A terrible evil is coming! And a family of Gur nomads are the only ones who seem to be taking precautions to protect themselves. They even went so far as to steal from the goodly people who frequent the Crossing Inn. But a group of good-hearted adventures looking to make names for themselves stepped in and offered to recover the stolen property and return the Gur thieves to the authorities.
In the past two sessions we learned of four Gur men, what they stole, and where they were headed. The PCs recovered missing gems in COINS, stolen weapons in SWORDS, and a broken wand in STARS. This time out the PCs seek Papa who stole rare herbs and headed towards the foreboding and unwelcoming Quivering Forest in GLYPHS.
The Crossing Inn. A stop-over for travellers heading in and out of Phlan. However, with Phlan currently under the control of the Green Dragon Vorgansharax, the inn hasn’t seen nearly as many travels of late. Add to that the unseasonable cold and the lingering fog and it’s no wonder the inn has fallen on tough times.
As the five factions mount a heroic effort to reclaim Phlan, the PCs were asked to visit the Crossing Inn and gather intel while awaiting further instructions. When they reached the inn they discovered that a family of nomadic travellers who’d been staying in the area had tricked the locals, stolen some good, and fled the inn the night before. The heroes, all looking to make names for themselves, volunteered to track down the thieves, recover the stolen goods, and bring the perpetrators back to the inn to face justice.
In the last write-up we covered the introduction including who these thieves were and what was taken. We also followed the PCs’ adventures as they undertook the first mission called COINS. In that one they recovered a box of stolen gems for a visiting merchant. This week the PCs undertook two more missions called SWORDS and STARS as they tried to recover two more stolen items: a wagon full of weapons and a magic wand.
Greetings readers! After a long break Dungeon’s Master is back in business and will be posting new articles (and Friday Favourites) on a regular basis once again.
It only seems fitting that our first new post be about D&D public play. There’ve been a lot of changes to the D&D Adventurers League since our last blog post and we won’t get into all of that just yet. However, with the discontinuation of the D&D Encounters program our weekly public play write ups will need to undergo a few changes as well starting with our title. From this point forward our weekly recaps will carry the D&D AL title since we can’t call it D&D Encounters any more.
With the passing of D&D Encounters we had to decide what we were going to do at our FLGS on Wednesday nights. Over the past few seasons we’ve run the hardcover adventure, or at least the part that was provided as a free PDF download. Although the new Curse of Strahd hardcover is outstanding, we’ve decided that we’re going to save it for home play. Instead we’re going to run the adventures formerly called D&D Expeditions week to week.
This season the shorter adventures form one linear, continuous story over the span of 14 modules. Each new adventure builds upon the one that came before it. At my FLGS we decided that running these was better than running the hardcover which we knew we’d never finish in the allotted time of the Curse of Strahd season. So this season my weekly recaps will cover the modules in order as we play them starting with DDAL04-01 Suits of the Mist.
What do you do when you find yourself in possession of a stolen Red Dragon egg? What if you knew where to bring it but couldn’t get it there because it was too big to fit through the exit? Simple, find another exit that will accommodate the egg’s size. Oh, and don’t get caught with it or allow it to get cracked in the process. Just another day in the life of an adventuring party wandering through the Duergar city of Gracklstugh.
This week at Face to Face Games in Toronto we had fewer players than normal and only ran four tables, but we did have two new walk-ins so that helped round out the tables we did run. My group had six including one of the new players. He’d been playing at another FLGS and was new to our store, but not to D&D organized play. The party looked like this: Group A had the Human Monk, Human Rogue, and Half-Orc Barbarian; Group B had the Elf Wizard, the Dragonborn Fighter, and the new character a Halfling Rogue (Assassin).
Last week we only had the three players in Group A so they explored the Whorlstone Tunnels while Group B stayed by the entrance waiting for Droki. When we started this week the party was still divided into two groups.
Dancing Myconids, hallucinogenic spores, the blessing of the Demon Princess Zuggtomy, swarms of biting insects, a two-headed dog, a two-headed giant, and spellcasting Derro Dwarves were just some of the things the party faced during the last session while exploring the Whorlstone Tunnels. Three PCs were knocked unconscious and captured by the giant Ettin while two others planed for a daring rescue. Can things get any stranger? You bet they can; read on and find out.
This week at Face to Face Games in Toronto my table was down to only three players. The rest of the tables were all full with five and six players each. Fortunately the three players who were present in my group were the guys playing the three PCs who were knocked unconscious and captured at the end of last week’s session. That made things a lot easier for me as the DM to run. It also gave these three players a lot more face time during play. The party this week was made up of a Half-Orc Barbarian, Human Rogue, and Human Monk.
After battling an Umber Hulk and a few mad Dwarven Barbarians, the party was really looking forward to the normalcy and predictability that comes with city adventuring. So it was onward to Gracklstugh. The NPCs Buppido (a Derro Dwarf) and Hemeth (a Duergar) were both from Gracklstugh so they gave the PCs a bit of a primer on the way so they’d know what to expect when they arrived.
This week at Face to Face Games in Toronto we ran four full tables. My table was back down to five as open of my regulars had to cancel. The rest of the party included a Human Rogue, Elf Wizard, Dragonborn Fighter, Half-Orc Barbarian, and Human Monk. Important to note was that the Wizard was the only character to speak Dwarven which would make things a lot more interesting in a Duergar city.
Escaping the Ooze Temple was an ordeal that the party was happy to put behind them. They continued their journey towards Gracklstugh through the winding passages of the Underdark. For days they traveled, consuming all of their food and water stores and finding precious little to replenish it. Exhaustion was beginning to set in as some PCs began to go without food and water.
This week at Face to Face Games in Toronto I finally had my full group back together. The party of consisted of the following six characters: Human Rogue, Elf Wizard #1, new Elf Wizard #2, Dragonborn Fighter, Half-Orc Barbarian, and Human Monk. The player running Wizard #2 has now rebuilt his character three times. Hopefully he’ll be comfortable with this build and stick with it.
The party was still recovering after seeing the Demon Lord, Demogorgon, with their own eyes. Somehow Demogorgon was lose in the Underdark. A truly terrifying predicament. With Sloobludop destroyed behind them, the party needed to decide where to go next as they sought safe haven and a means to get back to the surface.
We ran four full tables of six at Face to Face Games in Toronto this week. My group had the following characters: Human Monk (3), Human Rogue (4), Drow Paladin (4), Elf Wizard (3), Dragonborn Fighter (3), and Human Druid (3). The party also had a few of the NPCs who escaped from the Drow prison with them including Buppido, Jimjar, Eldeth, and Stool. They’d also picked up a new companion, a Duergar named Hemeth who was to be sacrificed with them to the Deep Father in Sloobludop.
Welcome to another exciting season of D&D Encounters. This is season 21 if you count from when the program originally launched, or season 3 since the launch of 5e. The new storyline is called Rage of Demons and this season’s adventure is called Out of the Abyss. The Encounters season has the characters wandering the Underdark as they struggle to learn what’s happening and why there are so many Demons wandering around. Along the way they meet numerous interesting NPCs and begin to understand that the Underdark is a dangerous and beautiful place. However, it will take all of their skills, wits, and magic to survive long enough to reach the safety of the surface world once again. Do you have what it takes? Visit your FLGS and find out.
We had a great turnout at Face to Face Games in Toronto. We ran four tables of six (24 players total), but will be expanding to five tables next week as we know more players will be participating this season. At Hairy T North we had five tables that could barley handle the 29 players who showed up. Everyone wants to play this season of D&D Encounters.
My table had the following PCs: Gnome Wizard (Folk Hero), Gnome Fighter (Sage), Half-Orc Barbarian (Folk Hero), Half-Orc Fighter (Outlander), Elf Ranger (Outlander), and Elf Wizard (Acolyte). We’ll see how the absence of any healing magic works out this season. I’m guessing badly.
On September 9 we began the new season of D&D Encounters – Out of the Abyss. As D&D Encounters returns to a regular weekly schedule and everyone gets back to playing more or less the same encounters each week we’ll get back to doing new Recounting Encounters episodes every week. Links to the weekly show will be included in the weekly recap articles (the week 1 recap will be posted shortly).
So what have we been doing over the past few months you may be asking? Over the summer some groups at our FLGS continued with Princes of the Apocalypse, and by the end most were at very different points in the adventure with none anywhere near the end. Other groups gave up on PotA once the material in the free DM PDF was completed. Tables at our FLGS who stopped decided instead to run D&D Expeditions to fill the time on Wednesday nights.
With everyone doing different things and playing different games we found it difficult to keep to a regular Recounting Encounters schedule with meaningful content. But we did manage to record a few new episodes. Today we’re sharing those podcasts. You can click the links below to listen or download each episode. These are also now available through iTunes.
A terrible evil is coming! And a family of Gur nomads are the only ones who seem to be taking precautions to protect themselves. They even went so far as to steal from the goodly people who frequent the Crossing Inn. But a group of good-hearted adventures looking to make names for themselves stepped in and offered to recover the stolen property and return the Gur thieves to the authorities.
