Power Score

This session kicked off our trip into Chult. We're now on our way to Omu. I want the group to be in the Tomb by December, so we won't be spending too many sessions in the jungle.

You can watch this episode right here:

Basically what happened here was that we started out fine, but by the second hour I felt the need to hand the group a substantial encounter. Unfortunately, when I tried to do so, they went around it. This session ended up having too many mini-events and no major developments.

The Party

(Ryan) Mistletoe - Human Druid
(Garrett) Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock

This is a recurring thing in my games. I get so obsessed with getting things done, that nothing has time to sink in. I really should be following the Perkins model and running one set piece encounter or event per session, but I have a hard time committing to it. If that one set piece ends up sucking, then the whole session sucks!

By running lots of little things, you can mine for material. There's many opportunities for something to click and before you know it, there's a fun explosion.

Val couldn't make it this week. She ended up going to PAX Australia, where she actually got to spend time with Holly from Dice Camera Action! She also met Ryan, who plays Mistletoe. I live in New York, and two of my players are in Australia. That's pretty awesome, right?

In this session, I playtested some stuff that ended up in the Tomb of Annihilation Companion, which I just put on the DMs Guild.

In that book, I made 30 days of travel, including foraging events and night time encounters when the group is camped. I picked and chose from it for this session, and they all ran pretty well.

Foraging: If you want to actually say what the heroes find when they forage, you'll need to google jungle fruits. The Tomb book doesn't have enough unique ones to fill a month. I used a combination of googled fruits and fruit that I just made up (I've always loved the idea of big blue fruit).

As we rolled along, Mistletoe (a druid) began cataloguing his new discoveries. He decided to make Mistletoe's Guide to Fruits and Vegetables, which I thought was a hilarious idea.

The heroes had selected Azaka Stormfang as their guide, much to my dismay. I wanted to do a terrible Sean Connery for Hew Hackinstone! She has a secret, so I played that up as much as I could.

As far as finding water, it seems like the best way to handle it is to just say that however much water they got from foraging, that's how much they got from the rainfall in their raincatchers that night.

I had set up that Azaka wanted to go to Firefinger, which is a fairly prominent section of the Chult chapter. We ended with the heroes arriving at Ataaz Muhahaha, one of my favorite jungle locales.

Good show! These long journeys are always tricky. There is a lot of feeling out and sometimes you don't realize you need to fine tune until you're deeply in the middle of an event that is hard to resolve quickly..

Years ago, during 4th edition, I had multiple groups all running around in my D&D universe. On very rare occasions, they would cross paths. Absolutely nobody cared about this but me, because they didn't know each other! I was thrilled by it. It was my own personal "Batman meets Spiderman" moment.

That's one of the fun things with this online stuff. Now they can see each other. And maybe, some day down the road, they'll end up in the same place at the same time.

You can watch this episode right here:

Right now I am thinking that if that my Tomb of Annihilation group dies in the Tomb of the Nine Gods, this group will jump in and try to finish the job.

Ruins of Mezro is one of the DMs Guild adventures linked to Tomb of Annihilation. I wrote about it a few weeks ago. This book is good, but I wish there were a few more details on key areas.

The Party

(Shaun) Linnet - Human Druid
(Ashley) Lemuel - Human Rogue
(Jesse) Kyrin - Human Cleric

This group is made of two people from my "online test games" from a year ago, and Shaun, who is a Dice Camera Action fan. A lot of my newer players are DCA fans, which is very cool. We're all on the same page as far as the general style of game we're looking for.

The group went through some mini-montage encounters, and then arrived at the city. They had to navigate a moat full of crocodiles, which is a really cool scenario in my book..

In the book, the ruins have other NPC groups exploring the city. I generally don't like factions, as they make things too unwieldy. I got rid of them, and made up a crazy pterafolk who thinks he rules Mezro. The group befriended him and agreed to kill some goblins who had "invaded" his city.

In my games, I often like to run the bad guys as kind of nice people. That gives me more options. The group can team up with shady people or feel conflicted about killing them. For whatever reason, running Planescape always puts me in this mindset, and I've been running my new Planescape campaign for a couple of years now.

The group saw a hippo stuck in the mud. This was a velociraptor ambush, and encounter right out of the book. My dice were on fire, and Linnet dropped to 0 right away.

The heroes had a guide with them - Eku, from the Tomb of Annihilation book. She has a secret. I ran her like a really positive grandmother with healing powers. She revived Linnet and the heroes were able to drive off the dinosaurs. The hippo followed the group around for the rest of the session.

The heroes ended up finding the goblins at an amphitheater. I knew I was going to stumble when describing the goblin village (which can be launched through the air as if fired by a catapult). I did get to run a goblin battlestack, which was awesome. The group wiped them out really quick, though.

Then we got to the main thing I had set up. The group needs this tablet. It's stuck in the chest of a zombie that's in the middle of a zombie horde on the lower floor of a building that once held a market.

After some planning, the group agreed to send Linnet's familiar down to draw away most of the zombies. A weasel! This killed me. The weasel was not amused.

After some great rolls, the weasel was actually able to draw away half the horde.

The heroes would handle the other half in the next session, and it went horribly, horribly wrong.

Good group! Good session, I like what I did with the adventure. Good group! I look forward to the day that they cross paths with the others.

You can buy the Tomb of Annihilation Companion here.

I just released a new DMs Guild product called the Tomb of Annihilation Companion. The idea of this book is for me to take all of the ideas I had while making the Guide to Tomb of Annihilation, and writing them up in an actual product.

When going through the Tomb adventure, I noticed a few things that I wanted to have:
Detailed examples of how to run foraging in the game.
A mapped out series of days of jungle travel.
Revised Dinosaur racing rules that were a bit less abstract and had more environmental hazards.
Actual encounters for the Sewn Sisters creeping into the camps of the heroes.
A bit more information on making Albino dwarves and yuan-ti as characters.
Buildings to explore in Omu. The section on this is extremely short in the Tomb book, and I wanted more cool stuff. There's a pretty good chance that the group will want to duck into a random building, and I didn't want to be caught with my pants down (metaphorically speaking).

So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Rules Are Annoying: Game mechanics are not something I like to dwell on. That doesn't fly when you're making a D&D product, though.

My general attitude when running a game is that mechanics can get in the way if they're too complicated. But if you completely toss them, the game feels cheap and too loose. People spent time making characters that can do certain cool things. If you let EVERYONE do those cool things (and more!), then it warps the game into something else and you lose a lot.

I'm always walking that tightrope, and I have to constantly pull myself back into the rules. What makes it harder is that there are a lot of rules I just can't remember - drowning, fighting underwater, spell concentration, who can cast off a spell scroll and how it works, stuff like that. It's annoying to look it up. I try to write those things down.

The Mudslide: So what happened was that I made up a mudslide encounter. The heroes are walking along in the ran and boom.. here comes a mudslide. There's a ton of zombies in the mudslide! Roll to avoid it... if you get sucked in, you're trapped in the mud with zombies trying to get at you. You need to make some checks to pull yourself out. Bing, bang, boom, what an encounter!

The other day, I bought Jungle Treks. This is written by two D&D vets, Teos Abadia and Eric Menge. They, too made a mudslide encounter!

I sat down and read it. What I saw was that if I ran my mudslide the way I made it, the group would be through it in 5-10 minutes and we'd move on. In Jungle Treks, these guys made a mudslide an EVENT, and they did it without the zombies.

They laid out how many rounds the group had before the mudslide reached the heroes. They went down a great list of things the group would do. My favorite was the group taking to the trees and jumping from branch to branch. They described avoiding the mud with a very elegant phrase: "running laterally."

Then they made rules for getting sucked into the mudslide. The mudslide drags you into a river. You could drown!

I learned a heck of a lot from reading that. They carefully thought it out, then wrote it up in a very breezy, easy-to-read manner.

Baggy Nanna: One of the thing I got excited about was Baggy Nanna. I realized that some groups are going to try to tears the sack off her head (it's stitched to her neck). What's under there? She's meant to be a surreal, creepy villain.

I whipped up a whole thing which may end up linking the character to her for good. I was extremely happy with that one.

So yeah, I made a thing and learned a lot. I am enjoying looking at how other people do things. Rules can ADD tot he fun if you do it right. I'll be keeping that in mind from here on out.

Shami-Amourae, succubus queen

OK. I finally finished the Tomb of Annihilation Companion and I have a million blog things to catch up on. I've run 5 sessions of Planescape that need to be written up, so I'm gonna do that right now. Keep your hands inside the recap at all times. Do not make eye contact with any unsavory NPCs as they may get the wrong impression.

We had left off with major changes. Bidam died and the multiverse contracted. Three alternate universes combined into one. This happened because Bidam is the embodiment of Rule of Three.

This was a way for me to "write out" some old continuity things to clear the path for my online games. The main thing was to place Umbra a the goddess of good in my campaign setting. Umbra is the main NPC in the classic Chris Perkins adventure of the same name. In my campaign, she's all grown up and is now one of the most powerful and influential deities in my campaign setting.

Fall From Grace had changed during the merge. She was now a paladin of Umbra, and the bad things that happened last session had been altered. She was more or less back to normal.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

The heroes have a laundry list of things they need to get done. Tonight, they decided to fulfill a promise they made to Nocticula, demon queen of succubi, assassins and shadows. In my campaign, Nocticula is one of the twelve demon lords under the control of Iggwilv. The group promised her they would find a way to alter Nocticula's truename, so that Iggwilv had no power over her.

There was one person who knew Nocticula's truename - Shami-Amourae, a succubus queen who was trapped in a realm called the Wells of Darkness. The wells are described in Dungeon Magazine #246. It's an abyssal realm that is difficult to escape. All of these major entities are trapped in the wells.

The heroes went there and had a tough choice to make. They could try to free Shami, or they could try to free Cabiri - the obyrith linked to Burningwater, the abyssal realm now ruled by the group's friend, Bazuuma.

I was delighted to see the group stuck with the plan to help Shami.

The wells are guarded by 20 foot tall bodaks (!). The heroes wisely avoided them. They dropped into Shami's well. She's trapped in an inky pool. She can stand in it, but she's covered in black film. In the adventure it is actually said that she makes sweet sweet love to monkey demons here to pass the time, so we did some goofy stuff with that.

The heroes cut a deal with her. Now they had to figure out how exactly they could free her.

They eventually went to the ruined keep of Ahazu here. Basically, they need to find this bat-demon named Ahazu the Seizer and cut a deal with him.

To get to him, the heroes had to solve a mosaic puzzle. They fought some vargouille protectors. Then they made their deal with Ahazu. He would free Shami, but the group would need to bring him a more powerful prisoner within 66 days or else the heroes themselves would be trapped in the wells forever. The heroes agreed.

They have an iron flask, which you can use to trap people in. I asked them who they wanted to trap. The Answer: Iggwilv! Yikes.

The dynamic duo went back to Shami and freed her. This triggered a trap.

Shami was Demogorgon's girlfriend for a long time. She's locked up in here because she knows things that Demogorgon doesn't want getting out. So he has this magical trap. When she's freed, a portal opens up and drops a waterfall of water from the river sick into her well. The water wipes all of your memories clean!

Shami escaped. The heroes did not. Their memories were wiped and they blacked out...

Last time, the group had their memories wiped clean. They awoke in an abyssal prison with no knowledge of who they were or how they got there.

They'd eventually learn that agents of Demogorgon had showed up and taken the heroes away. They brought them to a prison in Demogorgon's realm. The prison is known as Divided's Ire, and it is massively detailed in Dungeon Magazine #147.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

You might remember that Theran has a "side vagina", a little pocket in his abdomen where he keeps a ball of magical energy that stores his memory. You might also remember that wayyyy back when the group got in that epic fight with the genie in Limbo, that Renbuu the Slaad lord had quietly altered this ball as a prank.

So.. amnesiac prisoners notice the side vagina. Theran uses the ball. He gets his memory back... and turns into a golden slaad! Renbuu has Punk'd this young man, yes sir! George is not amused.

Two stealthy individuals creep up to the group's cell. It's their friend Fall from Grace and Wesley Powderbottom, the cherub who speaks in a widdle baby voice. They break the heroes out. They had gone on a quest to obtain Desert's Night, a flower that cures Styx amnesia. Bidam has his memory back!

Theran and Bidam learn that they've been in prison for a few weeks, and an army of their friends have come to save them. The group would eventually learn that Selinza the cat lady SOLD HER SOUL to Dispater's wife to find the location of Theran. Selinza loves Theran, but Theran gives her the stiff arm every time she makes a move. It's outrageous.

The heroes need their stuff! They have truckloads of magic items! Where are they? It turns out that this prison is broken up into wards and is run by powerful prisoners. The leaders divvied up the items.

So the heroes creep around, looking for ways to get their stuff back.

I had noted in a earlier recap that Jessie likes to "push buttons" and I had thought I should purposely put wacky stuff in my adventures for her to do this with. So... since my campaign is stupid.. Bidam found a Demogorgon throne radiating magic. Demogorgon's whole thing is having two head, right? Many of his minions have two heads. So Bidam sits on the throne and transforms.

You may recall that Bidam has four balls and a weiner with a dragon head on it. Now it has TWO DRAGON HEADS. I can't express to you the joy that this development brought the group. Jessie pointed out that she could now fire TWO laser beams of healing from her double dong. Achievement unlocked!

The heroes met forgotten concubines of Demogorgon and learned some stuff. They got two bad guys to fall in love with each other and got some of their gear back. As things progressed, the heroes freed prisoners and ended up with a small army of allies, rampaging through the prison looking for gear and a way home.

They didn't realized that a succubus infiltrated their ranks and quietly began killing off the escapees when she could get away with it.

The adventure culminated in a wild battle with a demon named S'Sharra. As the group fought her, the traitorous succubus dragged the escapees into a pillar of spinning death. The heroes got to her and put her face-first into the pillar. Three escapees became new friends of the group:

Yantz Cogburn: A devil who talks like Morgan Freeman. I looked up a bunch of Morgan Freeman quotes and read them at appropriate times. The impression was apparently so bad that TO THIS DAY the group doesn't know it's a Morgan Freeman parody.
Amarysse: An angel who is basically Mary Poppins. I love doing a Mary Poppins voice.
Prophyra: A rebellious demon teenager. he was the breakout "star" of this group. She kept saying "you're not my dad!" and clearly, she needed a dad. The group broke through her crusty exterior and ended up bringing her to live with Bazuuma and Bidam's two dragon kids. Bidam's teenage son has a crush on her.

This adventure was wayyyy to hack and slash-y, but I was able to streamline it and make it work for our style.

Theran is a golden slaad

I should probably note that the group is 14th level. The plan is to wrap up the Blood War story by the end of the year. So in the next month and a half, we'll need to complete the invasion of Thanatos, have an epic final battle with Lamashtu, and come to some kind of confrontation with Iggwilv and Graz'zt, who are really the true enemies here.

Future Plans: Once that's done, I want to run a few session that cover the course of nine months time. Theran has 3 babies due to be born, and Bidam has one on the way. I want to give the group some time to relax and recover from the Blood War, and dig in to their relationships with their friends.

City Adventures: I'd also like to explore their status in the city. They'll be around 16th level, and possibly as powerful and influential as the factols in the city. I also would like to use Shemeshka some more. I'd like to roleplay her more like Chris Perkins does. I would like to do some city stuff where the group has some sort of epic struggle with their hated enemy, Ash Vodiran, the greatest thief in Sigil. Maybe he'll attempt his biggest heist ever - stealing Theran's sphere of annihilation!

I'd also like to do adventures utilizing their mansions in the Elemental Plane of Earth, and their festhalls. The players love when the festhalls get used. I'd say the "mob meeting" of all of the brothel owners was something they very much enjoyed and want to do more of. Sigil is awesome, so I think we should definitely pend some time having adventures in the city proper, using all the friendships and storylines we've built over the past few years.

Light Tone: I love that the group is on the side of the devils, and I love running the bad guys as if they were kind of nice people. It's more fun for me that way. The most important thing for me in D&D these days is FUN. I have no stomach for constant violence and misery, I prefer to try to create a game where it feels a bit more like a celebration of everything. In modern terms,

I want my games to feel like the Guardians of the Galaxy. There's adventure, there's danger, but there's still a lot of jokes and nothing is taken too seriously.

This particular evening involves a return to Limbo. For whatever reason, these are always great sessions. I think it is because all of us love Limbo and get excited when we get to go there. The ability to make arcana checks to mold the chaos into pathways and items is such a fun tool to play with.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

The heroes had gotten their memories back, escaped Demogorgon's prison, retrieved their stuff, and returned to Sigil with their new friends. We went through a bunch of downtime stuff:

Loving Matrimony: Bidam used his new double-weiner on his wife and rolled tremendously high!
Hee Hee: Eo Kaplan (the Michael Jackson undead gnoll) wants to open an orphanage because he loves the children, who are the future. To my surprise, the heroes let him use their mansion for his creepy plan. I don't do rape or molestation in my games, so in my head, Eo Kaplan's intentions are unsettling... something like... he wants to make them work in a sweatshop, or he actually just enjoys sleeping with children in his bed in a truly platonic way. Or..! He collects children like some people collect stuffed animals. Something like that.
Mel vs. Eo: Mel Narnia (Melania Trump) hates this plan and has moved out of the mansion with her son, Baron Donald Flumph, who Eo is obsessed with.
Unrequited Love: The group visited Selinza, whose soul belongs to the devils. She now works as a bouncer at the devil festhall of Sigil, known as the "Hellhole".
Magic Item Souvenirs: Bidam's kid ask him if he got anything for them when he was away on his trip. Bidam handed them a ring of protection and bracers f defense. What a dad!
Succubus Queen Buddy: Shami Amourae had made her way to Bazuuma's other abyssal realm, the Crystal Roads of Deluer. She was ready to help with the whole truename thing when the group had time.
Cabiri Crabs: Some of the group's demon friends were very unhappy that the heroes didn't free Cabiri from the Wells of Darkness when they had the chance.
Friendly Crustaceans Under the Sea: The group has been making demon crustaceans and selling them to the Blipdoolpoolp, a D&D goddess that I get a kick out of. Demon production has stalled. The PROGENITORS (demon breeders) have lost their mojo. This is a storyline that Jessie specifically requested. She wants to go on a quest to correct their erectile dysfunction. Again, my campaign is stupid.
Mary Poppins: Amarysse the angel was given the job of maid. She was responsible for keeping the f**khaus clean. She took to it with zeal, singing cleaning songs that probably shouldn't be repeated.
Morgan Freeman: The devil, Yantz Cogburn, settled in to become a barfly at the Smoldering Corpse tavern, where Eo Kaplan performed his musical numbers and dancers from the Shadowfell plied their trade.

Bovina, possible future goddess of Minotaurs

Divine Mooing: Bovina the cow lady tracked the group down. She asked the group if they had the divine shard - the item that she planned to use to become the new goddess of minotaurs. The group realized that it was missing. Demogorgon took one item from their pile! Demogorgon was going to use the shard to gain tremendous power unless something was done!

Bovina has a thing for Bidam, but Bidam is completely loyal to his wife, Bazuuma. I mean... 100%. Bidam has completely changed from a player to a devoted family man. It's kind of amazing. The demon lord Graz'zt once threatened to seduce his wife away and Bidam flipped out on him.

Despite all these adventure hooks, the group was dead set on one thing - Going to Renbuu and forcing him to change Theran back into an elf. Renbuu's prank had made Theran a golden slaad and he was not having it.

Limbo: Once fully rested and geared up, the group walked through a portal to Limbo (the heroes live in Deadbook Square, an area of Sigil with about a dozen portals to different planes).

The heroes stepped into the githzerai city of Zerthadlun and were greeted warmly by the citizens there. Long ago, the group had learned martial arts in an academy here.

A bunch of modrons were here. They bopped up and down when they saw the heroes, who were famous among the modrons for helping them complete their modron march. The modrons were on a secret mission, observing their chaotic enemies, the slaad. This interaction was meant to foreshadow a surprise at the end of the session.

The heroes used their magic scrimshaw whalebone to summon the ghostly pirate ship known as Bechard's Cyst!

The literal skeleton crew got to work while Captain Ricketshanks shouted pirate cliches and his undead parrot imitated demonic whale sounds uttered by Bechard (the obyrith/demon lord whale that the group had rescued from Yeenoghu's Realm).

Theran used his mastery of mutability to turn the chaos of Limbo into a floating river for their pirate ship to sail on.

Renbuu, one of the Slaad Lords

The heroes began to sail for Renbuu' gallery. They've been there twice before.

Along the way, a swarm of chaos imps infested their ship. Chaos imps are 2e monsters that can inhabit non-magic items. Basically, the group's own items attacked them, including the staff of power and the sword of sharpness! Yikes!

One chaos imp actually inhabited the ship and turned it upside down. Theran fell into the chaos of Limbo, but he was able to cast fly on himself and get back up to safety. The group used magic and intimidation to force the chaos imps to leave.

Chaos Pinwheel: The heroes came upon one of thee random chaos generators. Bidam had used one long ago and gained a wish. He wished to kill the Lady of Pain, which caused a chain reaction that led to Theran becoming one of the Lady of Pain's dabus servants and learning a lot of Sigil secrets.

Bidam and Theran both used it. Each rolled a result that boosted one of their ability scores by 1 point. Not too shabby!

The heroes arrived at Renbuu's lair. He graciously greeted them and showed the heroes his latest works of art:

A statue of a male elf spewing 7 different colors of liquids
A painting of a rainbow, but every color in it was a shade of red.
An always-running play about the life of Zagyg, the mad god. Zagyg is Gary Gygax's old character. In my game, he's an insane time-traveling god who is always causing mischief.

Theran is a golden slaad thanks to Renbuu's prank. Theran demanded to be returned to his original form. Renbuu still wa stewing over the time that Renbuu dared to enslave a slaad. So Renbuu reached into Theran's gooey head and pulled out his control gem! Now Theran was a slave of Renbuu!

I have always considered Renbuu a pseudo-ally of the group. I think he's really cool. But it became clear to me here that the group hates him! They wanted to kill him.

He showed them his painting studio where nude models of many different races hung around, not self-conscious in the slightest. Renbuu showed them his paints, which were a special souped-up version of Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments.

The adventurers snatched the pigments, which are able to alter reality.. For example, if you paint a door in the air, a real door is made. That kind of thing. The group started to try to paint Renbuu out of existence!

Renbuu unleashed some powerful attacks. He even turned Bidam's platinum scales back to their original black! Bidam was not happy.

Suddenly, Modrons exploded through the ceiling and attacked Renbuu. Their secret mission was to abduct some slaads and study their anatomy in the hopes of learning how chaos worked so that they could make order out of it!

Renbuu was abducted by the law-abiding modrons and Theran got his control gem back. The group kept the pigments, thanked the modrons, and made their way home.

Abysm, Demogorgon's Lair

I'm sitting here writing 5 Planescape summaries in a row, and it's giving me a lot of perspective. The two players of this campaign, George and Jessie, have been with me for 10 years. We started out with just us three getting together playing every week. It was the beginning of a transition from my old group, in which I was running a really unpleasant Shackled City campaign.

Pro: Once the Shackled City game ended, I started running 3 games a week, 2 at the game store, and one at home with George and Jessie. I guess I was a "professional DM"? I got paid to run games at the game store for 6 years. It was an awesome deal.

Jessie stopped playing D&D for a while when she had her daughter, but a few years later she jumped at the opportunity to come back.

Cedric, one of George's old characters

George: George is one of the most loyal friends you can have. At work, he's by far the best and most reliable worker. In life, he's always polite and kind. He's one of those people who gives much more than he takes.

One of his quirks is that he refuses to accept birthday and Christmas gifts. At first, I used to try to work around that. Eventually, I realized that to honor his wishes was itself a gift. George means what he says. If he says he doesn't want a present, he really means it.

Jessie's extremely vulgar pirate character

Jessie: Out of everyone in the world, Jessie has the sense of humor closest to mine. We both love dirty jokes, Will Ferrel, adult swim, and all things Korean.

I always felt honored that she played D&D with me, as I always felt like she was one of the "cool kids" and I'm a weirdo lurking way off the beaten track. But she always shows up, she always plays, she's always pleasant. She listens to my dumb stories and tells me hilarious anecdotes about being a parent, complete with poop, vomit and other bodily functions.

Campaign Groove: This campaign is special to me because we hit a groove early on, and I've been able to give these players the long, in-depth game that they deserve.

The fact that they've learned (and retained) so much information about Sigil and the planes means a lot to me. It means that they're paying attention and they're invested. It means I'm doing my job!

Jessie having a dream about the Lady of Pain was seriously one of the things that meant the most to me. The game is in them!

Back Burner: When it comes to D&D projects, I go through waves of interest. For a while, Planescape was at the back of the list while I got the Tomb Guide done, the Tomb Companion done, and the online games up and running.

Sitting here now, laughing at all these doofy notes I wrote and remembering what they mean reminds just why D&D is so awesome. It is a way to get together with your friends in a safe, healthy way, and have fun while creating a story that entertains all of us in our own style.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Black-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

Last time, the adventurers had realized that Demogorgon had stolen their divine shard. With it, Demogorgon could obtain god-like power!

They consulted their ally, the succubus Red Shroud, and learned that the shard was likely in Demogorgon's two towers in the Abyssal Ocean. These towers are sometimes known as Abysm.

Platinum Bidam

Demogorgon has two heads, each with a distinct personality. One tower reflected the personality of the head known as Aameul, the other tower reflected the personality of the head named Hethadriah.
Red Shroud forged them markings on their hands which would grant them passage into Abysm. She even knew the sigil sequence to teleport them there!

Red Shroud is allies with the heroes, as she is trying to reform her ways. As the daughter of Demogorgon and Malcanthet, she's obviously a little messed up.

The heroes appeared in the tower, and nervously greeted a balor guard, who let them pass. The heroes explored rooms in the tower.

Soul Larvae Sorting Chamber: The heroes spotted a cambion named Drumorg pocketing soul larvae when nobody was looking. The heroes blackmailed him, and ended up with a massive pile of soul larvae all their own.

Crimson Theran

They wanted to give these larvae to the Queen of the Harpies, the long-suffering girlfriend of Pazuzu. With the larvae, she could become a fully-fledged demon lord and leave Pazuzu without fear of being murdered.

Magic Experiment Chamber: The group required truenames of nascent demon lords, one of which would allow them to summon Xanthopsia, Queen of Obscenity, who they met when they fell into the innard's of Graz'zt's abyssal realm. Xanthopsia is trapped down there.

Shami-Amourae's Old Room: Demogorgon kept this room around. Currently, a simulacrum of Shami-Amourae lived in here. The simulacrum was fed up with Demogorgon. The group acquired a really dumb magic item: Magic lingerie that gives you an AC of 18, would they wear it? Bidam was all over it, but he didn't want to take off his armor of invulnerability. I think they plan on giving it to one of their dude NPC friends.

Prison: I made up some NPCs to see if the group would free them. There was a drow, a frost giant, and a devil. The group left them there, to my surprise.

Treasury: This is the home of Fearforge, an adult black dragon, sleeping on a massive pile of treasure. They couldn't help but notice that there were some really dumb magic items sticking out of the pile that I had made up. The heroes crept close and used Renbuu's pigments to turn the black dragon into a gold dragon. He woke up and was appalled at his pat behavior. He befriended the heroes and agreed to go to Sigil with them. Here's the magic items:

A pump that would solve the erectile dysfunction of the Progenitors.
A dimensional love hole. The less said, the better.
3 arrows of urethra seeking! That's right! When fired, it magically goes right in there.
The Divine Shard!

War Room: The group had the shard, but were curious about what was in the final room of this tower. Generals were arguing about Blood War plans. The group snuck around and learned that the demons were planning to use misty portal on the river styx to blindside the devil armies. They also found a sigil sequence that could take them right to Lamashtu's lair!

The adventurers escaped Abysm with Fearforge and returned to Sigil, with a bunch of new options for future sessions.

Almost caught up! We should play again next week, where we'll go into the final stretch that will somehow involve fighting the demon lord Lamashtu and/or Iggwilv the Witch Queen.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Black-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Golden Slaad Wizard

Mirror Placement: The heroes rested after their stealth mission in Abysm. Bidam was excited about the idea of installing the magic mirror from Bzallin's Blacksphere into his home in Sigil. Where did he put it? On the ceiling above his hovering, rotating love bed partially covered in panther skin.

New Ally: They'd made friends with a dragon named Fearforge. They used magic paints to turn him into a gold dragon. He now called himself Goldforge. Bidam added the dragon to his family.


Bazuuma, Demon Lord of Positive Energy

Here's Bidam's family, in case you are wondering:

(Father) Bidam: Dragonborn embodiment of one of the three laws of the multiverse.
(Mother) Bazuuma: Demon Queen, rules 2 abyssal layers, has 20 eyes that shoot eyebeams.
(Son) Pyranicus: Abyssal dragon magically aged to young adult status.
(Daughter) Pyranica: Abyssal dragon magically aged to young adult status.
(Foster Demon Teen) Prophyra: Sulky demon who puts on a tough front.
(Uncle) Goldenforge: Gold Dragon and honorary uncle in charge of guarding the children.

It was time to do what they promised - they were going to free Nocticula from the control of Iggwilv. If Nocticula's truename was changed, then Iggwilv has no power over the succubus queen unless she learned the new truename, which is not exactly easy to do.

The heroes met with Nocticula in one of the empty cities in the Crystal Roads of Deluer. The adventurers would have to perform the truename ritual and petition one of three gods to change her alignment. The choices:

Demogorgon: Obviously, this was a bad idea. The group had just stolen from him.
Ygorl, Slaad Lord of Entropy: Another bad idea. The group had just had another Slaad Lord abducted by modrons.
Corellon, God of the Elves: The heroes gave this a try and were soundly rebuffed.

The ritual was going wrong. A rip appeared in the air, spewing forth searing winds. A balor was trying to step through. The heroes just barely.. BARELY.. kept the balor from coming through and sealed the rift so that the ritual could continue.

They dug through ancient stolen texts and found one more entity who could change truenames: Blipdoolpoolp!

The group called upon her, and she opened a portal to her realm. The heroes stepped through. Blipdoolpoolp didn't get many visitors. When the heroes explained that they were the ones selling her demon crustaceans, she was intrigued. They asked for her to change Nocticula's truename, but she wasn't too keen on the idea.

The group looked around. Blipdoolpoolp is worshiped and served by frog-people known as kuo-toa.

The heroes couldn't help but notice that the lobster-headed goddess seemed to fin Theran's golden frog form quite appealing. There was only one choice: Seduction. I'll spare you the details, but
Theran did what had to be done.

Blipdoolpoolp agreed to change the truename if the group did something for her. There was an entity trying to overthrow her. Its name was King Gadriga, Lord of the Dragon Turtles, Lord of the Rippling Waves. If the group could slay him, she'd do what they asked.

The heroes summoned their ghostly pirate ship and sailed the seas of Blipdoolpoolp's godly realm. The group tracked down the beast. It swam up underneath the ship and hook it! The group almost fell overboard. Then it breathed a spray of team at them.

We started to settle into a boring "You roll, I roll" rhythm but I snapped out of it and began running it in a more cinematic style.

Bidam jumped into the thing's mouth and slid into his intestines. Then he began using his breath weapon and slicing at the thing's bowels with his sword of sharpness.

Theran hit it with a fireball. The fire raced through the creature's body. Bidam had to out run the blast. There was only one way out - the sphincter. Bidam heroically dug through the dragon turtle's impressive fecal matter and jumped out of its butt with the flame following just after!

King Gadriga was dead, and Nocticula's truename was changed. Iggwilv would not be happy.

This is a complete list of every recap and episode of Dice Camera Action.

Other Relevant Links:

Note: I put an "*" next to the episodes that I think are the best/most fun to watch.

Season 1 - Curse of Strahd

Episode 1: A band of heroes were going to get some waffles when they were sucked into the mists of Barovia, a realm ruled by the evil vampire Strahd Von Zarovich.

Episode 2: The heroes battle a vampire and meet Ireena, who Strahd is obsessed with.

Episode 3: The Waffle Crew gets a fateful Tarokka reading that determines many aspects of the adventure:

Episode 4: The group has a sprawling battle with hags that live in a windmill.

Episode 5: The epic battle with the hags is concluded.

Episode 6: The group arrives in Vallaki. They meet Rictavio, who interprets Madame Eva's reading:

Episode 7: Diath kills a guard and is scheduled for execution.

Episode 8: The Waffle Crew tries to find a way to bring Diath back.

Episode 9: Diath's spirit possesses Paultin's body as the group explores the abbey.

* Episode 10: The group tries to convince the abbot to bring Diath back from the dead.

Episode 11: Strahd shows up to take Ireena away.

* Episode 12: The Waffle Crew fight a desperate battle against Strahd.

Episode 13: Evelyn has become a werewolf and is now a danger to her friends.

Episode 14: Strix fights for control of an evil magic staff.

Episode 15: The group has a memorable battle against an evil tree.

Episode 16: Evelyn goes on a rampage in werewolf form and may have killed a baby.

Episode 17: The group travels with a man they don't trust and encounter some demon guardians.

* Episode 18: The Waffle Crew is nearly wiped out by the Amber Temple and has one of the darkest moments of the whole campaign.

Episode 19: Paultin is imprisoned in Castle Ravenloft.

Episode 20: Strahd tries to convince Paultin to join him.

* Episode 21: Paultin tries to escape Castle Ravenloft as the group explores the Amber Temple.

Episode 22: Strix is mortally wounded in a battle with vampires.

Episode 23: To save Strix, Diath makes a dark pact with an evil entity.

Episode 24: This is a special live show held at TwitchCon 2016. The group went to Van Richten's tower and got attacked by witches. Diath had an epic battle with a broom.

Episode 25: The heroes get a big surprise and go to find a lost little girl.

Episode 26: The Waffle Crew debates killing a little girl to defeat a greater evil.

* Episode 27: Diath does the unthinkable and the group sets fire to an entire vistani camp.

Episode 28: The heroes explore Argynvostholt and discover the Icon of Ravenkind.

Episode 29: The group teams up with Mordenkainen, goes to Castle Ravenloft and battles Rahadin.

Episode 30: Diath is cured of his curse and Lightfall is enchanted by Saint Markovia.

Episode 31: The final showdown with Strahd!

Season 2 - Storm King's Thunder


Evelyn, episode 52

Episode 32 - No Place Like Home: The heroes befriend Zog the dwarf, fight some orcs and realize that at least one terrifying entity has followed them from Barovia.

Episode 33 - Were and Tear: The Waffle Crew completes their epic quest to eat waffles. Then, they make friends with an owlbear and battle werewolves who are intent on freeing Strahd.

Episode 34 - Thine Own Elf: The group fights alongside the legendary hero Drizzt Do'Urden. They give him the Strahd doll for safekeeping. Drizzt decides to take it to Gauntlgrym, the legendary home of the dwarves.

Episode 35 - Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum: The Crew rests at the grove of a dryad and ends up in a deadly battle with a band of hungry hill giants.

* Episode 36 - Small Packages: Things go very wrong as the heroes try to get to their destination.

Episode 37 - Royal Rumble: The group gets in the middle of a massive battle between the dwarves of Citadel Adbar.

Episode 38 - Icebreaker: The heroes set out for Ironslag and meet a frost giant.

Episode 39 - Fortune Favors the Cold: The group has an epic battle with a chimera and they infiltrate a yakfolk village.

* Episode 40 - Big Yak Attack: An epic battle against the yakfolk.

Episode 41 - Evil Inside: Rooting out enemies and helping the freed slaves.

Episode 42 - Home Fires: The heroes have a sprawling encounter in the foundry.

Episode 43 - Meltdown: The Waffle Crew's luck runs out against the fire giants.

Episode 44 - Animals in Heat: An owlbear, a mouse and a cranium rat explore Ironslag.

Episode 45 - Fire Giant Override: The heroes learn a bit about the adamantine heart.

Episode 46 - Heartbroken: An epic battle against the fire giants.

Episode 47 - Apocalypse Drow: A band of drow stumble upon the waffle crew, who are in dire straits.

Episode 48 - The Hero Conundrum: The Waffle Crew is torn on what to do next.

Episode 49 - Distraction Force: It is time to capture Maegara, the fire primordial!

Episode 50 - Mountain of Ashes: The Waffle Crew battles the dao.

Episode 51 - Bite the Dust: Special live show at the Stream of Annihilation!

* Episode 52 - Can't Hurt Sunshine: Evelyn has to die in order to save her friends. A must-see if you've been following the show.

Episode 53 - The Double-Edged Sword: The group is split. Diath gets a sword connected to Sigil while Evelyn and Paultin end up... somewhere else.

Episode 54 - Together Forever: The waffle crew is in Barovia. Paultin is to become the new ruler of the realm.

Episode 55 - Flesh and Blood: The wedding is a fiasco!

Episode 56 - Prime Evil: The waffle crew time travels?!

Episode 57 - Wrath of Strahd: The heroes have dinner with pre-vampire Strahd.

* Episode 58 - Bloodbath: Probably the most consequential episode of the series so far. Unskippable!

Episode 59 -Snowflakes in Kronenheim: The group makes friends with an airship captain.

Episode 60 - The Red, the White, and the Crew: The waffle crew tracks down Artus Cimber and fights a dragon.

Acquisitions, Inc - Enter the Trash Witch: Strix learns more details of her origin and doesn't get along with Jim Darkmagic.

Acquisitions Inc. Pax West 2017: Strix and the Acq Inc. team travel to Omu.

Episode 61 - End of the World: The adventurers make a deal with Shemeshka.

Season 3 - Tomb of Annihilation


Baggy Nanna

Episode 62 - Abandon Ship: A dragon attacks the airship.

Episode 63 - Bad Dates: The Sewn Sisters creep everyone out.

Episode 64 - In Guide we Trust: The heroes acquire protection from the Soulmonger.

Episode 65 - Bait and Twitch: Live from TwitchCon, the crew heads into the jungle of Chult.

* Episode 66 - Ghosts & Goblins: The heroes enter a trapped shrine and Evelyn meets a saint.

The DCA Puppet Show: The entire series recapped in sock puppet form!

You can read this issue of Dragon+ right here.

Dragon+ is back with a brand new invention! Let's see what we got here in this little digital doodad. We'll go through it one article at a time.

Imagining the Ampersand: An interview with the cover artist, Leah Palmer Preiss. She makes very detailed art and likes to sneak secret messages into it whenever possible.

Xanathar's Guide Preview: An interview with the cover artist to Xanathar's. He played D&D growing up and sounds to me like hi group really tortured him.

Then there's an interview with Xanathar, the beholder crime lord. He loves his fish and he doesn't undertand pants.

The Art of Storytelling: This is an interview with a group of creators about D&D and storytelling. Bruce Cordell, Ed Greenwood, R.A. Salvatore,

I did not know that Minsc from the Baldur's Gate PC game was actually a real D&D character first.

My favorite quote in thi article is from Ed Greenwood: "Roleplaying gives you practice in letting a story 'breathe,' giving its characters freedom to do the unexpected, and in vividly but briefly imparting surroundings and setting."

and...

"An experienced storyteller knows what to leave out, too, to heighten the stakes and urgency and move precious at-the-table gaming time to the juicy encounters and scenes everyone wants to savor."

Hell yeah!

Spider Shark: There was a panel at HasCon run by Mike Mearls and Chris Lindsay where the participants got to make their own owlbear-type creature. 'Tis a spider shark.

We get the stat block. Wow. It has 162 hit points and it can launch barbed webs and nets at you. Pretty cool.

Figuratively Speaking: We learn a bit about the upcoming Icons of the Realms: Classic Creatures miniatures set. This set digs up monsters from 1st edition and modernizes them. They selected monters such as boar-headed orcs. Apparently, Demogorgon's in this set!

Richard Whitters talks about D&D art. He says that 3rd edition had the "dungeonpunk" look, which some people hated.

He goes on to say that 4th edition art was solid, but in some cases lacked the "D&D feeling."

I sort of see what he's saying. There was a definite world of warcraft influence that sometimes made the characters in the art look too bright and action figure-y, if that makes sense.

He thinks 5th is where the art coalesced into its best form.

I know that he's talking about the overall collection of art from each edition, but I think that the 2e art was far more effective, even though the artists didn't adhere to a "house style." DiTerlizzi, Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, Brom, Baxa and Holloway each had their own style, but each of them created classic D&D art that in some cases defined products or even entire settings.

There are some 5e books that I own that, if you asked me right now, I couldn't even remember what is on the cover. That is not the case for me with 4e books or 2e books.

Qawasha & Kupalue Part Two: This is a story about two of the NPC guides in Tomb of Annihilation. There's tons of tidbits to pull out and put in your campaign.

These NPCs took a trip to Mezro:

Samrith Vess: An accomplished researcher and scribe. She spent most of her life learning. She has decided to actually leave the library and experience the place she's read so much about.
Zara: A warrior guardian with a face that is like stone.

The vegepygmy makes a structure: A splendid pavilion with a mat roof made of blue-green leaves woven across a frame made with stiff, fibrous bark, and tied to the trunks of young trees with lashings of a strong, supple vine."

That's the kind of sentence I'd like to be able to write. I'd have never thought to use the word "fibrous" or "lashings of a strong, supple vine."

I've been noticing more and more that good D&D creators tend to pepper their work with these breezy, elegant sentences. I have a very hard time with this, and I'm trying to get better. I've never used the word "fibrous" in my life, but it adds a lot to what he wrote.

Chatali: A special tea made from the crushed seeds and leaves of a plant found only in Chult. It was a favorite drink of Mezroan royalty.

Mezro History: Mezro is a city built by the hand and mind of Ubtao, a god of Chult.

Mezro has buildings made of stone that even the most skilled masons cannot replicate.
The outer city was made by humans. The core was fashioned by Ubtao.
Ubtao made a temple in Mezro that has walls of interlocked crystal and a dome of pure gold.
The temple contains the Maze of Life! It takes you to another world.
Those who walk in the maze with truth in their hearts can enter a trial within their own being. The diligent and humble will find the true nature of themselves if hey solve the maze.
Those wise enough to solve the maze are bathed in the energy of the maze's glittering heart and emerge transformed.

Awesome!

Click or Die: An article about Idle Champions, a computer game. The thing I like most is that they use characters from Force Grey and characters from the D&D novels, like Bruenor. I'd like them to use Farideh from the Brimstone Angels books more in these things. Why does she always get overlooked?

Character's Spotlight: Hey! Character sheets for Dice, Camera, Action characters! Diath and Paultin! Diath is 9th level. He has an 8 Strength. Paultin's level 8??

Behind the Screen: Driving a Stake In It: This one talks about movies, characters and motivation. What drives your character? That kind of thing.

D&D Classic: We are given three short stories that appeared in really old issues of Dragon. I remember reading a comment in an issue of Dragon Magazine, where an editor stated that they got tons of short story submissions for Dragon Magazine, but the readers of Dragon weren't too enthusiastic about them. Everyone wanted to write fantasy short stories, but nobody wanted to read them.

Chronicle of the Plane of Shale: Planescape stuff?! Wow. Holy.. there is a PDF here that has complete 5th edition monster entries for some of the unique monsters from Planescape: Torment!

Gronks: Stone beasts that roam the outlands. Their reproductive organs are on their foreheads. They reproduce by smashing their heads together. I'm in awe.

I feel like a horrible person for daring to look this gift horse in the mouth, but I feel the need to point out that this would have benefited from new art. They use really old CGI art from the game and I think younger people might be very turned off by it.

Grillig: Long-armed reptiles. Nobody knows how they breed. "more of them simply seem to appear when their numbers become thin." That's a cool adventure in the making right there. These are also very low level monsters (CR 1/2).

Sohmien: Freaky horse-type creatures with dead white eyes. They leave a trail of mist in their wake and their hooves kill any vegetation they touch. Hey...! "According to legend, the last of the nightmare lords was lured to the Gloom Meet by his subjects, then attacked by by fiends who had tired of bartering for permission to use his nightmares."

The Gloom Meet! I've been planning a Gloom Meet adventure for a few years now. Who are the nightmare lords? That sounds incredibly cool.

Anyway, Sohmien hate nightmares and attack them on sight. "..the ride of the sohmien will not end until they kill every nightmare in existence."

Trelon: Monsters who are a "mixture of orange and shadow." They have two long arms that end in curved spikes. They were created to exterminate mages on a long-dead Prime world.

The lore here is absolutely tremendous. Very inspiring!

There is a massive Planescape story attached. It involves Estavan, one of the major merchant NPCs in the original Planescape boxed set. There's a whole description of the Plain of Shale, which is in the Outlands (a central plane containing gate towns that lead to most major planes of existence).

I'm going to need to go over this with a fine-toothed comb later.

Best of the DMs Guild: We get free previews of four Guild Adept products:

Maps of the Month: Free Tomb maps by Mike Schley. Sweet Jaysus. Why would you not download these?! They're free! They're awesome! Ataaz Muhahah, the Heart of Ubtao and more from Tomb of Annihilation.

Unearthed Arcana: A link to the pdf that gives subtypes of tieflings linked to the different archdevils. Obviously, I 100% love this.

Tremendous issue! Tremendous! I think a lot of the stuff presented here is a bit niche and won't appeal to everyone, but it's right in my wheelhouse. Great issue.

Episode 67: Vengeance is Mine

The new issue of Dragon+ has characters sheets for Diath and Paultin. You can check them out right here. Paultin has greater invisibility!

Chris is deathly ill on this episode, yet he toughed it out. These conventions must be like bacteria traps. Everybody comes back from them with rickets and/or the scarlet plague.

The Party

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

The group is in the jungle of Chult with Dragonbait and Umbril, the cleric of Torm. The group is bringing Umbril to a camp, and they're searching for the ruins of Orolunga.

Last episode, Evelyn communed with a Saint Andral, who serves her god, Lathander. He gave her the power to become a mega-construct. Evelyn is more than a little fired up about this. Anna goes off with an ultra-detailed description of her new form and then she cuts a promo on the darkness.

The heroes come to a camp that has stakes set up outside of it that impale dinosaurs who get too close. The heroes notice some skinned frog carcasses. Looks like grung.

The group is spotted by guards on watchtowers. A military organization known as the Order of the Gauntlet is camped here. This is right out of the Tomb of Annihilation adventure.

Nate shows off his giant d20. Jared has a big one, too. The rest of the group calls for an end to this dice measuring contest.

The group meets Commander Breakbone, who's a bit of a jerk. They meet Ord Firebeard, a dwarf. Paultin gets hung up on these last names, which are clearly inaccurate representations of the NPCs. Ord's beard is not ablaze and Breakbone's limbs show no evidence of fracture.

The Order of the Gauntlet wants to draft the waffle crew into service. They're having problems with the grung, which are multi-colored frog people. After much back and forth, the group agrees to go find where the grung live.

The heroes meet some of the other depressed soldiers in the camp.Evelyn hears a few sick and injured soldiers..

The group heads into the jungle on the following day. Evelyn rides Waffles and tells her about her old horse, Morning Glory. They enter a dark section of the jungle. They spot some moss and mushrooms. Strix realizes that the mushrooms are called "zabu". They can explode. They're like fungus grenades.

Suddenly, poison arrows are fired down from the trees. There's a total of 12 grung spread out over 3 trees. 4 grung in one tree and 4 in another.

Waffles is hit three times with poison arrows... not cool. Diath scampers up a tree and stabs a grung. Natural 20! Paultin uses Crown of Madness on a grung.

Strix shrugs and fireballs a bunch of them. Diath rolls another 20! Only 4 remain. They flee. Diath notes which direction they run in.

Dragonbait taps Paultin on the shoulder. He points to a foot-tall grung nearby. It's purple, and it is stepping out of a bush. It stares at Paultin with big blinking eyes.

The group realizes they might have just killed this kid's parents. That is where we stop!

In two weeks, DCA will do a show at PAX Unplugged on a Friday night. It's in the big main theater!

Overall

Chris Perkins is pretty hardcore. He was quite ill and still ran this game with no complaint. I appreciate his dedication! I don't like the grung, but I'm interested to see what Chris does with them. We'll find out next week!

In this session, we got to play through one of my favorite jungle encounters in the Tomb of Annihilation book. It is the crumbled bridge known as Ataaz Muhahah!

You can watch this session right here:

Val was recovered from her illness and the group was at full capacity!

The Party

(Ryan) Mistletoe - Human Druid
(Garrett) Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
(Annalise) Val - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock

Ataaz Muhahah

There's a statue in the middle of the bridge and there's a big break at the end. Monkeys swing on vines that hang underneath the bridge and sometimes the echoes of their laughter sounds like a deep, booming cackle.

NPC Dilemma: While preparing this, I had a problem. The group has a froghemoth with them named Hoppy. I've established that he can barely jump at all. How the heck is he going to cross the bridge and jump that gap?

It took me awhile, but I finally decided that there's a shard of Kubazan's spirit here. It inhabited Hoppy's body, giving him super strength, and he made a mighty leap across the chasm. The Kubazan left him and he fell face-first on the ground.

The heroes decided to tie themselves together on one rope. Mistletoe was in the lead. He walked up to the statue and touched it. The book specifically says that if the statue is touched, it animates and tries to throw you off of the bridge.

Things Go Wrong: I had written down how pushing works in 5e, but in the moment I couldn't make sense of it. Something about an athletics check that the statue has advantage on it? Sounds good, I thought. I did an opposed Athletics check. I rolled... a 26! Poor Mistletoe.

Now I had another dilemma. The heroes are all tied together! Are they all thrown over the bridge? I blindly decided to have each character also make an opposed Strength check. Obviously, nobody beat a 26. So I described it as the statue grabbing Mistletoe with one hand and the rope with the other. It threw everyone off the bridge!

I would have been panicking if it hadn't happened so fast. Would this be the end of the campaign? I had put some things (a chwinga and a kamadan) down in the valley just in case something like this happened, but it seems like a bit of a stretch for one chwinga to stable everyone.

TPK? They fell 100 feet. 10d6! They crashed through the treetops, breaking branches which slowed their descent. The group ended up hanging on a branch, dangling. 2 heroes had special powers that put them at 1 hit point. Val went own, but was healed. They legit survived a 100 foot fall! I was impressed.

They took a short rest, and then came up with a clever way to climb up, using ropes and pitons. As the group climbed up the 100 feet of rope, the monkeys threw bananas at them. Ramrod was having none of this and killed one with a javelin. Zavagor immolated another, and the third fled for its life.

The group helped Hoppy up. He was back to normal. They resumed their journey.

The group's progress (I moved Ataaz Muhahah)

Travel: The next day, we did a quick "montage" battle with goblins which I wasn't happy with. I didn't think out complications in advance.

The day after that, everyone but Val and Hoppy ended up falling in quicksand. When preparing this, I had looked up the quicksand rules in the DMG. They are very cool! You sink d4+1 feet. The DC to escape is that number, +10.

Ramrod got out. Zavagor rolled a natural 20, and proceeded to narrate his angry escape, eyes and skull flaring with fire. He killed me with that, and then he screamed something about "Generations of my people!" and I just lost it. It was decided that this should be the art for this episode, and so it was.

The day after that, the group came upon ruins. These ruins are from Jungle Treks. Yep, this is the home of the tropical harpies. Did I get art of the harpies?! You bet your sweet patootie I did! Here's part of it:

How about that crap? Not too shabby! Tropical harpies are an absolutely fantastic idea. They should have some sort of unique power, but I can't figure out what. Parrot-like mimicry?

Ramrod got possessed by Bokadoka, a goblin ghost. I generally don't like possession because, if I was a player, I'd be less than thrilled at the prospect of having to sit there while someone else controls my character. I played it like she would "ride along" in Ramrod's psyche and veto any actions that went against her interests.

I got to use my "snobby woman" voice, which was a big hit with my old groups. So far on the show, I've never gone 100% with the voices. I guess I'm not quite comfortable yet, as this was snobby lady at 65%. Her voice should be more nasal and throaty.

That's where we had to stop! The next session involves an absolutely EPIC battle with my beloved tropical harpies.

I'm still getting caught up on blog stuff. A few weeks ago, we played some more Eberron. In this game, I run an 11th (!) level sorcerer with a hairy chest.

We had gone on this mission in a Daask complex underneath the city of Sharn to cause a distraction so the queen's evil soldiers could abduct a changeling alchemist. We got completely wrecked by some hobgoblin guards and now trolls we about to enter the room.

It turns out that one of our draws from the Deck of Many Things had changed the alignment of the Daask leader (an oni). She asked us to keep the alchemist safe, and we agreed to do so.

I turned invisible, as did the alchemist. The other heroes played dead. The trolls came in and looked around. One picked up our wizard and bit her. He was going to eat her! Then, the trolls were called away and went deeper into the complex.

We fled and ran home to our bar. We debated how to hide the alchemist. We decided to have it pretend to be our wizard and hang out at the university library. Just typing that out makes me realize what a bad idea that was. The Daask needed a few days, then they'd smuggle the alchemist out of the city and bring it to Droaam (a land of monsters ruled by a hag).

I was extremely paranoid of everyone, as I had a number of secret enemies due to the deck. I had destroyed the hot dog cart of a warforged named Bun a session or two back. Now, he's our enemy. He actually opened up a business next to ours called "Double-Cross Bun's". He wanted to drive us out of business once we opened our bar. Son of a...

The soldiers kept up their end of the deal, giving s potions and claiming to heal our friend (who they probably poisoned in the first place).

Sharn is currently ruled by this Princess tied to out fighter's backstory. She's pretty much an evil schemer, as far as we can tell. Her people wanted us to head up a new air force of some kind. My character wanted an air ship, so I agreed, figuring I could steal it when the times comes.

They gave us two missions to complete, but we decided to do something else and put those on the backburner. A while back we had learned that we had each been sent a magical gift from our 4e characters. The wizard's gift involved a "...fallen star in a medusa city in Droaam."

Google says these are the Daughters of Sora Kel

I made friends with the airship's bound fire elementals (it eats sorcery points, which I have quite a few of). We took off for Droaam. Along the way, we ran into one of the fighter's secret enemies: a white dragon! He actually dueled it in a no arrows/no breath battle.. solo.. and won! He has a high AC.

We had a battle with a roc, an then we arrived at the Droaam capitol. The DM read us some of the description and it was very cool. I love the idea of monster cities that are run by hags and medusas.

The hags seemed to know we were coming. We were brought before the ruling hags known as the Daughters of Sora Kell.

That's where we stopped!

I finally got my airship! I've wanted one of these from the beginning. Pretty awesome. We're based in Sharn, but I love the idea of heading out into the world now and again to experience all of the weird Eberron stuff out there. Droaam seems extremely cool, I am looking forward to learning more about it.

We're going to take a look at a special Tomb of Annihilation adventure today. It is an "Epic", a convention/game store event where four or more D&D groups all play in the same scenario at the same time.

As far as I know, this adventure is not available for sale. I think you have to get it at a convention or your game store. I'm writing this to tell you about the ideas that you might want to use and I pulled out some descriptive text you can read to the group to describe certain locations.

It's Cheating: I don't want to post spoilers, reveal goals or how to resolve a particular encounter. I'm looking at this from the perspective of a DM looking to see if there is anything I can use in my game. The answer is a resounding yes!

Deluxe: This thing clocks in at a mighty 82 pages, although the last 30 pages are for stats and handouts. It's written by Will Doyle, who is quite the prolific fellow.

This adventure is about Port Nyanzaru being overrun by the undead. The city's in chaos and it's up to the heroes to fend them off.

Here's the backstory:

10 years ago, a pirate named Pelican Jake decided to rob his pirate girlfriend, Idrianne Smoke.
Jake teamed up with Aremag the dragon turtle and they sunk her ship.
Now, her ship has returned from the Nine Hells (!!!).
She is leading an alliance of "infernal pirates" to attack Port Nyanzaru.
She wants to find Pelican Jake.

Captain Smoke is Awesome: Check out the description of the infernal pirate: "If Idrianne Smoke was once beautiful, her years in the Nine Hells have twisted her horribly. Her teeth are now jagged metal, her skin is scaled, and black horns curve from her brow. On her shoulder, a scraggly parrot eyes you suspiciously."

A devil pirate! This actually fits in with the story of Levistus, the ruler of Stygia. In 4e, Levistus had a scheme where pirates were bringing him souls to hoard.

Ideas

Here's some of the highlights and notable things about this scenario.

Ouch: I won't say which scenario this was in, but this shocked me. Characters are going to lose limbs!

Old City Tomb: We get details on an unexplored tomb under one of the ziggurats. In it is a powerful spell scroll that can inspire armies.

Mother Sibonseni: It uses Mother Sibonseni, who is an interesting NPC that kind of gets lost in the shuffle in Port Nyanzaru. The group is actually given does of a poison that incapacitates in this scenario, which is pretty cool.

Blow Things Up: This mini-adventure is my favorite. The group has to blow up Captain Smoke's ship!! They'll be using a wagonload of oil and alchemist's fire. I'm dying to run this one.

Cloak and Dagger: There's a very harrowing scenario where the group has to pull off some really fun disguise stuff. Pretending to be a pirate, that seems like it can lead to a lot of fun things.

This thing is awesome! They should sell it on the DMs Guild. A ton of work went into this and it looks like a heck of a lot of fun.

Descriptive Text

Here's some boxed text from this adventure that you can use to describe things in Port Nyanzaru when you run Tomb of Annihilation.

My version of Kwayothe

Kwayothé: "Kwayothé (k-WAY-oath-ay) is a Chultan priestess of Kossuth. She’s calm in a way that exudes both serenity and menace, and uses her beauty to manipulate men and women alike. She’s always accompanied by males and females highly trained in unarmed combat, who double as her consorts."

Kwayothé's Villa: "Kwayothé’s villa perches on the lower slopes of Throne Hill. Inside, the air is thick with the aroma of perfume and fresh fruit. Servants fetch you water and wine while you await the arrival of the prince. Kwayothé arrives draped in fine silks and feathers. She dismisses her servants with a snap of her fingers, and looks you over with a smile."

Jessamine's Villa: "Writhing serpents decorate the walls of Jessamine’s clifftop villa. The lamps in here burn low, and hooded warriors lurk like gargoyles in the shadows. Roars and screams drift from the battle below. Jessamine watches over the city from a balcony, her body swathed in black bandages."

Ekene-Afa's Villa: "Ekene-Afa summons you to her villa on Throne Hill. Ornate weapons hang from her walls, and parrots squawk from gilded cages. When you approach, warriors are strapping armor to her scarred body. With her back to you, she addresses your reflections in the looking glass."

Dinosaur Race: "On this day, Port Nyanzaru hosts its famous Dinosaur Races! Grand lizards of all sizes scramble through the streets, whipped on by daredevil riders. As evening fog rolls in over the Bay of Chult, torches are lit to mark the race course through the city’s streets."

Old City: "The Old City sprawls beyond the port’s outer walls. Three lofty ziggurats loom over the streets - remnants of some lost civilization - with a shantytown of bamboo shacks clinging to their flanks. Panicked citizens cram the streets when you arrive. Greasy smoke coils from the outskirts of town and bells toll from the ziggurats."

You can buy this adventure right here.

A new batch of Adventurers League modules came out, all of which are linked to Tomb of Annihilation. A Day at the Races is the third one, and it primarily deals with a deluxe version of a dinosaur race.

I've read this whole thing and I can say with confidence, if you plan on doing a dinosaur race in your Tomb of Annihilation campaign, buy this and use the event in here. It is tons of fun and full of really great ideas. It sort of kills me inside that my group has already left Port Nyanzaru, as there's no way for me to run this.

Three Parts: This adventure is broken up into three sections. Part 2, the race, is by far the largest section and makes up the vast majority of the adventure.

This dinosaur race event is called Na 'Nbuso's Haka. It is meant to honors kings of Chult's ancient past.

Story: There's been some suspicious stuff going on in recent dinosaur races. Fluke wins, freak deaths, things that have many people concerned that there's cheating afoot. The heroes are going to enter a race and try to figure out what's going on.

Part One: The group registers for the event. They must pick which team name\uniforms they want (there are ten choices). The team choices are based on different creatures in Chult: grung, froghemoth, t. rex (!) and more.

The heroes can gamble on the two races that occur before theirs.

Part Two: Ok. Ready? This race occurs in four phases: Land, air, sea, and grand prix royale.

First Leg: The group rides on chariots pulled by dinosaurs. We're already done here, right? This is the best thing ever.

Second Leg: The heroes ride pteranodons (!)through the air, attempting to swoop through wide rings of iron. Each rider needs to snatch a ribbon from a ring of iron. Once you get a ribbon, you can harry riders on another team until your entire team has ribbons (at which time the group can advance to the next phase).

Third Leg: The teams must ride on plesiosaurs in the ocean toward a statue in the water. Once at the statue, the heroes must dive in, swim down, grab a brick, get back on the plesiosaur and take it to the warehouse district. Then they need to solve a puzzle.

The mind reels from all of the cool things you can do with this. Imagine you're diving down to get the brick at the same time that a rival is. Underwater brawl? Shark attack? Playful dolphins? Aremag appearance?!

Final Leg - Grand Prix Royale: The entire group rides on one triceratops and races to the finish. The characters each have a shield and a whip, as do the opposing teams. You all whip the crap out of each other.

The entire team on one mount. Fantastic! So much hilarity can come from this, so many cool maneuvers.

Part 3: This is a quick conclusion to the scenario. Some creatures run amok right after the race concludes. The heroes take them down and then they discover a container with a really, really cool substance in it that I don't want to spoil. This discovery leads into the next adventure, A Walk in the Park.

Overall

I love this adventure. Love it! I'm not sure what else there is to say. If you're running a dinosaur race, you have to use this. It's almost cruel not to. If players knew what they were missing, they might try to punch you right in the face and, honestly, I can't blame them. How dare you! Just who do you think you are?

As far a nitpicks or concerns, I do think that some dungeon masters might want more concrete rules in the race section, as a lot of details and rulings are left up to the DM. I could also see new DMs having trouble running the pteranodons-flying-through-the-rings section, as it's quite vague.

I would have also liked a description of some rival NPCs and teams.

But those are minor nitpicks. This is easily one of the best releases linked to Tomb of Annihilation so far. You should definitely check it out and see if it's something you want to use.

Watch WebDM on Youtube here.
Check out WebDM on patreon here.

Today I was on a podcast with Jim and Quinn, the guys from WebDM. We taped a show that will be out next Friday, if I remember right.

We talked about D&D for just about two hours and, somehow, we didn't get to everything. Quite a number of their patrons posted questions for me to answer. I was only able to answer a few, so I figured I'd post the answers to the rest of them right here.

Hunter: Hunter said that his group had kept the little girl from Curse of Strahd as a sidekick, and wanted advice on how to handle it. I assume he is talking about Arabelle, the vistana who is related to Madame Eva.

First, I think you should check out Dice, Camera, Action episode 26. Liisa Lee plays Arabelle and did a great job IMO. Chris set it up where the group needed to kill Arabelle in order to enact a ritual.

Second, I think it would be cool if you played up the mysterious powers of Arabelle and have her be a weird but helpful ally. At certain points in the adventure, she could do tarokka readings that help them out of a jam or give the group some kind of magical boon to aid them in their quest.

The Dark Powers would probably see her as the person who should replace Strahd, so they'd reach out to her now and again. Baba Lysaga might want her as a step-daughter, or maybe the hag wants to eat her.

Daniel: Daniel asked me what influenced me to "smooth out modules" through my guides.

When I was a kid, I didn't know I had ADHD. I also didn't know it was an actual thing that can affect your life until I took medication for it when I was much older. My entire life changed!

Most of the time, I could not read one page of Dungeon Magazine. I'd read the first sentence of an adventure over and over, but I couldn't retain it. Obviously, this made running adventures very difficult.

Eventually, I taught myself to take notes as I read. It helped me retain information and maintain my focus for more than a nanosecond. When I was done, I had a "cheat sheet". Dungeons & Dragons taught me how to study.

Early on in this blog, I was getting ready to run Hoard of the Dragon Queen. As usual, I had pages and pages of hand-written notes that guaranteed I would have no problem running this thing. I was always looking for content to put on this blog, so it seemed like a fun thing to do.

I figured that 5e would have a lot of new DMs who would need help. I started the guide, basically "sharing my work" as I went, so new people could see way to link everything together and all that stuff.

Richard: Richard had two questions. He asked me how I would build a homebrew pantheon and if I had any house rules.

Pantheon: In my experience, players aren't going to remember most of your gods. You can make 20 of them, but the group will probably only deal with a few of them.

The gods that matter in your campaign are the ones worshiped by the party paladin or cleric, the god of healing (if they have churches where people can pay to get diseases cured, raise dead, etc.) and the evil god that's usually the cause of the bad things going on in the world.

If I were going to make a homebrew pantheon from scratch, I'd probably make one god for each alignment. That's a simple, organized way to make 9 distinct entities, and you have a good starting point for each of their personalities.

House Rules: Here's some of my house rules:

Floor Dice Don't Count: If your die falls on the floor when you roll it, the roll doesn't count. Some people have a natural tendency to pick it up and re-roll if it's a 1, but they'll keep it if it's a 20.
Rape Does Not "Exist": Rape doesn't happen in my campaign except as part of a tragic backstory. Nobody ever considers doing it. I just don't want it in my game. I'm not sure if I ever told the story of how I ran a female character modeled after LaToya Jackson, but you can probably guess what happened.
If It's Cool, It Happens: If someone has an idea that gets me excited, it's happening in some form. I used to let die rolls shut down things that would have been hilarious, but not any more. I think one of the main things we're doing in D&D is mining for cool moments. When you get one, don't throw it in the garbage.

Jacob: Jacob asked what my favorite ways to start a campaign are.

I do a montage of scenes that show off each character. It just involves one die roll. Usually the point of it is to let the player convey their character's personality and style. If it was a TV show, they'd do their cool thing, then the video would freeze with them giving a thumbs up and their name would appear on the screen for a moment, and then we'd cut to the next character.

Robert: I answered some of Robert's questions on the show, but we got sidetracked. He asked me what I recommend for people who want to make their own adventures and content for the DMs Guild.

I made a list:

Download the Monster Maker (it's free): It makes stat blocks that look like the ones in the official books.
Use the Homebrewery: I don't use this, but it pumps out documents that look nearly identical to the Player's Handbook interior.
Art: There are sites that have free art that you can use. Just make sure it's cleared for "commercial use". Pixabay and wikimedia commons have quite a lot of art that is completely free to use. It takes some time to dig through it all.

As far as writing, I'm still learning that side of it. Things I've noticed so far:

Try to be succinct and avoid walls of text. Breezy adventures are good, as most people don't have time to read a massive, dense adventure.
Look at the work of D&D creators you like and see how they do things. My favorites: Monte Cook, James Jacobs, Bruce Cordell, Michael Curtis and F. Wesley Schneider.
Don't underprice yourself! I have no problem paying a couple bucks for a useful book. My experience with pay-what-you-want is that 1 in 10 people pay.
Write about what you like. If you used one particular thing in your campaign and made material for it, you should use it. You spent hours and hours creating these ideas and playtesting them, and I think that shines through.
The books that generally sell are monster books, new spells and player options. Adventures generally don't sell well. Collections of adventures seem to do very well, though.
Don't be afraid to send your stuff to bloggers to review. Many of them love getting that kind of thing. Just remember that they might not like it, so definitely get a real life friend to give it a look with fresh eyes before you send it out.

Thanks to everyone who sent a question! I loved being on the show and look forward to doing more things like this in the future.

We played through more of Ruins of Mezro, which you can buy right here.

You can watch this session right here:

The Party

(Shaun) Linnet - Human Druid
(Ashley) Lemuel - Human Rogue
(Jesse) Kyrin - Human Cleric

The heroes were in a large two story building that once held a market, trying to get a stone tablet that was situated in the middle of a zombie horde. It was lodged in the torso of a single zombie.

Theater of the Mind: I had a bit of difficulty describing this place. Half the zombies were on one side, and half were on the other. The first floor was full of lines of tables with products on them. The second floor held offices and desks.

Over-explaining: When you're in the moment, it's easy to either over-explain or under-explain the scene. If you overexplain, some players will tune out and then operate on their limited understanding of the scene. Players aren't keen on piping up and admitting that they don't understand the layout, I think they assumed they missed something.

To combat this, I will often reiterate the basics of the place as we play, to ensure I've communicated the essential details. As soon as I finish reading boxed text aloud, I repeat the bullet points to hammer home the things they need to know.

Under-explaining: If you under-explain, which I often do, each player has their own image of the location that is vastly different from what I had intended.

Accurate Descriptions: I think that when you're running a complicated location, you should probably have some kind of map to show them. Especially if you're running a major encounter!

Also, if a player does something based on misunderstanding the location (for instance, trying to jump a river of lava that they think is only 5 feet wide, not 50) you should rewind. If the mistake isn't realized until much later, you can probably let it go unless it had major consequences.

The Zombie Market: My idea here was that there are crossbeams above the horde. The group could climb on them, drop a rope, and pull up the zombie with the tablet lodged in it.

The group did not do that! They gathered on the second floor and smashed a hole through it, directly above the tablet zombie. They used their weasel, Iris, to draw the horde away. She was killed! She's a familiar, so she vanished and could be summoned again the next day.

I was very alarmed at this point. They were about to lower themselves into a room with 200 zombies!

The group lowered a rope through the hole and climbed down. Lemuel, the rogue, made a beeline for a potion stall that still had some potions intact. There was a zombie hidden under a stall that dragged him under. Linnet ran over to help.

Meanwhile, Kyrin was trying to pull the tablet free of the zombie. Its arms were tied, so it struggled to bite at them. Kyrin kept trying to make strength checks, but the tablet wouldn't budge.

Swarmed: The horde closed in on Kyrin and he was surrounded by about 20 zombies! The dude is 3rd level. I was worried that he would die. The group was able to get the attention of the horde and peel many of them off.

A batch of zombies started crawling under the stalls and tables to get at Lemuel and Linnet. The heroes ended up getting on the tables and jumping from one to the next, making their way toward a window that they could use to escape outside.

Kyrin finally got the tablet free as the zombies bit him a number of times. Then things got worse. Two zombies looked down at him through the hole in the ceiling. They were about to fall through!

He disengaged and fled.

While table-jumping, Linnet crashed through a rotted table and a crawling zombie attacked her. Lemuel got to the window, smashed it open, and called to their guide, Eku, for help.

Eku: Eku is one of the guides from the tomb of annihilation. She has a secret and is a mysterious, friendly old lady.

She came in and used her healing powers to keep the group alive as they made for the window. Thanks in part to Eku, the group escaped with the tablet.

They rested in the building where they'd defeated the goblins. They hated that zombie market and agreed that they were going to burn it to the ground.

The Tablet: They looked at the tablet and were able to figure out that it was a map. There are a bunch of magic obelisks in front of buildings in Mezro. If they are touched in a certain order, they just might open a portal to the real Mezro, which is hidden away in another plane.

Once rested, the group set fire to the market and began touching the pillars in order.

When they got to the library, they sent in to check it out. Zombies were in there, some browsing and some putting books on shelves. My thinking as that a long as the group followed the rules of the library (be quiet, get your books checked out before leaving) the zombies would leave them alone.

The group was amused by this and followed the rules. They found a bunch of books that give them information on the hag Nanny Pu'pu, who Eku had told them about, and the Sewn Sisters, a hag coven. They also read about Ras Nsi and the barae (protectors of Mezro with magic powers).

I had googled the barae, who are mentioned in older D&D products and novels. I described each of them to the group. There are tatues of the barae in the main encounter area of Mezro, so I wanted to set up what could be a very fateful moment in the temple.

That's where we stopped. In the next session, we added a fourth player and the group got hammered with wild magic.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything became available for purchase in game stores the other day. I got it and I should have a review of it up soon. I was also given the special promotional adventure sent to game stores, called "Underworld Speculation", written by Chris Lindsay.

It is a short scenario meant to last 1-2 hours and it comes with pre-generated characters that utilize the new options in Xanathar's. I'm not sure if this will be sold on the DMs Guild. Maybe they will wait a month or two so game stores can run it, then release it?

If you want to watch the session, it is right here on Youtube:

Warning: Major Spoilers! This adventure has some special things in it. If you are going to play through this adventure, you should not read this, as it will lessen your enjoyment of it.

The Party

(Shaun) Lyra - Halfling Rogue
(Brandon) Fosser - Human Cleric
(Matt) Selkie - Human Sorcerer

The group has been in the city of Waterdeep for a few weeks tracking the criminal activities of the Xanathar, the beholder crime lord. They were knocked out and awoke later in a cavern that contained a pool of water as well as a magic orb siting in the center of a magic circle.

The orb reached out to them telepathically. It explained to them that they were prisoners of the Xanathar. Its name was Dawn's Beacon, and it could help them escape.

After some careful study, the heroes saw that it was a magic item of great power. It granted them the power of water breathing, and it had other "legacy" powers it could install in them over time.

The heroes got their water breathing going and dove into the murky water, swimming down and down, looking for an underwater tunnel. They tied themselves to one another with a rope, as the conditions were pretty harsh:

Half speed.
Visibility of 10 feet!
The water tasted grainy.
Underwater combat rules (disadvantage on attack rolls unless using a few specific weapons like tridents or daggers).

The heroes were attacked by 2 humanoids that had tentacles instead of legs. One tried to drag Selkie away (she had decided to hold the rope rather than tie it around their waist) but failed.

The group was able to take them down. The rogue did a lot of damage.

Then we came to an area that I didn't quite get. Maybe I missed something. A trip wire in an underwater tunnel? How does that work?

It doesn't matter, because Fosser spotted it and the group was able to avoid it.

They continued swimming and came upon a really tough monster... a flail snail!

This thing has 5 attacks! It can emit radiance that stuns you!

Fosser heroically kept its attention while the others chipped away at it. He used the dodge action to great effect, swimming and evading the dancing flails. Selkie cast create bonfire, which does work underwater.

The bonfire erupted inside the snail's shell and did quite a bit of damage over the course of a few rounds. It used its stunning radiance power, but the entire group made their saving throws!

Lyra sliced off one of its tentacles (when you do 10 or more points of damage in one shot, a tentacle is sliced off). The group defeated it, although Fosser was hurt very badly.

The heroes found an empty side tunnel to rest in for an hour. Once healed, they continued on.

The group emerged in a strange valley. In it was a fortress, 4 clams, and a massive beast that swam far above them.

Something seemed off to the group. I was wondering if they were about to catch it and I almost ruined it by mis-speaking. They decided to go to the fortress.

Descriptive Vagueness: A bunch of "algaepygmies" attacked them. Selkie cast a darkness spell. Watching this back, I don't think I was clear on where the darkness was. Some of the group seemed to think they were all in the cloud of darkness. I thought the cloud had caught only the algaepygmies.

These are the kinds of mistakes I have a hard time avoiding. I have a hard time communicating what's in my head iwith words at the table at that moment. I'm so excited to do the encounter that I sort of take off without the rest of the group having a full understanding of what is where.

Selkie went into the darkness and chopped up some algaepygmies. Others emerged from the darkness. Lyra and Fosser took them down.

The Big Surprise: With the bad guys slain, they looked at the fortress. It was made of one solid block of stone. No windows, no doors. The front gate was held up by a slot.

The light bulb went on. Selke said... "We're in a fishbowl!"

Yup! The group had been shrunk down and placed in the bowl containing Sylgar, Xanathar's prized pet goldfish.

Dawn's Beacon pointed out that if they could swim out of the top, they could escape.

The adventure has a slightly different take. It says that Dawn's Beacon would teleport them out if the group swore a magical vow to one day kill the Xanathar.

I thought it was much more fun to have them try to swim out as Sylgar attempted to eat them!

The heroes wrapped themselves in seaweed and tried to inconspicuously float to the top, which I thought was a hilarious idea.

They got pretty far... then Sylgar came at them. Sylgar has a +9 to hit and over 100 hit points!

It bit Lyra, doing 22 damage. She survived! She swam up and out, vanishing as she emerged from the water.

Then it came for Fosser. It bit him, too, doing 22 damage! He lived! He swam out and the entire group escaped!

Overall

They were genuinely surprised by the twist. It was definitely a unique, fun adventure. When I read it, I wasn't really into it. But, as is often the case, it came off much better in play than I thought it would. This adventure was fun.

I'd tell you to go play this, but I just ruined it for you. If you can get your hands on it, run it for unsuspecting players!

The heroes continue traveling through the jungle of Chult, searching for the Lost City of
Omu. Their guide, Azaka Stormfang, died when the group fell off the bridge last session. I bought art of her and she died after 2 episodes. Not cool!

You can watch this right here:

I had bought Jungle Treks and I immediately wanted to run the tropical harpies scenario. So, I did!

We had left off last time with Ramrod getting possessed by the ghost of a goblin named Bokadoka. Seeing as how I was robbed of the opportunity of doing my bad Sean Connery voice, I decided to use my "snooty lady" voice. I also got to show off my "woman singing" voice, which always kind of makes people take a step back.

Tangent: When I was going to community college, I'd be home alone with my dog in the mornings. One day, I took advantage of the empty house and began loudly singing in an opera man voice.

I was doing a dramatic, deep version of: "Lay down and boogie, play that funky music... til you DIEEEEEE" and I was holding the last note, cracking myself up. I'm marching around my room singing this stupid song as loud as I can, and suddenly I hear howling.

Stunned, I staggered out of my room, and there's my dog - who had never howled before - singing along with me. The problem was that I was laughing so hard that I couldn't sing with her. She was looking at me like, "what the hell are you doing?"

OK, now that I've told that essential story, we can continue.

There's these skeletons that guard the bottom of the harpy tower. They attacked, and I got a little alarmed. The fight was you-roll, I-roll. No drama, just numbers. I couldn't think of any cool maneuvers to do, so I ended it a quick as I could.

The heroes got into the 3-stories tall harpy tower. The harpies were on the roof. The setup here is that the floors are weak. Crossing the 2nd and 3rd floors require an acrobatics check. Fail, and you fall through!

Val crossed. Ramrod fell through. He tried again. Fell through. Mistletoe tried. Fell through.

At this point, I figured the harpies had heard them.

What followed was an insane battle. where Mistletoe and Zavagor blew up this evil idol on the ground floor (it's the thing on the cover of Jungle Treks).

Val actually climbed in the back of a harpy and rode it around, dodging obstacles and ultimately flying it into a wall.

Ramrod grabbed a harpy on the 3rd floor jumped on it. They both smashed through two wooden floors and crashed on the stone ground below. he tried to flip him so that she landed on him, but he rolled a natural 20 on the opposed strength check.

He killed her. One harpy fled. Mistletoe stopped it with an entangle spell. While the group tried to figure out what to do with her, Ramrod chopped her up with an axe.

It was a really fun session, one of my favorites of the campaign so far.

Due to scheduling, we might not have another Tomb show for a few weeks. I'll be filling the gap with Ruins of Mezro (2 episodes yet to be posted) and Return of the Lizard King (3 episodes yet to be posted).

Jungle Treks is very cool! I look forward to running more DMs Guild stuff.

Episode 68: Grung at Heart

No Nate today! A special announcement about Friday's live Dice, Camera, Action show slipped out on the show before Dice, Camera, Action. If you want to know the secret, watch this clip on Twitch.

The Party

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

We stopped last week just after the waffle crew killed a bunch of grung (frog-people with poisonous skin). There is a purple baby grung looking at them.

Diath wants nothing to do with it. NPC Paultin actually licks it, starts hallucinating, and wanders off. Strix puts him on a leash.

Diath doesn't want the baby grung. It keeps saying "Yuminugg" or "Yobbnug". Anna theorizes that Chris is setting us up for another "pets" episode. the party would be:

Waffles the owlbear
Baby grung
The severed hand
Simon

Anna's my little pony dice are rolling really low. She switches to her tomb of annihilation dice.

The group is attacked by a froghemoth! Strix is grabbed.. it swallows her.. CRITICAL! She's down!

She's going to die... although she does have that evil soul in her, the insurance policy against the death curse.

Diath pulls out Gutter and charges forward. He's going to try to stab it without hitting Strix. Someone utters the phrase:"Strix-shaped bulge".

Dragonbait tries to pull her free, but fails..

Strix takes acid damage. 1 failed death save. Then she rolls, 1 success.

Diath tries to pull her out... natural 20!! She's out.

NPC Paultin is invisible and singing to himself. Dragonbait is swallowed and he starts trying to hack his way out. It works! He tears a hole into the belly of the froghemoth. It regurgitates him back out.

NPC Paultin heals Strix. The froghemoth turns to Evelyn and grabs her. She's hanging upside down. It is bloodied.

The baby grung makes a run for it. Evelyn calls it "Baby Diath".

Strix casts polymorph on the froghemoth. It fails its save! It becomes an axebeak.

Diath helps Strix up. They share a moment. She barfs on him.

The crew continues their journey through the jungle. After an hour, Diath gets a weird feeling. He spots more Grung trying to surround the group. There are a lot of them.

The group starts yelling "Yabanogg."

The grung advance. The baby pops out. The grung point and want the group want to turn around and leave.

Evelyn pantomimes murdering the froghemoth. The group cracks up. She is hilarious.

The grung bring the group to their village. The crew needs to cross a lake.

Strix casts alter self and gives herself gills. She starts swimming. Pirahnas! She takes 22 points of damage. She's down!

Evelyn dives in to save her. Rolls a natural 20 on her perception check. Evelyn pulls Strix out.

The group enters the village. They can see a number of buildings that were burned recently, apparently from flaming arrows.

The grung come out.. there are many different colors of grung. The single gold one looks like the leader.

They put paint on the group's faces, which allows the waffle crew to understand the grung and communicate with them.

The grung explain that the order of the gauntlet has been attacking them. They've captured two human prisoners.

The chief asks the group to get the order of the gauntlet to stop attacking. The grung don't want to leave this area, because the pirahna lake protects them from zombie attacks.

The grung give the group a horn of blasting! Dang. This seems like one of Chris's favorite magic items to give out.

The undead plaguing the grung are coming from the aldani basin (are we heading to Mbala? Or the Heart of Ubtao?). The grung want to work together with the order to fight the undead.

The group talks to two human prisoners of the grung. Their names are Lorsa and Wolf, and they explain that Breakbone is terrified of frogs in general.

Diath is able to get the prisoners freed. He wants to find tons of frogs to freak out Commander Breakbone. Strix collects a pile of frogs.

The group heads toward Camp Vengeance and that night, they rest in the waffle hut.

Strix empties her bag of frogs that she collected. Whoops.. most of them are grung babies. That's where we stop!

Overall

Fun show. I love it when it is just these three players. Don't forget that the PAX Unplugged DCA show is on Friday night, 8:30 PM EST.

Tomb of Annihilation 8 - The Jungle of Chult

Ruins of Mezro 1 - The Zombie Horde

Tomb of Annihilation Companion

Planescape - Blood War XXI. The Wells of Darkness

Planescape - Blood War XXII. Divided's Ire

Planescape - Blood War XXIII. Prismatic Croaker

Planescape - Blood War XXIV. Expedition into Abysm

Planescape - Blood War XXVI. The Lord of Rippling Waves

The Complete Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide

Dragon+ Issue 16

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 67 - Tomb of Annihilation

Tomb of Annihilation 9 - Ataaz Muhahah

Adventures in Eberron - The Elemental Airship

Dungeons & Dragons - Peril at the Port

Dungeons & Dragons - DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races

Answering WebDM Interview Questions

Ruins of Mezro 2 - The Tablet of King Osaw

Xanathar's Guide to Everything - Underworld Speculation

Tomb of Annihilation 10 - Tropical Harpies

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 68 - Tomb of Annihilation