I have two friends. You might know them as Galin and Sel Carim. Time was they HATED D&D. They had listened to some of the norky wierdos at the local game store and thought D&D was all orcs standing around in 10'x10' underground rooms guarding treasure chests there supposedly only to enrich adventurers. They constantly railed against it in contrast to "good" roleplaying games like Shadowrun or L5R. They bought Munchkin's Guide to Power Gamers and laughed and laughed and I always sadly shook my head.
Finally a threw down the gauntlet. I would run them a D&D game as it was meant to be, in an established setting (in this case Forgotten Realms) and they would love it, and then I would be getting their appology. Heh. They agreed--provisionally.
The Rules:
1) It was to be run ultracanon. RAW was to be the alpha and omega here. No Grimcleaver alternate patch rules, no reinterpretation of things I didn't care for, starting gold would be what it said in the books it should be, experience point awards would be what the books said they should be. The game would have to stand on it's own. I upped the ante on this by adding that there would be nothing added to the game that did not appear in one of the books, or could not be directly extrapolated from it. Every monster, race, class, spell, magic item--everything straight out of a canon source book.
2) It would be a 20th level game. They would bend the rules to the limit. No conservative characters here. This would be their chance to charge the bars of what they considered a set of goofy rules to turn them into Sherman's neckties. I agreed, but added a requirement that if the characters were 20th level that they would need 20 levels worth of backstory and depth and be what they are--aging heroes on the doorstep of retirement with the scars to show for it.
The characters are in the Decyphering the Mirror post (same game) but here's the overview:
Rhondel: Formerly General Talthea of the North, the Great Murdering Wind, the Dread Ice General, Bane of the Orcs. Now a merchant of oozes, slimes, and jellies that he breeds himself in a cozy, if unwholesome, ranch in the wilderness of the Dales. Plagued eternally by the duality of the pleasant family man and snooty academic versus the meglomaniac tyrant who takes into his hands the fates of those who live and who die. Interestingly he came to the idea of oozes when as a general in the army he was camped in series of caverns with the survivors of his unit whilst outside oozes moved about devouring the screaming dying of both sides. No torment over their killing, no misery or nightmares. They committed their atrocities cleanly, without being haunted by them, and he discovered a great love and envy for them.
Thorin: A paladin of Torm and defender of his daughter Shanalee in an unending conflict that has raged his whole life against his elven wife, Selesia, a follower of the Maiden of Pain, Loviatar. Once long ago the two were lovers in Tethyr, during the perrenial conflicts between the humans and elves there. They were both rejected of their people and went to live in a colony of followers of Lurue, goddess patron of outcasts. He became a bard in those early days to soothe the melancholy and fits of rage his once serene wife suffered, but threw that all away when one day to his horror, she and much of the villiage converted to the faith of Loviatar and sought to torture Thorin into conversion. Those that refused to convert were slaughtered or fled. Thorin and his infant daughter sought for retribution at the glades of Lurue, and when none was available, fled. Eventually he found a new patron in Torm, and became a paladin, wandering the land fighting continal wars against Selesia and the growing darkness within him--as he discovers that in his lashing out at everything evil, striking out at those he hates in blood soaked vengence, that he is in reality fighting an inner pain.
Azelmaer: A gnomish techsmith and cleric of Gond who abandoned the faith of the pastoral gnomish community of her birth to travel to Lantan in revelry over the fabulous gifts of the wonderbringer. Her path made her a member of a theives guild, and a bard, to gain the means and the knowledge to seek after rare discoveries and acquire them. Acting in the moment, forsaking lasting friendships or relationships she lived on the move, not thinking of consequences and leaving a chain of both good and ruin in her path--never meaning to of course. After hearing about the horrible murder of her theives guild friends in Waterdeep after helping a strange dark man break into a buried tower in the deserts of Netheril she has become plagued by demon attacks and must now discover what that item was that she helped the man recover, and why once he had retrieved it, he had smashed it and disappeared.
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Wow. If anyone is up to this, it's you, Grim. I can't wait to see how this pans out.
You are a braver man than I.
The character backgrounds sound pretty solid, if a bit 'out there' for my taste. A 20th-level game is hard to run right out of the gates, backstories or not. I know because I've tried twice, never to any degree of satisfactory success (my players enjoyed it, but that's mostly because they got to play 20th-level characters). Good luck and keep us posted. I'll be watching eagerly for updates.
Now that the game is over, here's the grand reveal:
The party starts in Teziir, a colorful trade port on the shores of the Dragon Coast. There they meet a young halfling girl named Ryn who informs them of her mission to "save the world" from an orc god planning to come back into the world. She wields a prophecy that she intends to fulfil, though it is written in draconic and is difficult to interpret, full of strange imagery regarding some conflict during a ritual enacted to bring about the destruction of the second great creator race.
It turns out as they set out to counter the return of this orc god that they discover that Ryn is in fact Ryndaelious, a young copper dragon who was magically changed into halfling form, her identity magically rewritten to turn her into a cypher to prevent the coming destruction and to discover a solution to the dragon rage which has been driving all of dragon kind mad. The prophecy was the work of an ancient blind gold dragon named Lianwyr who had become host to a powerful elemental fire wyrd, consuming the dying lava pool she was connected to and binding the portal she manifested through into his own flesh, using his immunity to fire to protect him from the ferocity of the conduit.
In their efforts, a key to their struggle involves constructing a "Helm of Righteousness" a helm of alignment reversal empowered with a spark of Beshaba, a portion of the divine essence of the goddess of misfortune, captured when she was split apart from the goddes of fate, Tyche. According to Ryn, the helm is needed to convert a vampire into a good vampire, somehow vital to foiling the ritual, but Rhondel becomes increasingly interested in using it instead to redeem Selesia, Thorin's Loviatan wife and bring the old paladin some happiness after decades of pain. He goes in search of Lianwyr and posing him this question gets a second prophecy, one of two paths. One, the path where the helm is used to redeem Selesia, in which thousands of people will die, but the world will gain two champions clad in white, and the other, where it is used against the ritual where two lives will be lost but the others saved.
Soon however the drums of battle sound when a huge invasion of orcs make its way toward Teziir, armed with wooden stakes mined from the forests at the fringes of the Giant's Run mountains--apparently hunting the vampire they need for the ritual. Teziir forms an army to its defense, strangely large and enthusiastic as the collected clerics bolster a huge response. The battle is lead by a Harper named Kith Kerzan, uncomfortable with leadership but seeing the need for order amongst the rabble of defenders. The players join in the defense--finally lead by the legendary General Talthea, once again clad in his ghastly ice armor and returned to turn back the hordes. The battle is savage, the orcish army is five times larger than the defenders, and in the end nearly everyone on both sides die. Leading the orc army is a strange black robed man, a shade from ancient Netheril wearing a magical mask created by Thoth during the Orcgate Wars to control an entire bloodline of the mightest of orcs granting them iron discipline and fanatic morale. It is this shade, Tchariach, a divine seeker of Shar--goddess of darkness, who once appeared to Azelmaer in the guise of a bard chasing rumors of a great treasure in Netheril, and whose demons flayed the flesh from all of her thieves guild friends.
It turns out that after years spent in the Plane of Shadow, that Tchariach became frustrated with the stagnacy of life there. In his magical research discovered the Lady of Night and the true purpose of the shades as her children. He devoted his life to her, in aquiring the pieces she needed for her various plots, scheming and manipulating others to fulfil her plans to end everything. It was he who assembled the peices for the ritual and infiltrated the Cult of the Dragon to supply them the items required to create what they believe to be a dracolich, but which will in reality create an undead vessel for the orcish god of pestilence to wipe all of dragonkind from the face of Faerun forever. His ally in this, was a powerful orcish favored soul named Ugrash Stinking-Sore, a wretched creature who hoped through his service to Yurtrus to earn his favor, and to provide a sacrifice to him so great that he might earn immortality by gaining immunity from the god of death and decay. In exchange he became a Cancer Mage, a loathesome accumulator of illnesses with a sentient cancerous mass as a familiar.
Before departing the battlefield Tchariach unleashes one last fiend, a sorrowsworn demon. The demon attacks Selesia, who had been moved enough by the words of a great elven stateman and poet laureat from Evermeet summoned by a wish spell in an earlier conflict. Thorin attempted to redeem her after rescuing her from her Loviatan cohorts, who had turned on her as an infidel--claiming her love for her daughter was blinding her and softening her and coming between her and her worship of Loviatar. Not knowing the words to say, he used one of the wishes from a ring of wishes to know what could be said to change her heart--and got the foremost poet and statesmen of the elves in response. The elven statemen died in his effort, but the effect was successful and something in her heart was touched, and so in magical disguise she went to fight beside Thorin in the fight with the orcs.
The sorrowsworn demon unlocked her deepest regrets and sorrows and she snapped, flying into a berzerker rage against Thorin and the rest. leaping to attack Talthea. Temporal stasising her, the group dispatched the demon, and then chained her up in order to undo the demon's effects on her. In reality Talthea used programmed amnesia to perform subtle alterations to her memories and her emotional reactions to him, to help smooth the slope toward her redemption, but without Thorin identifying his unbidden tampering with his wife's mind.
The alterations made her softer, still evil and bitter, but more amenable to Thorin's implorings. Together Shanalee and Thorin try to work with Selesia, a willful association with evil that leaves Thorin stripped of his paladin powers pending an Atonement spell. That night Selesia scourges herself to discover why she has lost the hate in her heart, and why the presence of Loviatar feels so far from her. In return she recieves a cold reply. She must either kill her daughter, whose love has earned her Loviatar's jealous scorn--OR she may this one time find release from Loviatar's service if she will go to the temple of Mystra and don the Helm of Righteousness. Selesia stalks upstairs after Thorin leaves and tries to kill Shanalee, but cannot do it. She screams a bitter howl and Shanalee awakes to see her mother with twin swords slammed into her headboard and panics, heartbroken at the sudden betrayal. Selesia flees and Shanalee huddles broken. Selesia makes her way to the temple and by trickery, pleading and finally begging is finally given the helm, and she dons it--becoming lawful good. Thorin discovers what happened to his daughter and goes to tell the high cleric of Torm, and about the change in his wife. The high cleric has him invite her to the temple, promising he'll handle it. When she arrives she is arrested and taken caged to be tried for her crimes. Angry Thorin is forced to face that though her alignment was changed through magic, that she is still accountable under the law for what she's done. He goes home to Shanalee and finds her traumatized and unwilling to leave the house. She says she wants justice and revenge on her mother and becomes enraged when Thorin tries to defend her. All of this, and it turns out that the vampire the badguys seek have fled to Westgate--aparently as part of a larger plan. They must go now if they are to stop them. Heartbroken Thorin goes with the others to Westgate. Ships have come from the Dragon Coast to retrieve a vampire, and the purple robed figures aboard unleash greater barghests upon the city to create chaos while they track their quarry. The party discover that the majority of the vampires escaped into a manor house and find that it has a secret basement level of dungeon cells and a large pleasure brothel now filled with the bodies of bloodless women, throats torn out.
From there was a painting, a teleportation focus to an underdark sanctuary of Gorgauth, the archdevil demigod of political corruption, connected to the Night Masks, the vampiric theive's guild whose safehouse the manor was. Gorgauth provides assistance to the party, suprizingly, though the chamber is filled with his kyton minions leering at the party wearing the faces of their loved ones. They are given various helpful magic items to aid them on their journey, including an amulet of the planes and a robe of powerflessness that they may trick Tchariach into donning. When asked why he helps them, he smiles a secretive smile and says that countering the plans of his fellow evil gods is the last little pleasure he has from home.
In the attempt to secure another spark of Beshaba, the party adventures around in various directions, finally Rhondel seeking the council of Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun. Though the conversation is largely snide insults and ego posturing between the two archmages, the result is that Blackstaff involves one of his allies, a cleric of Savras named Omrick, charging him to go to Candlekeep and research the prophecy.
Coming together again, the party magically seeks out Tchariach and finds out he's headed to Candlekeep. Likewise the discover that Severel has infiltrated the prison in Teziir, killing several guards and escaping with Selesia. Rhondel uses his new archmagic to create a mass resurrection spell, and brings back to life all the thousands of people who died in the battle with the orc hordes.
They go to Candlekeep to stop Tchariach, but the library is ruined in the fighting. Azelmaer is finally able to kill Tchariach, but in searching his body, they find that he has not only no correspondence on him--but in fact little besides a few medium power magic items, as if he were sent there knowingly to die. Omrick tells them that he's been researching the Helm of Righteousness from the prophecy and he believes it to be more than just a helm of alignment reversal, but a major artifact given to a martyred cleric of Helm by Helm himself in the year that the corrupted church was clensed and the last High Watcher was thrust down from his position. It is said the god's helm can never be touched by any living being, nor worn by any who is not good. A good vampire would fit the bill.
They meet up with Saedrigar, a good vampire who has been fighting against the drow in Cormanthor, and together make their way to the abandoned cloister of Helm in the northern mountains. After passing a variety of tests of the heart to prove their worthiness they recieve the armor.
Now they have but to meet up with Talthea, who has been caught up in a battle between a treasure vault plane belonging to Tiamat cloistered in the plane of fire and the icy wastes of the far northern glaciers. Finally killing the hellfire wyrm and his army of draconic baatzu, and casting them to the ice below in a shower of gore, he finds himself confronted with the Frostmaiden herself, Auril. She is impressed with his cold and cruelty and unabashed power and offers to make him a god. Caught up in his bloodlust and surging power he accepts, not understanding that she means him to be her consort. He transforms into a demigod, sprouting a spread of icesickle crown tines out of his general's helmet, fixing it to his head and a massive beard of horefrost. When he meets the party next, he is radiating chilling ice and evil. Worse, his presence prematurely activates the armor of Helm and the godly essence activates and begins stalking the now evil demigod. In conversing with Auril, Talthea challenges her, demanding to know why he is evil now and spurns her when she addesses him as her love. Furious she cuts him off from his powers and leaves him to face the armor of Helm as a powerless godling. He scrabbles through the forests crying out to the other gods to help him, when finally the footsteps behind him stop. Selesia challenges the fragment of Helm's essence, daring it to try and pass by her, daring it to touch her and kill her knowing that she is prophecied to be a great champion and protector of Toril. She then leaps over the suit and cuts the straps on the helm prying it off to an explosion of light. Saedrigar is nowhere to be seen, consumed by the light of Torm's divine essence, and the armor falls in a smoking heap.
Events are accelerating. They recieve a dream challenge from a creature named Kolukat, a death giant lich. He tells them that he is their ultimate foe, that the plans they are taking on are the plans which he has spent a millenium putting into motion. He shows them the great giant empire of long past and how the dragon kingdoms destroyed it, and how the survivors had put themselves into stasis rather than live without their empire. They were found by the Netherese, who had become allies of their decendants, the ash giants. Kolukat was a one of these last ash giants from a forgotten golden age, and with them had taken upon themselves foul rites to stand against the phaerimm onslaught that consumed netheril even though doing so condemned his soul. He had become a lich in the attempt to gain the power he needed for revenge. Now having lost two heritages, he would eradicate dragonkind forever. The netherese and ash giants had tracked and bound a fearsome creature, an abomination born of the dying anger and desparation of the giantish gods of their great age--a great raging horror called Golgiops. It was bound with 12 keys, one of which Azelmaer had been tricked into helping destroy. Kolukat would unleash the plague dracolich onto Faerun with a virulent plague that would kill all of the dragons combined with releasing Golgiops into Dragon Aerie, the plane of the dragon gods, to destroy them as well.
Praying for a miracle, Azelmaer brings their crisis to Gond, who tells her their problems come from chasing after dusty mumblings written on parchment rather than using their own clever industry. He tells her that not all the peices are on the board anymore, and that when the time comes the hidden piece will make its move and then they'll have to think quickly and wisely...and if they want a vampire then he'll give them one. When her eyes open they have a mechanical vampire, an effigy with them, who not only can wear the armor of Helm, he can apparently control its enchantments.
Tracking Kolukat they make their way to the badlands above Cormyr on the borders of the Anauroch Desert. There a great band of desert nomads, abberations, and Zhents had been gathered into an army by Kolukat to head north and attack the lair of a nearby blue dragon, the very one the Cult of the Dragon was persuading to be changed into a dracolich, and whose ritual had been corrupted by Tchariach and Ugrash. The battle was a fearsome one and the maimed dragon was forced to flee back to it's layer, and as the group made their way through the warded lair they finally found the ritual room, where the change was already beginning. The portal to Dragon Aerie was open and the undead god-dragon began to stir. Kolukat raised the last key above his head as the heroes charged him. In that moment he disintegrated, screaming horribly, and imploded. Behind him stood the clone of Tchariach with a Hoop of Sphere Control. With a blossom of magic missiles he destroyed the last key, unleashing Golgiops not into Dragon Aerie, but rather into Faerun itself. Half the group grab onto the dracolich as it flies overhead out of the passage, including the effigy in the activated armor of Helm, Ryn and Selesia. The rest stayed to stop Golgiops, a huge titan with a body shrouded in shadow from which 16 arms protruded, the raging fire-wreathed spirits of tormented undead giants spawning around it constantly, possessing the bodies of all within reach. They battled intensely, Talthea finally realizing as Tchariach escaped what the significance of the hoop was. He had Azelmaer cast daylight, because somewhere in the darkness was a sphere of annihilation. The light caused Golgiops to recoil, covering his now illuminated malformed face defensively. At that point Thorin attacked, but was scooped up and swallowed. Talthea tried exercising control over the sphere and slowly began mastering it, but feared to use it on Golgiops until Thorin was freed. Azelmaer summoned a huge earth elemental to grapple open Golgiops' mouth and in a frenzy of attacks Thorin savaged the creature, brutally damaging it and forcing it at bay as Talthea harnessed the power of the sphere of annihilation to destroy it. Meanwhile above the battle against the dracolich continued. As the Helm effigy delivered the last killing blow it used its disease breath weapon on Ryn, infecting her. Azelmaer once again pled to Gond for a miracle, and he took her off to someplace safe where the disease could be contained and where she could be stabalized until a cure could be found. The End.
First and foremost, I will say...
Grimcleaver, you won the bet.
You ran that game in rare form and yes, DnD is a cool setting.
For those of you who may not know, this game started over a year ago, before I started posting on this site. Though I had gamed for many years, I hadn't played much DnD and to be honest, I didn't think much of the DnD in general. My oppinion of DnD has improved dramatically since then, I've come to love Forgotten Realms, Plansescapes, Dark Sun and others.
One of my favorite sceenes in the game was the moment when Selicia put on the powered up helm of alignment reversal. It was a tense moment. Thorin had caught Selicia trying to steal the helmet from Rhondel's study. Thorin stopped her from assaulting Rhondel but upon realizing that she wanted to use the helm, pleaded with Rhondel to let her use the helm. Rhondel agreed to go and fetch the helm. When he returned he suprised us both by using temporal stasis on Selicia (nat 20 iniative).
Then he told Thorin the prophesy. If you save Selicia, many will be sacrificed. You must choose between saving her, and saving countless others. Rhondel continued "you are a paladin, you know what the right choice is. Will you save the one or the many"
Thorin, with a tear in his eye drew his weapon and took a ready stance "I choose the many"
Then Rhondel surprised me, he hit Thorin with he ring of Telekenesis and pined him to the wall saying "You deserve happines Thorin, but you had to make the right choice. I have already commited many atrocities, If anyone will doom the world it will be ME! This act will be on my hands." At which point he dissmissed the temporal stasis and handed the helm to Selicia.
Anyhow, I thought it was a great sceene that deserved to be detailed. Grim ran in wonderfully and Galin did a great job roleplaying Rhondel (when he pulled the ring of telekenesis I was completely shocked).
I think that this experiment should prove, first and foremost, that the system does not define the game.
Rulesets abound, and damn near well any of them could have been used by Grimcleaver to play out the same epic storyline (yes, even bunnies and burrows). D&D is merely one of the more easily understood rulesets. Just as easily, Grimcleaver could have run fifty floors of orc and pie. What makes a game great is those who play. It sounds to me like you've got some outstanding players, Grimcleaver!
Game on!
TK