can be boring, but in this campaign they are never boring. Nothing feels like filler. Everything is related to the story in some way and I think that's the key. Every room gives us clues about what is coming up and it builds interest and anticipation.

We did a big session of Planescape tonight that went really well. Graz'zt is trying to add another abyssal layer to his triple realm. The group is trying to steal all of his abyssal realms from him.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

We did a huge pile of little tasks in the city of Sigil.

Factol Rhys

Lifepearls: The group cut a deal with Factol Rhys of the Transcendent Order. She gave them 3 lifepearls to use to disrupt Graz'zt's realms. In exchange, the heroes promised her one of the 3 layers. She put in a clause - if the heroes ended up not succeeding in their coup attempt, they'd need to make it up to her by going on a dangerous mission in Pandemonium. She said they'd be obtaining one third of a key.

The heroes don't know it, but this key opens the Bastion of Unborn Souls, the place where all souls come from.

I tried my best to portray Factol Rhys correctly. She's very cool. She ends up being a big deal at the end of Faction War.

I made sure to have one of Iggwilv's apprentices touch base to hear the latest about the lifepearls. Iggwilv is an ally of the heroes and is working with them to get revenge on Graz'zt, with whom she has a very dysfunctional on/off relationship.

Devourer

Orcusword: Bidam got the Orcusword. It's fixed. He had a vision of himself as a devourer, an undead creature from Volo's Guide to Monsters. Whenever a new book comes out, I try to use the material I like right away. Otherwise, I tend to forget about it and it never gets utilized.

I had a neogi named Master Vulgid try to "buy" the woman the group rescued from the garden of floating crystals last session. Neogis are in Volo's guide too and I've always liked them. I just decided to throw him in the mix and see what happens. Right now he hates the heroes because they turned down all his offers.

Crux: The group has a portal to Crux in their square. Crux is a town on the world tree. It's from the Dead Gods adventure. I just don't like that place.

Deskari, Pathfinder demon lord

I did a thing where Ztefano, the mysterious ally of Graz'zt, killed everyone in Crux and took their souls. He's going to use those souls to build the new district of the city of Zelatar.

There are not too many details on Ztefano out there. I decided to loot material from Wrath of the Righteous. There's a demon lord in book 6, his name is Deskari. I don't like him and I don't plan on using him. So I took all his cool stuff and gave it to Stefano:

He has a poison stinger that injects eggs in people that hatch demon locusts.
He's got Riftcarver, an artifact scythe that can cast gate once per day.
I also gave him a version of the flail snail aura. When someone casts a spell at him, there's a chance he reflects it or some other effect goes off.

The heroes went to the Plane of Positive Energy, this time with a map. They got their lifepearls and thy found a "safehouse" for Bazuuma, their demon lord ally. It's on the border of the plane of minerals. It's a floating tower made of Iceland Spar.. I called it dwarven spar" for D&D.

The Plan is in Motion: The adventurers were ready to make their wish. They called on the water genie Lymph Dilutius and they wished for the 3 lifepearls to be put in the center of each of Graz'zt's realms.

My idea here is that since the Abyss is alive and sustains itself by swallowing demon princes and princesses who want to be demon lords, the triple realm of Azzagrat itself would react to the scheme of the heroes.

The genie put a lifepearl in the blue sun of Voorz'zt, the third layer. The sun "spit it out" and started emitting solar flares of cold flame. The sun sent the lifepearl hurtling into one of Graz'zt's 66 ivory towers - the tower of Iggwilv, which the group had been in once before.

The genie had technically completed his task and told the heroes what happened. They decided to go to Azzagrat to get the life pearl. They got there using the Abyssal Undersump, the ooze-infested "sewer" of the Abyss.

Traitors!

Graz'zt and Iggwilv

The secret entrance they knew of led right into Iggwilv's tower. The group crept in and grabbed the lifepearl. The whole plane was shaking. The heroes turned to leave and found Graz'zt and Iggwilv standing in the door.

Iggwilv had betrayed the heroes! The truth is, Iggwilv did not want Graz'zt marrying Bazuuma so she let him know what the heroes were up to.

The group tried to use their cubic gate to shift out of the plane, only to find it didn't work. Graz'zt was blocking planar travel magic during the upheaval. I decided Graz'zt could do this based on a note I saw (I think it was in the PH) that said that a demon lord can block people from gating or plane shifting into their plane.

Graz'zt spoke and both heroes had to make Madness checks. They failed and each had a greed-based madness bestowed upon them. These are right out of Out of the Abyss.

Graz'zt asked about Lord Stillborn, the undead baby genie from a few sessions back. The group informed him that it really was Graz'zt's son, and that Verin, Graz'zt's right hand man was the one who killed the air genies, including Graz'zt's pregnant air genie lover.

Graz'zt was enraged at this news and the group was quite intrigued.

Suddenly, tongues shot out of the wall and dragged the heroes... somewhere else.

The Bowels of Azzagrat

I thought it would be fun to have the abyssal plane itself devour the heroes like it devours wanna-be demon lords. The heroes fell through the throat and the innards, encountering partially-digested demon princes and princesses along the way. All of them begged the heroes to help them escape.

I was a little worried about creating these almost-demon lords. It's kind of daunting stuff that feels original enough. Whenever you need creative juice, just go to the Dungeon Dozen, like I did. Here are the goofy demon lords that I made up:

Xanthopsia, Queen of Obscenity: She has four arms and says awful, awful things. She blurted out three weird words. Theran later realized that she had given him her truename. With it, in theory, he could summon her and free her from the gullet of the Abyss.

Forfex the Soul Farmer: He's a "death yak" with displacer beast tendrils. He used to literally grow new demons.

Lady Malisma, the Memory Thief: She steals memories and thoughts - it sustains and powers her. She was so weak that she couldn't steal them any more - the heroes had to consent to it. She tried to steal one of Theran's memorized spells from his mind, but he blocked it. Bidam gave her a memory that he had already recorded in a sensory stone.

Raklivivius the Conquerer: He's a little gnaw demon that controls a demon giant from the inside. Raklivivius is actually in the chest, controlling it sort of like Pacific Rim.

The group ended up fighting him and Bidam figured out his gimmick really quick. Bidam cut into the giant and found Raklivivius. Bidam just sliced him in half.

The Triple Hearts: The heroes were stuck in the "stomach" of Azzagrat. There was a vast lake full of demon princes and princesses reaching out of the water, moaning in pain as they were very slowly being digested.

The group also heard heartbeats beyond the stomach lining. They cut their way through the guts of the plane and came to a cavity that held multiple black beating hearts. There were three - one for each layer of the triple realm.

A fourth heart was half-grown - this represented Bazuuma's layer, which was so far only half-connected to the realm via the planar breach spell.

The group realized they had a lifepearl with them. They thought they might be able to fuse it to a heart and 'corrupt' the heart with positive energy. The plane suddenly freaked out and sucked the group up a tube and ejected them completely.

Verin's Secret

Verin

The heroes found themselves at the Bay of Choking Bile, up by the waterfall of salt. Down the cliff below, they could see the alkaline sea and the portal to Bazuuma's realm of Burningwater.

The plane had placed the heroes before Verin, Graz'zt's right hand man. Verin surmised that the plane wanted him to kill them. But Verin didn't want them dead, he wanted their help.

Verin said he wanted Bazuuma's realm. Verin was a demon lord! Graz'zt actually stole his realm from him. Verin bided his time and now he wanted revenge. He wanted the group to help him kill Bazuuma and take over her realm. In exchange, he promised them all sorts of things.

The adventurers saw someone creeping up behind Verin - it was the slayer genie. Last session, the group had sent the genie to kill Gonard Flumph, my Donald Trump NPC who had been put in charge of Samora, which is on the same layer as the Bay of Choking Bile.

The heroes later learned that the slayer genie was stalking Gonard Flumph and closing in on him. A solar flare hit and injured the genie greatly, so Flumph was still alive.

The genie backstabbed Verin. Verin suddenly transformed. His white gooey form slid off his body. Underneath was Ztefano - the black demon lord who wielded Riftcarver!

The group finally learned that Verin and Ztefano were one and the same.

Narrow Escape: A fight broke out and Ztefano did a number on them. Mid-battle, the group heard a whale call. Bechard the demon whale had come through the portal and was in the alkaline sea below. The heroes jumped off the side of the cliff into the sea and swam inside Bechard - in Bechard's gullet is a weird mini-realm full of shipwrecks.

They felt Bechard turn and going toward the portal. They heard a thud from above. Ztefano had jumped onto the whale and was slicing him with Riftcarver.

That's where we stopped!

Next session, they'll have to shake of Ztefano. Ztefano has betrayed Graz'zt and is now going to try to steal Bazuuma's realm for himself. We'll resolve this story next week.

You can watch this right here.
You can check out the Blades in the Dark RPG here.

Nadja: A month or two ago I was watching a panel from a convention. The panel of DMs included Chris Perkins, Matt Mercer and a few other people. I didn't really like the panel, but I did like Nadja Otikor, one of the featured DMs.

She is very new to the game and I thought it was really interesting that she just jumped right into running an online game. That takes a lot of moxy and I heartily approve. I think it would be interesting to watch a newer DM and see how she runs things.

Blades in the Dark RPG: I was set to watch her run MissCliks: Prophecy, but as I was getting ready I saw that she had a new show airing right now! I decided to watch that instead.That being this.

This group is not playing D&D, they are playing John Harper's Blades in the Dark, an "industrial-fantasy" RPG game. The players play criminals in a seedy fantasy city full of gangs and factions. There are steam trains and gas lights alongside demons and mysticism.

Nadja has a nice-looking map on the screen that gives us some details. The two factions important to this session:

The Lampblacks: Shady thugs who hire the adventurers.
The Red Sashes: They run a "sword school." It's a front for selling a drug called black lotus.

The Party

(Nathan) Finn: Street Tough
(Mads) Rem Daeva: She has 4 black eyes and weird powers.
(Omni) Nuri: She has pale skin and dark hair.
(Tony) Zul: Arabic Ne'er-do-well

We start off with the characters in an office meeting with a burly fellow named Bazzo Baz, leader of the Lampblacks.

Bazzo wants the group to take turf from the Red Sashes. They have high class drug dens and sell a lot of black lotus.

Rem flat-out tells Bazzo she's going to keep the drugs, which doesn't go over well. The group will be paid "1 coin" which is apparently an abstract way of keeping track of money.

Omni is pretty hilarious and Mads is very helpful. She helps the DM find rules stuff a number of times.

Double Dealing

The group leaves the meeting and begins to scheme. They are talking about trying to make a deal with the Red Sashes to turn against the Lampblacks.

I am wondering if this is something not anticipated by Nadja. Maybe this game isn't as 'set' a D&D is. It seems more abstract and fluid.

In my experience, the natural instinct is to block the players here because if the group goes down a path you didn't prepare for, you might feel like you won't be able to fill the session or that the session will suck.

I think that in most cases you can go their way and make it work. You don't want to "block" the group when their idea could potentially make for an awesome, unpredictable session.

The group wants to give the Sashes info in exchange for drugs. They want to steal the drugs and frame the Lampblacks

Nuri points out that if things go wrong, she has grenades. Awesome.

Mads is really on the ball. She has all the rules handy and can find stuff in a second.

The group heads to Black Hole Sun, the black lotus den run by the Red Sashes. The group is going to meet with two important NPCs:

Mylara: She runs the Red Sashes.
Talitha: She runs Black Hole Sun.

Mylara is talking with Talitha, Mylara runs the red sashes.

Rem walks up to Talitha and makes a roll. In this game, you roll 2d6. I don't think you add them together. Result: 1, 1.

We get hung up on rules confusion. A viewer in the chat gives us the solution. How handy.
Basically, she can nullify the bad result by taking "stress," which gives her an abstract punishment.

Rem tells the Red Sashes that the Blacklamps hired them. Rem offers to give the drugs to the Blacklamp and to taint the supply. Wow.. great idea.

Zul violates Talitha's personal space and drinks her tea.

The deal is made, though it is not on solid ground. It's time for phase 2 of our scheme - tainting the drugs.

Black Lotus

Nuri knows a guy - a "psychonaut." He's hooked on dreamsmoke. She meets him in a bar and has a very amusing car crash of an encounter and eventually she realizes she actually already has the drugs on her character sheet, which is very funny.

Nuri takes her drug that she already had to a lab for some tainting. She rolls bad and starts a fire. There's a few minutes of rules confusion. Ultimately it is determined that there actually is no fire and she successfully laces the drugs.

The group goes back to the Red Sashes and they agree to work together for one week. Rem wants to shake her hand, but Mylara is wary. It becomes more and more obvious that Rem is up to something. She makes a roll to convince her to shake hands. She rolls 4 dice, 3 of which are 6's.

This is a massive success and I don't understand what the effect exactly is. A subtle electric charge goes through Mylara. Because of the good roll, Mylara (leader of the Red Sashes) is a permanent contact/ally.

From there I had a hard time following what was happening. The game is very abstract and there's a lot of jumping around in time.

Rem seduces an office worker but gets caught by his boss.

We stop there and Nadja hands out XP. Giving out XP is done individually in this game so it takes a few minutes. Nathan literally did nothing so he gets 0 XP.

Overall

I like all of the people on this show and it feels like once they get a handle on the rules, this will be fun to watch. It got a bit confusing as it went, but the people are funny enough that it was still entertaining. They all seem comfortable with each other and laugh a lot, which goes a very long way in making a show worth watching.

Leadership: The group dynamic is still being worked out. Sometimes, you get a group of players that are all tentative - they wait for someone else to take the lead. In this group, Mads sensed that happening and stepped up as leader.

That was good, but from that moment on she drove the action and only Omni contributed. It was a little odd to me that in some instances, the group didn't come to a consensus on their plans. People just did things without any discussion or consultation.

Blades in the Dark RPG: The game itself seems pretty cool. I don't get the system at all and it was very jarring to let the players create their own flashback. Creating your own flashback is potentially awesome, but it seems like it will take practice to get right. It feels like it could come off "convenient," like a TV show making up backstory to explain an implausible thing that happens right after.

I think if you're running this game, you should have a list of 'stock' NPCs to pull from. It's hard to come up with names and memorable NPCs on the spot.

All Stars: I always get a kick out of watching these shows and putting together "all star teams" in my head. I'd definitely want to see Omni play in a group with some of my other favorites like Jonah from Force Grey, Shattercock and Grimo from Twits & Crits and Anna from Dice, Camera, Action.

It looks like this show will be airing each Monday so you might want to check it out. This episode should be archived on Twitch for a while, at least.

Today we're going to talk a little about the state of Dungeons & Dragons through the lens of a panel discussion from Gamehole 2016 in Madison, Wisconsin with Mike Mearls, Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford - the people who run D&D as we know it.
It was a great panel. If it sounds like something you're interested in, you should go listen to it. I'm going to 'spoil' it for you. The audio of the panel is right here.

I am going to pull out the most interesting stuff and talk about it a bit.

The Approach to Steering D&D

Mike Mearls explained their approach to Dungeon & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast provides a service. They listen to what D&D players want or need, and do their best to provide it.

As far as I can tell, this approach has been phenomenally successful. I keep hearing that the Player's Handbook continues to be a very big seller. I don't think I have ever heard someone in real life say that they don't like the 5e rules. The game seems to be a critical and financial success.

Some of the other editions didn't really last all that long. 3e had 3.5 roll out a few years after 3.0. I think that D&D Essentials came out two or three years after 4e did.

In 5e, it seems like they are in it for the very long haul, releasing a 'storyline' every 6 months and a few side books each year.

How long can that last? How long do they want it to last? It feels like we're potentially in uncharted waters.

I think D&D is going to be pretty big for as long as people watch other people play games online. D&D can be phenomenally entertaining in that format if you have the right people at the table.

The Roleplaying/Combat Dilemma: At one point in the panel,they took questions from the crowd. One person asked what he should do when he has a group where half of them jut want combat, and the other half don't want combat at all.

Jeremy Crawford gave what I think is the best advice I have heard in a really long time. He said that you have to monitor your players constantly. Watch their reactions. Are they having fun? Did they like this thing we just did? Give them more of what they respond to.

Jeremy says he will actually junk his plans for an entire session right there at the table if he sense that it won't go over well on that particular day.

Mike chimed in with more. He pointed out that even in combat there can be talking. You can always have roleplaying going on, even in a string of battles.

Then Chris said to think of the monsters as heroes that are on their own adventure. Groups of monsters are like dysfunctional groups of adventurers and you can play them a such. They have all of the weird relationships with each other that the characters have in their group.

Settings: I really liked this. They said that they consciously try to treat the D&D multiverse as one big campaign setting. Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Planescape, they are all connected and all part of the story.

I really get a kick out of the idea of them publishing an adventure where heroes go on a quest to a bunch of different, less-utilized settings such as Al Qadim, Birthright, Spelljammer, etc. Heck, a spelljamming vessel can take you to all those places.

You could do a Rod of Seven Parts story where each piece of the rod is in a different setting. I would love that.

Volo's Guide to Monsters

There were a number of comments about making Volo's Guide to Monsters that I thought you might find interesting.

Trolling the Forums: Mike Mearls sat down and searched all of the forums (like ENWorld and RPG.net) and he looked for every list of monsters people to seeing 5e. He used that list to help decide which monsters to put in the book.

Powerful Monsters: Mike points out that Volo's doesn't have many high level monsters because their research shows that not many groups get above 10th level. This not because people don't want to, but because they just don't make it that high due to time.

Why We'll See Lots of Hags: Jeremy Crawford always pushes for hags because he's been using them in hi campaigns for decades. He mentions his home campaign a few times in this panel. Chris Perkins plays in it. I would like to hear more about this. What kind of game does the D&D rules guy run?

Everything is Linked: Mike points out that all of the fey entries in Volo's Guide to Monsters together depict the situation in the Feywild. We don't get the full picture but we get pieces. You kind of get the feeling that there might be a big Feywild thing coming up. Who knows, maybe he was just making a broader point.

Picking the Monsters: They had a ton of monsters they wanted to put in the book and didn't have space to fit all that many in. They actually sat down and did a vote, complete with a points system. After that, each person got to pick one monster to put in the book. Here's the picks:

Chris Perkins: Nilbog.
Chris Lindsay: Grung.
Jeremy Crawford: Wood Woad.
Mike Mearls: Didn't give himself a vote. He would have picked a Norker but he knew everyone else hated them.

The Decision-Making Process

Why There Are Few "Splatbooks": They feel like player options done poorly can ruin a game, so they are being extremely cautious about introducing new stuff, including spells. They also don't want to confuse people trying to get into the game. They want everyone to know that the Player's Handbook and the Starter Set are what is needed..

They purposely didn't call Volo's Guide to Monsters "Monster Manual 2" because they don't want to confuse new players. Mike once met someone who tried to start playing 4th Edition with the Player's Handbook 3. Wow.

Future Trends: They want to lay a foundation so that D&D can thrive 40 years from now. They actually made a comment about being ready for what comes if/when online gaming wanes.

What would that be? I've always thought that D&D won't die until they can make video game that allow you to do anything within the context of that world. How far off is that? Many, many years, right?

Future Products

New Storyline: They are a few months way from announcing the next product. I think it was January of last year that they announced Curse of Strahd so maybe it will be January again?

I know there was a D&D book online called "Labyrinth" that had people speculating. So I guess that's a clue of some sort. It could be a reference to the Mazes of the Lady of Pain. It could be a reference to the movie, Labyrinth which was very feywild-y.

Chris says that the adventure he's working on right now starts off sandbox-y, becomes more focused and old school.

He says that Pendleton Ward of Adventure Time was a consultant. Consultants come in to talk before the adventure is written. Chris tried to put Pendleton Ward into the book - as in, their style and sensibility.

Remakes: The general approach to revisiting old concepts is to try to put a fresh spin on stuff.. it's like the temple of elemental evil, but it's not. Curse of Strahd isn't a straight conversion of the original Ravenloft adventure, it's a new version.

Clues: They really hammer one point home again and again. There are loads of clues to future stories are in the main books, including Volo's Guide to Monsters.

Character Death

I found these to be extremely amusing so I figured I'd put them in here. Someone asked them to talk about their favorite death/retirement story in a campaign.

Chris Perkins: Chris was running his Iomandra campaign, which he wrote about often in his DM Experience columns.= during the 4e era. His group sacrificed themselves to kill Vecna. They created a huge explosion that destroyed Vecna, knowing it would destroy him, too.

Mike Mearls: This was in an Eberron campaign, One player was running a warforged artificer, Group was facing an undead warforged that lived on an island that was one giant construct (good god that sounds awesome). The warforged PC "uploaded" himself into the psyche of the island and took partial control of the island. By doing so, he could open doors and remove hazards for the group but his spirit had been permanently removed from his body.

Jeremy Crawford: He was running a Ravenloft campaign. Patrina kept telling the heroes throughout the campaign that Strahd was just misunderstood. He thought the group knew she was just trying to mess with them.

They get to the final battle with Strahd. Strahd pops up and the ranger says they should help him. They pause. Strahd drops one hero in the first round. The cleric flees! The ranger still just wants to talk to him. It's a total bloodbath. One hero became a vampire, everyone else but the cleric died. The cleric spent the rest of his days gibbering naked in the woods.

I don't know how long these good times of D&D will last. It seems like they're really aiming for a continuous ascent and what's crazy is that it really does feel like it's working. Their approach to the game seems to be working wonders, so let's keep our fingers crossed that D&D is big for years to come.

There is this sale going on now at DrivethruRPG where all Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG adventures are 40% off. That means you can get a lot of their stuff for $4.00 each.

DCC RPG is a lot like 5e except that it is a little more old school and wacky. I ran a DCC RPG campaign a year or two ago at the game store. I had some group chemistry issues (to put it mildly), but I did get to run a lot of awesome adventures.

I bought a bunch of adventures and today I'm going to review The Making of the Ghost Ring. Basically, I want to go through it and see if there's anything worth stealing for my D&D campaign.

This is written by Michael Curtis. He wrote Intrigue at the Court of Chaos, one of my favorite adventures of all time. I'm really interested to see what we've got here.

First off, the cover is just incredibly awesome. Doug Kovacs has this huge string of DCC RPG covers and art that are just ridiculously great. The guy has been on fire for years!

This adventure involves the creation of a magic item and is meant to be an example of how the characters can make magic item in DCC RPG. I love the idea of an adventure about creating an item. I almost immediately had ideas about how I can work this into my Planescape campaign.

Meeting the Ghost

This adventure is about a ghost who needs to make this magic item within a month or else her soul is claimed by a devil named Maalbrilmorg the Hell Smith. This is due to a contract she signed with him when she was alive. It is up to our heroes to make this item and save her soul.

This review is basically going to be a running tally of all of the hilariously awesome stuff in this thing. There are at least 6 things in this module that made me laugh out loud.

The Stink Pools: This is where the wizard lives. It's a swamp. There is "a tree that forks in twain." Resting in the division is a round hut made of saplings and animal hides.

As if that isn't great enough, then we have flavor text that tells the players that this structure is "beckoning you like the arms of a winsome lover."

The Plot: This adventure is broken down into three objectives. Basically, we're going on three mini-quests:

Rescue a certain master jeweler who has the ability to inscribe mystical sigils into the ring.
Obtain a specific gemstone from an ancient pyramid.
The ring must be tempered in the fluids of a terrible beast to seal its power within the band.

These steps must be done in order.

The Ghost Ring Stats: In case you're wondering, here's the completed item in 5e form:

+1 to INT and CHA.
Cast mending at will.
Cast charm person at will.
Absorb a single spell cast upon the wearer once per week.
Flaw: Charm person and absorption doesn't work on females.

The Journey Chime: The group can teleport courtesy of this magic item, which is "...a potent object of yore." Ring the bell and it teleports you to different places.

The Woe-Touched Halfling

The jeweler is "woe-touched," which means that he has magical bad luck that comes out in times of stress. He is being held captive in the city of Oolvanvar. Michael Curtis somehow comes up with all these names that are fun to say out loud.

The heroes appear in Oolvanvar and end up "...stepping into a filthy alleyway and barely avoiding an effluent of human waste running down the grim path's center."

The jeweler is being held by a band of villains. Their lair includes:

Attack dogs with their vocal cords severed, transforming them into silent assassins.
"Dusty paintings depicting long-dead nobles and wanton tavern wenches hang from the walls."
Gnashrilda Foul-Mouth: "Her chainmail bears the scars of a hundred battles and her leather skirt is cut high to allow free movement in battle. Bearing her blood-red hair in dreadlocks, Gnashrilda spews a constant stream of obscenities in combat."

The Bronze-Handed Pharoah

To get the gem, the group must defeat "...the Bronze-Handed Pharoah of old." Yes, he really has bronze hands. His origin goes like this:

Both of his arms were severed by a giant foe.
Despite having no arms, the Pharoah defeated the foe by tearing out their throat with his teeth.
He had magical bronze skeletal limbs attached to the stumps.
He had a hole drilled in his skull and placed the gem in there.

The Gem: It is the '"size of a pea," it is embedded in the pharoah's head and it can focus mystical energy unlike any other gemstone.

Getting the Brain Juice

The group has to get cerebral ichor from a huge monster. To me, this creature seems like the DCC RPG version of the Tarrasque. It is known as the Odontotyrannus!

This monster has been forced into a magical slumber. The group will have to creep up and perform surgery on it. You can guess what happens then.

The Odontotyrannus: "Its face is a horrible mixture of human, bat, and iguana bearing a slavering maw."

When it first wakes up, the creature is groggy. It starts off with just one attack per round, but as the rounds roll on, it starts using more and more of its powers. Each round its attack bonuses go up as it shakes off the sleep crust.

Once that is all done, there is another encounter courtesy of Maalbilmorg. That fight is on cooled lava that is thin in spots and there are lava geyser going off.

Obviously I love this thing. As I read it, I was figuring out how to use it and I think I have it. I'll probably run this in 3-4 weeks reskinned. My players have a broken cubic gate that needs fixing and this is a great way to do it.

The sheer volume of good ideas alone is enough to make this worth buying. I also really admire the effort put into making each thing. He could have just thrown that hut in a random swamp, but instead it's a round hut in a split tree that resides in The Stink Pools. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

This adventure is awesome and right now it's on sale, so check it out if it sounds like it's up your alley.

Today I'm going to go through Hole in the Sky, a DCC RPG adventure for level 0 characters. I'm hoping to find some stuff to use for my D&D 5e campaign.

The reason I bought this was simple. This sentence on the back cover: "They are to follow an invisible bridge until they arrive at a hole in the sky – and then jump through."

That's all I needed to hear!

Funnel: DCC RPG 0 level adventures are weird. Each player has at least 3 characters, each of them a farmer, peasant, etc. They go through this meatgrinder of an adventure that will kill most of them. Those that survive gain a class and become level one characters.

You could easily convert this to 5e, but you'll need to change the Wheel of Destiny at the end.

The Plot: The bizarre Lady in Blue recruits people who want to escape their mundane lives. She sends them on a quest to free Drezzta, a powerful green-cloaked woman. There's more, but I don't want to spoil it.

The Hole in the Sky leads to an extra-dimensional prison. Those who free Drezzta get a spin on "The Wheel of Destiny," an artifact that can change your life.

The Lady in Blue

I think the Lady herself is my favorite thing in this adventure. The Lady in Blue is seven feet tall, has the head of a statue and she holds human heads in her hands. The heads do the speaking for her.

To me, she is awesome because she's unique and different from most of the other female entities in these kinds of games. This NPC stands out as soon as you describe her.

When the metric ton of flavor text tied to the Lady in Blue is done, the heads kiss each hero on the forehead, which is weird and hilarious. Then she sinks down into the earth and is gone, which also amuses me greatly. What a great NPC.

The Invisible Bridge

At midnight, the group must step off of a cliff onto the bridge. "Once the last character has stepped upon it and gone more than 60’ across the bridge, the beginning of the bridge fades from existence, so that the bridge always ends a maximum of 60’ behind the hindmost character, and does not return." That is scary.

The journey takes three days. A storm hits and might blow characters over the side or else they fall to their deaths. They could have done a lot more with this bridge.

The heroes go through the hole in the sky. How can there be no flavor text for that?! On the other side is a weird realm with a purple sky. The heroes must head for the prison.

Along the way, the group might face a Chaos Pig: A "green and black tiger-shaped swine" that burrows out of the ground.

The Prison

The prison is a 300 foot tall monolith with 50 foot long thorns. The double doors are 60 feet tall.

Cur Maxima: A 30 foot diameter pumpkin that moves around using 8 vines as appendages.

This adventure is a little different from the other level 0 adventures. This one has a story and it is more about exploring a place and slowly learning what is really going on. The others are more of a funhouse dungeon.

As the adventurers explore the prison, the heroes are stalked by Cur Maxima. They meet bands of people who were also sent here to try free Drezzta but ended up going mad or just trying to survive.

The group is ultimately meant to free the prisoner, who is extremely powerful and can turn a character inside out with a thought.

The Wheel: Once the group has done this, they must flee the collapsing realm. They then meet up with the Lady in Blue and get to spin the Wheel of Destiny.

The Wheel is just a way to beef up characters and change them a bit. Rolling low is bad - The characters can end up altering time and going back to being a peasant, not even remembering that any of this happened.

Overall

This adventure had a lot of promise, but the actual dungeon leaves me feeling flat. There's really not a lot going on in there. Reading other reviews of this adventure, I see I'm in the minority.

I feel like the journey on the invisible bridge could have had some epic encounters, but there's just bad weather and some bird monsters.

The realm inside the hole is very vague, too. I feel like this adventure needs a lot of tweaking.

Story: That said, this might be one that comes off in play a lot better than it reads. This module has a story that I'm trying not to spoil. The story is very easy to follow and I would imagine that some players will really enjoy it.

I kind of wonder what happens if the group figures out what's going on. There's no guidance on how certain NPCs react if the heroes do certain things. The adventure seems to assume the group won't figure it out, but there's some pretty heavy clues in the prison.

The Pumpkin: I do like the idea of being stalked by a hideous monster throughout the prison. Long ago, I played through an old D&D adventure called Skarda's Mirror. In it, we were wandering in this mirror maze and a magic ape-thing was popping out of the mirror and terrorizing us. It was really fun. This could potentially be similar, though I think that the pumpkin monster might be a little too silly.

A giant skull with spider legs seems much cooler to me. I can just picture people laughing when I describe the pumpkin. I guess they won't be laughing when it mauls a character to death, but I feel a little apprehensive about it.

I think I would use the Lady in Blue as the basis for a demon lord in D&D. I'd definitely use the bridge and the hole in the sky. The rest of the stuff I could take or leave.

This is easily worth the money and I'd imagine some DMs could really do cool stuff with this.

I am going to review another DCC RPG product today: Grimtooth's Museum of Death. This one is interesting, as it is a "crossover" of sorts. Grimtooth is a character/mascot from a series of "Traps" products that came out decades ago. Those books were extremely handy.

I got one of the Grimtooth books way back in the '90's and I tried using some of the traps on my players. All of the traps in the Grimtooth books are extraordinarily vicious. The players used to groan when I pulled that book out during play.

The Dungeon

The tone of this book is different. The whole thing is purposely goofy and sarcastic. The heroes will be taking an elevator through the 101 levels of Grimtooth's dungeon. The adventure takes you thorough an odd collection of floors: Floor 4, then 24, then 13, etc.

Here's an example of the tone. Grimtooth is giving the opening flavor text. He says: "Before you die, please shout out a number between 1 and 10 rating how agonizing your death is, 10 being the highest."

Diagrams: The thing I like most about this book is that there are drawings of the traps. A lot of times, I have trouble visualizing complex traps. A lot of them use words like "promontory" and I can never keep those kinds of words straight.

One weird thing about this module is that vast swaths of some of the dungeon levels are not detailed. In the beginning, the book says: "The maps contain several mystery rooms keyed with question marks. The rooms are supplied for judges to insert their own traps..."

Several mystery rooms? Level 4 has a total of 14 rooms. 10 of them are question marks.

Getting Keys

This adventure is very brief. The heroes must go into a dungeon level, meet an NPC related to Grimtooth in some way, and get a key to another level. This chain of events ends up sending the group all the way down to Grimtooth's throne room.

During the exploration of floor 4, the group runs into Grimtina, Grimtooth's sister. She is: "...invulnerable to all attacks, possesses inhuman strength and splits anyone who touches her from skull to groin with her chainsaw."

The group goes through a few more levels, braving traps and getting keys. There's a few traps that I thought were really fun.

There's one that seems like certain doom. It involves a rolling cylinder and barrels of acid. If that trap goes off, there is literally nowhere for the heroes to dodge to. They are going to get steamrolled and scorched by acid.

There is also an antigravity room that I got a kick out of. I love it when a dungeon room has a floor like a chess board.

The Climax

The group gets down to Grimooth's throne room and I really like the way it looks. A throne surrounded by massive piles of gold is a very classic trope and a really cool place to have an encounter.

Grmtooth ends up screwing the group over and the group might end up fighting his pet dragon Grimfang,

One of my favorite traps kicks in when the group is ready to leave. The elevator literally rockets up through the roof. I really get a kick out of that. I think the players would freak out.

Trap Appendix

Then we get stats for Grimtooth as a patron. In DCC RPG, patrons are powerful god-like entities that you can worship and gain special spells from. You can also call on him for aid. His aid consists of things like dropping a giant bowling ball on your enemies or sending Grimtina to maul your foes with a chainsaw.

If you displease him, he does all sorts of stuff. My favorite is where he leaves a trap for the character somewhere in the world. The hero knows there's one out there, but they don't know where. It goes off at the most inopportune time.

Piles of Traps: Another thing I really like is that there are appendices in the back full of traps to use. There's a page of door traps and a page of floor traps. All of them have diagrams and drawings. They squeezed a ton of content onto each page.

The traps are brutal and/or amusing. I particularly like this one: You are walking up some stairs. Your foot falls through a stair and spikes stab into your foot. It will take five minutes to work your leg free, or you can just rip it out and take damage. As you are deciding what to do, a cobra falls from the ceiling onto you. Just thinking about that makes me laugh. A cobra! How random.

Overall

The dungeon is really odd. It's unfinished. I don't expect 100 levels of dungeon, but it's weird that we adventure through 4 different levels, most of which are left undesigned. It is almost like this book is more about the stuff in the back than the adventure.

Aside from that, it's a very fun book. What's great about it is that it is a fantastic resource. You could buy this and you've got enough traps to last for a very long time. In my opinion, those two pages of door traps and floor traps are insanely useful and on their own made this worth buying.

We had a really awesome session of Planescape last night, maybe one of the best of the whole campaign.

Tonight was the night that this whole "Graz'zt wants a 4th abyssal layer" storyline was resolved. When planning this, I realized that I'd slipped back into 'overpreparation mode' in the past few weeks and I made a conscious effort to run this like a Chris Perkins session. That means that I did a couple of big scenes that are given enough time and breathing room so that they can resonate with the players.

This one involves a lot of demon lords and NPCs, some home-brewed:

Bazuuma: "Good" demon lord, friend of the heroes, is merging her abyssal realm with Grazzt's Three realms.
Graz'zt: Demon lord, rules 3 abyssal layers.
Iggwilv: The witch queen, betrayed the heroes, now the prisoner/girlfriend of Graz'zt.
Ztefano & Verin: Ztefano and Verin are the same person - one is an albino made of goo, the other is a pseudo-drow assassin. Graz'zt's right hand man.
Bechard: The demon whale, friend of the heroes.

Planning for the Future: Tonight, I started laying the groundwork for the idea that the heroes are becoming the living embodiments of two of the fundamental laws of the multiverse.

Bidam Will be Rule-of-Three. Things always happen in threes. Throughout this session, Bidam encountered groups of three monsters.

Theran will be Unity of Rings, which is about how things come full circle. Basically, each session I'll have someone say a phrase to him in the beginning, and then someone else will utter the same phrase to him in an entirely different context.

If I can, I want to try and pull off some Curb Your Enthusiasm endings. I don't know if that's possible, but maybe the stars will align.

The players haven't picked up on it yet. It will be fun to watch them as they start to notice all the threes and recurring quotes.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

Last Time: We left off with Ztefano hacking into Bechard with his artifact scythe, Riftcarver. Inside Bechard is a bunch of shipwrecks. The heroes were in there.

Babau

We started inside Bechard with the slayer genie looking up at Theran. This genie had two of his arms cut off by Ztefano last session and he was hurt really badly. He asked Theran, "Do you have any spells you can put on me?" Theran told him he didn't have any healing spells.

Ztefano summoned some babaus, which are demons from Volo's Guide to Monsters. According to the book, they actually sprang from Graz'zt's blood, so I should be using them a lot here.

Battle with Demons: The babaus cut their way inside Bechard and we had a sprawling fight on wrecked pirate ships. Bechard swam through the planar breach from Azzagrat to Burningwater (Home of Bazuuma).

Bechard tilted as he dove underwater to escape Ztefano's assault. It worked, but it affected the fight. The babaus went flying. The heroes were able to take them down.

Bechard was hurt badly. He needed to eat a soul to get better. He had sensed a soul in the sea of Burningwater, located in one of the mysterious underwater towers.

The Tower of Oolvanvar

Shadowguard

The group went in the tower and braved a bunch of traps from Grimtooth's Museum of Death. I used the trap where your foot goes through the floor and it is impaled with spikes. Then, a ceiling hatch opens and A COBRA falls on you. They thought that was hilarious.

The Wheel Trap: I used the crazy room where a cylinder rolls down a ramp, squashing everything in its path and then crashes into barrels of acid, causing them to explode.

The players actually figured this one out! Jessie specifically asked to look for tripwires. She says she did that because she's playing a lot of Skyrim and I guess there's a ton of tripwires in that game.

The Lich: The story with this tower is that a follower of Acererak (famous demilich from the classic adventure Tomb of Horrors) found it via a spell mishap. She wanted to use it to store her phylactery, as she was trying to become a lich.

She failed at her attempt to become a lich and died during the process. That means that the soul that she needed to use to become a lich was still stored in her phylactery, and Bechard could eat it and heal up a bit.

We Need a Big Magic Item

When I was planning this, I was sitting there wondering how the group could fight Ztefano, a demon lord. And what about Iggwilv or even Grazzt? The heroes have no chance. I tried to wrack my brain, and I realized that one item could even the score: a talisman of the sphere.

Treasure Overload: The group is already overloaded with magic items. It feels like Monty Haul to give them a sphere of annihilation. But if you look at the sphere of annihilation stat block - any time the sphere goes through a portal or in a bag of holding, you roll on a little chart. There's a 50% chance the sphere vanishes!

Since this is Planescape, the group goes through at least 4 portals per session. So the sphere won't be around for long. I'll just let them mess around with it and see what happens. If it starts to ruin the game, I'll get rid of it.

They Never Lock Their Doors: What's funny is that the group left the sphere in an unlocked building at the end of this session. They have been robbed twice by the greatest thief in Sigil, Ash Vodiran. He stole the Wand of Orcus and 18,000 gold from them!

Honestly I absolutely love the idea of him stealing this thing from them and forcing a final showdown. They hate that guy so much.

Blackfire Creeper

Demon Lord Madness: Theran has Madness from when Graz'zt spoke to him. Nothing gets in the way of his pleasure. Theran's pleasure: books. He made a beeline for the spellbook of Oolvanvar and her other book from the Bleak Academy.

Looting 4e: There is this ridiculously great article on Acererak in Dragon Magazine 371 full of untouched material. What works out so well is that Acererak delivers soul to Orcus/Tenebrous. Bidam has a dark pact with Tenebrous. So in this tower, there are some really cool monsters, but they don't attack because they sense Bidam's connection and respect the Orcusword.

The talisman of the sphere and a sphere of annihilation are in here. The group freaked out. To move the sphere, you make an arcana check. The DC is a 25! If you wear the talisman, you double your proficiency bonus. That gave Theran a total of +13 to his arcana, so he needed to roll a 12 to move the sphere.

Theran spent an hour and attuned to the talisman. He actually de-attuned his robe of eyes, which is his trademark item. So right now he's attuned to: Talisman of the Sphere, Staff of Power, and the Amulet of Non-Detection.

Problem With the Sphere: He tried to move the sphere down to Bechard. He needed a 12. He failed..failed..failed...failed..and failed. Then he succeeded. This became a theme throughout the night. Not good! This is the item meant to ward off the demon lords.

Bechard ate the soul and brought the group to the island where Verin/Ztefano is building a city out of the souls of the people he killed in the town of Crux.

Goofy Demon City: I had an idea that amused me greatly. When I read about how the city of Zelatar is made out of souls and that you can see the faces of tortured spirits in the wood, cobblestones, etc, I thought that was kind of too dark for me at this point in my life.

I was thinking about all of the cheesy crap I can do with this city in a realm infused with positive energy. I could make the entire city full of living buildings and objects, like the candelabra in beauty and the beast. So the heroes walk down a street and a street lamp smiles and says hello. It cracks me up just thinking about it, so that's the plan.

Fighting the Demon Lord Ztefano

Spidey Sense is Tingling: While traveling, Bidam sensed trouble from his ring of joining. With it, he can sense the emotions of Bazuuma. She was in pain! She was fighting Ztefano and losing. Bidam's Graz'zt madness kicked in: He is obsessed with making someone his, and that someone is Bazuuma!

The group got to the island. Ztefano was in the center of the city, using souls to create buildings. Bazuuma lied on the shore, sliced open by Riftcarver. Fall From Grace used lay on hands so Bazuuma wouldn't die.

Bazuuma told the heroes that she'd fired all of her eye rays at Ztefano and he was hurt really badly.

Then more bad news. The group heard screeching. Bidam's son, the baby dragon Pyranicus, was attacking Ztefano! Pyranicus had no chance against the demon lord.

Sphere Malfunction: The group ran to help. Theran tried to move the sphere. He needed to roll a 12. He failed. Bidam couldn't wait. He and Fall From Grace caught the demon lord by surprise and did piles of damage to Ztefano. Fall from Grace rolled a critical while using divine smite, so she did 4d6+4d8+5 damage!

Then we rolled initiative. Ztefano teed off and did piles of damage to Bidam with Riftcarver. 66 points, I think.

Theran, back at the shore, tried to move the sphere again. He needed a 12. He failed.

Ztefano killed Fall From Grace. Because she has a demon amulet, she disappeared and reappeared next to it in a church of her goddess in The Outlands.

Theran rolled again. He failed. I swear.

Ztefano cut into Bidam and dropped him. Bidam was making death saves. Ztefano turned to Pyranicus, the baby dragon. If Pyranicus was slain here in his home plane, he was destroyed forever!

Theran rolled again. He made it! He moved the sphere to the location of the battle. Then I let him roll one more time to see if he could send the sphere into Ztefano. He failed. Pyranicus was doomed!

Bidam rolled his death save. NATURAL 20! He got up and killed Ztefano! It was unreal. We were freaking out.

Ztefano vanished when slain. The group realized that Ztefano wasn't dead - he'd appeared wherever his demon amulet was stashed. Some other abyssal layer, no doubt.

The Witch Queen

That's Iggwilv the Witch Queen, by Saniika.

Then there was even more bad news. Someone was yelling at Bazuuma. Bidam ran over to check. Theran tried to move the sphere... and failed. It felt like he was rolling a d12 instead of a d20. It was unreal.

The group saw Iggwilv standing over Bazuuma. Iggwilv was telling her that she'd never marry Graz'zt and that Bazuuma wasn't even worthy of being her puppet. I had set this up where the group's choice would really matter. Iggwilv was going to kill Bazuuma in one round.

Jessie roleplayed Bidam's madness. Bidam wanted possession of Bazuuma and someone was trying to take her away from him! Bidam got surprise and tore into Iggwilv, doing piles and piles of damage.

Iggwilv's Trickery: There was no blood. This wasn't Iggwilv, it was a simulacrum! A simulacrum is a 'clone' made of ice and snow, and it has half the hit points of the original. Obviously, the use of simulacrum is inspired by what Chris Perkins did when he ran the Amber Temple on Dice, Camera, Action.

Iggwilv turned in shock. She couldn't believe Bidam had the audacity to stab her repeatedly with a lightning sword. She looked at Theran and hissed, "Traitor!"

Then she saw the sphere of annihilation! If two people want it, they can do an opposed arcana check. Whoever rolls higher gets it! Her arcana is very, very high.

We rolled initiative. Iggwilv rolled low. Theran tried to send the sphere of annihilation into her. He failed his roll again! Bidam and Pyranicus rolled ridiculously well and destroyed the simulacrum! It turned into a pile of snow.

There was one more visitor. He was nearby, using greater invisibility. It was Graz'zt.

Graz'zt

That's actually some amazing fan art for For Duty & Deity from right here.

Graz'zt became visible. He jabbed his blade, Wave of Sorrow, into the ground. He pulled up some abyssal tissue. He saw that it was infused with positive energy. Bonding with this layer might do him serious harm!

He told the adventurers that he was going to hunt down Ztefano and that the planar breach that connected his layer to this one would be shut down. He told them that one day he'd come for Burningwater, but for now they were welcome to continue to rule their domains in his triple realm. Perhaps their alliance would strengthen over time.

Then, he looked at Bazuuma and walked over to her. Graz'zt obviously finds her attractive. The gimmick with Bazuuma is that she is utterly beautiful except for the fact that she has 20 eyes on her face. She wears a veil to cover them.

Bidam vs. Graz'zt: Bidam stepped in front of Bazuuma. Graz'zt dominated him (DC 23) and made him step aside. Graz'zt whispered something to her that made her eyes bulge. Then he told Bidam that one day, Bazuuma would be his. Bidam was adamant that would never happen.

Survival: Graz'zt left and it was over. Bidam was already abandoning his philosophy of hit it and quit it. Now, with this madness of Graz'zt, he's become utterly devoted to Bazuuma.

I plan on doing a final test of Bidam's beliefs over the next three sessions. Each time, he'll have a opportunity to 'hit it.' If he declines two out of three times, his belief will change to something new.

Hole in the Sky: We did some quick cleanup. The group had hired a wizard to cast another planar breach to connect Bazuuma's realm to the plane of positive energy. I took this opportunity to steal some stuff from Hole in the Sky, which I reviewed the other day.

There is now an invisible bridge that connects all of the islands and towers in Burningwater. The bridge also leads to the portal to the plane of positive energy - a hole in the sky.

Return to Sigil: Bidam stayed with Bazuuma due to his madness. Theran returned to Sigil. He brought the sphere of annihilation through a portal. I secretly rolled on the chart - and as fate would have it, the sphere made it through.

Theran failed 3 more rolls (I swear he only needed a 12) and then was able to park the sphere in his wizard lab. The group wanted to put a post-it note near it that said "do not touch!"

Then Theran opened the spell book he'd taken from the tower of Oolvanvar. A glyph of warding went off - a huge explosion that destroyed the book and wounded Theran. People came running. Theran had been blown up and killed in this very building by an explosion, so obviously people were concerned.

Someone showed up in the square - Drokkarn the pit fiend! He'd finally found the group's demon slaves: Barbagg the imp and Nin the heresy devil.

Drokkarn told Theran that the Dark Eight (the pit fiend generals of the Blood War) had activated him and were going to give him an army. He asked Theran if the heroes would like to fight alongside him against demons in the Blood War. Theran wasn't sure what to say.

Nin started to heckle him and challenged Theran to a sorcerous duel. He went into a big tirade, which ended with the phrase: "Come on, do you want to put a spell on me?!" That's Unity of Rings, phase 1.

That's where we stopped. It was a great one. Running it Perkins-style goes against my nature but sweet jaysus, it works so well.

Episode 30: Nail in the Coffin

Finally we get back to Dice, Camera, Action. It feels like it's been forever.

Over the break, a few things popped up that I think are worth mentioning. Anna got a custom mini of Evelyn made:

That's pretty much perfect!

Chris tweeted some photos of stuff in the Wizards of the Coast offices:

On the top shelf is a lady of pain hat! Below it is the Spelljammer monstrous compendium one, home of the giant space hamster. There are a ton of old D&D action figures.

When I was a little kid there was this really crappy store that carried these toys for cheap. I remember getting an otyugh, a chimera and warduke. Those are long gone now.

This one's full of 5e stuff. I really get a kick out of that beholder sweater. I might get one.

Jared is selling some shirts, including a shirt that looks like his shirt. I like the Hydlide one.

Holly has created a zine being sold for charity. It looks very professional and looks like it has a lot of Strix art in it.

The Party

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

Last Time: The adventurers teamed up with the legendary mage Mordenkainen, went to Strahd's castle and killed Ass Smear ("Kasimir" aka Rahadin). Diath couldn't stop himself from eating a corpse, and it looks like he's a full blown ghoul now.

They are right next to the dining room, one of my favorite encounters in the castle. Mordenkainen left the group to find the Heart of Sorrow, a magic item that powers Strahd.

Diath points out that they still need Strix's tarokka item (the sunsword) in the 'room of bones.'

After a lot of discussion, Diath gives Strix a potion of polymorph. She makes herself look like Rahadin. Then she uses prestidigitation to re-create Rahadin's aura of moaning souls. Clever!

They're going to pretend to be Rahadin's captives. They think the bone place is down in the dungeons, so down they go.

After a lot of exploring, Diath falls into a pit trap. He slides down a ramp into a cell. Evelyn is able to rescue him.

The Crypts

The group ends up in the vast crypt area, which is a pretty iconic D&D location. It is full of crypts, each of which are detailed in the book.

Evelyn is magically drawn to one - the crypt of St. Markovia. This area is on Curse of Strahd page 86, Crypt 6. Chris changes this around quite a bit from what's in the book.

I always thought it would be cool if Evelyn became a Saint. Maybe that will happen somehow. If she defeats Strahd, that's worthy of sainthood, right?

In the crypt, the group sees dust that might be the remains of St. Markovia. The group thinks that if Diath snorts it, he'll be cured. He declines. Strix quietly puts some of the ashes into a potion bottle and keeps it.

The spirit of Saint Markovia appears and blesses Evelyn's weapon, Lightfall. She calls Evelyn "Lady Marthane." Lightfall is imbued with the powers of a mace of disruption

Lightfall:

Sheds light.
+2d6 radiant damage to undead and fiends.
If the undead/fiend target has 25 hit points or less, it must make a saving throw or be destroyed.

There are all these bats on the ceiling of the crypt. They freak out and start flying around.

Diath Drinks Ashes

This is a 5th edition ghoul

Strix makes a mixture of wine and the ashes of Saint Markovia. She wants Diath to drink it. Diath does! Are they crazy?

He is in intense pain and doubles over. Chris tells Diath that this is what it feels like when someone turns undead.

Diath barfs up a black substance. He churns out more of it. Evelyn thinks the evil is coming out of him. It worked! He's not a ghoul anymore. Wow.

Paultin decides to clear out the bat swarm. He drunkenly tells them to go away.. and they do.

The heroes head up some stairs. mist coalesces, and Strahd appears! Paultin says "Nice to see you again, sir."

He tells them their gods can't save them now. The group makes a hilariously lame attempt to pretend they are prisoners of 'Rahadin.'

Diath throws a dagger. Strahd turns to mist. It was an illusion. Evelyn casts zone of truth and the group interrogates Paultin. They become convinced he wasn't actually going to betray the party.

From there we had some issues with the stream. The group encountered a shadow demon and Strix got it to back off by pretending she was Rahadin.

Overall

Good show as usual! I love seeing them go into the crypts. It feels like they could spend 4 sessions in there, easy, but I don't think that will happen.

It feels like we are heading toward the conclusion. If Chris wants to start Storm King's Thunder in the new year, that means we only have a couple of sessions left, and we'll probably miss a week or two due to the holidays.

I realized we might not get to see Baba Lysaga, one of my favorite NPCs from Curse of Strahd. I love the Creeping Hut, I hope we get some kind of reference.

Don't forget, there is a special episode of Force Grey coming up on Monday. Check out my summary of their last session to get caught up to speed.

Today we're going to take a look at a big adventure from the Adventurer's League: Assault on Maerimydra. You can buy it right here.

The story runs concurrently with the events of Out of the Abyss and deals with Graz'zt, a demon lord I'm using a lot in my home campaign.

I did not know this existed until a reader pointed it out to me. This thing is official and explains what Graz'zt was doing during Out of the Abyss. Let's check it out.

Overview

First of all, this adventure is huge. It's 83 pages long, though there's about 30 pages of monster stats. Costing just $5, this is a ton of adventure for your money.

The premise is that Graz'zt has a force of monsters who have overtaken a former drow city called Maerimydra. The heroes are part of an army who attack the city and try to take it back.

Graz'zt is currently enacting a ritual, designed to protect him fro being summoned by Vizeran De'Vir. That's something that happens at the end of the Out of the Abyss adventure.

He also has created an 'abyssal heart.' He is going to try to spread madness throughout the material plane and control the land similar to how he controls layers of the abyss.

Running this as-is probably won't work. It was designed to be run en masse - a whole bunch of tables at a convention at once. Some chapters have 6 scenarios, 2 of which your group can choose to go through.

This is very easily modified for your home game. You can just use them all or the ones you like.

This adventure has a lot of awesome ideas in it, and I learned some new things about Graz'zt. I pulled out some of my favorites so you can get a look.

Hledh Hellspawn: She is a half-fire giant granddaughter of Graz'zt. She rules Maerimydra, the former drow city.

Matliedun: Son of Graz'zt, a cambion. Stuff we learn:

Uhh here's a quote: "If captured, Matliedun is the son of Graz'zt and one of his many concubines."
He's in charge of tower security in the undying temple.
His bedroom contains stuffed people. Two drow females and a quaggoth.
He wears demon armor and fights with a clawed gauntlet

Squallocks the Vrock: She is an advisor to Graz'zt. She wears a robe of stars.

Elisande: Mysterious young girl with a black-furred blind goat. She has no concept of right and wrong. I won't spoil it. Throughout the adventure she does cutesy 'crazy' things. I found her kind of annoying and plot-invincible, but I love the goat.

Graz'zt is described as hedonistic, shocking, and just short of god-like.

Graz'zt went to Maerimydra's Undying Temple and regrew a magic heart made of necrotic energy, beating with the raw chaos of the Abyss.

Welcome to the Sporedome

I love the opening flavor text. The group is among the army set to attack Maerimydra:"Excitement wars with panic and those not seated pace back and forth. Secretive drow mix with tall mushroom men while stout dwarves talk with humans wearing helmets capped with red feathers. A little girl in a dirty dress sits alone atop a tall mushroom, her arm around a black goat with milky white eyes."

From here, the group goes on a few missions to capture bases near the city. The heroes might fight alongside myconid allies who use pacification spores to stun enemies.The adventurers also team up with a mind flayer to take on an aboleth.

Bloodfire Dust: Poison that literally boils your blood. How awesome is that?

Umber Hulks: We learn that umber hulks lay eggs! I had no idea.

Grapdol Symbiote: This is a mind flayer item the group can use. Swallow a tadpole. It burrows into your spine for 5 rounds and then you sprout gills, gain telepathy and gain 30 feet of darkvision. It dies after two hours.

Here's quite a scene: A mummy lord knight riding a nightmare who has a squire that is a ghost. I have never heard of anything like that! Very creative.

Fiendborne Forge Giants: These monsters are half fire giant/half demon. That's great. They are immune to poison. Blindsight 60 ft. Can cast Darkness 1/day. They might have leathery, useless wings, horns, extra eyes, etc.

After a bunch of missions and combats, the army is surprised by an assault from the rear. This assault is centered around a truly insane daughter of Graz'zt - The Mother.

The Mother: She is the spawn of Graz'zt and an unknown, unspeakable creature. She"..represents all of the worst aspects of Graz'zt's connections with hunger and fecundity." So many cool details:

She's vaguely feminine in form, has three horns.
Several tentacles grow out of her abdomen.
She has a snakelike tongue that can drag creatures into her mouth.
Creatures are birthed from her, pulling their way free of her mass.
To use a legendary action, she must consume a derro.
The ground around her is littered with corpses that writhe with her parasitic young. If you get too close, a corpse explodes and a swarm comes after you.
Her stats are great. As a legendary action she can spawn a succubus, a barlgura or a vrock.
She has 7 attacks! 6 tentacles and 1 tongue.
The mother literally spews eggs onto the battlefield. We get a chart that says what's in them. There's an ooze, explosive gas, a carnivorous swarm and more.

The Undying Temple

According to these notes on the 3rd edition City of the Spider Queen adventure, the Undying Temple was linked to the plane of negative energy. In 5e, it's linked to the ethereal plane. I don't think the planes of positive and negative energy are part of the official 5e cosmology.

If the group survives The Mother, they need to bust in to The Undying Temple, find Graz'zt and stop him.

Warped Magic: There's an area of warped magic. If you cast a spell there, you need to make a DC 15 wisdom save or the spell is absorbed and has no effect. The caster also takes d6 necrotic damage per absorbed spell level. Undead are healed by this.

They didn't phone in the flavor text, that's for sure. Check out what can be found in Bexron's Room in the Undying temple: "Large lurid paintings hang on the walls of this bedroom. One depicts a mother cooking and consuming her children, another shows a rider who clearly loves his favorite steed a lot, and the final shows a naked man kneeling in a pentagram of blood as he reads from an evil-looking tome."

Abyssal Energy Orb: A throbbing black orb covered in searing fire.

It's a piece of the Abyss consuming the souls of hundreds of slaves.
Drow faces soundlessly scream in the dancing flames.
Touch the orb and wow you are taking 55 damage and you're poisoned. Saving throw DC: 25.
You can enter the orb to go into the Ethereal plane.

The Nursery: OK. This adventure is awesome. This nursery has cribs containing 12 of Graz'zt's half-demon babies.

Their nursemaid is Joifericus the succubus. "She spends hours every day feeding them and teaching the finer points of evil."
The infants are half-drow, fire giant, orc or quaggoth.
They have stats. The kids have an AC of 10 and 10 hp. I imagine that might have been a little uncomfortable to run at the convention.

Facing Graz'zt: The final area is really awesome. There's so much in it. There are symbols of each demon lord. It's complicated, but there are ways to use creatures bound by these symbols to de-power Graz'zt piece by piece. Graz'zt sits on a throne made from hundreds of drow corpses.

The group doesn't fight just Graz'zt, but other monsters as well! It is a really insane encounter. They put a lot of thought into stripping Graz'zt's powers to make this fight manageable. You can use that list to help make Graz'zt beatable, if that's what you want to do.

Overall

Seriously, if you ever plan on running a siege in your campaign, you should get this. This is also fantastic to use just for magic items and monster ideas.

The one negative about this is that typos litter the document. I really don't care much about that, but it is very noticeable. I figured I'd warn you. Also, there are maps, but they are hand-drawn o blue graph paper.

I loved this thing and I am working it into my own campaign in a month or two, once we start the blood war.

I liked playing Eberron online, so I've decided to try running some online games. If you are interested, email me: powerscorerpg@gmail.com.

I am running one this Saturday at 7 PM EST and I'd like 2 more people, so if you can make that, let me know. 1st level characters, I'm running an old Chris Perkins adventure converted to 5e.

I think what I'd like to do is run a few games and get the hang of what it is like. Once I feel comfortable, I have two old mega-adventures I am going to convert to 5e and make a campaign out of. I think I might record them and put them on youtube.

So if you want to be a part of that, let me know!

A few things about my style:

The sessions will be 2 hours long. I like to keep it short.
I'll be using google hangouts. I think I will try Roll20 at some point.
I am very loose with the rules, so if you're a min/maxer or a rules-oriented person you won't like it.
I don't care if you're new to the game, all I care about is that you are considerate to everyone and are a team player.
I am very joke-y but I take the game serious.
I don't like to stop the game to look stuff up, so often I just make a call and look it up later.
I will write about these games in this blog. Just so you know!
It will be set in my homebrew world that I've been using for 25 years.
Try and have your main stats handy - especially your spell attack bonus and your DC. I try to keep things moving.

I hope to hear from you! I am really interested to see how this turns out, or if it will even work at all.

Also, the Force Grey special live show is this Monday. If you live in or near LA, you can get free tickets. I am told they will be giving out a free 32 page adventure and a poster to everyone. I tried to find out what the adventure is, but had no luck.

In 2014, I ran a DCC RPG campaign in the game store. I wrote summaries of it on the DCC RPG forum and there were a few times that the people who wrote the adventures I ran would respond.

That campaign was a roller coaster. A few of my players really hated each other. The adventures were very good, but the campaign ultimately got dragged down by the group chemistry (or the lack thereof).

The people who make DCC RPG are awesome. At one point, they sent me a box of free stuff completely out of the blue.

Wizard Jamboree: Towards the end of the campaign, I made up an adventure based on art in the DCC RPG book. I had the heroes attend a secret meeting of a wizard society. In it, wizards from previous adventures showed up and I created zany wizard NPCs based on DCC RPG art.

The wizards would have spell duels, trade spells, collaborate on projects, have big wizard meetings, argue about stuff, that sort of thing. I tried to form something of a continuity out of the previous adventures and put it all together.

I thought it was a good idea and I considered pitching that as an adventure, but I didn't. A year later, out came The 998th Conclave of Wizards.

Who knows, maybe it had nothing to do with me. I love the idea that it did. This thing is huge and packed with stuff. The author, Jobe Bittman, did an incredible job. In some ways, I think that this is the very best DCC RPG adventure ever made.

Prior to this, Jobe Bittman wrote one of the best DCC RPG adventures ever - The One Who Watches From Below. In fact, my group loved that one the most, by far.

Bryce Lynch likes to say that DCC RPG has a reputation as being a "con-game." As in, people only play this game at conventions. I hope that's not true, because you can run a hell of a campaign with their adventures. They have about 10-15 adventures that are, in my opinion, as good as it gets. If you string them together, you will have an absolutely epic campaign.

This adventure is loaded with stuff that you can use for your D&D campaign. If you use the Forgotten Realms, you could use this material for the Arcane Brotherhood, a wizard faction that I know nothing about.

The Star Cabal

I think the main thing to know about this adventure is that it is overloaded with good ideas. I am going to talk about some of them, but I don't want to spoil the whole book. There is a lot of stuff in here that really got me excited.

First off, the cover is great. It depicts many NPC wizards who are members of the conclave.

The Star Cabal: A wizard society that has become a shadow of its former glory. Lots of squabbling. Members include, or included, 'famous' wizards who have their names on DCC RPG spells like Ekim from Ekim's Mystical Mask.

The group is invited to join the Star Cabal. But to do so, you must submit to challenges three!

The group needs to find a tower in an extinct volcano deep in "malarial marshlands." I think you could get malaria in them. The tower is a giant crystal. The heroes need to get past a "Prime Tentacled Horror."

It turns out that the giant crystal is a vessel that takes you into outer space. It brings the group to an asteroid city protected by a magic bubble. The city is called Ciz.

Robots: I think this will be the main sticking point for some people. This adventure has sci fi stuff in it. It is very easy to get rid of, but I imagine that some people might be turned off by it. There is a robot wizard and the city guards are robots.

The Star Cabal runs Ciz "...using it as a mobile base of operations in their epic battle against the awakening elder gods."

The city is full of "...star merchants, itinerant wizards, and thrill-seekers from across the cosmos."

We get some really great charts to make up aliens, alien names and pidgin phrases.

Prisoners of the Cube

This is the greatest thing I have read in a long time. I am going to steal this idea and put it in my game so fast you won't believe it. I literally stopped writing this review to jot down the cube details in my campaign notes.

Cubism: There is one punishment for all crimes in Ciz. You are put into a condensed cube of solid matter. And then... people buy you! That is so great.

Cube Auctions: The cubes are sold at judicial auctions. Wizards can "decube" the prisoners for a modest fee. "Bidding wars have been known to erupt over prison cubes tied to crimes of passion as families and other interested parties vie for the chance to mete out their own justice..."

Indentured Servitude: There is an unspoken social contract that the prisoners must be an indentured servant for a week.

Cube are also sold in the market. A merchant might say that his cubes are all full of good people caught in unfortunate circumstances and that they will make good hirelings.

You can do so much awesome stuff with this it makes my head spin. I can't wait to use it!

Exploring the City

The group will be adventuring in the city a bit. My favorite stuff:

Dastardly Villain: There's a chart of random encounters. My favorite: "Your pocket gets picked by an alien cutpurse in a top hat."

Another Random Encounter: Someone hands you a note that says "Pure intention is the currency of heroes."

The Planar Clock: There's a clock tower with a magic, hovering clock that rotates slowly. Instead of numbers, it has celestial runes. It has 5 hands, one of which goes backwards. It tells what time it is in different realms

The Mausoleum of Shared Experience: This place holds the brains of dead wizards. You can put a drop of their spinal fluid on your tongue and ask 1-3 questions of the wizard. This is another idea that is getting wedged into my campaign right now.

They list 8 magician brain, one of which is Emirikol. This is weird because Emirikol is alive in Emirikol was Framed.

Members of the Star Cabal: The two that I like the most are the wizard with the three-eyed cat and the wizard who has a magic ring on every finger. He actually grew a sixth finger on each hand so that he could wear more rings.

The Adventure

Amidst all of this stuff is an adventure. The wizards are all competing, trying to find an artifact called the Baton of Perpetual Light. It was in the possession of a wizard named Reynard, who disappeared.

The adventurers will explore some wizard towers and ultimately go to a weird realm to face a very powerful bad guy. I don't want to spoil it, but it is pretty cool.

Also, they fight "terrordactyls," which makes me laugh.

I should probably note this. I HATE this advice:

If that is too small to read, what it says is that there is a major plot point in this adventure that is not determined. They want you to get your players speculating on what is going on and then steal their ideas.

In my experience, if you do this, players figure it out and they stop trusting you. They clam up in crucial situations, afraid to talk strategy in front of the DM, because the DM has shown a willingness to use their own ideas against them. The game takes on an adversarial vibe.

If I am running a game and a player blurts out an awesome idea, I stop the game and ask them, "Do you want to do that? I really like that idea." Then we go from there.

Overall

I love this module. There is a ton of useful stuff. This is pretty much a city supplement and an adventure at the same time. They really squeezed a lot of content into each page without making it feel like a chore to read.

This is not one you can pick up and run. You need to read it first and plan a bit. This adventure has a lot of charts, which will grind the game to a halt if rolled at the table.

I think if you were to run this, you should pick stuff off of the charts in advance and have them ready. So, make some aliens, choose some random encounters and flesh them out a bit, pick out a wizards tower, that kind of thing.

This adventure is great and if it sounds like your thing, you should definitely check it out.

Drivethru RPG is a site that sells .pdfs of old D&D products. Now they have started selling printed books. When I read the announcement, my eyes almost exploded.

A lot of older D&D products are extremely expensive and most Planescape stuff is very pricy. The cheapest copy of the Hellbound boxed set on amazon goes for $174 right now! This is potentially a way to get a physical copy of a book that you like for much cheaper.

I don't know if they'll ever try making actual boxed sets, but I hope they do.

Protect Your Investment: If you own an expensive old product that you are going to use at the table, you might not want to subject it to the rigors of play. You also might want to buy one of these so that your valuable one doesn't get caressed by cheeto fingers.

Premium Version: I decided to experiment. I ordered Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, which is officially the favorite Planescape book of one Chris Perkins. There are two versions of this product. One is "standard," and one is "premium." Premium costs $12 more. Premium ones, I assume, are made of higher quality paper. There are no changes to the content.

I ordered the "premium" one. Know why I was able to do this? Because you people go out of your way to pay money for those .pdfs I made, so I have a big pile of credit sitting in there. Thank you!

Pricing: It came to a total of $31 with shipping, I think. I saw an original Uncaged on ebay for $30 + shipping. It's a little weird to opt for this new one rather than buying an original. I almost bought both for comparison purposes but hey, I'm not Mr. Peanut when it comes to disposable income.

One thing that had me very worried was a prominent note on the screen. It said that this product was made from a scan. I started to expect the worst.

Wait Time: I ordered it on a Saturday. It took 5 days for them to print it. Then it took 5 days for it to get to me.

Very Happy!

I used the flash on the camera so that you can see that this book is shiny.

I didn't have high hopes for this, but I flipped through it and I was extremely impressed! The cover is glossy and sturdy. They used great, heavy paper for the interior. The art inside looks fantastic! I'm a big DiTerlizzi fan so I am extremely happy. The binding seems secure and when I first flipped through it, this book looked to be flawless!

So this is an easy thumbs up. That said, the closer I looked, the more things I noticed. To me, none of these are a very big deal. I am pointing them out so you can decide if you want to buy one of these products.

By the way, seeing the TSR logo in the corner of a newly-printed product feels really good.

The Spine

This is my biggest bone of contention and, to be frank, my bone isn't all that big. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they made up their own image for the spine. I took a picture of the book smooshed between "official" books so you can see what I mean:

It's between Hellbound and the Factol's Manifesto. See how it is cream-colored and has that weird font? I am pretty sure that is not what the original spine looked like.

What's strange is that I don't think it is that hard to re-create the spine using an art program. I did a quick planescape spine in photoshop. It took about 10 minutes:

Maybe there's some legal issue or something. This creamy spine sticks out like a sore thumb.

Off-Center

When I looked more closely, I saw that a few things were off. Look at the back cover:

Do you see how the "E" in Planescape is cut off? See how the central text box isn't centered? It wasn't noticeable to me right away. I've had "official" products printed off-kilter too, so this doesn't really bug me.

Chaotic Alignment

Check out the center of the book. See how the text is really close to the spine? You have to pull the book apart a bit to read it, which worries me because I don't want to tear this thing apart with my Herculean strength. It's readable, but it is definitely too far in there.

Wonky Page

This one page is a little odd. If you look at the border on the right, it's aligned weirdly. It's thicker on the side than on the top. It's actually thickest on the bottom. Again, to me this is a very minor quibble.

It Looks Fantastic

Check it out. Judge Gabberslug! I used him in my campaign a few months back and I want to use him again. That's a scan?! To me, it looks great.

One thing I should note. In the old Planescape products, they used shimmery gold ink in at least some of books. These don't. Not a big deal but, again, I figured I'd mention it.

Looky here. Cranium rats! They are statted out in Volo's Guide to Monsters. This will give you a ton of extra lore and ideas to use.

The full page pieces look perfect. Seriously, they did a great job:

Overall

I love this book. It was worth every penny. It's sturdy and the materials seem to be of high quality. If you are on the fence on whether or not to buy this, I say that you give it a shot!

I ordered a module just now so that I can see what that is like. It's The Mines of Bloodstone. Those bloodstone adventures sometimes go for outrageous sums of money, so I figured this is a good one to get.

Realms of Chirak is reviewing ALL of these products right here.

Today I'm going to write about the online game I ran last night. Using 5th edition rules, we played through an old Chris Perkins adventure called "A Wizard's Fate" from Dungeon Magazine issue 37.

As a kid, I flipped through this adventure and decided to run it when my group had level one characters in my home campaign world. Flash forward 20 years and I finally got around to it.

First, I'll talk a bit about this whole online thing, then I'll talk about how it went.

Recruiting Readers: A week or so ago, I made a post asking people if they want to play some D&D online. I am doing this because I want to learn how to run games online and get the hang of it. I am thinking about doing my own little D&D show.

There are a lot of adventures I want to run, and I think it might be fun to put them up on youtube if I can run it in a way that isn't boring to watch. I like the idea of running the hardcore D&D group that never skips a week and tears through classic adventures that few people have played.

Luckily for me, I got a lot of responses. Thank you to everyone on twitter who retweeted my request, especially Teos Abadia and Scarlet Moth. I really appreciate it.

I ended up with over 15 people, so I split them into 3 groups. I will run the other two next weekend.

Running Games Blind: One of the things I liked least in the game store was that there were a number of players that I didn't want to play with, but I had to. I was wondering if this would be the same way.

Quality Players: I ended up with three utterly fantastic players. They were fun, funny, they paid attention, were considerate, they were everything I value in a player. I was really bowled over.

There was a 4th player, but he had connection problems. I kind of assume this will happen each time, so I was ready for that. I'll squeeze him into a future game if I can.

Overprepared Again: When preparing this dungeon, I put too much in. I can squeeze a lot of D&D into 2 hours, but this dungeon has a lot of potential backtracking that can make things longer. I got into overpreparation mode, to the point that I ran out of time and wasn't able to read up on each character's spells and abilities like I wanted to.

The other problem was that I woke up at 4 AM and couldn't fall back asleep. This game started at 7 PM. I was almost falling asleep prior to the game, which really didn't help. I got through it OK, but I definitely wasn't sharp at all.

The Party

(Pat) Gurn Sirensong - Gnome Bard
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock
(Andrew) Finy Teetoe - Halfling Rogue

Zotzpox the Imp

The overall story:

An evil wizard named Elzid turned good due to his girlfriend, Erilyn.
Elzid's imp, Zotzpox, didn't like it. Zotzpox ended up blowing up his master and his tower.
Zotzpox is now waiting for agents from hell to come and pick up the treasure in the vault of the wizard's dungeon.
Zotzpox has Erilyn in captivity and will hand her over to the devils as well, for purposes of corruption and evil-doing.
A sage hires the heroes to obtain some of the treasure in that vault.

Intro

I started off with quick flashback things, which I like to do to introduce characters and to lay some groundwork for the upcoming story.

Zavagor stole an amulet off of a drunk panda-man and got a cryptic message from his demonic patron: "The gargoyle needs iron. The circle is wooden."

Keyquest: These are clues for the dungeon. There are three magic doors and three keys. If you put the wrong key in a door, horrible things happen to you. I couldn't see any clues at all in the adventure that indicates which key goes where, and I didn't want this to be just a guessing game.

Simple Clues: At first glance, the clues might look too simple (the group gets an iron key and finds a door with a gargoyle lock on it). But in my experience, what is simple to the DM is just one clue in a sea of potential clues to the players.

In this case, they were all over it. They immediately grabbed that clue and kept it in mind.

Finy ran into the imp in town, when he was buying the combustible agents that he eventually used to kill his master, Elzid. Finy actually did some dagger tricks to distract a merchant while Zotzpox snatched them and flew away.

Gurn met Elzid in a bar. Elzid needed help writing a love poem. A half-orc ended up dead and the scene was fled.

Hired: The heroes were hired by a sage to retrieve a specific item from the dungeon - the brain of Bigby's cousin. This brain stuff is taken from the 998th Conclave of Wizards, which I reviewed the other day.

I realized I was in Planescape mode, where we are very joke-y. I should have adopted a more serious approach.

The group took a rikshaw for a bit, then walked the rest of the way. The tower is in the city. In this homebrewed city, there are a lot of wizard towers.

Pollidemia

Cameo: They passed another wizard tower. They saw a goblin trying to trim hedges for his master, a sorceress.

They really weren't sure what to make of it, even when the goblin held up his broken hedge clippers, hoping for help. His master leaned out the window and called him inside.

This was an easter egg for myself. That's Pollidemia the Wicked, an NPC that has been in my games for 20 years of real life time. I just wanted to plop her in there and see what happened.

Bidam from my Planescape campaign used to wash this little goblin's underwear and give him baths.

The Hill

The group arrived at the exploded tower. There were dead bodies strewn upon it. On closer inspection, the bodies weren't scorched - they'd each been killed by a little stinger to the neck. These three goons were minions of a woman a few of the heroes had ties with named Dornella.

Almighty Zotzpox: An invisible creature began to heckle the group. Gurn thought a god was speaking to them and he ended up bowing down to Zotzpox. The imp was tickled by this. It was very amusing. For the rest of the adventure, Gurn was praising mighty Zotzpox and it ended up playing into the climax.

Zotzpox called the adventurers names and told them to get off his property. Gurn turned to leave but the group made him stay. Ultimately, the group found stairs into the dungeon of the fallen tower. They went in.

Sealed in: They walked through a hallway and accidentally stepped on a pressure plate. A stone block slid out from the wall and sealed the group in the dungeon. They didn't know it, but Zotzpox was in there with them, invisible.

The Dungeon

Keys: In this dungeon, there are three magic doors that must be bypassed to get to the vault. Hidden throughout the complex are three keys.

It's cool, but a little tricky. If a group can't find a key, you could end up with frustrated players and a session that goes in the dumpster.

The heroes kept finding keys and Gurn kept picking locks. Any locked door that he failed to pick was declared a "false door." By the end of the adventure, the group had given themselves nicknames:

Finy: The Living Skeleton Key
Zavagor: The Gatekeeper
Finy: The Key Holder

The group's tentative name: The Key Ring

I should mention that the Key Ring had an ongoing gimmick where they'd give an NPC a coin and then steal it back and a lot of variations on that sort of idea, which was very amusing.

Pacing: This was a group where you could just sit back and let them roleplay, and it was very funny. I had a lot of material that I wanted to get through, so I cracked the whip a bit too much.

I think that in short online games, the Perkins Dice, Camera, Action method is definitely the way to go. This group would really shine if I laid out a session that just had a few encounters/scenarios, and each was given time to breathe.

Traitor: At one point, Zotzpox quietly appealed to Gurn. He wanted Gurn to betray his allies and join him. Gurn was in awe of mighty Zotzpox, but never really considered turning against his trusty allies.

Dungeon Crawling

The exploration went like this:

Antechamber: The group unscrewed the head of a devil statue and found the iron key.

Two Partially Collapsed Chambers: The group missed a bit of treasure, which was hard to detect. I hate missed treasure, but I decided to let this go.

Two Locked Doors: Finy declared both of these to be "false doors." These doors would prove to be quite vexing for the Key Ring.

Library: The group quickly found a secret door in here. It led to a large, webby chamber.

Chamber of Webs: The heroes ended up fighting a giant spider. Zavagor and Gurn backed away, firing off ranged attacks. Finy dodged a web glob and jumped on the spider's back. He gouged both of its eyes out and killed it! I am pretty sure one of those rolls was a natural 20.

The heroes found another secret door. Inside it was a treasure chest. Finy, the LIVING SKELETON KEY pulled off another expert trap dismantle on a magic fire trap.

The chest contained piles of loot, including a magic sword +1, a wand of the warmage +1 and an all-important brass key.

Trapezoidal Door: The group found a weird door that has a gargoyle face with a key hole in its mouth. Remembering the clue from Zavagor's demonic master, they put the correct key in it. The door and the key vanished. Beyond that was a...

Smooth Stone Circle Door: Before the group could mess with this thing, Zotzpox attacked! He was invisible. He plunged his stinger into Zavagor and dropped him! The stinger is very brutal. 5 points of damage and then 10 poison, or 5 if you make your save.

Gurn healed him with a spell as Finy stabbed the imp. Zotzpox turned invisible and fled, heckling them the whole time.

I should note that I de-powered Zotzpox a bit. In the adventure, he has a ring of spell-storing that does a lot of nasty things. I got rid of it.

After fending off Zotzpox, the heroes backtracked.

Rats & Bones: There's a trap on the door. In the adventure, it says that armor and helmets fall on the person who opens the door, doing a lot of damage. I had trouble picturing that trap doing 5 points of damage, so I changed it to a poison needle. Finy expertly detected and bypassed it.

Gurn befriended some rats. The rats directed the group to treasure in the rubble. Gold and a chalice. They also found more keys! These keys opened the "false doors."

False door #1:

Summoning Chamber: The adventurers found a room with a magic circle and a scroll that could be used to send Zotzpox back to hell! The trick would be in luring Zotzpox to it.

The adventure kind of poo-poos the idea of using this to defeat Zotzpox. I liked it when I read it and decided that it was viable if the group wanted to try it.

False door #2:

Woman in White: Erilyn, the woman who had turned Elzid to good was here, in a trance-like state. She was guarded by a giant skeleton. The group's key-senses exploded. They detected a wooden key in the abdomen of the skeleton!

They defeated the skeleton and eventually snapped the woman out of her trance. She explained the basic story of what was going on. Two things I didn't make clear:

Zotzpox had actually been trying to blow her up. He put the explosive agents in two perfume bottles that were meant to be gifts for her. He didn't expect Elzid to mix them before giving them to her, but he did. The tower blew up.
Zotzpox captured Erilyn and decided to hand her over to his devil masters when they came to get the treasure.

She didn't know those things, but I probably should have conveyed this to them somehow. At this point, we were low on time so I was hustling. I wanted them to go all the way through the adventure, as for all I know this is the only time we will play.

Zotzpox vs. The Key Ring

The group decided to deal with Zotzpox. Gurn was alone by the door. Finy was hiding in the shadows, having rolled a cool natural 20 on his hide check.

Gurn lied to Zotzpox and wanted to subscribe to his newsletter. Gurn rolled decently on his deception. He walked Zotzpox to the summoning chamber, where Zavagor was waiting on the lectern, ready to read the scroll.

Zotzpox immediately flew to the lectern and plunged his stinger into Zavagor, dropping him! Finy fought the imp, keeping him in the circle. Gurn healed Zavagor, who got up and used the scroll.

Chris Perkins actually wrote out what the incantation was:

With tongue of flame, I send thee on
Thy journey into fire;
To infernal planes, I say "Begone!"
Lest thou arouse my ire

The circle flared to life. Zotzpox rolled his save. If he failed, he was sent to hell. He made his save - but still took 2d6 damage. He had 1 hit point left!

Gurn stood over him... and he hit his god with a thunderwave. Zotzpox hurtled across the room and was embedded into the lectern, dead.

Gurn was definitely conflicted about killing his god, but he never wavered in his support for THE KEY RING.

Treasure: Now we were way over on time so I hustled them through the doors and skipped the trap in the final room.

This room is interesting. It has hovering spheres that contain treasure, exactly like the dwarven treasure vault on Acquisitions Inc. season one.

The group looted piles of stuff, almost got killed by an iron cobra. They actually got a clue on how to shut it off but they didn't catch it - it was a bit obscure and I was rushing them.

They found potions, a pile of copper, scrolls, a treasure map, and the brain of Bigby's cousin. The Key Ring was victorious boom, they hit level 2.

Overall

Good Dungeon: The adventure is very good and I did it a disservice by rushing it. This easily could have filled 5 hours or more. The danger with this kind of adventure is in knowing when to let the group roam and when to keep things from dragging.

Great Players in D&D: The players were fantastic. I don't want to get too soppy, but it is a deep honor to me that players like this read my blog. It really means a lot to me. It was an awesome session, a good adventure and the players were top notch.

The Best Player in the World: I don't know if I've ever written this before, but I think that Anna Prosser-Robinson from Dice, Camera, Action is the best D&D player in the world. I know some people will scoff at that idea, as she doesn't remember how many attacks she has and stuff like that.

The thing that I love about Anna is that she is cognizant of the fact that Chris is running a game and juggling many things at once. She actually helps carry the load for him. She keeps it fun, she is ready to smooth over any player interactions and she is in no way selfish whatsoever.

Best of all, she is willing to let her character look foolish if it makes the game better. There are not many people who do that. She is a team player, she is the "glue."

The Cauldron: From 2008 to 2014, I ran 2-3 D&D games per week in a game store and at home. I got paid to run D&D campaigns! It was an intense cauldron where I learned a ton about preparation, the little pitfalls of running the game and what really matters in D&D.

What is Important to Me: In that time, I learned that the key to a fun game is the people. In my opinion, the rules are a means to an end. All of it is junk meant to aid you in creating a story together - a chapter of a book or an episode of a TV show. If that junk gets in the way, you throw it out.

There is a danger in that. If you junk the rules too much, the game starts to feel cheap and victory feels unearned. A lot of twists come from how a spell interacts with specific creatures and that kind of thing.

I honestly felt that these players were right up there with Anna and the people I most enjoy playing with.

Follow-Up: Two things to note:

Zotzpox isn't dead. When devils are killed in the Material Plane, they reappear in hell. He might get demoted for his failure.
It is likely that THE KEY RING will be hunted by devils. They want that treasure.

You can watch this show right here.
The D&D site has links to all of the other episodes right here.

I couldn't watch this live, so I went to Twitch to watch the archived video. It's four hours long! That is a long time. Was it worth it? Yes. It was really good from start to finish.

In the beginning, there were audio problems with Matt's mic. It goes away after about 20 minutes. It's not a big thing, so don't let it deter you if you have interest.

Spelling of Names: I am having a real hard time finding out the spelling/pronunciation of certain names. Here's two that I have no idea if I am getting right: Limolai and Dalyra. Also, Brawlwynn is spelled different ways in different places.

Delicious Hitch candy.

New Players: Speaking of the new players, there's two of them. Jonah and Ashley are absent. The replacements:

Emily Gordon is a producer for Comedy Central and she's writing a movie.
Dylan Sprouse is probably best known for his show with his twin brother on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.

Good or Bad? I am a big Jonah fan. I think he's hilarious. I was wondering what the show would be like without him. It turns out that these two new players were really good. The more I think about it, the better they are. They fit in seamlessly and were a lot of fun.

The Party

(Brian Posehn) Calliope - Half-Elf Bard
(Shelby Fero) Brawlwynn Chainminer - Dwarf Fighter
(Utkarsh Ambudkar) Hitch - Human Rogue
(Dylan Sprouse) Tyril Tallguy - Firbolg Druid
(Emily Gordon) Skirt of Snakes - Tabaxi Rogue?

Last Time: The group obtained a piece of the Rod of Seven Parts but had it stolen from them. They are in pursuit of the thieves on a flying chariot.

They have the mini-castle prop that was used in the Acquisitions, Inc live game. This should be interesting!

A white dragon is bearing down on the flying chariot. It breathes ice and Joppa is frozen solid. He falls over the side! Dagny jumps after him. They're gone.

Brian is appalled that Matt kills characters of players who can't make it to the game.

The white dragon vanishes into the clouds. The group gets closer to the flying castle. Their flying chariot disappears and they go tumbling through the air. They land on the side of the castle.

Acquisitions, Inc.:The group is going to the place where the last Acquisitions, Inc. game happened. That's very cool. These heroes are adventuring through the wreckage of what the last group did.

There's two other people here - the new characters. They join up. The new players are very funny.

The Premise: This whole session boils down to this: The castle is broken into three sections, each floating separate from the others. Their magic is slowly failing. The heroes need to somehow get from one to another and get back the piece of the rod before the whole complex falls from the sky

Hitch has boots of spider climbing. He goes up a wall and spots a badly wounded giant. There's a bunch of dead Zhentarim nearby. Tyril wants to heal the giant.

The new players are a lot of fun and they fit in great. Skirt of Snakes in particular is very entertaining.

Tyril Tallguy

Tyril heals the giant. He asks, "Are you Lawful Good?" The crowd loves that.

The fire giant explains that indeed this is shortly after the events of Acquisitions Inc show. The Giant agrees to help them if he can. The giant could throw them, too.

The giant throws Hitch across. There's some Zhentarim over there. Here comes the white dragon! It freezes three Zhentarim.

Brawlwynn climbs on Calliope's back. Calliope wants to be thrown. They get chucked across, through a door and down a bunch of stairs. They end up befriending two frost giants down there.

Exploding Zhentarim

We end up with a severed leg, genitals attached, tied to a rope and thrown across. Hitch is holding the rope while Skirt of Snakes crosses, carrying Tyril in tiny animal form.

Limolai, the woman who betrayed the party and stole the rod, pops up near Hitch. She chucks a dagger at him. Hitch is still holding that rope as the two new people cross. This is nutty.

She shoots at him and misses. Crowd loves it. This is a great crowd, very into it.

Tyril is a baby hedgehog. Hitch tries to shove him down Limolai's throat! No dice.

Skirt of Snakes casts sleep and it works. Uh oh.. Brawlwynn kicks Limolai in the head out of pure hatred. This almost wakes her up!

Tyril still wants to crawl in her mouth as a baby hedgehog. He does... and then becomes normal size! Crowd loves this, hilarious. Nobody saw it coming. Limolai's head "pops like a balloon covered in whipped cream." Wow. Great all the way around.

Uh oh.. the white dragon is back. It flies into a castle and I think it gets hypnotized by that gem.

Auspicia Dran

The heroes learn that Auspicia is here. She's the villain from Acquisitions, Inc. and Omin Dran's sister.

There's a whole thing where Tyril uses his tan bag of tricks to give energy to one of the magic gems keeping the castle afloat.

The heroes run into some bad guys. Tyril kicks one of them off the side. Calliope casts suggestion on the other guy and tells him to join his friend. The group tries to persuade the guy to jump. Brian rolls a 21. The guy jumps.

The heroes find some frost giants that are chained up. They free them and make friends with them.

Intermission

There's about an hour and a half left. This show is very good. The new people are great.

MST3K: I think Jonah is currently filming the new MST3K show that will apparently appear on Netflix. If you're an MST3K fan like I am, this is the most insanely great news ever. I was always a Joel guy and originally I was going to skip this new show, but now that I've gotten to see what Jonah is like there is no way I am going to miss it.

The group is at the central castle, home of Stratovan. They burst through the doors with their frost giant allies.

Final Battle

A bunch of villains are in here, including Delyra. She worked with Hitch when he was in the Zhentarim.

Auspicia is here, too. She has the piece of the rod. The rod glows and wow, she turns into Miska the Wolf Spider. Miska climbs up the wall.

She's sort of half-Miska. As each round rolls on, she gains more spider legs. This is what Miska looked like in the 2e Rod of Seven Parts boxed set:

He's the sidekick of the Queen of Chaos, an ancient demonic entity who had the epic battle against the wind dukes. I believe Miska's blood is what transformed the Rod of Law into the Rod of Seven Parts.

Tyril summons a giant toad. He tries to ride it up the wall. Many of the Zhentarim and the Dran Enterprises people run away.

Frog Tongue: Tyril tries to swing on his giant frog's tongue but misses when he tries to hit Miska. It was a very cool idea.

Romantic Interlude: A giant throws Hitch at Miska. He stabs it and then uses his cunning action to run, duck a swipe and grab Delyra and dips her. Hitch tells her that he missed her. Crowd gives a big ovation for that. This is good stuff.

Calliope rolls a one and the strings on her crossbow/lute snap. Broken bowstrings on a natural 1 is very old school.

Skirt In Trouble: Skirt of Snakes is being held by Miska. She's right by Miska's face. She swipes at Miska's eyes, temporarily blinding it. Skirt pulls out some whiskers for Calliope to fix her lute with. Wow that's really clever.

Miska hacks into Skirts and knocks her unconscious.

Brawl Win: Brawlwynn rides her flying shield up above Miska's head and brings her hammer down on for a total of 23 points. Then she uses a bonus action and rolls a critical, killing Miska.

The Falling Castle

Miska rots away and Auspicia is underneath all the gunk. She says that she's sorry, and dies. A wave of energy rockets out and causes the castle to plummet to the ground.

Tyril has his giant frog swallow Skirt to carry her. That is really awesome. Skirt fails her first death save.

The group prepares to try to survive the castle's plunge all the way to to the ground. Tyril has a great idea. He is going to use his rope of entanglement on Brawlwynn's shield to tie his frog to it. Skirt is in the frog - her legs are sticking out.

The castle falls! It's like zero gravity in there. The group has a few rounds to do something. Calliope smartly looks for the piece of the rod.

Brawlwynn tells Hitch to use his immovable rod.

The Plan: Dalyra grabs the piece of the rod and tries to float over to Hitch. Hitch has a choice - her or the group. He ties his rope to the immovable rod and tries to throw the rope to Dalyra but it goes straight up because they are in a freefall. Calliope uses mage hand to send the rope over to Dalyra.

So the toad is affixed to the shield and Skirts is inside the toad. They're tied to the flying shield As the castle is about to hit the ground, they trigger the flying shield and the immovable rod at the same time. All that force is transferred to the rope and the toad.

Skirt gets ejected out of the toad's mouth. Calliope needs to grab her... rolls a 20!

Hitch is dangling 400 feet up grasping the immovable rod. His arm breaks! He's holding the rope with Dalyra on the other end dangling.

The heroes sail to the ground into the dirt. The group makes saving throws. 25 points of damage to Brawlwynn, the rest take 13 points (he rounded up!).

Hitch is hanging way up there. Utkarsh gives a speech and explains that Hitch loves Dalyra. Hitch isn't sure what to do.

Here comes Palarandusk the sun dragon! Joppa and Dagny are on his back. The crowd loves this. He says to Hitch: "You've done well." Utkarsh is genuinely touched.

That's where we stop!

Overall

This show is long, but it's good. It's shocking how smoothly the new people fit in. Every single player on this show was fun to watch. Matt did a great job, too. As the show went, he became more and more of a performer. He'd actually stand up and act things out. It was a lot of fun.

I have no idea what this intermingling with Acquisitions, Inc. will lead to. From what I understand, Chris Perkins is working on the new season of Acquisitions, Inc. right now. Brawlwynn killed Omin Dran's sister. Maybe we'll see Brawlwynn vs. Binwin someday.

Episode 31: Let There Be Light

This is it! The final episode of Curse of Strahd. From what I understand, these same characters will be going through Storm King's Thunder next. That's assuming they survive tonight.

Mark Hulmes is back as Ezmerelda. She is the group's ally, according to the tarokka reading.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Mark) Ezmerelda - Vistani/vampire NPC

Last Time: Diath got rid of his curse and Evelyn got Lightfall enchanted. The heroes are just about ready to kill Strahd.

The adventurers come to a room with furnishings made of bones (Room K67, page 78). Seated in a chair at the table is Ezmerelda. She has a hilt of a sword. The Sunsword! She hands it over. This is the last item they need to use against Strahd.

The group discusses who should have the Sunsword. They ultimately give it to Paultin. It's interesting that the group did not take the items according to what they drew from the tarokka deck.

The heroes talk about the little Strahd doll they have. It is empowered to defeat Strahd. Strix is using to use it.

The group takes a short rest. Paultin attunes to the sunsword. Here's what it does:

+2 to hit, +2 to damage
Does radiant damage
+d8 damage to undead
Sheds bright light (mood lighting for the hut)

It has some other things that don't get mentioned.

Once the rest is over, the castle shakes. The group thinks that the mad mage has destroyed the Heart of Sorrow, which means Strahd has lost some of his magical protection (the heart absorbs the first 50 points of damage that Strahd takes).

Ezmerelda says the group might have to knock her out, as Strahd can control her. Evelyn hugs her and Ezmerelda barely stops herself from biting her neck.

Ezmerelda gives Diath a silvered short word.

The group is going back to where they heard the organ music. They think that is where Strahd is.

There's a table with rotting food. The pipe organ is there, but no Strahd. Here's an old depiction of this thing by one of my favorite D&D artists, Clyde Caldwell:

Strahd is not here. Gertruda is. Diath notices a tiny emaciated man crawling on the underside of the table. Diath stabs him through the table. He yells "Evelyn, look out!"

Evelyn hits the creature with Lightfall. It does +2d6 radiant damage to undead. She does 28 damage to it. She sees that it is the vampire spawn from the church that was on episode 2. He fails his save and turns to ashes.

Gertruda says that Strahd told her that if she wants to go to him, she has to play dead. Strix suddenly has a great idea. Play "dead" on the organ. Paultin hits the notes D, E, A, and D... and a secret door opens. Wow, the group is very on their game today.

Paultin uses his charm to win over Gertruda. The group convinces her that he's a prince.

Paultin's Shadow: The adventurers go down a set of stairs past the secret door. Suddenly, Paultin's shadow actually steals the Strahd doll and flees up the stairs. It closes the secret door, which can't be opened from the inside. There's little holes in the wall. Strix casts gaseous form and passes through them.

Gertruda

She sees that the shadow is whispering to Gertruda. The shadow looks like Paultin with bat-like wings. It gives Gertruda the doll and tells her to guard it with her life. She runs as the shadow attacks Strix.

The shadow hits Strix and drains 4 points of her strength. She now has a strength of 6. If the shadow drops her to 0 strength, she becomes a shadow. Yikes.

Paultin shouts instructions and Strix plays the notes on the organ. The secret door opens. Paultin attacks his shadow with the Sunsword. He misses, but it recoils from the light.

Evelyn attacks the shadow. She rolls a natural 20. Boom! It is completely destroyed. Paultin has no shadow.

The group catches up to Gertruda. Strix takes off Gertruda's scarf and sees many bite marks on her neck. Gertruda drops the doll. They leave Gertruda here and go back into the secret stairwell.

Back to the Crypts

Mother's Tomb

The stairwell connects to one of the crypts down below. In the book, this secret door connects to an archer post (K11, page 57). I think Chris has modified this passage to get the group to the crypts for the big finale.

Diath sees that the door at the bottom of the stairs is trapped - it has a glyph of warding on it. Diath disarms it, rolling a cool 24.

They find the mother's crypt (K88, page 94). There's a landing with two statues and a shimmering blue curtain blocking the way down further.

The group messes with the blue curtain. Diath touches it and is teleported back to the top of the stairs.

Cyrus Belview is walking through the crypts. Paultin casts suggestion on him and makes friends. Cyrus tells the group that only people good of heart can pass through (only Lawful Good, specifically).

Cyrus thinks Evelyn isn't good hearted, which makes Strix laugh heartily.

Evelyn is able to squeeze through the gap in the side of the curtain. Strix dimension doors herself and Diath past the curtain. Paultin tries to go through the curtain, but he's teleported back.

So it's just Evelyn, Strix and Diath down there. They see Strahd.. he has thrown himself on his mother's sarcophagus and he is distraught. His weeping is interrupted by Diath and Strix arguing about trying to get Paultin and Ezmerelda in here.

The Final Encounter

I'll do this in detail for the sake of posterity.

Initiative Order:

22 Ezmerelda
20 Diath
Strahd?
18 Strix
15 Evelyn
12 Paultin

Ezmerelda: Wants to try to help Paultin get in, but there seems to be no way to do so.

Diath: Diath tries to make Strahd talk to buy time for the others to get in here. "These tombs. Your parents?" Strahd explains that the spirits of his parents don't approve of the pact he made with the dark powers.

Strahd: I think this is his turn. He's just talking, not using his legendary actions or anything.

Strix: Continues the conversation.

Evelyn: She pulls out the Icon of Ravenkind. Evelyn compels him in the name of the Morninglord. She uses the icon to try to paralyze him. He fails his save. He can auto-make this saving throw with his legendary resistance, but he doesn't.

I think we're low on time here, so this is going to be quick. Strahd is perhaps so distraught that he can't shake it off just yet. Maybe he just knows he's doomed. The group has all of the items.

Paultin: He casts invisibility and is able to squeeze through the side of the curtain.

Diath: He casually walks around to the front of the tomb. He condemns Strahd for bringing pain to all of the people of Barovia. Strahd can't respond because he is paralyzed. Diath senses no remorse at all.

Strahd: Is paralyzed.

Strix: Pulls out the doll and sticks it in his face. Opposed charisma check. Strix rolls a 22. She wins! Chris is surprised that she rolled so high. The dolls mouth opens and sucks Strahd inside of it!

Evelyn: She tries to use moonbeam on the doll. No effect.

Paultin: He is about to stab the doll with the sunsword, but Ezmerelda stops him. Ezmerelda knows if Paultin destroys the doll, Strahd will be free and he'll reappear somewhere.

Ezmerelda: She thinks maybe the best bet is to take the doll out of Barovia.

Strahd is imprisoned!

Aftermath

Ezmerelda can never leave Barovia. She puts her stuff on the ground. She wants to be slain.

Paultin's going to do it with the sunsword. Strix insists on watching. Ezmerelda tries to console Strix and wow, Ezmerelda can't resist the bloodlust. She tries to bite her, but misses!

Paultin tries to cast sleep on her, but vampires are immune. Ezmerelda pretends to fall asleep to make it easier on them. He stabs her. She turns to ash.

Diath breaks the hag pin and throws it on the floor.

They leave the castle and they see that the rain has turned to snow. The clouds actually clear and the group can see the sky for the first time.

Then they see a glimmer of sunlight. Evelyn hugs everybody and says how proud she is. Strix points out that everyone's dead. Evelyn: "I just love your realism."

Strix thinks the group needs to give this doll containing Strahd's soul to someone powerful in Waterdeep. How crazy would it be to have Ed Greenwood on this show to play Elminster?

The group gets in the coach. The drawbridge is down. Light strikes Castle Ravenloft for the first time in centuries.

Evelyn wants to get Dee, whose fate is still unknown. They're not going to get her. On the far side of the drawbridge is a large elk. It's Mordenkainen. He nods to the group and runs off into the forest.

Evelyn summons Mourning Glory, who is no longer an undead horse. It's a majestic magic steed. Evelyn asks Strix to get on. She says no. She asks Paultin. He declines. She asks Diath. Diath gets on! Good old Diath!

Strix puts a note on a hag potion that says "For Izek." She leaves it in the snow. She hopes it will kill him somehow.

The others go through the mist. Paultin looks back at the castle. Takes his last swig of wine. Then he goes through the mist, too.

No waffles!

Back in the carriage, something emerges from underneath. MURDERBOT. He gives an evil grin right into the camera. He is going through the mists, too.

Chris asks the players to name their favorite moments from the campaign:

Jared: Taking the dark pact.
Anna: When the group fought the tree monster.
Nate: When he was Batman.
Strix: Everything involving Izek.

Overall

I really enjoyed the show. I can imagine some people not liking how easily Strahd went down. I can understand that. I was OK with it for a few reasons.

First, Strahd isn't gone. He's just contained. There is a good chance he will escape sometime during the next season, which will be crazy.

Second, Chris had to squeeze a lot into one session and try to wrap up whatever threads he could. A lot of people in the chat wanted Escher to return, but he didn't fit. I guess he could have put Escher in the dining room with Gertruda.

The people in chat also wanted Dee. The thing about Dee is that she can go through the mists and make a dramatic return next season (if she's still alive).

I think I would have liked it where this whole session was just Strahd hounding the group - popping out of the shadows and then fleeing just as fast. But Chris wrapped up a few important threads instead - Obtaining the sunsword, Paultin's shadow, Ezmerelda's fate, and Gertruda.

I am fine with it and I really liked this. It is so nice to see how the group evolved. The Waffle Crew has been firing on all cylinders for quite a while now.

The Participants

Nate: I was really put off by how many shows he missed this season and I felt like he wasn't putting in any effort. Something must have happened, because for the last 5-10 sessions or so he has been fully present and a worthy contributor. He found his role and got comfortable right at the end of the campaign and he seems to have spent some time familiarizing himself with his powers. What else can you ask for? He's been perfect for this last stretch and I look forward to seeing him stabbing giants with the sunsword.

Holly: She's really into the campaign and she has a great character. I'd say that Strix is a classic character. When Holly is playing, Strix pops into your head. You can imagine her. Holly knows her stuff, she puts in extraordinary effort to fire off Sigil slang, which is hard for even DMs of Planescape to do. I can only remember "berk,""jink" and "cutter" most of the time. Holly was the heart and soul of this campaign. She is playing this for the pure love of the game and I love watching her play D&D. She is really good.

Jared: It took me a long time to realize how much Jared added to this campaign. He was responsible for almost every one of my favorite moments. He takes things seriously but he will joke around when it is fitting. He has a tremendous wit and I felt like he really took the live game to another level. Jared was a courageous performer on that show and I was blown away by his ability. He would fit right in there on stage with Matt Mercer and he wouldn't just be one of the group, he'd be by far the most valuable contributor.

Anna: I don't want to belabor the point but, like I said the other day, I think Anna is the best D&D player on the planet. Not in terms of stat stuff. I'm talking about the things that are, in my opinion, truly important - the intangibles. She helps Chris run the game. She helps with the pacing. She is completely unselfish and she has the rare trait of being willing to make her character look foolish if it makes the game more fun. Every single session she is at 100%. If she's in a bad mood, you don't ever know it. Evelyn is another classic character and Anna is able to bring her to life in a very vivid way. If you ran a game and you wanted to use Evelyn as an NPC, you'd have no trouble, right? You could do the voice, you know what she would do in different situations, and hopefully you'd remember to have her summon her horse by singing a lovely tune.

Chris: I don't know about you, but I learned a lot by watching him. It is really interesting to watch him run an adventure that he wrote. He does a ton of great voices and it is fun to see the decisions he makes. I am endlessly fascinated by the way he lays out a session. He just does a few big things and gives each scenario time to breathe. While doing so, he makes sure it never drags. I feel like when you watch Chris DM, you get a good baseline for what you should do during a game. New DMs should definitely watch him. I still feel like if I watched this show, I could run Curse of Strahd without ever looking at the book.

Storm King's Thunder

I believe season two will see the waffle crew going through the newest Chris Perkins adventure, Storm King's Thunder. The group is 7th level (?). They could conceivably jump in to the giant lairs right away.

Chris has talked about running Storm King as if it were The Walking Dead, but with giants everywhere instead of zombies. I think that will be really fun to watch. I am interested to see which dragons he uses, if any. I'd also like to see which lairs he uses.

One cool thing is that we might get to see the homes of the waffle crew. Where did they come from in the Realms? Will we see Evelyn's paladin school? Will we find the portal to Sigil that Strix used, if there is one?

All in all, this show got better and better as it went and I am looking forward to season 2.

Last night I ran another online game for people who responded to my post last week. This is a 2nd edition adventure that I converted to 5e. It is from Dungeon Magazine #58.

Why is This Happening? I'm doing this to learn what it is like to run games online and possibly to practice for doing my own goofy little D&D show.

If I do a show, I want it to be a game of hardcore D&D. We play every week and we play through old adventures that we've all heard of but never actually gone through. I have two old mega-adventures in mind that I have literally never heard of anyone playing through that definitely deserve to be used.

Who knows, though. Right now, I'm just putting my toe in the water.

Volo's Guide: I should note that I used the vegepygmy stats from Volo's Guide to Monsters page 197. They worked perfectly! I had to alter the russet mold. The 2e version transforms you. The 5e version causes "newborn" vegepygmies to burst out of the victim's body! I went with 2e version, as it was essential to the adventure.

There is a lot of meta-rambling in this article. The actual summary starts down beneath "The Scheme of Skargle." Tonight's group:

(Shane) Ambrose - Human Warlock
(Matt) Arietta - Human Warlock
(Ellen) Burwin - Gnome Bard
(Jesse) Kyrin - Human Cleric

A mold man aka vegepygmy

The players were all really nice. Once again, I ran out of time when preparing and didn't get to look up any of their powers or spells.

Kyrin in particular has this awesome backstory that I was able to sort of work in to this, but we just ran out of time. He's a cleric of the Raven Queen. The Raven Queen has a huge history in my campaign world, as she was almost killed by Orcus when I ran the HPE 4th edition path in 2009-2010.

The problem in this session was that I made about a million mistakes. I had to let it soak overnight so I could get perspective on the session. Let's start with me telling you a little about this adventure.

Mold Man Rampage: This adventure is written by the mighty Chris Perkins. It is about a 'hospital' that has a mold man infestation break out. The group needs to go in there and figure out what is going on. Spoiler alert: A bad guy used russet mold to turn all of the patients into mold men, who are now on a rampage/watering themselves.

When I looked this adventure over, I was on the fence about running it because it is about vegepygmies, which is weird. Mainly, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pull it off. It's not a static dungeon. It's a place to explore and a mystery to solve. I find these types of adventures to be intimidating to run.

The Ground Floor

The Map: One hurdle I had to overcome was the map. We're playing on google hangouts - there's no way to display maps. So I made a map and emailed it to each player so that they could refer to it as we played. Describing the interior of the hospital would have been very difficult. This worked out perfectly.

Skargle: I saw the bad guy's name - Skargle. That's when I decided I wanted to run this. What a great name. I couldn't wait to say it out loud. I just imagined all the awesome villainy that this scumbag Skargle would partake in.

We never got to Skargle. It was a two hour session and again I tried to cram way too much in.

Conversing in Google Hangouts: One thing I am still trying to learn is the weird way that conversation works online. You can't talk over each other, it just doesn't work. It leads to a lot of little unanticipated things.

One thing was that when I would ask the group what they wanted to do next, there was a long pause. That's because people didn't want to talk over each other. Also, if a situation arose that the whole group could react to, I would ask them what they do. Again, they can't talk over each other, and because everyone is polite (which is awesome), nobody says anything for a moment.

These kind of things can be ironed out over a few sessions as you establish the group dynamic. But in a one-shot where nobody knows each other, it slows things down quite a bit.

I think what I should have done in those situations is to ask each individual person what they did.

Motor Mouth: Another problem was me. I talk a lot. Online, that's trouble because only one person can talk at a time. If the DM is constantly blabbing away and cracking the whip, there's almost no room for the players to play!

I caught myself actually cutting off a player trying to roleplay about five times. I'm so conscious of time that I would take any pause as an indication to move forward.

Everyone had put a lot of thought into their character. I feel like I didn't give them the space to express it.

D&D Wisdom: Chris Perkins gave some DM advice a few months back: "Talk less, listen more."

That has really stuck in my head but I've had trouble applying it in games. In the past, I've been in a lot of campaigns where the DM just sits back and lets the group flounder. I know sometimes the DM is doing this because they don't have any/enough material prepared and they are just trying to filibuster a session. I hate that. I would quit that game.

The question is, how long do you listen for? When do you move forward? That was the thing I struggled with last night. I did feel like they should have been given the spotlight more.

I'm so battle-hardened by the 5-encounters-in-5-hours mindset of 4e that I have never been able to shake it, and honestly I don't know if I want to. But I do feel the need to give players more of a spotlight, more freedom to express themselves.

DM Antagonism: It's funny because one of the things I am most proud of is that I was able to shed the mindset where the DM gets riled up by the players.

When I was younger, I'd plan a session. If the group destroyed it with a tactic that I didn't anticipate, I would harden. I would get real vicious with my other monsters for the rest of the session. I would clamp down on them with the city guards. I felt like I had failed as a DM - I needed to re-establish that my game could be challenging, and that people can't run roughshod over my campaign world.

Fandom: Over time, I have been able to completely throw that stuff in the garbage. Now I am able to be a fan of the characters. They are the stars of the TV show. I get to watch the show and help create the show. I get to make up some scenario, throw it at them and see what they do. They almost always do something you never thought of. It is a lot of fun.

When I ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I was a huge fan of Dark the Dragon Sorceress, who was played by a 9 year old. She was a fantastic player. She led the group through the chapter two dungeon and found every trap - not through rolls, but through listening to the clues in the flavor text. It was amazing.

Favoritism: The thing about being a fan of the heroes is that players might feel like you're playing favorites. I try not to do that, but I've been accused of it a number of times.

Often, when players think I am favoring another player, it is because the players accusing me are the ones making my life harder. They are usually the people looking to "break" the game, find cheesy power combinations, combine loot to be invincible and generally treat D&D like a video game.

Those players leave a bad taste in my mouth. That is not the type of game I am running. I want my game to be the saga of heroes. I want it to be about characters leaving a mark on my campaign world that other players they've never met will hear about ten years from now.

The Scheme of Skargle

Foulwing

The adventure starts out with nurses running out of a hospital being chased by a mold man. The heroes got to introduce themselves by doing something in this situation.

Running Vegepygmies: I had told at least some of the players that this is an adventure where it was possible to resolve most things without combat. The problem was that the way I had the mold men act was pretty much guaranteed to force combat.

There are 12 mold men in this building. They're in a lot of different rooms. I realize now that I should have taken a few minutes to write down things that they were doing in each area.

There's one mold man in a washroom/bathroom. He shouldn't have been standing there like a monster in a video game. I should have had him doing something. Going to the bathroom? Poking something with a stick?

There's another mold man in a herbalist shop. It is hiding behind the counter. I should have had it rooting through the stuff in the shop. That's interesting, right? That makes sense. The mold man is not just a pile of hit points waiting to be subtracted.

Better, there's all sorts of weird magic herbs in here that Chris Perkins made up. They're one of my favorite parts of this adventure. I could have had the mold man use that stuff.

Solving the Mystery

The group accosted the mold man outside and ultimately fed it to a foulwing, which is a dragon-like creature that people in my homebrew city use as mounts.

A nurse gave the group keys to the building and asked them to find out where the 12 patients were, and where the "head doctor" was.

Modern Terms: As written in the adventure, this place is pretty much a hospital complete with syringes, patient files and "Dr. Edwin Alastair." It didn't sit well with me, so I reflavored it as a "House of Healing." I decided that everyone who works there was an adventurer when they were younger. I was going to tie the villainous SKARGLE to them, but we didn't get to do any skargling.

Exploring: The group headed inside. Burwyn smartly started listening - the place was very quiet. The heroes explored a main area, listening at each door.

Ambrose realized there was a mold man watching him from behind a circular stairwell. A huge fight broke out. The mold man clawed two people before it got killed as it tried to run away.

Some of the party wanted to take a short rest right there. Others felt that was not a good idea.

Then there was a bit of confusion. Arietta wanted to cast unseen servant, which takes 10 minutes. She was actually casting it during the battle. I was so whip-cracky that I didn't stop to hear Arietta's player and it took me a while to understand what he was trying to do.

It's a great idea to use an unseen servant to open the doors. I was so focused on time that I almost smothered the life out of the idea inadvertently, but eventually I caught on.

More Mold Men: They detected a mold man in a "patient bedroom" and decided to barricade it in there, which I thought was a really funny idea. They swiftly pushed a bunch of furniture up against the door and then used iron spikes to seal the deal.

A short rest was attempted. Burwyn rested. Arietta was working on the ritual. Kyrin decided to creep around and listen at each door. Ambrose had the amusing idea of going outside and peering into the windows of the patient rooms.

He ended up breaking in and looting some jewelry from a patient's personal belongings. At this point, the group was unaware that the mold men WERE the patients.

Edwin Alastair: Ambrose rejoined the group. The unseen servant was summoned. Burwyn was still a long way from being rested. The heroes found the doctor - he was being held hostage by a mold man. Edwin begged them not to kill the mold man. "He's my patient!"

The players sort of gasped and asked me how many mold men they'd killed already. I think it was three.

Kyrin rushed the mold man and knocked it back. They were able to restrain it.

The Mission

Edwin gave the group options. This is where the players get to learn the gimmick of this adventure.

There's a "brew of restoration" in this place. You can load it into a syringe, stick it in a mold man, and the mold man will make a saving throw. If it fails, it transforms back into a normal patient.

Edwin gave them the locations of lots of useful items:

The Brew of Restoration in the Herbalist Shop.
A POTION OF PLANT CONTROL in an office.
Syringes in another office.
A "soil syringe" upstairs in a storage room.

So this adventure is all about the group trying to inject and cure the mold men rather than killing them.

Edwin has healing spells! He healed both wounded heroes back to full.

The Herbs: The heroes decided to head to the herbalist shop. There was a mold man behind the counter that surprised Burwyn and a fight was had. Ultimately, Ambrose rolled a critical and blew its leg off, knocking it out. I'm pretty sure subdual damage can't be done with most spells but we were low on time so I wasn't worried about it.

They injected the mold man and were dismayed to see it turn into an old man minus one leg. The old fellow was alive though.

Here's the weird Chris Perkins herbs that the group grabbed:

Willowdust: You snort this white powder (!) and it makes you feel no pain.
Crawlbane: It repels insects
Deathmock: If you drink this tea, you fall into a cataleptic trance for 2d4 days where you don't need food or drink.
Hushthorn: If you drink this tea, you fall asleep for 24 hours and cannot be awakened.
Scarfade: Gelatinous salve that heals wounds.
Venompurge: Antitoxin, basically.
Wakemoss: When heated and eaten, it keeps you awake and vibrant for 24 hours.

Ambrose snorted a bunch of willowdust and felt full of vigor. He even got some temporary hit points out of the deal.

Looting: After that, the group went to get the potion of plant control, which I think is the most insanely useful item for this adventure. They also found two other potions, but the adventurers weren't sure what they were.

They got some syringes and decided to head upstairs to get the soil syringe.

Mold Man Garden: Up there is a vast arboretum with a bunch of different gardens. Each garden has a magically-controlled temperature and different plants.

At this point, we were pretty much out of time.

The group scanned the room. There's three mold men in here. I decided to see if we could squeeze this in, so I had the group spot all three mold men and proceeded to do some injecting.We didn't get to finish that as we ran out of time.

One of the things I get a kick out of in this adventure is that there are mold men with weird traits and items. For example, there is:

A mold man with A BROOM
A mold man with RIPPLING MUSCLES
A mold man with A MEAT CLEAVER

We just didn't get to them.

Overall

The group was good, I just felt like I stifled them too much. I'm asking a lot of people who have never played together to coalesce immediately, adjust to my style AND finish an adventure all in two hours.

I should have streamlined this, but I was afraid I would take the Perkins out of this Chris Perkins adventure. There was, after all, skargling to be done.

Last night, I ran another online game. This time I ran a 5e conversion of Salvage Operation from Dungeon Magazine #123. It is written by D&D honcho Mike Mearls himself.

Average DM: One thing I feel like noting is that this project is a little weird. I don't want to sit here and say that I am a good DM. I have a million flaws. I guess the whole point of this blog is just me giving the perspective of someone who has run a massive pile of campaigns. I'm not saying I'm good. I'm saying I've done it a lot.

I believe that all of us DMs are on about the same level of skill. You start off with a bunch of things you need to fix. As you play more, you fine tune those things and then there you are, right alongside the rest of us. Everybody is better at some things than others, but I've never seen anyone who is good at everything you need to do to be a good DM. I don't think it is possible.

New DMs: That is why I get really interested in watching these online shows. People like Nadja Otikor are very important to me because they are the new breed. They are growing before our eyes. They have the advantage of watching other people run games.

I would guess in the next five years, people are going to develop a lot of new ways to look at and handle being a DM. We can watch each other and figure out how to get a handle on the things that are too complicated to multitask.

For example, I'm a big fan of the Gary Gygax rule. When someone asks you a yes or no question that you don't really have an answer to, roll a d6. 1-3 means no. 4-6 means yes.

I think people are going to develop a lot of little tricks like that to streamline and improve the process.

Nautical Adventure: My goal here was to really try to fit this adventure into two hours. I was completely successful! We got the whole thing done with no rushing.

This adventure involves the heroes getting a crate out of a derelict ship inhabited by agents of a demon lord named Tharzax. I have never heard of Tharzax before, so I found this extremely interesting.

The group has to go to the cargo hold of the ship. Then, as they find the crate, a giant squid attacks the ship. The heroes must then get all the way out of the ship before it is completely destroyed. Many of the rooms are full of webs, making escape extra-difficult.

Timing It: When I read this, I immediately knew that the 'escape' part of this adventure would be difficult to run. Mike Mearls set it up so that the whole thing is timed. On round two, the squid grabs the ship. On round 11, the cargo hold is flooded. That kind of thing.

The tricky thing with that is there is a chance the group will get out quick without trouble and the ending will feel a bit flat. If the group takes the time to destroy the webs on the way down, then escape will be very easy. It should be, if the heroes had the foresight to remove the webs as they went. But that still means I have a flat ending.

The other option is to just have "timed" events. As in, once the group gets to room 5, a tentacle breaks through and the cargo hold is flooded, etc. That feels kind of cheap because then the group's actions don't really matter.

I pretty much went with the timed events.

Modifying it for 5th Edition: What's so nice about this adventure is that it fits in with some 5e rules very nicely. Webs are very clearly laid out in the DMG. Webs in a 10 foot cube: AC 10 HP 15 DC 12 to avoid/escape, vulnerable to fire, etc.

I was concerned about the group just bashing through the walls or the side of the ship and circumventing the whole "dungeon." If you look at the ship stats in the DMG, a sailing ship has AC 15 and 300 HP. It has a damage resistance of 15, meaning you need to do 15 points or more to do any damage at all to the ship.

The heroes are 1st level, so it would be hard for them to do 15 points in a single shot.

I also dug up the underwater combat rules which ended up coming in handy.

Every player was really good.

(Ryan) Beller aka "Mistletoe" - Human Druid
(Daren) Del - High Elf Wizard
(Ashley) Lemuel - Human Rogue
(Garret) Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
(Haydon) Salazar - Human Fighter

Go Get a Crate: We started off on a ship called the Soul of Winter, which was heading to the site of the derelict ship. The guy who hired them, Aubreck, was on board.

I had prepared a bunch of goofy pirate stuff so that my players could introduce themselves through interacting with the pirates. Arm wrestling, drinking competitions, etc.

I immediately bailed on it because I thought I should just get to the adventure. If it ended short, we could do that stuff after.

The Soul of Winter came upon the Emporer of the Waves, the ship with the cargo on it.

The heroes eventually learned that the Emporer of the Waves got lost in a storm 20 years ago. It went to an island inhabited by orcs who worshiped Tharzax. They were killed and the ship was turned into a web-choked shrine of Tharzax the demon lord of poison.

Recently, those orcs were almost completely wiped out. One of the last followers of Tharzax, Krell, decided to take this shrine/ship out to sea and put his fate in the hands of Tharzax.

Boarding the Ship: The heroes boarded the Emporer of the Waves. It was tilting to port (the left side... I had to look that up). Ramrod immediately established himself as a go-getter who busted open doors without considering the consequences.

Beller pretty much immediately slid into the role of party leader. Beller wore a kilt and a crown of mistletoe, which I found very amusing. Ramrod kept calling him "Mistletoe" and within about 10 minutes of game time, so was everyone else.

Tharzax: They started to explore. They found an altar to Tharzax. Originally this room had a giant centipede in it, but I junked it because I felt that a lot of combat would eat up too much time. Plus, I wanted to have a variety of encounter types.

I changed the altar so that it could give people demonic madness, like the demon lords in Out of the Abyss. Ramrod was affected but he made his save.

Webs: The heroes came upon another room where a giant spider jumped on Ramrod. Mistletoe used a spell to make friends with it. This spider became known as "Webster." Webster was a nice guy, but he was very confused by what the group was doing.

The group headed below decks, and found that every hallway and room was choked with webs that made the going very slow. There were little spiders everywhere. Ramrod squashed them whenever he saw them, which obviously would not please Tharzax whatsoever.

Sacks of Zombie: They ended up in a room that had two big hanging sacks that were wriggling. Inside each was a zombie that had spiders inside of it. Mistletoe did a sort of horror movie thing where he slowly opened a sack and a zombie popped up, opened its mouth and spiders came pouring out.

Then the group came upon a room with a woman trapped in a cocoon. I added this because I wanted to do the classic "rescue a woman from a prison only to find out she's a monster" trope.

I named her Selicia and she was a WERESPIDER. She was actually the girlfriend of Krell. Instead of turning into one giant spider, I decided she could turn into a spider swarm.

She was able to win over the group and they freed her. She told them about Krell and that he was nearby. Ramrod immediately went out into the hallway and yelled for Krell to show himself.

Krell Grohlg

A door down the hall swung open and there was Krell in his crustacean armor.

A big battle was had. Krell had a spider swarm that aided him. I re-skinned one of the Yurtus orc stat block from Volo's Guide to Monsters. It worked really well.

I should note that Del was a force of nature throughout this adventure. He kept rolling natural 20's and he also was able to drop Krell with a sleep spell.

I had Selicia act like she hated Krell and couldn't stop herself from hitting him, which woke him up! Then it was revealed that she was on his side. The group was outraged.

The battle resumed and the group took down Krell. Lemuel did an epic flip over the spider swarm (I think she rolled a 20) to try and get at Selicia. Selicia turned into a spider swarm and crawled through the boards of the ship and wasn't seen again.

Prisoners: I had the group find more people in cocoons. I liked the idea of having one prisoner who was a monster, and then others that were not. That way the group would be really off balance.

They were Rochelle and Zember Alatess. They were married. Zember didn't talk at all, he communicated non-verbally.

Somehow it ended up where Mistletoe gave Zember a massage and there was die roll to see how much Zember liked it, and it was a cool natural 20. Zember really, really liked it. Rochelle put a stop to that.

From that point on these NPCs suffered the fate of many an NPC and animal companion in a D&D adventure - I kept forgetting they were there.

Del had the good idea to clear the webs out of this one room, which helped a lot later on.

The Cargo Hold: The heroes dropped into the cargo hold. They scanned the massive pile of crates for the crate with an "A" on it. Their perception rolls were so ridiculously high (2 or 3 natural 20's) that they not only spotted the crate, they saw two ghouls underneath the waist-high water.

A fight broke out. Del cleared out some crates and put the box on a Tenser's floating disc. I can't think of a scenario where this spell was more handy and effective.

The Squid Attacks

Suddenly, the old sick squid attacked the ship. The ship shook and a tentacle burst through the side. Ramrod immediately charged it.

The rest of the group killed the ghouls and headed up above.

Squid Stats: Here is what the adventure says about the squid:

"...an old and dying giant squid, too frail to return to the deep, drifted near the ship..."
"...it's spent the last several hours lurking in the water nearly 100 feet below..."
"...the squid's hunger and illness drove it back to the surface for a final attack.."
"...the squid may be sick and old, but still represents a very real threat..."

When preparing this, I had to think about the stats of the squid. In this 3e adventure, it has 30 hit points and 2 attacks. To me, that means it's definitely killable but a massive risk.

In the 5e MM, the kraken stats are way up there. AC 18 HP 472 and 3 attacks.

I wish I had written down the swallowed part of the kraken entry. I didn't. When you're swallowed, you are blinded and restrained and you take acid damage at the start of your turn. To get out, you need to do a pile of damage to gt it to regurgitate you.

As soon as I looked at the giant octopus stats (MM page 326), it seemed perfect for a sick squid. AC 11 HP 52 +5 to hit, 10 damage and you are grappled.

Drowning: I looked up some stuff on drowning, figuring it would come up:

Suffocating (PH 183) You can hold your breath for 1 + Con mod in minutes. When you run out, you can survive for your Con mod in rounds, and then you drop to 0 and start making death saves.

I found this very handy site which has 5e rules assistance.

Fighting the Squid: OK, we got all that out of the way. Ramrod hacked into the tentacle, doing a hefty pile of damage. The squid has disadvantage to hit because it can't see into the ship and it was hurt bad enough that it pulled the tentacle out of the hole. Ramrod stayed right on it and went out into the water with it. He made a check and popped out with the tentacle as water was about to begin gushing through the hole.

The squid released its ink cloud before attacking the ship, so Ramrod was suddenly in swirly darkness. He made a perception and a swim check. He rolled high. He went at the squid, raging, and hit it again! He used a javelin for this, one of the few items you can use in underwater combat without a penalty.

The squid then grabbed him and swallowed him.

Escaping the Ship: Meanwhile, the party was trying to make their way through the webbed rooms. They had a choice - go real slow and make no checks to get stuck, or run at normal speed and make checks.

Mistletoe took the strategy of going slow and it paid off. He turtled his way through the ship.

Lemue the a rogue was quite adept at maneuvering through these webbed chambers. The other heroes kept getting stuck, and Lemuel would pull them free.

There was a rusty grate (open it = Strength check DC 15) that led to the deck in a hallway. Salazar stood on the floating disc and forced it open. By this time, water had filled the cargo deck and was now starting fill the level the group was on.

Lemuel hopped up onto the deck and helped the group get out along with the married couple NPCs who blinked in and out of existence a few times.

The adventurers piled in to the little rowboat that two pirates were waiting in.

Swallowed: Ramrod was swallowed. I was a little baffled as to how to handle him being swallowed. I should have done some acid damage but I didn't want to stop the session to look it up. I'm actually glad I didn't, because it would have taken me too much time and we were rolling along really nicely.

So Ramrod began stabbing the squid from the inside and it regurgitated him. I made a roll to see if it launched him into the side of the submerged ship and did damage, but I rolled low.

Ramrod swam back through the hole into the flooded cargo hold. Crates were floating, there was inky blackness, he as getting lost in there. He was able to get back out of the ship through the hole.

Escaping: The adventurers piled into the little rowboat. Del saw bubbles coming up from the water. The group groaned.

Ramrod swam to the surface and climbed in. The squid followed right behind!

Tentacles shot out of the foamy sea. It destroyed the rowboat and sent everyone into the water.

It grabbed a random PC - Lemuel - and crushed him. He was at 0 hit points and dying. Del got on his floating disc and cast firebolt. The squid was badly from Ramrod's assault. One fire bolt was enough to kill it!

Mistletoe grabbed Lemuel and gave him a potion to revive him.

The heroes had succeeded. The pirates sent another little boat to pick them up and we had ourselves one complete scenario in about 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Overall

The group was great and I was pretty happy with how I handled the adventure. I wish I had put more thought into the squid because I just knew something like this was going to happen. In the end, I was lenient, but when you look at those octopus stats, I ran it OK.

Distinct: There were a lot of well-developed characters. Salazar was at a disadvantage because his mic wasn't working very well. Even then, he contributed just fine.

Ashley in particular put a lot of work into her background, tying her character into some of my campaign stuff that was created by another player years ago. That player would love Lemuel and the whole thing fits together perfectly.

When I think of this group, they immediately feel like a unit. By the end of a single session, we had a very distinct, fun dynamic.

What I Learned: Running these three online games was very enlightening. I am really happy that I was able to figure out how to take a published scenario and fit it into a 2 hour online game. If I am going to do a D&D show, that's exactly what I want to be able to do.

I don't like watching D&D shows that are longer than 2 hours, so I want mine to be 2 hours or less. That's tricky when you're running old, published adventures. They usually have a lot of extraneous encounters. Knowing which ones to junk and which ones to keep can be puzzling.

Players You've Never Met: I was really curious to see what the people would be like. Every single player was good. It was shocking. It wasn't like the game store where you get a bunch of good people, and then quite a few people that are unpleasant to be around. At least, that's been my experience.

In this little experiment, they were all good/great. They all were courteous and pretty much everyone was beyond prepared.

Mearls Scenarios: I really like this adventure. It is simple but I've never heard of anyone doing this before. You go down the inside of a ship, then you have to go back up before it is destroyed. I'm going to look around and see what other old Mike Mearls adventures are out there.

Tonight I'm running Planescape, I'll have that up tomorrow. Then I'll try and figure out what the next phase of this online thing is. I'll probably see if any of the players want to do more.

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 29 - Curse of Strahd

Dungeons & Dragons - Volo's Guide to Monsters Review

Adventures in Eberron - Using Google Hangouts for the First Time

Planescape - Swallowed by the Abyss

Blades by the Docks: Episode 1

The State of Dungeons & Dragons Today

DCC RPG - The Making of the Ghost Ring Review

DCC RPG - Hole in the Sky Review

DCC RPG - Grimtooth's Museum of Death Review

Planescape - Sphere of Annihilation

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 30 - Curse of Strahd

Dungeons & Dragons - DDEX 3-16 Assault on Maerimydra Review

Dungeons & Dragons - Come Play Online with Me

DCC RPG - The 998th Conclave of Wizards Review

Dungeons & Dragons - New Printings of Old D&D Books from DrivethruRPG

Dungeons & Dragons - A Wizard's Fate by Chris Perkins

Force Grey: The Lost Episode

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 31 - Curse of Strahd

Dungeons & Dragons - The Menacing Malady by Chris Perkins

Dungeons & Dragons - Salvage Operation by Mike Mearls