Month: November 2017

Fresh off defeating the bugbear Klarg and his cadre of goblin and wolfish defenders, our heroes delve deeper into the cave hideout of the Cragmaw Goblins.

Leaving Klarg’s lair, the group stealthily discovers a room within the cavern that is half-filled with two large pools of water.  A battle ensues between the party and many goblins, with reinforcements arriving bringing two more goblins and a wolf.  The party managed to deal with the threat, but took some scratches and dings of their own.  An investigation of the room and the pools gave the party the intuition that the way the pools were set up had them serve as a security system for the main entrance into the cave.  Posts could be knocked loose to unleash a torrent of water to hopefully wash-out any intruders.  Since the party managed to avoid the main corridor on their way in, they were never noticed, and the security system was left unused.

A choice lay ahead of them as two paths led out of the cave they were in.  They chose the right after their rogue, Draxan (Corey) scouted ahead.  He discovered that this path led back down to the main corridor (and a potential sneaky back up to their current level) and that the other path led to a rope bridge above their current position.

Basically, they are all at (4) above on the map, where there is loose gravel and rock that inclines about ten feet up to a flat surface, and then after that another ten foot escarpment to scale before arriving in the upper hallway.

Cue the hilarity.

Agnar (Erik) the dwarven paladin manages to climb up with a successful Athletics roll (and Dexterity saving throw roll) and drops a rope to the rest of the party.  Unbeknownst to the party, if anyone fails on the saving throw on their way up, the entire slope of escarpment lets loose.

Magnus the dwarven barbarian (Miles), failed his saving throw and tumbled ass-over-teakettle down the incline, landing on his back in the stream, defeated, dejected, and damaged from the fall.

Maran, Tuck, and Draxan make their way up to Agnar with due to low athletics rolls on their part, and successful strength checks saw Agnar doing almost all of the work to get them up, leaving Wil and an embarrassed Magnus last up to join the group.

Cue the group strategy session when Draxan scouts ahead and finds out the path their climbing up to connects across the bridge to the twin pools cavern they came from earlier and that there is a room in front of them with five goblins arguing over a cook fire.  They decide to split the party (GASP!) so that they are spread out to deal with the force, and are in the middle of a debate of their own regarding ambushing the goblins or trying to draw some out when one of them says he’s going to check with Kleenex (spontaneous Goblin name I came up with) the bridge guard to see if he wants some of the food.

The players rolled well on stealth checks and the goblin rolled poorly on his perception checks so he moves out into the hallway, oblivious to the danger he’s walking into.  The group begins to debate whether or not they should grab him and have Agnar, who speaks Goblin, try to draw out more or if they should just take him out.  This lasts for a couple of minutes so I begin rolling behind the screen to see if any other goblins move out.  I set a high DC for this roll and just kept rolling for the remaining four goblins while the group talked.  Adam was the first to notice I was doing this, and urged the other players to make a choice.

After the debate continued, Adam made the choice himself.  Leveling his longbow directly between Tuck and Maran, he fired an arrow that connected with the goblin’s collarbone who then let out a yelp of pain that alerted the rest of the goblins that something was not right.

ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!

The goblin’s fellow archer buddy rushed forward and failed to notice Agnar in the shadows, (whom I forgot to have him roll his stealth check at disadvantage due to his armor, now that I think of it), but did see Tuck down the hallway so fired an arrow at him for some damage.

The party then hears a disembodied voice yell from the room in Goblin, “What’s going on?! Are we being attacked?”  Unbeknownst to them, this is Yeemik, the leader of the goblins, and he has Sildar Hallwinter, the human the group is searching for, hostage on the upper level of the room.

The three goblin fighters rushed up and attacked Magnus, managing to almost take him out before the party dispatched them.  With one goblin left, Yeemik yells to the party in Common, “TRUCE, or the human dies!”  As the lone goblin henchman remaining tries to retreat back into the cavern, Magnus gets and attack of opportunity and manages to slay him, launching him into the room for Yeemik to see.  (Had Yeemik rolled high on my check to see if he followed through on his promise, the party could’ve walked into the room to a downed and bleeding out Sildar).

The party entered the room and began to parley with Yeemik.  He tells the group that he wants to be the leader of the entire hideout, and if they bring him Klarg’s head, he’ll let the human go free.  (Unbeknownst to him, Klarg has already been defeated, along with every single other goblin in the hideout.)  Wil and his fox fetch the head and bring it back to him.  Yeemik, however, decides to push for more and demands 500 gold pieces in addition to the head of Klarg to free Sildar.  Numerous attempts to persuade (AND AN AMAZING INTIMIDATION ROLL OF 1 FROM MAGNUS) bring the situation no closer to being solved and as players start to close the distance between them and Yeemik, he decides that he’s had enough negotiating and shoves a almost-dead Sildar off the edge the 10′ cliff he stands on.  Sildar, at 1 hit point, takes enough damage to go unconcious, and the players make short work of the lone goblin.

Maran stabilizes Sildar and the human tells the party that Gundren had indeed found a map to the fabled Lost Mine at Wave Echo Cave that houses the fabled Forge of Spells, a great source of magical power.  The town of Phandalin prospered before a host of orcs invaded form the North and laid waste to all in their path.  A monstrous battle was fought between allied humans, dwarves, and gnomes against the orc forces and the ensuing spell-heavy war destroyed much of Wave Echo Cave and few survived the battle and cave-ins, leaving the location of the site lost for centuries.  The map was taken from Gundren when they were captured and he believes it has been sent to the goblin chief at Cragmaw Castle.

He’s glad they dispatched the denizens of this hideout, as he had overheard that they have been ambushing travelers and supply wagons along The High Road from Neverwinter for a while.  He asks the group to escort him to Phandalin whereupon he will pay them a 50 gold piece reward for rescuing him.  They rest and recuperate for the evening and continue the journey with the mining supplies and now Sildar to Phandalin.

I’ll spare you the give and take in town between the PCs and townsfolk unless it’s either super funny, or super important.  They’ll chat up some NPCs, buy some equipment, get some quests, etc.

Long story short though, Phandalin has a local thug problem.  The Redbrands are an issue for everyone, and the party might have to try to put a stop to them somehow.

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As the campaign progresses (in its young state, only two sessions) I’m getting a better idea of the power level of our party.  Goblins aren’t really hardy creatures (they have 7 hit points) and even at level 1 the characters are generally one-shotting them.  So going forward, I’m going to be looking at trying to balance the encounters more so that it’s more of a challenge than a cakewalk for the group.  I’ve been doing the enemy initiative rolls separating enemy groups (i.e. the goblin archers from the fighters) and going forward I think they are all gonna be on the same initiative so that the party gets a tad more pressure put on it.  I dunno, we’ll see how it goes.

This was also my first time wearing the DM hat as well as playing a character since Rich had to miss.  I didn’t get Maran, the dwarven cleric killed, so I guess that’s a success on my part!

See you next week! Happy Thanksgiving!

Setting up the table for our first D&D session had me feeling quite a mixture of emotions.  Firstly, I was super-excited to finally be doing playing the game with a group of friends.  Secondly, there was definitely an ample amount of nervousness and anxiety that came with the fact that I was responsible for telling the story, describing everything the characters saw, heard, felt, smelled, etc.

After sitting down in the DM chair at the head of the table I took a deep breath.  “What did I get myself into,” I asked myself aloud.

Turns out, a lot of friggin’ fun!

Our player’s characters (from here on out referred to as PCs) are contracted by a dwarf named Gundren Rockseeker to escort a cart of mining provisions from the city of Neverwinter to a trading post in the town of Phandalin.  He’s found “something big”, and needs the goods delivered there post-haste.  He goes on ahead of the PCs with a warrior escort named Sildar Hallwinter to “take care of business” in Phandalin before the PCs arrive.

Being the over-prepper I found myself turning out to be when it comes to being a DM, I queued up the sound I had on my iPad for a cart being pulled by oxen.  (Yes, that exists in Spotify!”

Even though we went forward with the idea that they all somewhat know of one-another in accepting this job, I asked our PCs to introduce themselves to the table.  Miles unveiled his dwarven barbarian’s accent too much laughing and snickering from the table, and Adam’s mysterious half-elven ranger’s introduction consisted of “I’m Wil.”  It seems like the other PCs will have to tease more out of him if they want to know more.

A few days of travel on the trail had Rich’s character Maran driving the cart, Miles’ character Magnus “had a rough night” and was trying to sleep in the back of the cart among the shovels, pickaxes, and bags and barrels of supplies.  They came upon a grisly scene blocking the path when they found two dead horses, riddled with black-tipped arrows, that they recognized as Gundren’s and Sildar’s horses.

Our heroes stopped the wagon, and went on high alert.  This wasn’t good.

Erik’s Paladin Agnar moved forward to investigate the scene, and from the woods heard a Goblin yell, “NOW!”

Roll.  For.  Initiative.

For me, watching the player’s strategize this battle (and ensuing ones) was one of the best parts of the night.  With some rough rolls from me, the goblins didn’t surprise the PCs, but suddenly five of them poured out of the woods near the horses, with three charging Agnar and two hanging back to pelt the characters with arrows.  Corey’s rogue Draxan managed to peel off into the woods, moving around to flank the goblins.

However, their ambush did not go as planned.  A well-timed entangle spell from Louis’ druid Tuck managed to catch a pair of the front-line goblins in a mess of vines that grew from the ground and wound their way up to restrain the goblins.  The third was able to pull free in time to jump back.  (Being restrained gives enemies advantage to hit (they roll their 20-sided attack die twice and take the higher of the numbers and gives you disadvantage on your own attacks where you roll it twice and take the lower of the totals).

Agnar is hard to hit normally (though he did get tagged by the goblin leader early), but with disadvantage on attacks the goblins only managed to bash their scimitars off of his shield and armor, with no hits taking purchase after the vines were in play.  Wil fired his longbow from the rear lines and felled a goblin archer with one hit to the heart.  Slowly but surely, the tide of battle was shifting towards the PCs.  Goblin archer #2 took an arrow to the shoulder and abandoned the field and rushed into the underbrush and our final goblin fighter was slain, giving our adventurers their first victory!

Investigating the area revealed that this area had been used for goblin ambushes for quite a while, and Wil’s ranger tracking skills noticed a trail where the retreating goblin ran, finding tracks of about a dozen of the creatures as well as marks that looked like two larger creatures were dragged from the road.  Our players deduced that Gundren and Sildar were captured and decided to hide the wagon and its goods and follow the goblin trail.

Goblins are tricksy folk, but Wil and Draxan lead the group in proceeding cautiously, uncovering and avoiding both a snare trap and a pit trap on the trail following the tracks.  They follow the trail for about five miles and come to a clearing where the trail leads into a cave with a stream flowing out.  As they approach, they come upon a clearing and surprise four goblins (the escapee from the earlier fight telling the tale of their clan member’s demise) and manage to surprise them and dispatch all but the injured party whom they interrogate for information.  They learn that the leader of the cave, Klarg, is a bugbear who answers to the goblin King, Grol.  Gundren and Sildar were kidnapped on the order of The Black Spider.  Sildar is inside the cave, and Gundren was taken to Cragmaw Castle along with his map.

Our heroes decide they need to rescue Sildar so enter the cave on the sly.  Creeping up into it, they find three wolves chained  up in a room and decide they aren’t a threat and keep going forward into the cave.  (The wolves eventually are agitated by the intruders, and two of the three break free from their chains and attack).  After dealing with the wolf threat, Magnus the Barbarian manages to scramble up a 30′ rock face and feed a rope down to bring up his compatriots.

Within the chamber they’ve scrambled into, they spy two goblins, a wolf, and the bugbear, Klarg.  Yet again, they’ve gotten the drop on their enemies since apparently I can’t roll good perception for the monsters to save my life.  What ensues is a full surprise round for the adventurers, and they lay waste to the not-so-mighty-when-surprised Klarg and his allies.

They find his hidden treasure chest among crates and barrels of stolen provisions and end up with some bling in the form of copper pieces, silver pieces, some healing potions and a small jade statue of a frog.

That’s where we wrapped it up for the evening.

As I wrote in the last entry, I wanted to get into D&D so that I could roll a character and be a player, but I (a bit begrudgingly) decided that if I wanted to play with my friends, I’d have to take up the mantle of DM.

It was WAY more fun that I had anticipated!

Some of my favorite takeaways was seeing the guys actually get into their characters.  Trying voices, (sometimes to great comedic effect), thinking like their character would and making in-game decisions based on that, (even if it led to contradiction when one character questioned and let the goblin go, and as the goblin moved to escape, another slew him where he stood), and the various in-game zings sent each-others way over a roll, or something said, etc.

I can’t wait to see what happens next and how the guys get even further into their characters and I’m glad you’ll be along for the ride!

Almost two years ago, I wrote up a post in which I confessed that I played Dungeons and Dragons by myself as a teenager.  D&D/Critical Role Blog Post

How I managed to grow up well-adjusted from that harrowing experience, I don’t know.

But in that post I discussed my discovery (and here I’ll detail the ensuing obsession) of the online show where “a bunch of crazy-ass voice-actors play Dungeons and Dragons”.  Since then, it’s been nearly a two-year journey watching those people play the game with such passion, have so much fun, and tell such a great story.

But one of the things that always appealed to me was the fact that these 8-9 people regularly got together every week and just friggin’ have fun together.

So it got me to thinking…life is short.  If I know I would have fun doing this, why aren’t I doing it?  I came to the realization that if I wanted to play D&D, I’d have to search for it or create it myself.

Although I really wanted to play a character, I started to understand with no friends who played the game, I was in the same situation as I was in middle-school with no one to play with or run a game for me.

It hit me, that I had to be the Dungeon Master.

So a couple of months ago, I bought the Player Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual, the D&D Starter Set adventure pack, a bunch of dice sets, and minis, and battle mats, and Dungeon Master screens, and pencils and notebooks, and…..you see where this is going.

I tossed an invite out to a group of friends.  Some excited, some luke-warm, and some downright not interested.  I’ll admit I was a bit deflated after both the time and monetary investment I made.

I figured I’d scratch the itch another way.

So I looked around online for the Plattsburgh area (and even Burlington…I pondered commuting to play) to see if there were games anywhere and found that Medusa Comics and Cards hosted a weekly game.  Success!  Or so I thought.  When I contacted them about whether or not they accepted new players, I found that they do, but basically just host the venue for a group of friends who play there, and their party was full.

That’s when I found Under One Roof video store (Under One Roof Video Store) hosts a Adventure’s League game (basically just public organized play sanctioned by the company the makes D&D, and Magic: The Gathering for that matter, Wizards of the Coast) every Thursday night.  I reached out and found that I was welcome to show up and play!  Excitement!  Celebration!  Loud noises!

I don’t remember how much time was in between finding out I was going to play D&D for the first time in what no joke amounts to over twenty years.  I did have the advantage of learning all of the rules basically of 5th Edition D&D through watching hours upon hours of Critical Role so I was by no means going in as a noob.  I threw myself into making characters.  I’m pretty sure I ended up making at least 10 characters, some with complete back story and personalities set, the way they look figured out, the whole shebang.

I anxiously awaited Thursday night, and I remember telling Nicolette before I went that I was legit nervous.  Even as a 35-year-old, it still felt like going out on a first date in middle-school.  Like that feeling of walking into a situation completely blind, knowing no one, and not knowing what is expected of you or what is going to happen.

I was the first one there, which didn’t help the nerves at all, but I can without a doubt say that the Dungeon Master Don, made me feel welcome immediately.  Out of the bazillion characters I made, I decided on Perrin Hilltopple, the halfling ranger.  I’ve been playing him for a little over a month, and look forward to Thursdays every week.  I’ve met a bunch of other people who enjoy D&D, and it is truly an awesome experience.

Playing the game got me thinking more and more about wanting to get a group together of my good friends though.  I reached out to the guys I coach with, and they were excited.  They in turn reached out to others, and I grabbed one of my buds that I had touched base with at the very beginning, and out of that grew that table of six that I am going to DM for on Tuesday nights!  Nicolette’s mom was gracious enough to let us use the backroom of her store to host too!

I’ve basically spent all of my free time prepping what you’re about to see below.  I compiled a word document that ended up being 79 pages JUST FOR THE GUYS TO MAKE THEIR CHARACTERS.  Print-outs of spells, reference documents for racial bonuses, the friggin gamut.  I made playlists for background music to play during the adventure, curated into different situations like “battle”, “travel”, “tavern”, and the like.  I was so excited I arrived an hour early to set this up:

We spent a little over three hours just making their characters, and it was awesome.  Out of the 6 players I have, three are brand-new to the game, two others have played here and there, and one is pretty much my veteran who plays weekly online.

 

Starting Tuesday night, with all my nervous/excited/anxious splendor, I’ll be running six of my friends through Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Our party of adventurers consists of:

Willroar Cupshigh, Half-Elf Ranger, played by Adam

Tuck Blackwater, Halfling Druid, played by Louis

Agnar Granitebuster, Dwarf Paladin, played by Erik

Magnus Moremead, Dwarf Barbarian, played by Miles

Draxan Stormwolf, Elf Rogue, played by Corey

Maran La’saen, Dwarf Cleric, played by Rich

I’ll post more about our dear adventurers as the campaign progresses.