P.H. Dungeon's page

This is a speech that Novo gave to his disciples at his dojo prior to setting out for the ruins of Hulburg

Novo calls together all his disciples on the eve of his departure. He stands tall before his brethren fully revealed as a changeling. Connor, his right hand, is at his side still in the guise of a child. His clothes look simple but well made, now with the ability to wear whatever he likes there is no reason not for it to be nothing but the best. He understands that he has become a leader among his people, and many are following his example and revealing themselves to the populous, with the expected results. Of course, he already knew that they were distrusted and feared. That is to be expect with a race whose history is littered with assassins.
Eventually everything would change, but it would take time. Gathering his thoughts for a moment he clears his throat. Everyone in the room stands silently at attention, a vacuum waiting for his words.

“Tomorrow, I will travel with my friends to defeat a dragon, but I wanted to take this moment to remind you why we are here before I left.”

“When I was training to be a druid I learned many things about Nature, its structure and laws; the most basic of which is the relationship between Predator and Prey. For as long as we can remember, we have been neither. Instead living within other cultures as a parasite lives in a host. Of course, the only parasites we know of are those that tend to kill the bodies they live in.”
“During the winter, I have been walking amongst the people fully revealed as a changeling. Thankfully most haven’t cared and still deal with me as if nothing has changed. However, many more have looked upon me with fear and distrust, going so far as to attack me. When people have meant me harm, even though I have done nothing to deserve it and even though their intent was to kill me, I have not killed them.”

“When I started the Shifting Shadows I told you my intention. If those who feared us discovered this clan, they would see an army being raised in secret…and they would not be wrong. However, I did not train you and bring you together to be an army. In Nature the only way an animal becomes stronger is through the challenges it faces. So, we train, to make ourselves strong, to learn our limits and to overcome them and most importantly to become wiser than those who would call us enemy simply because of our race and inherent abilities.”

“Those who came to me with the intent on taking revenge on another, I have turned away. Those that have used their training to bully people, escalating and seeking conflict instead of defending themselves, I have turned away. Those who seek to use their training with the intent to kill, I have turned away. Some have tried to lie to me, which comes second nature to us, but you cannot lie to me, I will know and If your wish is to become the monster that they think we are, you will not continue training under me. You will be turned away. I did not train you to be predators, but that doesn’t mean you are prey.”

“In Nature there are more complex relationships, there are those that co-exist with others to gain strength that neither would have alone. This is called a symbiotic relationship and that has always been my goal. I seek to stand amongst the other races with pride, and for them to see us not as monsters; but as equals. To cease to distrust us, and abolish the prejudice in their minds; but we cannot do this hiding in the shadows.”

“If I return…when I return…I will be opening the dojo to the public and taking in anyone who wishes to learn. If we wish to co-exist with the other races globally we must be able to co-exist with them here first. I will be offering my services and any who wish to join me, to the defense of the city and our home. If we are to be an army, let them see that we fight with them, and not against them. I will also, hopefully with the help of Floki, be starting a theater troupe; let them see that our abilities can be used in ways that are not malicious. I will not be offering my services nor those under me in assassination. I will no longer allow us to be murderers.”

He takes a deep breath and looks at everyone the puts his hand on Connors shoulder.
“Sensai Connor will continue to oversee your training in my absence. Train. Become strong. Use that strength to defend the weak. Do not be predators, do not be monsters. Be warriors, be protectors, take pride in who and what you are. Do not be the enemy, be their allies, be their heroes.”

““That is all I wished to say. Dismissed.”

I'm trying to run this fairly true to the adventure module. I made a few little changes- more as the evening went on.

In the chapel room, I didn't really see any information about anything going on under the altar- but since the barbarian took all the trouble to push it out of the way (with a really high athletics check), I figured I'd reward him- so I on the fly made up the cubby and gas trap). Regarding the two urns in the chapel room, I couldn't find anything about there contents. However, there is supposed to be treasure hidden in some of the pews and some kind of gas trap, so I kind of moved the treasure from the pews into one of the urns, and the gas trap into the cubby that I made up under the altar.
I also tossed the hezrou demon in because I felt like the players were getting a little bored of poking around at stuff and needed something to kill. I added the sentient short sword as a treasure item because I wanted them to have something to rp with, and I thought it could lead to interesting stuff further down the road- It will probably try to push its owner into making some sub optimal choices a little later.

Anyhow, so far the adventure has not been living up to the hype of being super deadly. There were only three level 9 characters, and there were no casualties, nor did anyone come that close to death- except the first level NPC half orc fighter.

Hopefully, I'll see some casualties in the coming session.

Session #20 (New beginnings)
Characters:
Novo/Old Wan/Anna (changeling, Monk 7, Druid 1)
Jove (human, wizard 8)
Alistair (human, fighter 8)
Floki (human, warlock 4/bard 4)
Sariel (aasimar, oath of vengeance paladin 8)

After spending the night tending to their wounds and otherwise suffering from their ordeal at the Pearl Necklace, Jove, Alistair and Novo decide their next move. Novo has had enough of Melvaunt and is ready to leave immediately, but Jove really wants the gold they left behind in the vault of the Pearl Necklace. He insists they return and Novo grudgingly agrees.

Thus, the trio returns to Pearl Necklace for what they hope will be a quick and final visit. Jove casts a potent invisibility spell that makes all three of them invisible, and Novo channels his shadow ki powers to cloak them in shadow and make them even more stealthy. Inside the Pearl Necklace, it is dark and quiet. The corpses of the guards they had previously killed are nowhere to be seen, but a trail of blood suggests that they were taken down to the basement.

They move like whispers to the vault, and as they approach, they see that there are three figures gathered around the door. One is clearly a rogue type who is attempting to pick the door’s highly complex lock. The other two seem more like his muscle, one being a female clad in plate armour, and the other being a tall male northman. Jove and his crew wait silently, hoping that the three will get frustrated trying to pick the lock and be on their way. Novo decides to delve into the mind of the northman with his medallion of thoughts. He learns that the trio are fresh off the boat, having just arrived in the city that very morning aboard a merchant ship from Hillsfar. While aboard the ship, they had heard tales of the luxurious Pearl Necklace. When they found that the city was in a state of civil war, their rogue convinced them to go to the Pearl Necklace in hopes they might make an easy score of loot. This confirms for Novo that they aren’t demons or cultists in disguise, which is somewhat reassuring. However, the northman detects Novo’s mind probe, and he starts calling out for whoever is there to reveal themselves.

The invisible wizard sighs and decides to converse. A long, awkward parlay ensues. Jove warns the would be thieves that the place is infested by a demon cult, and he tries to convince them to leave, but they seem equally intent on securing the contents of the vault. The wizard has seen enough violence in the past couple of days, and he really isn’t in the mood for a fight, so he offers to help them get into the vault in exchange for 60% of the wealth. The three thieves want a 50/50 cut, but Jove won’t have it. As the negotiations begin to break down, a third party arrives on the scene.

A group of a dozen city guards enter the Pearl Necklace through the front doors. They see the northman and the armoured woman, but Jove, Alistair and Novo remain invisible, while the rogue is out of sight in the vault room where he is still busy trying to pick the lock. The guards ask them their business in the place, and the northman, who sounds like a chatty leprechaun, explains (lies) that he and his companions had encountered a demon in the streets and after wounding it they had chased it into the place. The deception is pretty far fetched, but the guard captain starts looking about nervously. Afterall, there have been reports of demons roaming the streets, and the Pearl Necklace has had some sinister rumours circulate about it, regarding its connections with demon cultists. Floki keeps the conversation going, trying to buy his rogue companion time to finish picking the lock. This pays off and the rogue finally beats the complex lock. He opens the door to the vault. He sees the magical darkness that fills the vault and steps inside.

Suddenly, something bites him on the leg, two somethings in fact. He staggers out of the vault as poison courses through him. There is a set of puncture wounds that have pierced each of his boots and have sent burning poison streaking up his legs. He puts a hand out to grab the nearby table and nearly falls to the ground. Then he slams the door to the vault shut and staggers out of the room to join the Sariel and see what is going on with Floki and the guards. It seems that the guards aren’t looking for a fight, but are corrupt themselves and want to score some loot. They are in the midst of telling Floki and his crew to be on their way. Jove takes advantage of situation; he walks invisibly up to the vault, sticks the key that he previously found in vault door and opens it. He then whispers the pacification word and steps into the darkness. The iron cobra guardians lurking inside heed the magical command and leave him be, so he starts filling his pack with the sacks of gold coins the heroes had left behind.

The rogue has keen ears and hears Jove’s whisper. He darts back into the room that accesses the vault and sees the door open. He hears the jingling sound of coin sacks. He again shuts the door, hoping that he can trap whoever is in there inside. Jove is resourceful. He swigs a potion of gaseous form he’d been saving and he and his pack full of gold turn to vapour. He flies out through the key hole and leaves the building.

Meanwhile, Floki finally convinces the guards that he and his companions can help them break into the vault. He negotiates a 50/50 split with the guard captain. The rogue then goes to work on picking the lock for a second time. Eventually he succeeds and opens the door. Floki’s warlock pact allow him to see through magical darkness, and he can see the two iron cobras waiting in the vault. He also sees several sacks of coins (there’s still lots of silver in there). He says that since they took care of the lock the guard captain should go in and get the treasure. She is suspicious, so she sends in one of her lackeys. He immediately gets bitten by the iron cobras and falls dead inside the magical darkness. Instead of sending someone else in, Floki casts a cloud of daggers spell inside the vault. The iron cobras are programmed to remain in the vault and they make no effort to escape the spell. He keeps concentrating on the magic and eventually the swirling force daggers destroy them. With the guardians dealt with, the remainder of the treasure is easily looted. The guards take half, and Floki and his crew take the other half (3000 sp). Then both parties head on their way.

Meanwhile, Jove reunites with his companions back at Ublyn’s swap shop. They load up their gold and purchase some travelling supplies. They put Alistair’s brother’s body in a rickshaw cart with a tarp covering it and head out of the city. Tully and Connor, the two changelings, join them and are charged with pulling the cart. Near the end of the day, they reach the village of Dunheath- the village they had previously helped rid of a wyvern problem. Here they rest for the night and claim their horses, which they had been stabling in the village. The following day, they set out for Thentia. They have six horses altogether, so they use two to pull a cart holding Dustin’s magically preserved body, which Connor drives, and the others ride the remaining horses.

Floki and his two companions are also headed for Thentia, but they are travelling on foot. During the third day of travel, they are ambushed by a large band of kobolds. The kobolds attack from rocky slopes looming over either side of the trail. For the most part, the little buggers fire on the trio with slings, but a few spell casters are among them, and the most powerful of the lot drops a fireball on them, while his two apprentices bombard them with magic missile spells. Fortunately, Jove and is crew are also travelling the trail, and they recognize the three from the encounter in the Pearl Necklace a couple of days earlier. They arrive in time to save Floki and his companions from the ambush, and they even decide to help. Jove starts obliterating kobolds with minute meteors; Alistair picks them off with his crossbow, and Novo darts among them and takes them down with flurries of unarmed strikes and blows from his staff.

The kobolds aren’t eager to die, and soon they scatter like cockroaches. Floki and his two allies have suffered signifiant injury, particularly from the kobold sorcerers. Novo generously helps heal them with his staff of healing. Floki thanks them and makes introductions. At no point do Jove and his friends bother to mention that they recognize them, but Sariel the paladin does think Jove’s voice is very familiar. The two groups agree to travel the remainder of the way to Thentia together.

Early that evening they arrive. They stable their horses and find accommodations. That evening they all gather for a drink at the Giant’s Axe Tavern to celebrate their safe arrival in Thentia. It is also a chance for Jove, Alistair and Wan to finally properly toast their fallen companions. Alistair drinks more than his share, and seems to be the one that is suffering the most from the deaths of his friends.

Over the course of the following days, the heroes attend to various items of personal business. Wan introduces himself to Oswald, the bar tender at the Giant’s Axe. Wan has heard that Oswald has connections to the changeling enclave in Thentia and that he’s the one to speak to about contacting the community. He, Connor and Tully all discreetly prove to Oswald that they are changelings and Oswald agrees to meet with them the next day and take them to the enclave.

The following morning, Oswald makes good on his offer. The changeling enclave is essentially a cluster of shops and homes in the southwestern part of the city. Here Oswald introduces them to several of the changeling residents. Wan also explains to Oswald that he is looking to purchase real estate and start a fighting school where he can train changelings (and members of other races) how to fight in his special style. Oswald seems to think that the skills Wan has to offer would be a benefit to the community, and he shows him a series of interconnected cellars that join the buildings of the enclave together. Here he offers Wan a place to both stay and train students. Of course, only changelings would have access to the hidden dojo, but Wan is fine with that for the moment. Wan spends the next several days getting to know the people of the community, and recruiting pupils. He opens the hidden dojo and begins to take on more changeling students, which include both Connor and Tully. By the end of a ten day, he has 7 pupils training under him.

Jove and some of the others pay a visit to a street called Wizard’s Alley, so named because it has a number of shops that all cater to wizards. Thentia is known as a city that is home to several capable mages, and this is where they come to buy their supplies. Here they learn of a few magic items available for sale, and here Jove purchases the supplies he needs to transcribe new spells into his spell book. He spends the next several days in his private inn chamber, adding new spells to his spell book.

In addition to learning new spells, Jove also spends time analyzing the map that the heroes found in Melvaunt (dropped by fleeing wererats in an alley). He cracks the code used in the notes on that map, and he identifies it as a rough depiction of the ruined city of Hulburg. An “X” focuses on a place labeled the White Tower, which is attached to Hulburg castle. The notes say the following:

“In the bottom of the White Tower is the entrance to the crypts of the Hulmaster family. Access to the crypts is said to be guarded by a powerful construct. Anyone wearing one of the Hulmaster family warding amulets can safely pass the guardian and open the magically sealed doors.

Somewhere within the crypts is a secret door that accesses hidden chambers built by the wizard Londar Hulmaster. It is believed that these rooms hold many secrets including Londar’s arcane research and magical treasures. The most potent of these being his staff of power.

Members of the Hulmaster family still reside in Thentia. It is possible one of the warding amulets is still in their possession.”

Alistair takes time to bring his brother’s body to the temple of Selune. Here he pays to have it stored safely and to have gentle repose spells cast on it to preserve it until such a time that he can see it back to his homeland of Cormyr. During this time, he also pays to have a magical message sent to his homeland to inform his parents of his brother’s death.

Sariel keeps mostly to herself during this time. She is a woman of few words with a strange accent that suggests she is from a distant land. The common tongue doesn’t seem to be her first language, and she isn’t the type to make friends quickly. Their rogue companion who helped them break into the vault has disappeared with his share of the silver, and seems to have no interest in following the path the Floki has planned.

Floki is much more outgoing. He spends his days visiting the local inns and taverns where he earns room and board putting his skills as a skald to good use. However, he and Sariel have come to Thentia for a reason. Thentia is the closest settlement of note to the ruined city of Hulburg, and they have heard rumours that a white dragon has taken up residence in the ruins. Floki believes that this dragon is named Rhime and is the dragon responsible for the death of his sister. He and Sariel intend to slay this foul worm, but they know that if they are going to succeed they need to be prepared. To that end, Floki spends time hunting for rumours about Hulburg, hoping to gather any information that might help them. His hunt leads him to an adventurer named Tarl. Tarl has recently returned from Hulburg. He claims to have gone there in hopes of slaying the dragon. White dragons have a reputation for being fairly bestial and solitary creatures, and he and his companions were unprepared for the amount of minions the dragon had. Tarl explains that the dragon has established itself in the remains of Hulburg castle and that it has tribe of ice trolls serving it. He was the only one of the group to escape alive.

Floki also meets a mage named Fingol Firefingers. He learns that Fingol is the most renowned mage in the city, and as it turns out he’s looking for a group of adventurers to do some bodyguard work for him. He doesn’t give a lot of details, but mentions needing capable and trustworthy individuals who can protect him on a potentially dangerous journey. A journey that he says won’t take very long, but it involves going very far away. Some negotiating ensues, and Floki convinces Fingol to pay his party 6000 gp. However, Fingol insists that they first demonstrate their commitment and competence. He tells them to bring him some evidence that they know their business- some giant hands or something comparable.

The session end with the heroes gathering at the Giant’s Axe tavern to discuss how they wish to proceed. A lot of new adventure options stand before them.

So we got in another one of our rare face to face Shadowrun games last Saturday.

Session #7 (Trouble at the Pit)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Hashtag (human, hacker), Big Nasty (ork, cyber gangsta)

A few weeks have passed since the runners hit Pooch Palace and Tip was arrested. It is a Tuesday, August 18th, 2076. Skull, Hashtag and Big Nasty find themselves at a sketchy nightclub in San Fernando called “The Pit.” The club is owned and operated by the Cutters street gang, a gang that Nasty has ties to. The club features regular underground “fight nights,” and on this particular evening Big Nasty is due to have a fight against a guy named Matt Wrath who has come in from Chicago. However, Mr Donovan (The “CEO” of the Cutters) has informed him that he wants to talk biz after the fight. It seems he has some work in mind for Nasty and his team. Thus, Skull and Hashtag are at the club with Big Nasty. Monsta, the gangsta rapper that Nasty has gotten to know, is looking to improve his street cred, and he has convinced Nasty to make him his corner man. At the club, Mr. Donvan introduces Big Nasty to an old Chinese fellow that has come in from Seattle to watch the fight. His name is Mr. Zimm, and he runs a similar club in Seattle. He is always scouting new talent, and he is interested in seeing both Big Nasty and Matt Wrath in action.

A little while later, the main event begins- Big Nasty versus Matt Wrath. Matt Wrath is a jacked up elf that is built more like an ork than an elf. He’s a hardened street fighter who has seen plenty of action. His mascot is a big devil rat called “Matt Rat.” Wrath’s fighting style is built around his massive upper body strength and hardened “Fists of Wrath.” His lower body is his weak spot, and Big Nasty targets it mercilessly, while scrawny Hashtag calls out from the sidelines, “That’s what you get for skipping leg day!” Eventually, the big, cybered ork brings the elf adept down with a big kick to Matt’s knee joint. He collapses, and Nasty pounces on him, taking advantage of the opportunity and pummelling him in the face until he is a bloody unconscious mess. The odds were slightly in Matt Wrath’s favour, so Nasty’s victory is an upset, an upset that nets him, Monsta, Mr. Donovan and Skull each some good nuyen.

After the fight, the runners gather in Mr. Donvan’s spacious office. The office is built on the large balcony level that overlooks the main dance floor of the club (as well as the fight ring). Mr. Donovan is in a good mood, as had money riding on Nasty and has cashed in. He explains to the team that he wants to hire them for some shadow work. It seems that the Cutters are involved in the manufacture and distribution of “Calfornia Hots,” which are dangerous simsense chips that are simliar to BTL chips (better than life). The output level of a Cal Hot is a little lower than a standard BTL, and as a result the chips are legal in the California Free State, and in the LA. metroxplex (which is technically part of the Pueblo Coporate Sector). Recently some of the Cutters’ top female performers were poached by a rival production company called Utopia Studios. Mr. Donovan wants to send the competition a message. The runners are to hit Utopia studios and blow the place up. The Cutters can provide the explosives and 45K in certified cred as compensation to the team. Given all the favours the Cutters have done the team, they figure they owe them, and Skull opts not to bother haggling over their fee.

As the meeting is wrapping up, Mr. Donovan gets an alert over his commlink. There seems to be trouble brewing. He bursts into action, rushing to a weapons locker, popping it open and tossing Skull a shotgun and Nasty an assault rifle and armoured vest. The tatter of automatic weapon fire gets their attention. It sounds like it’s coming from the main floor of the club below. Screams of panic can be heard, and it is clear that there is indeed some serious shit going down. Suddenly, bullets tear through the wall of the office. The runners and Mr. Donovan hit the dirt just in time to avoid catching any lead, but a couple of his slower moving gangster guards aren’t as fortunate, and they get shredded by the onslaught. The bullets keep pouring in. Whoever is firing on them has some serious firepower. They stick to the floor and crawl to the office’s back exit. Big Nasty pushes open the door, he risks getting hit by getting up into a crouch; he moves out into the stairwell and starts down the stairs that lead to the club’s back exit. He safely reaches a landing, but as he does so, he notices movement in front of him. Suddenly a submachine gun appears out of nowhere (assailant wearing ruthenium polymer armor) lower on the stairs ahead of him. A burst sprays out at him. His wired reflexes kick in, and he throws himself to the side just in time. He then leaps down the stairs to engage the near invisible attacker with his bear hands. He knocks the gun to the side just before he/she can get off another burst. The assassin responds by drawing a monosword.

There’s a massive crash, as something slams into the security door to the Mr. Donovan’s office. The door buckles inward and almost bursts off its hinges, but it holds. Finally, the machine-gun fire comes to a stop, as it seems the shooter has spent his clip. Skull takes advantage of the opportunity. and he rushes out into the stairwell and leaps over the upper railing to land beside Nasty on the lower section of the stairs. Here he and Nasty face off together against the the ruthenium clad assassin. The assassin has drawn a monosword and is trying to cut down Nasty, but the bid ork is a skilled in melee combat, and he’s holds his own defending himself. Skull and Nasty working together gives them an advantage, and Skull tries to take their enemy down with his stun baton. Their foe is fast a f$!+ and avoids his best attempts. The clock is ticking, and he knows he needs to deal with her quick. He grabs the tip of his finger, detaching it and extending a monofilament whip spooled inside the hollow of his cyber finger. Suddenly Nasty’s silent running commlink starts smoking, followed seconds later by Skull’s, revealing the presence of a decker trying to hit them from Matrix. Meanwhile Hashtag throws himself into a utility closet at the top of the stairs. He pulls shut the door and does his best to hide himself. He then takes out his cyberdeck and jacks in. He starts searching for hidden icons, hoping to brick his enemies’ gear. He finds several hidden icons operating in the area, so he chooses one at random to make a cyberattack against.

As this is all going down, the door to the office bursts open, and two killers sweep through. One is a big troll with a urban camo coat and a Stoner Ares machine gun. The other appears to be some sort of combat mage. They see the office is empty and exit the back door that the runners fled through. Here they spot Mr. Donovan on the landing and Skull and Nasty trying to deal with the infiltrator assassin on the stairs. They arrive just as Skull slices her (turns out she’s a female elf) head off, using his monfilament whip like a garrotte. Nasty aims his assault rifle up towards the new targets, but before he can shoot, the combat mage hammers him with a mana bolt. With the way now clear, Mr. Donovan bolts down the stairs, past Skull and Nasty, escaping to the first floor before the troll can bring his machine gun against him. Nasty and Skull consider making a run for it. Unfortunately, Hashtag is still in the closet at the top of the stairs, and if the attackers find him, he’s f~%#ed. Thus, Nasty rushes up to face off against the mage and the troll, dodging a lightning bolt from the mage as he bounds back up the stairs. He lands a good shot against the mage with his brass knucks that nearly knocks him out cold, but the troll bloodies up the cybered ork gangsta with a big full auto burst from his machine gun. Nasty’s armoured vest, dermal plating and natural ork toughness saves his life, but he’s still brutally wounded. Skull takes a few seconds to regroup. He then parkours up the stairs and lands at the top among the troll and the combat mage with his stun baton, zapping the troll, but failing to bring him down. Nasty focuses on the mage, while Skull takes on the troll. Nasty and the mage’s fight is a sad thing to watch. Both of them are badly hurt and staggering about like a pair of drunken zombies. Nasty is definitely the bigger and stronger fighter, and he keeps the mage on the defensive, which prevents him from getting any more spells off. Finally, the mage zigs when he should have zagged, and Nasty clocks him in the face with a meaty, brass knuckled fist, knocking him unconscious. Skull versus the troll is a prettier sight to watch. Skull begins by using one of his adept tricks to get in the troll’s mind and command him to throw his machine gun down the stairs. The troll draws a big ruger revolver immediately after, but Skull pulls the stunt off a second time, and the revolver goes clattering down to join the machine gun. This evens the odds a little, and the troll is forced to face Skull in melee combat. Skull goes to work with his stun baton, and lands a couple of hits. They weaken the troll enough that he gets too slow to easily avoid the weapon, and finally Skull gives a jolt that takes the hulking killer down.

While all this is going on in the real world, Hashtag finds himself busy battling it out in cyberspace. His deck comes under attack, but his firewall holds up, and he gets a mark on his attacker allowing him to locate the rival decker’s icon. The icon materializes in the matrix as a big, red battle mech. Hashtag’s own icon is more like a bouncing 3-D happy face emoji. He flies over to the mech, dodging a bombardment of missiles and expelling a stream of emojis at him from his smiling mouth (data spike with multiple marks on his enemy). The cyber combat is brief, but fierce, and Hashtag comes out on top, bricking the Decker’s deck and dumping him from the Matrix. He then continues to hunt down enemy icons to attack. However, by this time his companions have about finished off their foes and there doesn’t seem to be any more threats in the club.

Mr. Donovan informs the runners that someone has taken out his driver who was in the process of bringing his car to the back exit to pick them up. The runners fear more assassins are lurking outside the club, so they regroup and exit out the front door with Mr. Donovan, and Monsta (who took a bullet in the arm when the troll first started spraying the place down) doing what they can to quickly disguise themselves and blend in with the crowd of panicked clubbers that are all trying to get out. Monsta leads them to his Escalade, and they drive off. Mr. Donovan directs them to a local street doc he has contacts with, and orders a bunch of Cutters to meet them there. He also has a couple of his men bind and hide the body of the KOed mage in the closet and pay off the cops to ignore said hog tied mage in the closet. The mage is later delivered to the street clinic for some interrogation. Big Nasty’s injuries are quite serious (being shot up by a machine gun tends to have that effect), and even with a nanite injection, it will still be several days before he’ll be of any use. Thus, the team has to post pone their job for Mr. Donovan. Given the circumstances, Mr. D accepts the delay without taking issue.

They conduct an interrogation of their prisoner. Skull tries to play nice and treat him as a fellow professional by forgiving him for his role in the attack and understanding that it is just business. The mage isn’t overly cooperative, but they eventually get some information out of him. They learn that his street name is Fenris, and that his team was hired by an elf Mr. Johnson that they were put into contact through via their fixer. The elf didn’t identify himself, but he was well dressed. The only clue that the mage noticed was that the elf was wearing expensive snake skin boots that had silver spurs on the back of them. The spurs were shaped like the upside down anarchy symbol that the Ancients go gang uses. The Ancients are one of the most well known go gangs out there. They are said to be an all elven gang with chapters in multiple cities and nations throughout the west of North America, and they are both feared and idolized by the populace. They also learn that that killers were hired to take out Mr. Donovan, Big Nasty and anyone with big Nasty. They consider allowing him to go on condition that he drops the job and promises never comes after them again. However, Mr. Donovan, can’t let the attack on him slide unpunished, and he has other plans for the prisoner. The runners don’t do anything to stop the Cutters from taking Fenris into the clinic’s operating room and dealing with him as they see fit.

Around the time all this is going down, Skull receives and interesting anonymous e-mail. It provides him with the passcode to access a sleeping capsule in a coffin hotel near Long Beach Airport. Here, he is told he can find information regarding the time he lost when he was taken captive by the PCC military. He’s very suspicious and paranoid, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and he decides to go check it out. Nasty is laid up and can’t come along, so it is just he and Hashtag that make the trip the following day. Everything ends up being on the up and up, and in the sleeping capsule Skull finds a data chip. The chip turns out to have security cam footage that shows him coming over the side of large yatch in scuba gear. Using his monowhip, he decapitates a hispanic man dressed in a speedo and silk robe who is hanging out with several gorgeous women on the deck of the boat. Before security can do anything to stop him, he dives back overboard and disappears. Hashtag does some digging on the Matrix. He finds rumours of the death of a high ranking Aztlan government official named Horatio Alvarez, which took place while he was on his yatch. The death reports indicate a heart attack and don’t make any mention of foul play. However the image of Horatio looks like the man in the security video, and the timelines match, so it seems likely that his was the man that Skull killed. There are no clues to indicate who sent Skull the chip or why.

The session ends with Hashtag and Skull arriving back at the street clinic plotting their next move. Nasty is still badly injured, but he has received some first aid. Mr. Donovan has had a shift in his priorities. He wants to find out what the f%+# is going on and who is trying to kill him and Big Nasty. To that end, he wants the runners to investigate the attack further. Perhaps starting by paying a visit to the Ancients to see if they can confirm if in fact the gang had anything to do with the attack. Mr. Donovan can’t fathom why the Ancients would try to take him out since the Ancients and the Cutters have a truce, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t involved.

Karma for Session #6: 7, Total Karma to date: 56

I second that those three choices. I used those three books quite a bit when I was running my Age of Worms campaign, and it was picking up the From the Ashes boxed set many years ago that made me really interested in the setting.

If you are looking to run adventurers- you can't go wrong with the Age of Worms adventure path. Savage Tide is also in Greyhawk, but not really since it is mostly on the Isle of Dread or in the outer planes. I love that AP though.

I would recommend getting your hands on Expedition to Castle Greyhawk for 3.5, which is by Eric Mona and James Jacobs so...

Other good old school adventurers that are set in the Greyhawk setting include:

Against the Slavers
The Against the Giants/Queen of Spiders adventures
Lost Caverns of Tsojanth
Tomb of Horrors
Temple of Elemental Evil
White Plume Mountain
The Cult of the Reptile God
The Saltmarsh Trilogy

A a few of those are being republished in the Yawning Portal book that is coming out for 5e in a few months.

I would pick up "The Living Greyhawk Gazeteer, From the Ashes and also The Adventure Begins. You can find them online.

From the Ashes is a boxed campaign setting which primarily consists of a world book, campaign book, and random encounter tables.

If you buy the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer the From the Ashes World book isn't a big deal, but the secondary book in the boxed set details out the Area Surrounding the Domain of Greyhawk quite well and for that reason I recommend buying the boxed set From the Ashes.

If your looking for just one item though, get the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer as it will be the most complete about the world as a whole. It is thick in size but does lack random encounter tables. It also includes the deities and a few organizations famous to the world.

The Adventure Begins goes into a lot more detail concerning the history of the world, especially the more recent history. It also includes a good Greyhawk City map and location descriptions as well. This makes adventuring in Greyhawk City easy when you want to stick to official places and NPCs found in the city. It also contains the calendar system and a host of other smaller details.

Session #4 (Trouble with Trolls)
Characters:
Old Wan (changeling, Monk 3, Druid 1)
Pinky (gnome, cleric 4)
Jove (human, wizard 4)
Delilah (half orc, fighter 3, barbarian 1 )
Alistair (human, fighter 4)
Cade and Toothless (halfling, ranger 4, with wolf animal companion)

The heroes wake on the floor of Lord Milman’s Hall after a night’s rest. The storm is over, and it is merely a cool, drizzly summer day. Dimble, Ruby and Edwin depart for Phlan; a rider is dispatched to Grayhill to bring news regarding the fate of the slaves from that town (being sent off to Zhentil Keep), and the adventurers set out, heading generally westward.

They take a slower pace, looking for potential fall back points to retreat to in case their impending raids on the fort go poorly or attract retribution. Their first day is uneventful, and they spend another night camping in the wilderness.

The following day, they decide to move south of the fort in hopes of finding the route that the slavers are using to move their cargo from the fort to Zhentil Keep. Eventually they come to a river that has an unoccupied camp site near it and some stands of trees. They investigate the site and conclude that it is a spot that the slavers might use on their trip south from the fort. The section of river that the camp is located beside is shallow and easy to ford. Cade channels his primal powers at the site and detects that a band of humanoids is approaching from the other side of the river to the north west. The heroes decide to hide in the trees near the camp site and see who they are.

Several minutes later, a band of 15 armed human men cross the river and arrive at the camp site. Here they start a short rest. The heroes can’t tell if the men are slavers or not, so Old Wan (changeling) disguises himself as one of the slavers from the fort and steps out of the trees. He asks if he can share their camp, and feeds the leader a story about having been ambushed by adventurers and how he is trying to find his way back to the fort. The men seem agitated and spooked (not necessarily by Wan), but they buy his deception and allow him to rest with them. The men claim that they are from Zhentil Keep and had gone north into the foothills of the Dragonspine mountains to search for the lair of the gnolls that have been troubling the region. They didn’t find the gnolls, but they did catch the attention of a pack of trolls. They were caught in skirmish with the trolls. A few of their men were killed and couple of others wounded. The men fled the fight, and a few of the trolls pursued them. The trolls are close on their trail, and the men know they don’t have much time to rest before the monsters catch up with them. Unfortunately, one of their men is really badly hurt, as his arm was nearly torn off by a troll. Wan offers the man some good berries, which heals him enough that he can travel. The men seem a little suspicious that a slaver guard has access to magical healing berries, but they are still grateful. They then part ways with Wan, heading south and encouraging him to get moving north if he doesn’t want to become a meal for a troll.

After the men have left, Wan returns to the trees where his friends are hiding and reports his conversation to his companions. As he is doing so, they notice three trolls crossing the river. The trolls soon reach the camp site that the men had just left. They start sniffing around, and the adventurers do their best to hide among the trees, as they don’t want to pick a fight with a trio of trolls. However, one of the trolls spots them. The thing immediately yowls in hunger and excitement and charges into the woods. His two kin follow close behind. Wan and Toothless face down the first troll with plenty of ranged support from their companions. Things are going well, as Alistair puts a well-placed crossbow bolt right through its neck, severing its spine, causing its head to fall off. Then the second two trolls arrive and it all goes south. Delilah finds herself forced to take on one of the trolls on her own, distracting it while the rest of the party finishes off the first troll (who is still fighting, despite not having a head) and tries to take down the second one before it kills Toothless and Wan. This doesn’t go well for Delilah, but it does keep the thing occupied long enough for her new friends to kill the headless troll- thanks to Jove’s fire magic. Soon the half orc barbarian is terribly wounded, and she is forced to retreat or die.

By now, Wan and Toothless have also suffered grievous injuries. Pinky focuses on healing Wan and Delilah, while Cade tends to his unconscious wolf. Meanwhile the second troll closes in on Jove and claws him brutally, despite his shield and mage armour spells. The wizard, escapes with a misty step spell. The troll rushes forward, deeper into the copse of trees, next tearing into Pinky. Alistair continues to hang back and devastate the enraged troll with crossbow bolts; the tactic is instrumental in finally bringing it down. Once again, Jove’s fire magic ensures that it doesn’t get back up. Seeing the fire magic, along with the deaths of his two kin, is enough to make the final troll decide to flee, and it runs off.

The heroes are too wounded to bother pursuing the creature and they are left to heal their wounds, of which there are many. They are in need of an extended rest, so they decide to make camp. The night passes uneventfully. The session ends with them waking up the next morning, trying to decide their next move.

Session #3 (Dancing Flame)
Characters:
Old Wan (changeling, Monk/Druid 3)
Pinky (gnome, cleric 3)
Jove (human, wizard 3)
Delilah (half orc, fighter/barbarian 3)
Alistair (human, fighter 3)
Cade and Toothless (halfling, ranger 3, with wolf animal companion)

The characters interrogate their prisoner and learn that the slaves from Grayhill were moved out of the fort that morning and taken in a small caravan to Zhentil Keep. It should take the caravan 1 day and half to reach Zhentil Keep. During the interrogation, Vane calls out from the fort, demanding to know what has happened. Old Wan bluffs him into thinking that the slavers have won the fight. The party then flees into the night, following the stream back to the site where the slavers fought the gnolls. Here they make their camp for the remainder of the night, and they are fortunate that no one comes after them

The next day they decide to start following the trail north after the gnolls. Soon Cade detects the presence of a large band of humanoids to the east of them using his primeval awareness. They decide to investigate and soon discover a group of slavers escorting a band of about 10 slaves. There are 8 mounted slavers as well ten slaver archers on foot.

The heroes hide among a cluster of rocks, as there is little cover out on the plains. However, one of the riders spots Jove doing a shit job of hiding. The mounted slaver and a couple of other riders, ride towards the rocks to investigate. They open up on the horse men with ranged weapons as the riders close, taking them down before they can reach them. More riders and archers move to attack the heroes, while a few of the slavers hang back to guard the slaves. The heroes take advantage of the terrain, taking cover behind the cluster of rocks they had been trying to hide among. The slavers are caught out in the open, and the adventurers pick them off with ranged weapons and spells. A couple of riders manage to close in on them, but Delilah makes short work of them with her great axe. Soon the surviving slavers retreat back to the where their companions are waiting with their prisoners. The adventurers decide to go after them, but they are forced to leave their cover to do so. The enemy archers fire as they close, but Delilah is the only one that takes any wounds. As the heroes move in on the remaining slavers, the two surviving riders bolt and flee, leaving the footmen on their own. The slaves jump them from behind as they fire arrows at the incoming heroes, and the fight quickly comes to an end.

They free the slaves and learn they were taken from a village called Mill Hill. Mill Hill was hit the previous night by the raiders, and these folk were captured in the raid. They decide to escort the freed captives back to Mill Hill. As they set out, it starts to pour rain. By the time they reach Mill Hill they are soaking wet and miserable. They find Mill Hill is a small settlement built near a large wind mill at the top of a wide, low hill. It is set up in the style of a ring fort, which used to be quite prevalent in the region.

Lord Milman is currently out on a trip to Phlan, and the village has been left in the hands of his twelve year old son Lord Milman the Younger. Lord Milman the Younger is grateful to the heroes for returning the captives and allows them to stay in his hall and get warm. They discuss recent events, and Lord Milman the Younger explains that his village has been living in fear of a potential gnoll raid. It seems they weren’t expecting the slavers- this is a new development in the area. Lord Milman the elder had gone to Phlan to meet with the council and try to convince them to mobilize the Black Fist to deal with he gnoll threat. He is expected to return the following day or the day after.

While they are warming themselves by the fire, they receive word that more travelers are at the gates of the hamlet. They go with Lord Milman to investigate and discover the travelers consist of two gnomes and a human sell sword who were caught out in the storm. The gnomes are brother and sister (Dimble and Ruby). They explain to Lord Milman that they are travelling to Phlan and from there to a gnome settlement called Grossetgrottle, which is located in the Dragonspine mountains. There Ruby intends to study illusion magic under the tutelage of her grand father. Pinky notices that the dagger Dimble is carrying looks familiar. He thinks that it might be Dancing Flame, a heirloom that has been in her family for generations.

The travellers are allowed in and escorted to the hall to get warm and dry. Pinky gets a closer look at Dimble’s dagger and confirms that it is Dancing Flame. The last time Pinky saw the dagger was when Pinky’s father gave it to her sister Reah. However, as far as Pinky knows, Reah was killed while fighting ogres in the Thar to the north (according to Kivan the ranger). Pinky confronts Dimble about the dagger, and Dimble explains that he stole it from a human swordsman named Delgar the Blade in the town of Teshwave. They were at an inn, throwing knives to pass the time. Delgar joined the game and was bragging to Dimble about how he had killed a gnome girl and took the dagger from her some time ago in Melvaunt. Dimble couldn’t abide the nasty man being in possession of such a fine gnomish weapon, so he broke into Delgar’s room late that night and stole it. He, his sister, and Edwin the sell sword then fled the town, riding off into the night. He claims they have been on the road ever since.

Although Pinky doesn’t normally use a dagger in combat, she does want the weapon back. She explains to Dimble that it is a family heirloom and requests that he give it to her. Dimble isn’t in any hurry to just hand it over, but he does seem to believe her story, and he reluctantly agrees to trade it to her in exchange for a horse (taken from the slavers) and Pinky’s remaining gold.

The session ends with the heroes resting for the night by the hearth in Lord Milman’s hall.

I originally started trying to write this journal in jot note form, but it wasn't really working for me, so I go back to prose for session #3 and up.

This final battle was surprisingly quick and easy to run, but it still felt epic and appropriate. It had a certain Star Wars vibe to it, with the final scene of Phann flying out of the collapsing primordial being very much like the Millenium Falcon escaping the Death Star as it explodes in Return of the Jedi.

Even though the campaign ended here, with the completion of the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure. I did end up running another session several months later, though I didn't get to doing a journal for it. A year of game time had gone by and the heroes were asked by the Dukes of Baldur's Gate and Lords of Waterdeep to go deal with the devil general of the former devil army that had emerged from Dragonspear castle. He had holed up in some ruins in the Lizard Marsh near Daggerford and the remains of the devil army were troubling the trade road. The heroes flew in on their griffons and took out the remaining devils in a pretty hack and slash session of combat.

They have since more or less retired, though I may get to picking the campaign up again and running another adventure or two at some point.

Session #45 (Confrontation with Ogremoch)
Characters: Inspiration (tiefling bard 10), Smashmouth (Goliath paladin 10), Father Varis (dwarf, cleric 10), Phann (half-elf, sorcerer 10), Bryce (eladrin, fighter 1/wizard/bladesinger 9)

The heroes fly back to Goldenfields Abbey with Tomas and their prisoner, Lady Du Lac (prophet of elemental air). Back at the abbey, they brief Abbot Doravick on the events of the previous couple of days. Here Inspiration performs the ritual song of sacred cleansing to cure Lady Du Lac of the madness inflicted upon her by the enchanted spear (an artifact possessed with the power of elemental evil). Father Varis casts a legend lore spell on the spear and learns that is called Windvane; he learns its properties and learns that is an enemy of elemental earth that even the primordial Ogremoch fears.

With Lady Du Lac's mind cured, she is much more lucid, and she decides that it is in fact time for her to return home. Tomas will escort her, and he tries to convince Bryce to join him. Bryce declines the invitation, as he still wants to experience more of the realms and aid his new companions against the evils they are about to face. Knowing that Bryce will soon face terrible peril, Tomas offers him the family moonblade, which Bryce accepts. The blade in turn accepts Bryce as his new wielder.

The following morning a massive earthquake rocks the region, destroying several buildings in the abbey. Smashmouth receives a vision from the gods. In his vision he sees the source of the quake- Ogremoch the ancient and evil primordial of elemental earth has been brought into Faerun and is on the move, destroying everything in its path.

There is no time to waste; the heroes mount their griffons and fly towards the Sumber Hills. From the air, they see that Feathergale Spire is in ruin, and a massive sinkhole has claimed the entirety of the lost dwarven city where they had previously been battling the cults in Marching through the sink hole, is Ogremoch. He is a walking mountain- a being over one hundred feet tall, composed entirely of earth and stone. With every step he takes, he seems to get bigger and bigger. It's as if he absorbs the land on which he treads into his form. Accompanying him is a small army of earth elementals and flock upon flock of gargoyles. The heroes can also see that the red dragon they had previously battled is attempting to fight Ogremoch, but even the mighty red dragon looks tiny compared to the primordial, and the adult dragon seems no match for it. Ogremoch soon swats the dragon away, and it is nearly knocked from the sky. It retreats and is followed by a swarm of gargoyles that start tearing into it.

The heroes come up with a plan. Phann decides to bond with Windvane. This costs them an hour, but Phann thinks doing so is their only hope of defeating the primordial. The heroes approach Ogremoch on their griffons, but they keep their distance. There is no sign of the dragon at this point, and the heroes are uncertain its exact fate. Bryce turns Phann invisible, and Phann borrows Smashmouth's flying broom. Then the invisible Phann flies towards Ogremoch with Windvane in hand. The rest of the party is clearly visible, and a large flight of gargoyles moves to intercept them. Phann lands on a ledge formed by Ogremoch's enormous eye cavity. The primordial's eye is in fact a glowing, green crystal structure that has a diameter the size of a man. Phann balances on the ledge and thrusts the spear forward. Its crackling tip shatters the crystal eye! The detonation of the eye blasts Phann with crystal shrapnel. Fortunately he is well protected by a stoneskin spell, and this vastly mitigates the damage. Ogremoch bellows in pain and rage. His body sways violently and Phann loses his footing. He plummets towards the ground, but manages to activate his broom and fly out of the tail spin.

Meanwhile, the rest of the heroes see the gargoyles closing in; they fly their griffons to the ground, dismount and ready themselves for battle. Phann, who remains invisible, flies back up to Ogremoch's other eye. Again he attempts drive his spear in and shatter it. His first strike fails to penetrate, but the second attack destroys its remaining eye. Once more, Ogremoch reels in agony. This time Phann uses his spiderclimb slippers to keep from falling, but he is again blasted with crystal shrapnel. With the final eye gone, Phann sees an opening. There is a tunnel like cavity before him that appears to lead into Ogremoch's head. At the end of the tunnel is a cavern-like chamber that houses another large crystal structure- Ogremoch's primordial analog to a brain. Phann bravely makes his way forward, intent on bringing down the walking mountain.

As the gargoyles close in Father Varis calls upon his god and summons a flame strike that blasts the flock. Inspiration finishes them with his own devastating spell, and nearly a score of gargoyles plummet from the sky. The gargoyles aren't the only threat. Earth elementals begin to rise up from the ground. Smashmouth and Bryce move in with axes and swords. The elementals swing their massive stone fists and try to beat the heroes into the ground. Their attacks are clumsy and the adventurers evade most of them. Inspiration casts a potent shatter spell that inflicts terrible damage on two of the elementals. However, this draws their full attention, and they pound him into the dirt. Father Varis comes to his aid, and he dimension doors both of them to safety. At about this time, Phann drives his spear into Ogremoch's crystal brain. This proves to be the killing blow, and the mighty primordial lets out a final bellow of rage before his earthen body crumbles. The strike also shatters Windvane, removing a terrible artefact from the world. Phann flies out of the collapsing primordial with rock raining down on him. He has lost concentration on his stoneskin spell, and he's thoroughly battered, but he still lives, and with Ogremoch defeated the heroes easily take care of the elementals nearby. In fact, all of the elementals in the vicinity crumble, and it seems that they were somehow being sustained by Ogremoch.

The battle is over. Ogremoch is defeated, and the adventurers are victorious. They tend to their wounds and fly back to Goldenfields to celebrate their great victory over elemental evil. In the days that follow they make their way back to Baldur's Gate where they each take some extended down time to recover from their adventurers and pursue other goals.

Session #44 (Confrontation with Queen Du Lac)
Characters: Inspiration (tiefling bard 9), Smashmouth (Goliath paladin 9), Father Varis (dwarf, cleric 9), Phann (half-elf, sorcerer 9), Bryce (eladrin, fighter 1/wizard/bladesinger 8)

The heroes fly into Red Larch aboard their griffons (and Elfreed the weird dragon steed creature) late in the evening of the 29th of Marpenoth. At the Singing Sword Inn they rest and chat with a few locals. It seems that Halinaxus the red dragon has been troubling the town. About a ten day earlier the dragon burned several homes to the ground and landed in the centre of the village. It demanded a tribute be raised, and he told the villagers he would be back to collect the tribute in the near future. After this event many villagers decided that was the last straw. Some folk packed up their belongings and fled south. Others decided to go with the Feathergale knights and swear fealty to an elf woman calling herself Queen Du Lac. Only a few folk remained in the village. Thus Red Larch is nearly deserted when the heroes arrive.

While they are chatting with the locals in the common room of their Inn, Bryce takes Phann aside and informs him that they share the same father. Phann isn’t sure what to make of this, but he isn’t overly thrilled to be related to Bryce. Bryce is also confident that Queen Du Lac is none other than princess Du Lac, the elf princess that his father Tomas is believed to be traveling with, and that Bryce was tasked with bringing home.

The next day the adventurers decide that they will head to tower fortress known as Feathergale Spire and try to find Tomas and Queen Du Lac. They are spotted well before they arrive, and after parlaying with a band of Fathergale Knights, Bryce convinces them that he is in fact Tomas’s son. The knights agree to escort them to see Queen Du Lac.

The heroes following the hippogriff riding knights to a cave nearby Feathergale Spire. They keep their distance, as griffons and hippogriffs are natural enemies. Here they land their griffon mounts. Bryce orders Elfreed to keep the peace between the griffons and hippogriffs, and the knights escort them through a lengthy underground tunnel to the palace ward of the lost dwarven city. They are taken into what was once the palace of the city’s dwarf royalty. Now it is the residence of Queen Du Lac. In the palace, they gain an audience with the queen. Several refugee villagers from Red Larch are in her great hall, but most of them look like they haven’t eaten in days and they seem strung out on some sort of narcotic.

The “Queen” is guarded by Tomas, Bryce's father and talented eladrin bladesinger, and she is eager to speak with Bryce and his allies. Inspiration does much of the initial talking, and the tiefling explains that they hope that she might aid them dealing with the red dragon. He is not in an overly diplomatic mood, for he knows that she is a corrupt prophet of elemental evil, and he likely suspects they will have to destroy her sooner or later. She finds Inspiration’s disrespect intolerable and is on the verge of ordering her knights to attack. Phann puts on the charm and calms her down, and Bryce manages to convince her to allow Tomas to speak with him and Phann for a moment in private. They learn from Tomas that Queen Du Lac has gone mad. Tomas thinks it is connected to the magical spear she now possesses. He believes she can still be redeemed if she can be separated from the weapon, and he is willing to help the heroes if they promise to try not to harm her. Phann continues to use his charm, and he convinces her that they will go attempt to slay the dragon if she offers the support of some of her knights. He also convinces her to escort them out of the palace and to the entrance of the tunnel where they will have to go to return to the forge ward and find the dragon.

Once they have her outside the palace, away from the bulk of her followers they turn on her. Phann is walking arm and arm with her when he suddenly grabs the spear from her hand, handing it to Inspiration who casts a dimension door spell and escapes with the weapon. She shrieks in rage at this treachery and orders her knights to attack. A fight breaks out, and the adventurers realize quickly that she has many kenku and cultist reinforcements close by. Inspiration hasn’t gone far, and he casts a dominate person on Queen Du Lac. He takes control of her and forces her to turn on her allies. She casts a cloudkill spell, conjuring a toxic gas to go roiling over the knights, driving them back and keeping the kenku and cultists at bay. The heroes disengage from the remaining knights and retreat with Tomas and Queen Du Lac back into the tunnel where Inspiration awaits them. Phann covers their retreat with a wall of fire, buying them time to make a getaway.

They flee with Queen Du Lac, and force her to harmlessly cast off her spells. They then gag and bind her, and after Inspiration uses invisibility magic to sneak back through the palace ward and retrieve their griffons they take her back to Goldenfields as their prisoner.

In Goldenfields they hope to cure her mind from the spear’s elemental evil corruption.

Session #6 (Pooch Palace Run)
Runners: Skull (elf, phys. adept), Tip (human, occult investigator), Hashtag (human, hacker), Big Nasty (ork, cyber gangsta)

About a month has passed since the runner’s last job. It has taken Hashtag, Tip and Skull some time to recover mentally. They still don’t know what happened during the six weeks of time that they lost.
Skull’s been having some flashbacks that involve him on a yacht killing someone with a his monowhip and then jumping overboard to escape security. Hashtag’s fragmented memories are much weirder, and he suspects that a lot of the time he lost was spent delving into different corners of the Matrix. Tip’s memories involve vague visions of astral jaunts and interactions with strange spirits.

It is Thursday, July 30th, 2076. Turtle, Skull’s “agent”, gives him a call with a business opportunity. He doesn’t have all the details, but he knows it involves abducting a Lifepet Golden Retriever from a luxury doggy hotel. He explains that Lifepet dogs are basically fancy, custom made drones created from the latest in 3-D printing technology. They look nearly identical to a real dog. Turtle wonders why anyone would bother checking a robot dog into a doggy hotel, but LA is a weird town with lots of rich bastards who do weird stuff… Skull thinks that the job sounds kinda f+~~ed up, but he needs the money, so as long as it pays well he figures he convince the crew to take it. Turtle sets up the meet.

The meet goes down that evening at a club on Hollywood Blvd. called the Singularity. It’s a hot new dance club filled with laser lights, AR imagery and pounding music. It’s not the ideal place for a meet, and it’s pretty much impossible to chat without the use of subvocal micophones. As they make their way through the crowded dance floor, Nasty’s new single “B#$@~ Got my Foot” (in reference to almost losing his foot to a monowire body trap in session #1) is blaring. He is recognized by a few girls who are in midst of performing the dance move that goes with the song, which basically involves extending a leg and shaking it it while pretending to be in great pain. They try to pull him onto the dance floor to partake in the B$#~* Got My Foot dance, but since he’s working, he’s trying to keep a low profile and otherwise be “professional”, so he keeps on moving. Skull and his crew are directed to a booth where they order drinks from the AR menu and wait for the Mr. Johnson. Tip and Hashtag support each other’s alcoholism by ordering doubles. Soon their patron slides into the booth. He doesn’t seem to have a much security with him, but at the same time doesn’t seem too worried about meeting up with a group of shadowrunners. He has slicked back black hair, clubbing attire, a spray on tan, and thick moustache (the latest fashion trend for men). He explains that his employer is a fan of Skull’s Matrix show “Running LA”, which is why he requested him and his team. He gives them the full details of the job. They are to extract a Lifepet Golden Retriever named Wallace from a doggy hotel called Pooch Palace. It needs to go down in the next couple of days, and they will need to hang onto the “dog” for up to 48 hours at which point they will either release it or detroy it. The trick of the job is that Pooch Palace is the “Fun City,” which is a walled corporate enclave that occupies much of what was once Anaheim. It is owned and controlled exclusively by Horizon, which is one of the big ten mega corps. Getting into Fun City always entails ID checks and their is extensive security in the enclave. All security contracts in Fun City are required to be handled by HSS (Horizon Security Services). This means that HSS will be handling Pooch Palace security. However Mr. J doesn’t suspect that the contract would be that extensive. The job pays 50K, but Wallace is known to wear a diamond studded collar that Mr. J thinks they could fence for another 50K. Finally, he makes it clear that his employer wants the job to be clean and without bloodshed. Skull and the team discuss it over their comms and decide to take the job.

Hashtag goes to work on the Matrix doing some legwork. He learns that Wallace belongs to a Simsense star named Tommy Talent. Tommy Talent has made a name for himself in the past couple of years and his career has skyrocketed. He has an exclusive contract with Horizon, but rumour has it that his contract is due to expire, and Amalgamated Studios has been making him offers. Hashtag suspects that the job could well be connected to all this, and he hopes that it won’t bite them in the ass. It seems that Tommy is currently out of town for a few days on a shoot. He also take time to hack the Pooch Palace host. Here he learns, which kennel Wallace is in, and he learns that Wallace has been slaved to the HSS host, which means hacking the robot dog from the Matrix would be real tricky, as it will be protected by the HSS firewall. He also does a brief hacking run into the Pooch Palace host. He discovers the file regarding Wallace, which indicates which kennel the dog is in and all its appointment times for spa treatments and such. It also indicates that it has been slaved the HSS host for the duration of its stay at Pooch Palace for security purposes.

Getting in and out of Fun City is going to be the biggest hurdle of the run. They decide to go with subcontracting a Coyote to help them out. Nasty gets the name of a guy that the Cutters (a street gang he’s associated with) knows who specializes in moving people and goods in and out of Fun City. The guy is named Mako, and he runs a dive shop in Santa Monica. Mr. Donovan (“CEO” of the Cutters gang) reaches out to Mako and informs him that Nasty and his crew will be coming to see him. The following evening they go to Mako’s dive shop. Nasty and Skull are both wearing ridiculous old style golf outfits. Mako wonders why the team looks like they are ready to go play 18 holes, but it’s LA, so he just shakes his head and they move on. Mako has slick looking Aztechnology Nightrunner boat ready to go. They rent dive gear and couple of waterproof duffle bags. Mako is even able to make good on Skull’s odd request for a pair of waterproof golf club bags. Skull puts his shotgun, and Hashtag’s cyberdeck and some other gear in one of the golf bags. The other one they leave empty (it’s for the dog). Next they suite up with their dive gear and head out. Mako and a couple of his guys operate the boat. He knows the local waters well and is good at dodging the coast guard and other hazards. About an hour later they are approaching the dark sea wall of the Horizon enclave (The Anaheim area is waterfront property due to the a couple of major earthquakes known as the Twins, which took place a few years earlier). The runners enter the dark pacific waters. Mako launches a small submersible drone and they follow it underwater to the wall. It leads them to a massive drainage pipe that is about 6 m in diameter. They swim into the pipe. Up ahead, Hashtag thinks he spots something in the murky waters, something big, real. It was about 30 m away and it swam further up the tunnel, so he didn’t get a good look at it, but it spooks him. Tip conjures a water elemental and uses one of its services to conceal their presence, making them difficult to detect. They go a little further up the pipe, but see no sign of the creature.

The drone leads them into a smaller pipe. Here they must swim single file. Eventually they reach a shaft with metal ladder rungs that takes them up out of the water filled pipe drainage pipe system. By this time Mako is losing comm reception, but he informs them that once they get up the shaft they shouldn’t need to do any more swimming. At this point the drone leaves them. They climb up the shaft one by one, and find themselves in another tunnel. This one has a little water trickling through it, but it is no more than ankle deep. Here they take off their dive gear and stow it in the water proof duffle bag. They hang it in the shaft and follow a schematic map that Mako has sent them. They make their way through the rat infested sewer tunnels and eventually they come to another shaft. This one leads up to street level. Mako indiciates that there are normally motion sensors set up in the shafts, but the one that he has directed them to is “clean.” The team clambers up onto the street. They look like a group of golfers coming back from a late evening at the golf club. Nasty and Skull each carry one of the golf bags. They switch their comms to open mode and display fake IDs, as they know that there are plenty of surveillance drones in the area that may perform secret spot ID checks, and everyone in Fun City is expected to be running an open comm signal. Skull has his face disguised (mystic adept power) to match the face that corresponds with the fake ID he’s running. Back up comms are run in hidden mode for more secretive communication. The area they find themselves in is fairly residential. It’s around 1:00 am on a Friday night, so the traffic is light. They do come across a few girls heading to a bar. The girls already seem a little wasted. One of them thinks she recognizes Nasty and tries to chat him up. Skull tries to convince her that it isn’t actually Nasty and he tells the girls to take off. Afterwards Nasty texts the girl’s comm and tells her it really is him. She forwards him a picture of her boobs, which he checks out using his jiggle app.

It’s a few blocks to Pooch Palace. They make it without incident (other than the tipsy girls Nasty had to fend off). They approach the staff entrance at the back. Tip calls on her water elemental for another service and again conceals the team as they hang out by the door. Hashtag gets out his electronics kit and cyberdeck. He removes the panel from the maglock with his tools and plugs in his deck. He jacks in, going hot sim. Since the deck is connected directly to the maglock which is slaved to the HSS Matrix host, he gains a backdoor access into the host. When he enters, he finds himself in a high tech, virtual security room. He takes a seat in the awaiting chair and checks out the camera feeds. He can vaguely make out the characters at the entrance- the spirt does a good job of hiding them. His first task is looping the camera feed by the back door. Next he checks on Wallace’s kennel and finds that the dog is where he’s expected to be. He opens the mag lock. They help his limp body inside. Tip stays with him to guard him. Nasty and Skull sneak down the hall towards Wallace’s kennel. There are only two security guards on site. One is in the staff lounge eating. The second one is patrolling the halls near the luxury kennels. That second one is in the way, so Skull sneaks up on him and take him out with is stun baton. With this done, Hashtag is about to let the dogs out by opening all the kennels at once. Before he can do so, the door the virtual security office opens and a droid enters. It appears to be patrol IC. It does quick scan of the room, but doesn’t detect Hashtag’s hidden icon, so it leaves. Hashtag then opens the kennels. Nasty grabs Wallace and starts carrying him back to the exit. Hashtag tries to destroy evidence by deleting the camera images of Skull and Nasty in the halls. Unfortunately, he only gets one of the hall cameras taken care of before the patrol IC scans the room again. This time he gets spotted, and an alarm is triggered. Another droid enters his room. This one fires a strange sticky globule at him, but he ducks out of the way. Hashtag isn’t in the mood to deal with Horizon IC, so he jacks out before things go real south. The characters start pull out a tag eraser and deactivate Wallace’s RFID tag. Then they stuff him in a golf bag. As they are about to leave, the second security guard comes into the hall. It’s chaos because music is playing loudly through the comm system (thanks to Hashtag) and there are loose dogs everywhere. The guard spots the team and starts going for his taser. Skull rushes him, and takes him down with his stun baton.

They flee into the night with Wallace in the golf bag. The dog is thrashing around, which looks suspicious. Hashtag had planned on using his electronics kit to deactivate him, but he hasn’t had the chance yet, and they didn’t want to spend five more minutes at Pooch Palace waiting for him- especially since an alert has surely been triggered and security assets are en route. They set a brisk pace for the sewer shaft. Suddenly a Horizon security rotor drone swoops down and intercepts them. It’s about 100 m away, but it hails them through its comm speakers and demands that they halt, lay on the ground with their hands on their heads and await Horizon Peace Officers. When the runners keep walking, it starts to fire. Fortunately, it is firing stick n shock rounds. It targets Nasty first and just misses him. Because of his cyberware and Skull’s adept talents, Skull and Nasty are much faster runners than Tip and Hashtag. Nasty scoops up Hashtag and starts to book it. Skull also breaks into a run. Tip hangs back a minute and calls on her water elemental once more. She sends it after the drone, which is still firing at Nasty as the ork sprints down the street. The elemental manifests around the drone, engulfing it in water. The water shorts out its circuits and causes it crash in the middle of the street. Sirens can be heard and they see a patrol car coming. Tip starts to run as well, but before she gets far a second drone starts to fire. It’s first shot just misses her. She uses her spirit’s final service to go for this drone, but before it gets to it, the drone tags her with a stick n shock round. It zaps her good, leaving her KOed on the sidewalk. By this time, Nasty and Skull are quite a ways up the street. They look back and see the patrol car closing in. The drone continues to fire on them. A stick n shock round clips Nasty. Fortunately, his armoured vest has some pretty extensive non conductivity features built into it, and he grits his teeth and keeps on trucking. Skull apologizes to Tip and yells that he’ll get her a lawyer- she’s out cold and can’t hear him. The water elemental completes its final service to Tip and takes down the remaining sniper drone.

Skull and Nasty arrive at the sewer hatch (Hashtag is slung over one of Nasty’s shoulders, and his golf bag with the dog is over the other). At the same time, a patrol car skids to a stop just in front of it. Two HPOs (Horizon Peace Officers) jump out an open up on the runners with tight bursts of submachine gun fire. Fortunately, they are firing gel rounds. A cluster of shots tag Skull. His vest absorbs most of the impact and he stays on his feet. Nasty heaves the sewer hatch out of the way and he jumps down with Wallace and Hashtag. Skull follows behind him and they run off into the sewers. The HPO’s don’t pursue, and instead wait for back up. They do take the time to arrest Tip. In the sewers, Hashtag shuts down Wallace so that he can’t be tracked in the matrix. The runners gear up in their dive suites and swim out where they rendezvous with Mako and make their get away.

They hole up for a couple of days in a safe house provided by the Cutters. In the end, they are ordered to release the robodog. They put it in a cab and send it on its way. Their employer follows through with the cash, and they get the diamond collar, which they fence for 50K. Unfortunately, Tip is in Horizon custody and it turns out that lawyers are expensive.

Karma for Session #6: 7, Total Karma to date: 49

So where does 5e D&D fit on that spectrum?

As a none American watching all this shit from the outside, it baffles me that out of 300 million people these are the two ass clowns that have been have chosen to potentially be the leaders of the country. Really! You guys couldn't find anyone better! WTF!

When I started this campaign I hadn't intended to run a lengthy campaign to x level. I wanted to run more of a mini campaign. This seemed like an appropriate spot to end (at least for now). They have pretty much wrapped up the two story lines I established at the start of the campaign (aside from the shoggoth, which is still well beyond what they can handle, and has disappeared back into the sea).

We might come back to this at some point, but I don't have any plans for that at the moment.

Yep, shield is pretty sweet, but unless you are intentionally building a melee caster who only really uses spells for defense and mobility (relying on a weapon for offense), you ideally don't want to be wasting spell slots casting shield spells. If you're doing that a lot you may need to rethink your tactics, and try to position yourself better, so you aren't getting attacked so often.

As an example of how the shield spell can contribute to a bit of a balance issue, we had a blade singer in our party, and he rarely used spells for offense; most of his spells were used for things like shield, mirror image, misty step, displacement etc... At 10th level, with his blade singing up and the shield spell up, he had an AC of 27-28, which is very high for a 5e character. A lot of monsters needed a natural 20 to hit him, which was annoying. However, once he burned through his spells and blade singing uses he was a lot more vulnerable. I could also get him with things like breath weapons and spells that didn't rely on AC to do damage. Still, when the rest of the party had ACs between 18-22, it felt somewhat unbalanced to have a character that regularly had an AC 28.

Assuming you want to run Pathfinder and not D&D 5e, you could still potentially use Princes of the Apocalypse or Curse of Stradh. They are fairly sandboxy, but would require conversion to Pathfinder.

The thing is... If you run an open campaign where the characters have a lot of Freedom to do what they want then you are going to have to put in plenty of work, regardless of how much the campaign gives you up front.

Session #19 (Caves of the Deep Ones)
Characters:
John Breslow (human, alchemist 5)
Freya Winters (sylph, arcanist 5)
Galdriel (aasimar, inquisitor 5)
Izzy (human, pyrokinesist 5)
Sir Toph [aasimar, cavalier 5]

The session begins with the heroes making their final preparations for their quest to destroy the “Egg of Dagon”- a blasphemous object they believe is hidden in the caves of the deep ones somewhere beneath Tern Island. It will be a difficult task, as they don’t even know exactly how to access the deep one caves, let alone locate the object once they get inside. Nor do they know how to destroy it. They start their day by meeting with the town council. Here they are introduced to a brave fisherman named Bryan, who is willing to brave the storm with his boat to help try to get them out to the island. They are also given a variety of magical items to aid them. These include: 4 potions of Bull’s Strength, 6 potions of water breathing, 1 wand of cure light wounds, 1 scroll of dispel magic, 1 scroll of fireball, 1 scroll of disintegrate, 2 scrolls of freedom of movement, 1 haversack, 1 rope of climbing, 1 immoveable rod, and Wavemaster Crowley’s +2 scale mail armour and ring of swimming. In addition, Shepherd Ivan casts a water breathing spell on the heroes (including Bryan) and endure elements spells to help protect them against the cold waters.

With preparations complete, they make their way through pouring rain and lashing winds to the docks. The heroes load into Bryan’s fishing boat. Sir Toph helps at the oars, and they set out for Tern Island. Saltmarsh’s harbour is well sheltered, but as soon as they reach the open water they must contend with the vicious storm. The swells are huge and continually threaten to capsize the vessel. Progress is slow at best. Bryan is a skilled seaman, but even he has not braved such dangerous waters in such a small craft. Soon the inevitable happens- a massive wave picks up the boat and effortlessly flips it over, sending everyone plummeting into the abyss. For several moments the heroes are disoriented, unable to tell up from down, as they thrash about in the darkness. The weight of their armour and gear soon starts to pull them down to the bottom, but by this time, they are starting to adjust to the sensation of being able to breath water just as a fish does. Instead of fighting it, they let themselves sink, and soon the heroes are gathered on the floor of the sea, some 60’ below the raging storm above. Compared to the world above the waves, it is quiet and peaceful, but also very dark. Freya casts a light cantrip, so that Izzy and Bryan (who have no dark vision) can find their way to the heroes. Izzy takes hold of Sir Toph’s cloak, and Bryan grabs onto Freya. Galdriel, who is trained in wilderness survival and highly perceptive, does her best to orient the adventurers in the right direction, and they start trekking along the bottom of the sea in the direction of Tern Island. Here and there they see signs of marine life- schools of fish, crab, rays, and even the odd shark. Every so often, Sir Toph uses the ring of swimming to help him reach the surface. It’s magic is quite potent, and even with his plate armour, the knight is able to swim. When he breaks the surface, he takes a couple of moments to scan for the distant island; then he lets himself sink back down to join the heroes on the bottom and adjust their course as necessary.

After some two hours of hiking beneath the waves, they reach the base of Devil’s Reef- the infamous reef that surrounds the island. From the bottom of the sea, it is as if they are standing at the base of large cliff that they must climb. Fortunately there are abundant handholds and the water helps to lift them up, making their climb quite easy. There is a noticeable increase in marine life around the reef. Fortunately, none of it seems interested in the adventurers. Eventually they crest the top of the reef. Here the water is in only 10’-20’ deep, and they know that they are getting close to their destination. They hike and swim along the reef, and soon enough they reach the base of Tern Island. They follow it to its south side, where the entrances to the various sea caves are located. Their initial plan is to head into “Frandor’s” cave complex, for when they explored it a couple of days earlier they found a pool of water that had a large, deep passage in the bottom of it that Galdriel suspects might lead to the deep one caves. However, as they get within the vicinity of this cave, they spot another entrance that is completely submerged beneath the water that they were not previously aware of. They change their minds and decide to explore this cave system. The passage is about 30’ wide and slopes downward. It is entirely with water. The heroes decide to travel single file, staying close to the right wall. Galdriel leads the way, relying on her extended darkvision and excellent perception to keep a watch for danger.

They have ventured some distance into the passage when Galdriel sees a group of seven deep ones swimming towards them from deeper down the tunnel. She motions for her companions to hide among the rocks and crevasses of the cave wall, hoping that the deep ones won’t notice them. Unfortunately, Sir Toph doesn’t find the best hiding spot, and the deep ones see him. He attempts to bluff them by trying to make himself look like a drowned corpse, but they don’t buy it. They swim in at the knight and combat ensues. Sir Toph draws the trident he brought for aquatic combat and uses his celestial powers to make it glow with blazing daylight, allowing the humans in the group to see. The deep ones recoil from the bright light, shielding their unblinking fish eyes with clawed hands. The rest of the heroes emerge from hiding to aid him. Galdriel and Bryan make use of spears, which, like the trident, are more effective underneath the water than slashing swords. As usual, John consumes a mutagen and enters combat in his hybrid bird form. Freya and Izzy use their magic, though Izzy finds it difficult to channel her fire powers underwater. When she does manage to do so, her blasts of flame manifest as jets of scalding steam. The deep ones are a little surprised to see not one, but six surface dwellers lurking amongst the rocks, all having no difficulty breathing underwater. In seconds, the adventurers have overwhelmed their foes, and clouds of blood fill waters of the tunnel. The two surviving deep ones swim away down the passage. The heroes fear that they will alert their kin. Freya expends a couple of her precious spells and pounds them with magic missiles to help keep them from escaping. Galdriel aids her with a spiritual weapon spell, and Izzy manages to get off a jet of steam that finishes the last one off. Galdriel has suffered the most wounds from the fight, and uses the wand to heal herself. Sir Toph cancels the magical light, and they then continue deeper into the dark, submerged passage.

Many more minutes pass, but eventually the passage they are following opens into a vast cavern that also seems to be completely submerged. The tunnel enters the cavern close to its ceiling, and it is about an 80-100’ drop to the floor of this immense cave. Off in the distance, towards the edge of Galdriel’s darkvision, she spots scores of deep ones drifting peacefully in the water. She wonders if they are sleeping. If they are, they are sleeping with their bulging eyes wide open. One of the last things the heroes want is to engage an entire colony of deep ones, so they cling to rock wall of the cave and use it to pull themselves along. It also provides spots to hide from any of the deep ones that might be awake. As they swim/climb along the wall, Galdriel keeps a close eye on the “sleeping” deep ones. She notices that they aren’t all asleep, a few swim among their kin- to what purpose, she is not sure. The gods are with them, and the none of the deep ones appear to notice the heroes. Galdriel then sees that up above the ceiling is no longer in sight, it seems that it now is higher than the water level, suggesting that there is an air pocket above them. They climb up, some twenty or so feet, at which point they break the surface of water, confirming there is an air pocket. Furthermore, a little ways ahead of them is the entrance to another tunnel. However, this tunnel is entirely above the waterline. They decide to investigate, and they emerge from the water. There is still no light, so Izzy and Bryan remain completely blind. John would be blind as well, but his active mutagen grants him darkvision. Despite this, no one in the party wants to create light, for fear of attracting the attention of the deep ones. The wide, slippery rock passage slopes upward, and the heroes press on in. Soon they find themselves in a fairly extensive cave complex. They see no deep one as they explore, but there are plenty of fish bones and crab shells, suggesting that deep ones spend time in the caves.

Galdriel leads the way, as she looks to her left, she notice a wide passage that slopes steeply down to a pool of still water. At the edge of the water she sees what appears to be a human woman chewing on a raw fish. The “woman” has wet tattered clothing and her back is turned, so she Galdriel doesn’t get a look at her face. She is sixty or more feet away, but Galdriel can still make out something very wrong about her that makes the inquisitor wonder if she is in fact human. Her “skin” looks more like a clear, glistening membrane than actual flesh. Galdriel motions for her companions to stop and duck down, so they don’t alert the creature. Galdriel watches her from behind a large rock for a few more minutes, and eventually she sees her wade into the pool and disappear beneath the water. They continue on with no real sense of where they should be going to find the “Egg of Dagon.” Thus, Freya decides to cast a locate object spell. She concentrates, thinking about the description of the egg, given in Crowley’s journal. A couple of moments pass, but the spell works, and it directs the heroes to keep delving deeper into the cave complex. The tunnels and caves they pass through continue to slope upwards, and it isn’t long before they pass by another pool of water. Unfortunately, this pool is home to more deep ones. At least one of the creatures is watching from the water and detects the heroes walking by. Suddenly, the still water of the pool is frothing with rage, as some eight deep ones burst out of it and shamble towards the trespassing adventurers. The heroes are outnumbered, but this time they aren’t fighting underwater. Izzy has no difficulty channelling her flames, and soon she is tossing deadly motes of fiery death at the fish men. Sir Toph moves in with sword and shield. His plate male gives him ample protection against their claws, and he starts slitting their bloated bellies with his enchanted sword. John’s mutagen is still active, and he shreds the creatures with beak and talons. Galdriel engages them with her scimitar, and even Bryan bravely attacks them with his spear. Freya, not wanting to waste any precious spells, hangs back behind the warriors and takes pot shots with her crossbow. The band of deep ones is no match for the adventurers, and soon the few survivors fall back into their pool, vanishing beneath the water. The heroes don’t bother trying to catch them. Instead they heal what minor wounds they sustained and hurry on, as it is only a matter of time before the deep ones realize what is happening and come at them in numbers too great to fight off.

They find themselves making their way up a steeply sloping passage that is about 15’ wide. After about 100’ it comes to an abrupt end, as it opens up into a large cave that is filled with water. The tunnel emerges well up the wall of the cave, and it about a 30’ vertically drop down to the water. Out in the middle of this large, subterranean pool is a small island of rock. The island is dominated by the form of an enormous black “egg.” As Elias described in his journal, the egg is about the size of a fishing boat. It doesn’t look fragile like a bird’s egg might. Its surface is smooth and dark, but also uneven, and it looks more like obsidian than anything else. A couple of dozen deep ones are in the water, surrounding the island; just their heads protrude above the pool. They appear to be worshipping the egg, and the cavern echoes with their inhuman chanting. Only Galdriel and Freya stand at the mouth of the passage, looking down upon this alien scene. The rest of the heroes, hang back in the passage so there is no chance they will be spotted. The deep ones are a ways away and completely focused on their devotions. As such, they don’t notice Freya and Galdriel watching them.

Freya reaches into the haversack that she has been wearing like a satchel. She calls for the disintegrate scroll and pulls it out. She then chants the words to the spell from the scroll. The scroll turns to dust, and she points her finger in the direction of the egg. Arcane power courses through her. This is the most potent spell she has ever cast. A ray of black energy streaks out from her finger. It soars down over the pool and hits the egg. Time seems to slow down for an instant, and she can’t help but wonder what will happen. The spell may well turn the egg to dust, but she also fears that it may just disintegrate the outer shell and unleash whatever is growing inside. When the ray hits, about half of the massive, black shell turns to dust. The deep ones, are confused. They seem unsure of what just happened. Then some of them start looking back in the direction the ray came from. They see Freya and Galdriel standing high above them at the mouth of the passage. Then their is a loud squelching noise and they look back towards the open egg. Something starts to ooze out of its remains. It is black and amorphous, like a great pudding, though mouths and eyes start to form on its writhing surface. In seconds, it has enveloped the island and engulfed the fanatic deep ones that were kneeling before it. It continues to expand, flowing into the water, getting ever bigger. Already the thing seems to be far bigger than the capacity of the egg should have been able to contain, and still more of it continues to spew out. The deep ones chitter and burble in fear, excitement and awe. Galdriel watches, transfixed by the horror of the scene. It seems they have done the very thing they came here to prevent! She shakes her head and snaps back into action; knowing it is probably futile, she fires and arrow from her enchanted bow. It sinks into the creature’s oozing bulk and vanishes with no apparent effect. Freya pulls out her fireball scroll and casts it. The fireball detonates on top of the thing, and the flames fan out over the water searing the heads of several deep ones. The fire vanishes as instantaneously as it appeared. The deep ones are gone, probably having dove below the water to avoid the inferno. The horror from the egg is still there, and the fireball seems to have had no effect on it. In fact, it doesn’t look as though the heroes have anything in their arsenal that has a hope of stopping the alien horror. They have only one real option. They turn back down the passage and flee, praying that they can somehow escape and find their way back home.

They move as quickly as they can given the slippery wet rocks and uneven ground. Izzy and Bryan continue to stumble about in the darkness, holding onto Sir Toph and Freya. Down the passage, ahead of them, they hear the sounds of more deep ones approaching. To their left is a narrow side passage that is partially filled with water. They decide to follow it. The dark water is about waist deep, and they begin wading through it. The oppressive ceiling is just above their heads and walls encroach in on them. The side passage soon widens and opens into a larger cave with a higher ceiling. It too, is partially filled with water. Though, near the centre of the walls, to their left and right, they can see tunnels branching up and away from the waterline that they could walk through if they could get to them. Galdriel continues to lead and wades into the cave. As she steps forward, she discovers the hard way that there is a sudden drop off. She plunges into the water, her scale armour pulling her towards the bottom. She fights to swim back up, but before she can get to the surface, barbed tentacles grab hold of her, and she realizes that she’s not alone. A large squid-like monster is in the water with her. It looks very similar to the creature that pulled Tendal out their boat a few days earlier (a devilfish- see session #16). The thing pulls her towards its snapping beak. Her companions rush to her aid. Sir Toph leaps into the deep water, swimming to her and driving his trident into its head (critical hit), which causes it enough pain that it releases its grip on Galdriel. She frees herself from its tentacles, though the barbs tear painfully as she wiggles free. Izzy casts a light spell, and a ball of flame appears in the palm of her hand, allowing her to see what is going on. John dives into the deeper water and tears away a huge chunk of its rubbery flesh with his beak, leaving it badly wounded. Galdriel pushes off of it with her leg and propels her wounded body to the shallow water just as it releases a cloud of unholy ink. The ink makes the water completely black, and even darkvision can’t penetrate the blackness. Eventually, the ink clears, and the creature is no where to be seen.

Izzy’s light spell has attracted the attention of another fiend. Swimming towards them from the other side of the cave, they see one of the chitinous monstrosities that nearly killed Sir Toph in the chapel of Dagon (a chuul- see session #18). The heroes remain in the shallows, waist deep in the water and wait for it, weapons ready. As it gets closer, Galdriel summons a spiritual weapon, which cuts a deep gash through the back of its head area. At the same time, Izzy and Freya blast it with fire. It keeps coming, but by the time it has closed in on the heroes, the thing is already quite wounded. Sir Toph and John stand in the front line to face the aberration. It goes for John, and grabs him up in a crushing pincer. Unfortunately, it stays just out of Sir Toph’s reach and he has to dive into the deeper water to get close enough to attack it. John frees an extract and chugs it. He magically grows to nearly twice his size, and the chuul almost loses his grip on him and has to grab at him with its second pincer to maintain the grapple. Then the chuul decides its not worth trying to keep him pinned, so it drops him into the water and goes at him with both pincers. The brutal attacks leave John gushing blood and unconscious. Sir Toph keeps stabbing at it with his trident and eventually penetrates its armour. Finally, Izzy brings it down with a blast of fire to the face, and its lifeless carcass slowly sinks to the bottom of the pool. John is given a does of magical healing, restoring him to consciousness.

Unfortunately, the heroes aren’t out of danger just yet. Deep ones are wading towards them through the side passage. The adventurers are low on spells. John is in terrible condition, and Galdriel is also fairly wounded. The session ends here, with more tense combat to come. Will the heroes escape the deep one caves and make it back to civilization or will they find a watery grave down in these lightless caves? Even if they do make it back, what is to be done about the horror they have inadvertently unleashed on the world?

XP for Session #19
deep ones 16 x 400 = 6400
devilfish 1200
chuul 3400
11,000/5= 2200 each

Most sci fi games are setting specific, unless you pick a generic system and then use some kind of sci-fi pack for it- like FATE, GURPS, Savage Worlds, Cypher System, BRP etc...

Session #9 (New Adventures in Kelton)
Characters
John Breslow (human, alchemist 2)
Seymaz (tiefling, warpriest 2)
Ephai (aasimar, rogue 2)
Freya Winters (sylph, arcanist 2)
Galdriel (aasimar, inquisitor 2)

The heroes set out on their horses from Breslow Manor with Grandpa Frandor. The plan is to travel to Kelton, a village about twenty miles to the northeast. In Kelton Frandor wants to buy some supplies, hire a couple of new retainers, and most importantly purchase some guard dogs. Frandor sets a leisurely pace. They encounter no trouble, but they do run into a farmer and his lads bringing a wagon full of wool to market in Saltmarsh. The farmer wears a holy symbol of Saint Cuthbert, and Gladriel takes advantage of this. She introduces herself, and inquires as to whether or not he knows Shepherd Ivan in Saltmarsh. The farmer is familiar with the priest, and she asks him to do her the favour of delivering Ivan a sealed letter. She doesn’t give him details about its contents, but the letter details the progress they have made in their investigation of the smuggling operation in Saltmarsh. He agrees to do her this favour, and they part company. Late that afternoon they stop in the village of Swinehollow. They spend the following day there as well, and Frandor takes time to purchase a horse for himself. The morning after, they continue to Kelton and arrive that afternoon.

The Kelton family maintains a manor house on top of a hill overlooking the village and the Kingfisher River. The manor is surrounded by a simple stone wall that could not withstand a siege but might deter a small group of raiders or bandits. Within the walls is the manor house, a detached kitchen building, stables, and expansive kennels. They find Lord and Lady Kelton out in the courtyard attending to the training of several of their dogs. Lady Kelton is a big, grim looking woman, who is quite the opposite of Baron Kelton- a lanky fellow with a cheerful disposition. With the aid of her stern voice and crop, she seems to be doing most of the real training while Baron Kelton watches and hands out doggy treats. Baron Kelton is surprised but pleased to see Frandor. He had heard the old alchemist had been murdered. He’d also heard the nasty rumours about Frandor being responsible for missing young girls in the town. Frandor hastily denies those stories and explains that he had a long, magically induced nap that he couldn’t wake himself from. The baron invites them to stay at the manor house. He has the horses stabled, and they spend the remainder of the day helping Frandor choose a few dogs to purchase.

That evening at dinner, they discuss much with the baron. He is eager to get news of the wider world and they tell him of the adventures they have had over the past few weeks. They don’t leave anything out, as Frandor assures them that Baron Kelton is an old friend that can be trusted. For his part, the Baron offers some advice. He explains that Viscount Gruber in Seaton is most vexed by the Skull King’s bandit raids out of the Dreadwood, and he would likely be very interested to learn criminals in Saltmarsh have been secretly supplying the bandits with shipments of weapons. Such activities would surely be considered treasonous in the mind of the Viscount, and he might be a powerful ally to the adventurers if they are smart about how they deal with him. Gladriel in particular seems interested in this prospect and thanks the baron for his advice.

As the evening wears on, conversation turns to how Frandor and Baron Kelton met. The baron tells the heroes a story about how when he was a lad he was captured by a band of Grimlocks along with several other villagers and taken into the caves beneath Saint Luthics Abbey. He was rescued by Frandor and the Company of the Axe, and he has vivid memories of Frandor hurling alchemical frost bombs at an approaching mob of the grimlocks as they fled the caves.The baron fills them in on a few additional details. Saint Luthic’s abbey is about five miles northwest of Kelton. It was built about four hundred years ago by priests of Pelor. They built it over top of a series of caves- caves that provide the only known access to the underdark in the Viscounty. Eventually, a tragedy befell the priests of the abbey, and it was disbanded. Over time it fell into ruin. No priests remained to monitor the threats posed by the deep realms, which eventually led to a tribe of grimlocks making raids against the nearby surface settlements. Eventually, the Company of the Axe drove the tribe back into the underdark, Savras used his magic to conjure several walls of stone that he used to seal off the connection to the underdark. Every few years, Baron Kelton hires adventurers to enter the caves beneath the ruined abbey and check to see if the seal is still intact. It is time for another inspection. He asks if the heroes would be interested in undertaking this quest. He offers them compensation of sorts- he will sell them a magical cloak (cloak of resistance) and suite of magical studded leather armour at about half they price they might normally expect to be able to purchase such items for. They agree, but Ephai insists on buying the armour before they go into the caves. The baron agrees, and he purchases a suite of enchanted studded leather armour for 500 gp.

Frandor makes mention of another opportunity for them during their quest. He tells them that when the Company of the Axe was leaving the caves, a grimlock tagged their elven ranger, Artemisia, with a lucky javelin throw. It caused her to drop her magical oath bow into a dark pool of water. Other pressing matters prevented her from having the chance to recover it. She died soon after on tern island, and as far as Frandor knows it still sits in the bottom of the pool. He also tells them about how he remembers having seen a cave in the complex that was filled with fungi, including some particularly rare mushrooms that are very useful in brewing healing potions. If they get a chance, he suggests they try to gather some.

The next morning, Frandor brews the party a potion of water breathing to aid them in recovering the bow. They then set out for Saint Luthic’s abbey. They arrive that hot afternoon. The abbey itself is nothing more than crumbling ruins. Upon doing some exploration of site, Gladriel locates several sets of fresh tracks that look like human footprints. Ephai finds the remains of a couple of goblins and a dead deer. The inquisitor surmises that they may have a pack of ghouls in the area. They follow the trail and the tracks lead them to a set of stairs that descends into the darkness of the abbey’s crypt. Ephai and Gladriel enter first, moving quietly in hopes of doing some scouting. They rely on their darkvision and bring no light source. At the bottom of the stairs they find themselves in a large crypt chamber with a low, vaulted ceiling. A pair of halls connecting other rooms branch off of each side of this central chamber, and on the far side of the room is another set of stairs that leads down deeper into the complex. Gladriel’s guess about ghouls proves correct when she spots a ghoul crouched on a stone sarcophagus, gnawing on a bone in one of side chambers to their right. The ghoul doesn’t notice the pair. Then Ephai hears what sounds like more ghouls coming from the halls to the left, and he proceeds to investigate. He follows a short hall and finds it leads to another large crypt room. He peaks around the corner and spots about a half dozen more ghouls. Unfortunately, he trips on some rubble and the ghouls all turn their heads, seeing him immediately (rolled a 1 on his stealth check). They hungrily burst into action and rush for him. He curses loudly as he is swarmed by ghouls. His companions hear him and try and come to his aid, but hey can’t get to him before the ghouls tear into him. Luckily, he resists the paralyzing effects of their claws and manages to stagger back behind Freya and Gladriel. The rogue is horribly wounded, but Freya provides him healing, while Gladriel holds the ghouls at bay with disrupt undead cantrips and her scimitar. Some of the ghouls move away from the fight and cut through the second hall out of the crypt chamber. This provides them the chance to double back on the party and attack them on two fronts. As well, two more ghouls join the these ghouls from one of the other chambers. One of these is a ghast that wears a tattered chain shirt and a magical belt of strength.

Thus, the five heroes find themselves in a fight with seven ghouls and a ghast. As might be expected, this proves to be a nasty combat. It isn’t long before most of the ghouls have been cut down, but Freya and John are paralyzed, and Ephai is unconscious and bleeding out. Semyaz faces off against the ghast, and a badly wounded Gladriel holds the final ghoul at bay with her scimitar. Then the ghoul gets the better of Gladriel and bites her on the neck, causing her to drop to the stone floor. This leaves Semyaz as the only member of the party still standing. He knows that if he falls he and his companions are all dead. The ghoul is about to start eating Gladriel when the ghast calls it to help in its fight against Semyaz. The thing reluctantly obeys its master, and Semyaz finds himself facing a ghast and ghoul on his own. The ghast has been giving him quite a go, and the tiefling has had difficulty connecting with any attacks, so he targets the ghoul instead and cuts it down with his greatsword. Suddenly, it is only the tiefling versus the ghast. They exchange several blows, and soon they are both horribly wounded. Thankfully, Semyaz has resisted its paralysis. Still, the only thing saving Semyaz is his plate armour is his divine ability to create illusionary doubles of himself- all of which are now spent. The ghast doesn’t give up, as it senses victory is close. Fortunately, Dalt is with Semyaz, and the warpriest ducks a claw attack from the ghast. Then he ripostes with a mighty slash from his great sword that hews the undead fiend down.

He hurries to the aid of Gladriel and Ephai, offering what healing he can. Soon Freya and John regain control of their bodies, and more magical healing takes place. The fight has taxed the party to its limits, and they have little choice but to go back to Kelton to recover. The plan is to heal their wounds and return to the crypt. Hopefully, the ghouls have been fully cleared out and they can find the entrance to the caves and descend unopposed.

XP for Session #9
ghouls 7 x 400 = 2700
ghast 600
Total = 3300/5 = 660 each (Level UP!)

32. A crunchy rule system that makes the bar of entry too high for all but the most committed rpgers.

33. Character creation that takes hours and hours

30. Bug spirits and Chicago Containment Zone.

29. and dice pools so big you need a die roller app

28. An Intiative system that you need an app or spreasheet to track.

This was the first kickstarter I supported. I'm really excited to get my hands on this game. I'm glad to hear that some of the pdfs will be available in the not to distant future.

I thought since I started a journal for the new Pathfinder Campaign I started (Eyes of the Lich Queen), I might as well start posting my journals from the 5e campaign I spent the last year or so running.

This campaign was run weekly on roll20. It features material from the Beginner Box, Princes of the Apocalypse, plus a some other adventures and plenty of homebrew content. It took characters from level 1-10 over the course of 50 sessions (sessions being about 2.5 hours each on roll20).

I plan to post 2 sessions per week, until I've posted all the journals. Since they are already written it shouldn't be too difficult to maintain.

I'm returning to pathfinder after over a year of running other stuff (5e D&D, Dark Heresy, some Shadowrun). I've decided to convert the 3e Eberron Adventure, Eyes of the Lich Queen to Pathfinder and give it a go.

I have five players for this campaign and I'm running it pretty much entirely on roll20. We're gaming weekly on Tuesday evenings from about 8-10:30, so sessions are fairly short.

The starting characters are:

Gale Miller (slyph, fighter 4- dex based fighter with a high Int to give her a fair amount of skills, so that she somewhat doubles as a scout/tomb raider)

Bakji (samsaran, occulist 4, scholarly type obsessed with acquiring lost lore)

Jeysus Chryst (aasimar, cleric 4, believes he is the son of a god he calls "The One" and he is attempting establish his own religion. He of course is the prophet of said religion)

Gundar Judsen (human, fighter 4, big, heavily armored fighter with a great sword who kills things, and isn't great at much else)

We played our first session last night. Journal to follow soon.

???? (not sure yet what the final addition to the party will be, as my fifth player is on vacation.

I would say that the background mechanics, including the flaws, bonds and such, which are more formally baked into the the character creation process are what adds more emphasis to the role playing. There isn't anything to stop you from doing that kind of thing in previous editions, but it isn't hardwired into the game the same way as it is in 5e.

Dragon Knight wrote:

And the game emphasis roleplaying over roll playing.

How? Or more specifically, where?

GM's Notes

I'm caught up on my journals for this campaign now. We have completed Library of Last resort, though I did truncate it a bit by removing one of the trials. The heroes are ready to move into what I feel is the home stretch of the campaign. I'm looking forward to ploughing through the last few adventurers and wrapping it up.

I think the background mechanic also goes a long way to making a character feel "unique", but I guess that depends on what your idea of feeling unique is- some people want to a lot of mechanical options to make a character feel unique and other players can play two characters that are almost identically mechanically but have them feel completely different based on things like personality and background.

Well I do recall them talking about having alternate rules for things like lasting wounds and armor class as DR, and that sort of stuff in the DMG.

I think it would be neat if they had an online database of alternate rules, and then you could check off the ones you wanted to use in your game and print them as a sort of booklet of house rules. Alternatively, they could start publishing little "flavour rule books," that provide the alternate rules for creating different fantasy flavours with the system (e.g. a low fantasy booklet, a high magic booklet, a science/fantasy booklet etc...)- probably not something you would see early on, but maybe a bit further down the road.

Getting rid of the magic item economy is still a huge win as far as I'm concerned. I don't really care what the price of ball bearings is, although it should be probably be more like 100 ball bearings for 1 gp.

Well 2d8 or 2d10 damage for a cantrip isn't too crazy, but once they scale up to 3d8/3d10 they start to become a better option than a 1st level spell. The 4d8/4d10 cantrip will be less of an issue since it doesn't come into play until 17th level, and most people don't spend much time playing at that level. Plus at 17th level a 4d10 damage cantrip is still pretty minimal compared the other options that casters have.

Keep in mind weapon damage will increase due to multiple attacks. An 11th level wizard might bust out a 3d8 cantrip, but that doesn't compare to a fighter making 3 attacks in a round, and chances are the wizard will almost always have higher level spells he will use instead, so cantrips will probably remain a last resort.

So although on paper it looks kind of off, I'm going to reserve judgment on that issue until I play the game for a while. I have a feeling it won't be a problem.

Thanks for the insight, I'll keep an eye on this when I play the game.

I feel like these issues could be pretty easy to solve with some house rules. Just rule that a spell caster can concentrate on up to 2 or 3 spells at a time or make a few of the concentration spells non-concentration spells.

I find the amount of buffing with spells that starts to happen in Pathfinder/3e quickly gets pretty out of control (I often see characters with between 6-10 active spells on them), so I'm glad they're cutting that back, but I agree that it does need to be done in an intelligent way.

Jody Johnson wrote:

I could see changing Concentration to match how we want to play.

Maybe DC 5 or 1/4 damage dealt.
Or just use the Playtest version and damage doesn't disrupt except maybe on a crit.

There's going to be a lot of "season to taste" going on group by group.

My personall pet project is savage humanoids using high quality manmade gear (goblins wielding scimitars versus say clubs or sharp sticks).

I'm not sure that reducing the DC would entirely solve the problem, at least with defensive spells. There would still be a reasonable chance of the spell crumbling before it actually does anything. And remember that, while the DC goes up, at higher levels, the bonus for the roll usually doesn't.

I actually don't have a big problem with this, if the defensive spell is supposed to be "ablative" - that is, if it is supposed to, say, take some damage and then collapse. But none of the 5E spells work that way, so far. In fact, I can't help but think that the folks at WotC didn't even bother to run the numbers, on this one. And who knows what their "playtesters" were doing...

And, of course, none of this solves the problem that you cannot have more than one spell going at a time - a problem that might not even be a problem, if so many spells weren't concentration spells, in the first place. I mean, I know we don't want to over-buff, but does anyone really have a problem with the cleric putting up Shield of Faith and then Blessing the group? Or the wizard protecting himself, a little, with Blur, while using a Flaming Sphere or letting his buddy Spider Climb? And do we really want that Spider Climb to fail, when the wizard gets hit?

The best solution would probably be to just have less cocnentration spells, in the first place - especially, in the defensive department. As stands, there are far too many of them.

Yeah that seems weird. I don't like the idea of your cantrip being a better option than a 1st or 2nd level spell slot.

I like at will cantrips. I'm undecided on at will attack spells that scale up to 4d10 in a way that other spells don't.

The cap only applies to PCs (and in theory most small/medium sized humanoid races). I LOVE the cap on ability scores. I like that they say that the normal human maximum for an attribute is 18 (though they allow for adventurers to go up to 20). This keeps the game in the realm of a fantasy game, and makes the game feel a bit less like a super heroes game in a fantasy setting, which is what pathfinder and 4e feel like to me (especially at higher levels). As soon as attributes start going over 18-20 the game begins to feel more like a super heroes rpg and less like a fantasy rpg.

I like how some of the combat feats appear to be focusing on a "fighting style" instead of just a certain maneuver or weapon (e.g. "great weapon fighter").

No power attack- yeah!

Does anyone know if the core books will be released for sale as pdfs or will they only be available as print copies?

I really like how paizo sells pdfs of their core books for $10, and it would be nice if WotC followed that model.

Use the levels of exhaustion rules they provided. Explain to players that while they are considered "At-Will" using them does cause some level of exertion, so abusing the use of them could lead to gaining a level of exhaustion. It probably won't come up in play, but in game you can still justify why wizards can't stand on the battlements defending a city all day long by hurling cantrips at their enemies.

Diffan wrote:

At-Will magic (Cantrips / Orisons) - Taken from PF's at-will cantrips / 4E's at-will powers this allows caters to be casters throughout the day. Some people like it, others don't. It IS a fixed rule but I'm sure people can find ways to limit it. Personally I think it makes me playing a wizard feel more "wizardly" than "Um, I do nothing but "help action" to save on spell power" 3/4 encounters of the day.

This is the biggest stickler for me and am pretty sad they didnt put it on a dial. Maybe the PHB/DMG will give me some options to mod this unwanted feature.

diffan wrote:

Bounded Accuracy - This is one of the biggest draws for me. I'm getting really tired of he ridiculous bonuses, ACs, attack mods, etc. that I'm seeing with v3.5 / PF and 4E. I don't need to have PC's who has AC 29 - 32 at 13th level. It's just.....unnecessary and creates a HUGE immersion problem when viewed in conjunction with the rest of the world. I mean, my 13th level v3.5 Fighter has an AC 29. That means he can literally go into any small village and destroy EVERYTHING without fear of reprisal from the locals. Even if 30 villages attack him at once, his AC (even prone) is likely high enough (mechanically speaking) he can lay there for a while and not take damage. That, to me, is just dumb. With bounded accuracy, AC 18 is HIGH but still hit-able with a d20 + ability modifier.

I am 100% with you on BA. In fact, I would say its the crown jewel of 5E.

I think this is a good analysis. It hits on a lot the thoughts I was having about the new system. The lack of reliance on magic items is a huge plus for me with this system. As a GM I hate feeling like I need to give out stuff like cloaks of resistance, rings of protection, belts of strength etc.. just to allow the characters to supposably keep up with the math of the game.

I definitely love the 20 attribute cap, and that players are forced to choose between a feat or an attribute boost.

The backgrounds and charts with the ideals flaws etc... were more interesting to me than I anticipated. I really hope they hook players into thinking more about PCs as characters and less about them as "builds." I find the focus on character optimization in Pathfinder and 4e really tiresome. However, I realize that it doesn't have to be the focus in those systems, but I notice it being really prevalent, and I would prefer to play a version of the game that moves away from that.

One change that I'm hoping for in the DMG is an alternate xp system that moves away from xp for killing monsters. D&D is one of the only systems that awards xp nearly entirely for killing things. Pretty much every other game grants xp for accomplishing objectives. The D&D default xp system has a pretty profound affect, particularly on published adventures (e.g., pathfinder APs) because it forces the writers to add in extensive "filler encounters" just to ensure the appropriate xp is available. This can often have a negative impact on the pacing of the plot and can cause a storyline to drag out much longer than it should because its stuffed with extra meaningless encounters that really only exist to be source of xp. Sadly, even if the dmg provides an alternate xp system, it looks as though xp for killing things will continue to be the default, and thus will continue IMO to plague published adventures.

I'll post here what I posted in the Free PDF thread:

Initial reaction for me was "similar to the playtest with some changes." And for the most part I enjoyed the playtest. I think the true merits of the system is that it doesn't require TONS of rules to make fun and interesting characters. Coming from a mostly 3.5 and 4e perspective I can say I'm glad bloated numbers with dozens of effects all stacked together are mostly gone. Further I think monsters of lower levels will remain somewhat relevant for longer periods and magic isn't an assumed progression a character MUST have to stay relevant. Further, feats are actually worth their salt instead of what they were in 3.5 and 4e.

Some things about the system:

· Ability scores max out at 20. So that fighter character isn't pushing his Strength into the strata sphere. He'll probably start rounding out his lesser stats, which makes ability checks better.

· Ability score bumps can be swapped for feats. This makes obtaining them more significant.

· No bonus spells means that spell slots remain a very potent resource that will most likely be held onto longer for the proverbial "right time". This, I feel, puts more emphasis on dealing with encounters with a level of thoughtfulness instead of just tossing in Fireball at every opportunity.

· less is more approach. With 3.5 (and to a lesser extent 4e) it was an exclusion-based system. Meaning that TONS of mechanical obstacles were fabricated to make attempting them severely difficult except if you had a feat, skills, power, etc. If so, its often a moderate or even easy attempt. In D&D next, it appears that things function about the same and proficiency or a feat give you a minimal boost, but not so much that not having it implies any such attempt is near futile.

All in all, it scratches an itch that neither my 3.5/PF or 4E games appear to do.

I've played a lot of 2e, 3.5/Pathfinder and 4e, and I have a love/hate relationship with all the incarnations of the game. Each edition has things I like/love about them, but they also each feature plenty of things that I find really annoying. I'm hoping that this edition will combine a lot the things I love about each edition and get rid of a bunch of the stuff that drives me crazy. I think it's on its way to doing that, but I'm sure there will be things that annoy me about this edition as well.

One of the huge perks, for me as DM, of this edition is that they've finally gotten rid of the idea of magic items being something that the players are entitled to via a very scripted formula (i.e., wealth by level). This was something that was brought in during 3.5 and continued with 4e that is possibly my biggest pet peeve about those editions (I realize 4e kind of solved the problem with the inherent bonus rules, but still..). I'm really looking forward to a game where magical items are actually a real treasure instead of an expectation/entitlement.

I'm also pretty stoked that the new edition won't be as dependent on minis and tactical battlemaps. I'll still probably use them somewhat since I have so much of it from running 3.5/pathfinder and 4e, but since I generally have to lug it all on public transit to where we game it will be really nice for all that to be more optional.

I really hope they come out with some good adventure content. I feel like it will be fairly easy to convert pathfinder material to 5e, but it would be nice if they had some good stuff of their own. I'm curious to see how the first two big adventures look. I think it's interesting that they contracted them out to Kobold Press to handle. However, I doubt they'll be of huge interest to me since they seem fairly traditional and iconic, and I think the next campaign I run will need to be more offbeat (coming off Age of Worms and Rise of the Runelords).

I personally don't like the idea of committing all my gaming time to one game system. I'm married in real life, so that's plenty of monogamy. I'm happy to give new things a try. I've been running pathfinder pretty much straight for the past couple of years, so I'm looking forward to playing some different games. However, as I'm still in the midst of two campaigns, I don't see that happening for several months.

I'll definitely get the core books, and I may try to make my next fantasy campaign a D&D Next game. However, there's a bunch of other games I want to play as well: Edge of the Empire, Shadowrun, Numenera, Dark Heresy etc...

So many good games, so little time. (I'm looking forward to that first generation of gamers to reach the nursing/retirement homes, and seeing all these 70-80 year old dudes sitting around tables playing rpgs all day long. The younger gamers can start showing up at seniors residences to run games for them).

The stuff people are mentioning about "christmas tree effect" with magic items, high level combat bogging down with vast amounts of +s and minuses to always track, complex stat blocks for NPCs- these are all the things that bother me the most about running pathfinder and 4e (though 4e monster stat blocks are more simple than Pathfinder ones). The changes to those parts of the game I think are what will make D&DN feel different from pathfinder and 4e and be more to my taste.

One thing that I like about feats for 5e is that you can choose between taking a feat or doing an attribute boost. Thus, you can have one player at the table who has no interest in the added complexity of feats taking attribute boosts, while another player who enjoys the extra tinkering can take feats (and of course you can mix it up). I also get the sense that some sub classes will be more complex than others. All this suggests that players will have some freedom to decide individually how complex a game they want to play depending on the choices they make when they are levelling up.

Session #1, minecraft hutt edition

PCs

Rico Cortez (journal narrator, human, explorer/fringer)
Tarlek (human, explorer/trader)
4D1 (droid, smuggler/scoundrel)
Fucha (wookie, hired gun/marauder)
Sparky (rodian, technician/mechanic)

I woke up in a shit hole inn, in a shit hole spaceport, on the shit hole planet of Tattooine. I had spent the past several days in a drunken stupor. Most of my credits had been lost to booze, twi’lek dancers and sabac games, but the lost credits and the hangover were the least of my problems. Mom and the crew had left port without me. I was stranded and pissed off.

Mom and I had a pretty big row when we had arrived in port regarding my so called, “incessant carousing” and “gambling problem,” and I hadn’t talked to her or seen her in several days. Still I was back to the ship docks in time for our scheduled departure. I’d like to think that she wouldn’t have just abandoned me, but in a way that is preferable to the alternative, which was that she had left prematurely due to some sort of emergency. She had made her share of enemies over the years, and she did have a few debts to a local hutt named Bargo. Being in debt to a hutt is not something I’d wish on anyone, but mom didn’t have much choice. A couple of years back, The Princess Bride had gotten pretty banged up in an asteroid field and we were desperate for money for repairs. We had nowhere else to turn. In fact the whole reason we were on Tattooine was so that mom could pay back some of the money she owed. What if Bargo wasn’t happy with the amount she had offered him?

Whatever the reason for her leaving, it didn’t change the fact that I now needed to find a new crew to join. I cleaned myself up and spent a couple of days visiting the local Cantinas. I finally met up with a fellow willing to take me on. His name is Tarlek, and I get the sense that he’s a bit of a greedy bastard. He’s an explorer/trader, and he talks about capitalism and the free market as if it were some sort of religion. Now I like money as much as the next fringer but only insofar as it will pay for booze, twi’lek dancing girls and keeping the ship flying, but it’s a tough galaxy, so you can’t blame a guy for wanting to earn some credits. His crew is the usual mix of misfits. He has a rodian mechanic named Sparky and a big wookie first mate named Fucha that is clearly his muscle. A droid called 4D1 recently joined up with his crew, but I’m not sure what its area of expertise is. It’s a law enforcement model, but I don’t get the sense it does much enforcing of laws these days. I’m sure there is an interesting story there that I may hear one day if the thing gets chatty.

It seems that, like my mother, his wookie Fucha is also in a bit of debt to Bargo. I know this because while were in the Cantina, we were approached by a droid called 3P9. I recognized it immediately, as it is Bargo’s personal protocol droid. He explained to Tarlek that Bargo wants to meet with him and the crew about doing a favor that would work towards paying off some of debts owed by the Fucha.

After lunch we made our way across town for Bargo’s manor. The place was opulent and well guarded by gomorians. We soon found ourselves in Bargo’s personal audience chamber. Bargo himself is slim by hutt standards. One side of his face is badly mangled, as a result of a botched assassination attempt several years back. I found him repulsive and hard to look it, but I tried not to let it show. It’s best not to offend a hutt in his home. He told us about how he had won a share in an oridium mine in a sabaac tournament a while back, and how he needed us to go check out the mine. He wanted us to bring him back a report on its status as well as recover the expected proceeds for his share of the year’s take. By his estimates, he figured he should be earning about 100K credits a year from the operation. I had a feeling he was going to be disappointed. I wasn’t eager to be the bearer of bad news to the thing, but it didn’t look like I had much choice if I was going to prove myself to Tarlek. Bargo is friendly enough when he’s in a good mood, but he’s a ruthless cuss at heart, and he doesn’t like to be disappointed. I knew this could all end badly if we didn’t play our cards right.

Our little mission briefing was interrupted when a half dozen gomorians burst into the audience room. They seemed to have a beef with Bargo, and they were carrying vibroaxes on their backs. The two gomorians that were guarding Bargo rushed forward to protect their master and a brawl ensued. 3P9 ordered us to help defend Bargo. I drew my blaster pistol and looked to my new captain for a cue, but he seemed content to see how things played out. So far none of the gomorians had drawn weapons, so escalating things didn’t seem too smart, especially since the gomorians all had viboaxes and were only a few steps away. It didn’t take long for the six attackers to beat Bargo’s guards into unconsciousness. That was when I got worried. I thought they might go for their axes and come at us next. We held our ground and waited, but instead of attacking they started shouting at Bargo. I don’t know their nasty primitive language, but it was obvious they were pissed off at the hutt. He pretty much sat behind his giant desk and took their barrage of angry words without much to say back to them. Then they turned around and left. I breathed a sigh of relief as the tension left the air. I like a good tavern brawl, but taking on a half dozen well-armed gomorians isn’t the kind of fight I get into if I don’t have to. I was glad to see that Tarlek had some sense, and knew when to play it cool. Even the wookie was smart enough not to know when to hold back. Bargo didn’t seem interested in discussing the nature of their dispute, but I couldn’t help but think it might have something to do with our upcoming mission.

We set out the next day. Tarlek’s ship is called the Good Fortune. It’s a YT-1300, which is a very common freighter in the outer rim. I was born on a ship just like it, and mom had the thing until I was fifteen. Then she sold it off, and acquired a newer YT-2400. Fucha showed me my locker and my quarters. It brought back a lot of memories from when I was a kid. The wookie gave me some dirty looks, as I was settling in. It was clear that he would be keeping an eye on me, and he didn’t entirely trust me yet. He certainly made it obvious that I should not go anywhere near his stuff.

A couple of days later we came out of hyperspace in the vicinity of the planet where the mine was located. It was a small planet, and other than the mine it was basically uninhabited. Our scanners showed that its atmosphere was toxic, which explained the lack of life. The mine operation appeared to be the only thing happening on the rock. Fortunately there were some generators set up that were maintaining an energy field around the mine which served to provide breatheable air and keep out the toxic gases.

As we made our decent, we noticed two landing pads. The main one was empty but the secondary pad had a small freighter sitting on it. We landed, and entered the big ferrocrete bunker that housed the mining operation. The entry area was deserted and there was no one in the reception booth to greet us. We found fresh trandoshan blood in the booth. Something was definitely wrong here.

Next we entered a big room that served as a cantina. Here we found four dead bodies sitting at a table. They had clearly been miners, and it appeared that they had been killed by blaster fire. According to Sparky, the rodian, they had only died within the past couple of hours. At this point we all drew our weapons. It was quite possible that there were still hostiles nearby. I wondered if they were connected to the ship we saw on the landing pad. We discovered a functional cook droid in the kitchen. It was a bit addled and hadn’t seemed to notice that the four men at the table were dead. Sparky shut it down, and attempted to delve into its CPU to see if he could glean any useful intel from its memory banks. We didn’t discover a lot, but we did learn that it had a restraining bolt attached to it. I don’t know much about such tech, but Sparky told me they are devices used to control droids and override their programming. I’m not sure why anyone would bother to put such a device on a cook droid, but someone had. Sparky removed the bolt, but it was unable to tell us who was responsible for implanting it in the first place.

We continued our search of the place and soon came to the office of the mine manager. It was deserted. Tarlek and I searched a big filing cabinet while, Sparky delved into the computer system. Fucha and 4D1 kept watch. We found plenty of documentation regarding the status of the mine. It seemed that most of the easy to reach ordium had already been extracted, and what was left would be costly to extract and not particularly profitable as a result. It looked like Bargo was going to be disappointed. Sparky managed to hack into some security footage. We saw a small droid leave the bunker shortly before our arrival. It hopped into a cloud car and flew off. We also saw a trandoshan receptionist get shot by blaster fire, but the camera angle didn’t show the attacker. Around this time an automated alert triggered. It indicated that one of the generators supporting the shielding keeping out the toxic atmosphere had shut down. Other generators were still active, so we weren’t yet in danger, but I suspected that if we a lost a couple of more generators it could get bad fast. Time was of the essence.

We headed out to the secondary landing dock to check out the ship. There we discovered five crates of oridium ready to be loaded aboard and shipped off world. The ship itself was deserted, though we found a dead body nearby and on the ship there was an empty crate that once contained blaster weapons. Tarlek and I both saw opportunity. We could load up the ship and take off now before whoever had hit this place came back. I was pretty confident that we could get a good price for the ordium, and we could use the credits to pay off Bargo. We also had documentation regarding the status of the mine. The rest of the crew seemed good with the idea. It was likely that any miners still around were already dead, so there probably wasn’t much we could do for them. Fucha, Tarlek and I got to work loading the freighter. 4D1 remained on guard duty, and Sparky made himself busy prepping the ship for take off. All this took us about half an hour, but during that time we were fortunate, and no one came back to the ship.

Tarlek was worried about walking back through the bunker to the Good Fortune. He had a bad feeling that he’d run into hostiles. Thus I offered to fly the freighter and crew to the primary landing pad. There wasn’t room for two ships to land, so I had to do some fancy piloting to lower the clumsy freighter close enough to the landing pad to allow Tarlek, Fucha and 4D1 to hop out without crashing the freighter into the Good Fortune. If I had failed it could have been disasterous, as I would likely have badly damaged both ships. I pulled it off though, and I think I impressed Tarlek. Sparky stayed with me, and we flew into orbit where we rendezvoused with the Good Fortune.

I recalled a planet called Zion 7 that had a prominent mineral market. It was only a few systems away, and I figured it would be a good place to get quotes on the value of the ordium and sell it off. We headed for Zion 7. A couple of days later we were docked. I hit the streets with a couple of samples. It didn’t take long for me to learn that we would likely get 25,000 credits a crate, and there would be plenty of possible buyers on the planet. It seems that ordium is a commodity in demand. Tarlek and I negotiated a sale. The negotiations went well and we landed 150K for the cargo. We were tempted to take the money and run, but we didn’t need Bargo sending bounty hunters after us. We all agreed to hand him over the majority of the credits, as well as the old freighter. We kept 40,000 for ourselves, and we hoped he wouldn’t discover that we had skimmed some off the top, as he probably wouldn’t see it as a finder’s fee the same way we did.

Next we returned to Tattooine. Our meeting with Bargo went as well as could be expected. He wasn’t pleased about the status of his mine, but that was outside of our control. He also wasn’t happy that we hadn’t bothered to find out who was responsible for the attack and if there were any survivors, but we did have credits to offer him and a ship that he could sell off. We encouraged him to direct his frustration and anger towards the hutt from whom he had acquired the mine from in the first place, and he seemed content to do so.

All in all, I count the mission as a success. Fucha paid off some of his obligation to Bargo. I made a decent enough impression on Tarlek that I think he’ll keep me on. We came out ahead several thousand credits, and no one had to fire a shot. Now it’s time to leave Tattooine and find new opportunities. Currently I have only the gear I had been carrying when I went into port. A lot of my more expensive equipment had been left aboard the Princess Bride and was lost to me, so one of my first priorities will be to buy some much needed equipment. I also plan to set aside some money to save for the entry fee to one of the outer rim’s biggest sabaac tournaments. Hopefully I’ll be able to resist spending all those credits on drinks and dancers, but we shall see. I have never been very strong willed when it comes to my vices. I look forward to future adventures, and I hope that wherever mom is she’s doing well, unless of course she did ditch me on purpose. In that case, f*+& her.

So I've put my Age of Worms campaign on hold for the next while, and convinced one of my players to give a me a bit of GMing break. So I get to be a player for a while, a role I very rarely get the chance to take on. He's decided to run some Edge of the Empire. Last night we played through what I believe was the intro adventure in the GM screen, and after that he's planning to run a published adventure called Beyond the Rim, which I believe is a 96 page hardcover, and the first full adventure FFG has released for this line. Hopefully I'll get to play through it, and after that I'll go back to finishing up Age of Worms.

I decided I'd try to keep up an in character journal of this campaign.

It looks like they have two big adventure modules listed to come out around the same time the core books are released. Both are tied together and seem to revolve around the Red Wizards and Cult of the Dragon working together to free Tiamat from imprisonment in the nine hells. I have no idea if they will be any good or not. I'm personally not eager to start up another big save the world campaign since I'm currently running Age of Worms and Rise of the Runelords, but I'll definitely keep an eye on what sort of reviews they get.

It looks like they just posted covers and release dates for a bunch of 5e stuff on the WotC site.

Once I wrap up the current pathfinder campaigns I have on the go I'll probably switch to D&D Next. I really want to play a D&D system without magic item dependency and stat bloat.