Dale's Campaign Primer

Well I told you that I’d need to give you a simple background of Dale’s world so you can better understand it while listening to any podcasts of it, so here it is.

(This assumes I get around to publishing the podcast.)

The name of the land is the Isle of Errin, a land mass probably more akin to a continent than an island.

The “civilized” main races of Errin are elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans. The humans have three subsets, the indigenous humans, the “new” men, both of which are your standard humans, and humans of the wild, which use the half-orc racial modifiers.

The gods are: Corellon for the elves, Moradin for the dwarves, for the indigenous humans Herne (a woodland god) and Kalannen (a military god), and for the New Men there are Mahnway (the one god), Saint Michael (Mahnway’s greatest servant), and Lucifur (the betrayer), and the newest god Saint Leonard (the traveler).

Orcs are a naval power equivalent to the Vikings. They raid the coastal cities still, but are no longer the threat they used to be.

The indigenous races of Errin lived in harmony with one another and the land - prior to the coming of the New Men from a land across the sea.

When the New Men came, they were ignored for a time as they seemed to pose no threat. But more and more of them came every day and they spread out which lead to a great war between them and the indigenous men.

The New Men had a large force of people looking for conquest, but the indigenous peoples had superior magic. The war was over in one day.

Before the New Men could be driven back to the sea, Kalannen stopped them for he considered this a slaughter and would rather see peace be made with these men.

Two of the leaders of the New Men, Baron Andreas and Baron Barcum, agreed to peace and accepted the many conditions about their borders and other such minutiae.

The third leader, Baron Kordt, did not want peace but had been injured and unable to stop his fellow barons because of a coma. He wanted to return to war but could not. If he were to break the treaty and return to war, the other two barons would be required to declare war on him. He did not sign the treaty.

To enforce the treaty the honorable Order of Saint Michael were placed in charge of policing the borders and guaranteeing that the three barons upheld their side of the peace treaty. This was another reason for Baron Kordt to not declare war.

Wizards have taken a new prominence recently with several schools of magic having been founded recently in every territory. The growth of magic also attracted magical creatures, both good and evil.

Baron Kordt had sponsored a tower in his land and allowed several arcane magicians to practice dark magic. Their recklessness caused the tower to explode. This warped many people into monstrosities and opened up a portal into another plane and horrid creatures poured out of it.

He also allowed people to worship the evil god Lucifur. Nothing good can ever come of that. They freely practice necromancy mix with creatures of great evil.

Eventually Saint Leonard, not yet a god, appeared and closed the portal, killed many of the monsters, and hunted the Lucifurians until they went into hiding. Shortly thereafter he ascended to godhood.

For the time being, Errin is at peace.

And there you have a simple base story for Dale’s campaign. It’s not the kind of campaign I would run, but I consider that a good thing.

Dale's Campaign - Session #18

Ok, I know I haven’t put up anything for the podcast yet, and there’s not much at the moment I can do about it.

The hosting service I’m using only uses PayPal, and for whatever reason, I have to wait 3-4 days before money is moved from my bank account to PayPal’s account, then to my hosting service.

And I’m not quite sure I’m willing to put the recordings out there just yet. This is all very new to me and the learning is a lot of trial and error.

Of the two recordings I’ve made, neither sound very good. The second recording sounds much better than the first one, but it still has a lot of hiss to it.

So if anyone wants the first recording, let me know and I’ll give you the link to download it.

This whole thing is a learning process, and I know how fickle people can be. People might listen to the first recording and hate it because of my lack of experience. They may never listen again, and I don’t want that.

Being in the middle of a campaign probably isn’t the best place to start either. But Dale will be taking a long break from the game soon for his son’s football/band season. It will be best for us as a group to stop his campaign at a convenient point rather than in the middle of something big.

That should give me time to learn how to work with recording equipment properly to be ready for a proper send off for Aaron’s Forgotten Realms campaign.

This session there was no Brian and no Justin (whose appearances will still be random). Since we didn’t have Culan’s character sheet, he was not around this night either.

We started off with deciding where we wanted to head.

Brian (playing Culan) had made it clear that he wanted us to stay in Whitehall and work out of there. But he wasn’t at the table when we made the decision, so “ha-ha”.

Mike (playing Mark) thought that we should go to the northern lands because his character is a “new man” and wanted to see more of the land.

Aaron (playing Kineo) wanted to leave the lands of the new men, but didn’t want to get into the politics of the land either.

I felt Kal would, at the minimum, want to leave the lands of the new men, but would also want to expel the Rulership of the new men. In fact I had already told Dale privately that Kal would not be staying in Whitehall, period. If the group were to stay, then he and Jaxil would leave in the middle of the night to start a guerilla campaign to remove Baron Kordt from power and work towards removing the new men from the land.

That would also mean the removal of Kal from the campaign and I would have to create a new PC. I was split on a fighter/rogue who specializes in daggers or a wizard/sorcerer with enough spell power to flatten a small city.

But we decided to head north back to our homelands, except for Mark, who will be visiting our homelands.

So we traveled the main road from Whitehall to the city of Trademeet.

Trademeet is a central city between the lands of the indigenous men and the lands of the new men. It is simply one giant bazaar of goods from all over the continent.

But before we made it to Trademeet, there was an incident at a farmhouse.

A child came running to the road we traveled and begged us for our help. The child’s sister was acting funny and talking in weird voices.

We were directed to the farmhouse and it created a suspicion in me - Dale had just seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

I could be wrong on that though.

We found a young girl, about the age of 6, who was most definitely possessed. She ranked “overwhelming” on the evilometer (a.k.a. Mark), she had amazing strength, she had a smoker’s voice, and she knew us by name.

We tried to reason with the demon inside of her, but it only wanted to destroy the girl, or possibly trick us into destroying her.

Everything else we tried failed, so we decided to get help.

We tied her up, almost into a cocoon, and took her to the nearest temple. The temple was to Saint Leonard, Jaxil’s deity. We were hoping for someone of a sufficiently high level that could take care of this problem, but nope. The highest level clergyman in the temple was Jaxil. The next highest was a fellow named Richie, who was at best level 3.

Long story short, we spent several days of Jaxil memorizing Dismissal, Dispel Evil, and Assay Spell Resistance then casting them on the demon in the girl. First he had to beat the demon’s spell resistance, and then the demon had to fail a save versus the spell. Jaxil beat the spell resistance many times, but the demon never failed his save.

As we were getting sick of this challenge, we called in bigger guns. Kal summoned a Hound Archon and had it teleport to a temple in Trademeet where it would find someone that could exorcise the girl because we weren’t getting anywhere.

A few minutes later the problem was solved, just not by us.

After everything was settled Richie came to us and asked for our help. He had heard some weird sounds coming from catacombs beneath the temple and knew that we were the type of people that could take care of things like this.

Apparently no one had been cleaning up down here recently.

You would also think that most societies in any D&D world would be sure to cremate their dead. A dead body in a D&D game is more than just a host to decomposition bacteria, it’s a plot hook.

One desperate plea later and we were in the catacombs.

It was your basic catacomb set up; a 5’ wide hallway with several areas cut out for interred bodies.

For quite a few minutes there was nothing to find, not even a sound, other than a few gold pieces that Kineo decided not to take.

But then Kineo opened a door and a dread wraith was on us. It attacked Mark with its standard spring attack (who used an ankh charge to avoid the hit) and fled far down the hallway.

Had it not decided to play ring-around-the-rosy with us, it would have died much sooner than it did.

The most irritating bit of this combat is that Kineo did three times the damage to the wraith with an orb spell than Kal did with a Scorching Ray and a Quickened Scorching Ray in one round thanks to the 50% miss chance of the wraith and poor rolling by me.

The next area we opened caused a thick mist to roll around our feet and fill the area we just cleared.

The first antechamber we entered had a large and strong undead creature in it and had a slightly lower floor filled with water. And whenever it hit someone it tried to grapple them and pull them in the water.

First it grabbed Kineo and dropped him into negative hit points and was then pulled into the water to be later saved by Kal and Jaxil.

First Kal cast a Regroup spell. Regroup allows you to do a short teleport of all of your allies and bring them right next to you. He placed Jaxil in a good healing position, Mark into a good attacking position, and rolled well enough on his Spot check to bring Kineo into a safe spot out of combat.

And Dale finally got his wish to have Jaxil cast an offensive spell when he cast Mass Cure Light Wounds on everyone and the undead.

Mark and the undead giant exchanged a few hits, but it still grappled Mark and was going to drown him. But Mark got the last laugh when he used his Lay on Hands to “heal” 55 points of damage on the undead and finished it off.

After that we called it a night.

Dale's Campaign - Session #17

I have the final answer to the question “Should I podcast our sessions?”

The answer was given to me by my place of employment.

(Rant deleted - just in case.)

Thanks to their draconian views and blanket rules-making, I may no longer listen to my MP3 player at work.

Once again, mankind is lucky that I’m not a scanner. You’d be finding exploded head pieces everywhere.

And since I listened to our sessions at work and then typed them out at home while they’ve been refreshed in my memory, the blog entries are crippled now as I’m not about to spend that time typing it all out on the weekends.

I will still attempt to write up the blog entries for the remainder of Dale’s campaign, but when it’s over, I will be no longer blogging our sessions, but I will be podcasting them.

I apologize to those of you who can’t listen to our sessions, but I can’t see a better option that doesn’t drain more of my time.

But that out of the way I can give you the crippled write-up of Dale’s 17th session, which will be podcast hopefully sometime later this week. And remember, if the write-up of the session doesn’t match the audio of the session, it’s because I didn’t get a memory refresh of the session.

We had just defeated the sewer-water elder elemental when Arriseus joined us again. In other words, Justin joined us for this session.

We investigated the sewer passageways further and found an odd spherical room about 30’ in diameter with a pool of collected water at the bottom and some odd growths at the center-top that radiated evil.

Kal summoned an owl to investigate and grab one of the growths to bring back to us for investigation.

The last thing we saw of the owl was its corpse dropping into the pool of water.

So Arriseus hit the growths with an eldritch blast, with no effect.

By then we were pretty suspicious that it was a beholder floating upside-down and waiting for some prey.

We discussed having Kal, Kineo, and Arriseus blast it simultaneously with Lightning Bolt, but it disappeared the moment one of us began casting.

Arriseus flew up to the side of the hole it was in and used a mirror to look up into the hole. The mirror turned to stone. (We didn’t realize until later that Dale messed that up – beholders can only turn flesh into stone, not metal into stone.)

Well we weren’t about to hunt down a beholder into its own cramped areas, so Culan cast Clairvoyance. He saw the beholder in another spheroid room at the top of the hole, waiting for us to pop our heads in.

When we didn’t enter its backup lair it started disintegrating a new pathway so it could either escape or get to us in another way.

Well screw that, so we moved into some semi-protective positions and waited for it to show. But it never did. So we moved on, but were still on high alert in case it did make a showing.

The next room we entered contained an elder black pudding, but we couldn’t see it very well thanks to the murkiness of the water.

But eventually we did see it move and, having seen a black pudding before, Arriseus, Kineo, and Kal each cast a Lighting Bolt at it.

It responded by bursting out of the water and grappling Kal for half of his hp. Kal later escaped with a Dimension Door spell cast while being grappled.

The rest of the party made semi-quick work of the thing.

We found no treasure, and we didn’t have a surprise showing by Mr. Beholder.

Our final path led us to a new location.

This place had to lead to the boss of the Thieves’ Guild because the path leading there was trapped almost continuously with some very lethal traps.

Between Kineo’s searching skills (taking 20’s) and Arriseus’s infinite number of Voracious Dispel blasts, the traps were disabled and we moved into the Boss’s area.

Inside the new area we found a lich who demanded to know why we invaded his home uninvited. Some of felt like talking, the rest of us said “It’s evil, kill it.”

We all went after it, but it was able to use the Greater Blink spell to walk through a wall.

The only way to follow it was through a door. So Arriseus opened it, setting off a Wail of the Banshee trap which killed Kineo.

It’s alright; we have a walking band-aid with access to Spell Compendium spells. One Revivify spell later and Kineo was back up to one hit point. (Revivify is a 5th level Raise Dead spell that brings you back to life at no level loss, but it must be cast before one round has passed.)

The rest of us ran after the lich, but it was invisible and the Invisibility Purge was centered on Jaxil, who was busy with Kineo.

Kal, who had See Invisible on himself, tried to dispel the lich’s spells with a Greater Dispel Magic, but was only able remove the Greater Mage Armor spell.

Culan attempted to do the same, he had to cast it with the area effect as he couldn’t see the lich, but he failed.

The lich was smart, so it left with a Teleport spell.

We searched the area, found some minor trinkets and several books in the lich’s library, and moved back to the beholder room to carefully check the place out and take out the beholder.

But he was gone; all we found was a passageway up into the ground level in a full warehouse. We searched through everything in that place (in groups of 2), but found nothing.

Eventually we gave up looking and went back to the temporary home Baron Barcum gave us.

Later that day, while Kineo and Arriseus were attempting gather information about the lich and the beholder, our lawyer let us know that we were being sued by the lich we attacked.

Well that was the last straw for us. Kal, Kineo, Culan, and Jaxil stormed to Baron Barcum’s keep and threw a huge fit about how pathetic it was for a town to allow an undead creature rights to sue anyone, much less even exist.

The baron defended the laws and made it clear to us that things were not going to change.

Although Mark was nice about and Culan attempted to be nice about, we pretty much told Baron Barcum that he was “Lawful stupid” and he could go do something with himself. If I have to explain it to you any further, then you’re not old enough to listen to the podcast because we received an R rating for this session.

We took a voluntary exile from the realms of Baron Barcum and we have no intention of ever returning unless it’s to cause mayhem.

This also trashed Dale’s whole storyline. I’ll be curious to see how he comes back from it to maintain the continuity of this module.

We spent the rest of the night in a bit of chaos because we weren’t sure exactly where we were to go next.

So far I’ve listed two of the barons of this land, Baron Barcum the lawful stupid rules freak, and Baron Kordt the lawful evil despot.

There’s a third baron, Baron Andreas. He’s much more sensible and likeable person so we went to see him as a chance to prove to us that the leaders of “new men” weren’t entirely worthless and needed replacing. (There’s a short history of this land that I have yet to put on the blog yet, but might need to now that we’re getting into it.)

Our chat with him helped basically told us that not all of the new men were pathetic, just two of the three barons were.

We left the lands of the barons to return to the northern lands, where most of us came from. Our paladin Mark is a new man, and even he was disgusted with how things were set up.

Right now things are open to us.

The last thing I remember us dong was leaving Whitehall, the city of Baron Andreas, to return home.

We discussed many options which included destroying Baron Kordt and discrediting Baron Barcum to have him removed from power. We can’t attack Barcum directly as Baron Andreas would be required to help him.

There are more options out there for us of course; we just have yet to have them presented to us.

And believe it or not, I thought this was amongst the most fun of the sessions we’ve had.
There was a lot of good role-playing and Dale ran the monsters in a manner in which they should have been run.

I’ve been in campaigns where “a lot of role-playing” meant you had to role-play out every single thing you did. That isn’t any fun to me, but if it works for you, good for you.

To me, role-playing should be there to help move the story and plots along. And that is what we did.

Last week Dale asked us what we’d like to see in the campaign, and he gave it to us. He played the monsters right and expected us to go to court against a lich and defend ourselves as something new. The law thing was definitely something new and interesting, but just a little too far out there for our PC’s to accept.

So kudos to Dale for the attempt.
Too bad for Dale that we trashed his module.
But he will remake it to fit whatever it is we’re going to do.

Dale's Campaign - Session #16

Well if there was ever a session to podcast, it was not this one.

We were back in high school this past Friday. We acted like a group of fifteen year old kids with the immature jokes and other locker room humor.

I’m still learning how to properly use the recording software as the recording volume needs some tweaking. I had it up too loud so it was not comfortable to listen too.

And thanks to those on the Dragon’s Landing Inn forums for helping me out with some of the issues about recording and doing a podcast.

They gave me some helpful hints about how to set up the area to reduce noise as much as possible.

And it looks like I’ll have to buy a mixing board and another microphone or two. I have a cheap ($20) Radio Shack microphone you can use for 360 degree recording and it does a decent job, but I’ll need another one to make sure that everyone gets heard clearly.

Dale and Aaron’s voices are clearly audible but the rest of us, especially Mike, need to be a little closer to the microphone.

So in addition to possibly rearranging where everyone sits at the table I’m off to the pawn shop soon in hopes of finding a simple mixer and possibly some higher quality microphones.

(Edit: Nothing usable at the pawn shops unless I wanted to jump back to the 1970’s. Tomorrow I’ll be dropping some change at Sam Ash.)

One other thing I need to deal with is the ambient background noise. But everything I’ve tried so far makes everyone sound like they are in a metal box when speaking. I’ll be trying a few things here and there to fix that.

But like all things, I’m sure the quality of this all will improve over time.

And, if everything goes right, I might be able to publish a low quality podcast of our final two sessions in the World’s Largest Dungeon. It’s low quality because it was recorded with a SanDisk digital audio player that I placed on the mantle of my fireplace while we were five to ten feet away from it.

Before I do that I need to get setup with a hosting service and edit the living daylights out of the recording. Like the part in the recording where we are ordering pizza and my phone number and address are clearly stated for all to hear.

But enough of the podcast for now, I’ve got an actual gaming blog entry to type in.

We started off discussing any changes to our characters and what teamwork routines we have.

The DMGII just listed teamwork routines, but never put any cap on them. Well that was pretty silly of the authors to leave such a wide opening loophole for powergamers to exploit. But that loophole was patched up in the PHBII when they said that any one PC can only have one teamwork routine per four levels.

Previously we never really worried too much about them, just assuming that we probably would have learned any routines that made sense for us to have. But with the new rules, we needed to clarify which ones we do and don’t have, and what we should learn.

We’ve narrowed it down to four routines (the names may not be perfect):

Spell Barrage – This one is almost required for a gestalt group of spellcasters. Every area effect blast spell cast in the same round has a +2 DC to its reflex saving throw DC for each blast spell cast before it in the same round.

Group Flank – If anyone in the group qualifies for flanking with an opponent, everyone has flanking. This is a big aid for Kineo and his orb spells. If Culan and Mark qualify for flanking, Kineo has it from range and gets his orb damage plus sneak attack damage, and the rest of us will get +2 on our ray spells.

Group Trance – I have a feeling this one is going to get taken a lot and might be overpowered. But it is certainly a good reason for someone in the group to be an elf or half-elf. If someone in the group is an elf or half-elf, then that person can lead everyone else in an elven trance. This means that everyone participating is considered fully rested in only 4 hours. Once again, a gestalt group with more than one arcane caster just cannot pass this up.

Friendly Fire – This gives bonuses to reducing or preventing damage when hit by area effect spells cast by your allies.

As for character redesign, Kal has done none, though that may change in the future.

I like Kal pretty much how he is, but giving up the illusion school of magic is hurting a little. I did it originally for role-playing reasons. Kal was supposed to be naïve to start off with and considered necromancy to be evil and illusion to be dishonest, but he’s been out in the world now for over 6 months. He still considers necromancy to be evil, but can see the advantages of illusions. But the other schools all are worth keeping, so the group will have to work around him.

I think the only person so far that has used the character redesign rules is Brian. And for that I think he just dropped Dodge to take Shield Specialization. That’s not what I would call a drastic change.

Dale also told us that our magical tower is not easily usable. First we must find a suitable place for it to be placed, just like a regular tower. Second we can’t just pick it up and move it anyone we want to. Basically he wants it to be a semi-mobile base of operations for us.

We helped him clarify exactly what he wanted the tower to be. It can only be used “at the speed of the plot”. That is a phrase I read from the writer of Order of the Stick meaning that the magic of the tower will return when it is a good time in the story line for it to come back.

And that’s something I can appreciate because how many of you DMs out there have regretted giving something stats only to have your players exploit it and use it against you?

And next up we had Dale asking us for information on what we wanted to see happen in the current campaign or any changes we’d like to see.

Aaron: “I really love drow.”
Sean: “I really hate drow.”
Aaron: “Just kidding.”
Aaron thinks he’s funny.

Among our ideas, of which any, all, or none could be adopted – all at Dale’s whim:

- Stop taking it easy on us. That night hag we fought should have really put a major hurt on Kal when he was stupid enough to get between her and her prey. But she only cast Magic Missile at him. My fear now is that Dale might go crazy on us. We shall see.
- Use a larger variety of monsters and change things up on us. I showed him a powered up bulette and gelatinous cube that I modified with E-tools. I then let him keep those printouts. Oops.
- Create a group of evil NPCs that would be our “evil twins”.
- Don’t railroad us onto a plotline, but make sure we have direction so we know where to go for the next step in the plot. (There is usually a very fine line between the two.)
- Give us some non-standard challenges, like non-combat and puzzles. The abduction of the mayor of Darken Moor is an excellent example of that.
- Sometimes the good guys don’t know everything, and sometimes what they know is wrong. What if the mayor was actually good-aligned and just being made to appear evil? That’s a plot twist and a half right there.
- Keep it up with the PC’s actions having an effect beyond the immediate situation. The reformation of the Brothers Grimm and the return of Darken Glen are good examples.
- Visit ENWorld for good ideas and tips, most notably the general and rules forums.
- Brian wants a no-win scenario. I’m hoping he doesn’t get that. I don’t want to be yelling out “Kahn!” at a game session. Aaron’s wife and neighbors may not appreciate it.
- Aaron would like some further investigation into the whole ancient civilization story arc that all but disappeared after a while.
- Scale our times and distances better. Dale admits that he’s not good at that. Now that we’re aware of that, it’s not as much of an issue.
- Incorporate some of our PCs’ backgrounds into the game. Kal would love to nuke some orcs because of his history, but that has never been explored in the game.
- I’d like to have Baron Kordt (the evil baron) as an adversary.
- Before giving us magic items, determine if they will actually be of any value to us. In a gestalt group, wands, scrolls, and potions have a much smaller value to us because we have an excess of spells and we’re over level 10. Recently all we’ve done is sell 90% of the magic items Dale has put in the dungeons. And they should almost always be in the hands of someone who knows how to use them.

That’s a large list of stuff, but like I said, it was just us throwing stuff out there for him. If he chooses not to use it, that’s fine. If we weren’t having fun, he wouldn’t be running a game.

Then we jumped into the game with a recap of our recent deeds and us moving on out of Darken Glen.
- He repeated the short bit about the lich whining about us upsetting the balance and promising to do something about that.
- The town of Darken Glen put up a fountain of us as thanks.
- Each of our mentors and the Order of the Heart gave us as all attaboys.

And to end it all and move us into the next plot, Baron Barcum sent us an official letter requesting our attendance for a party in our honor. We assumed he’d be asking us a favor as well.

So we gathered up our tower, our horses, and Kineo’s dog and headed off to the city of Graystone, Barcum’s headquarters.

Kineo promised his butt-ugly girlfriend that he’d be back, but he won’t be.

During our two week trip we noted that the effects of the change of swamp to forest was far-reaching and we met up with a troupe of guards called the Order of Saint Michael.

They are basically lawful good and lawful neutral set up to keep the peace of the region. We rode along with them for a period of time for safety and to get some information.

They told us that there had been a very large green dragon spotted in the area of the city call Trade Meet. We made note of this for future reference.

They also told us that this entire area was not safe for people thanks magical experiments in Baron Kordt’s territory. His dark wizards had a tower with a portal to beyond that went haywire causing the tower to explode and for months the portal remained open spewing out awful creatures until the traveler-god Saint Leonard (Jaxil’s deity) came in and closed the portal. Even though the portal was closed, its effects are still felt as the creatures from there still roam about the countryside.

At one point in our travels we felt like we were being watched through scrying, but the moment we began casting a spell, the feeling ended. Kal suspects that lich is involved.

All was well until we actually made it to Graystone.

The place was a nightmare for anyone whose alignment was not Lawful Jackass.

At the gate we were greeted by a man who was described to us as being a 20th level bureaucrat. After a not-so-small gate fee we were given a large book of rules and regulations (the short version) for this town and allowed inside.

We were all but accosted by people wanting to represent us as legal council the moment we cleared the guard area.

No matter where we went there were lawyers trying to be nice, not-so-nice, or even bully us to get our business.

Sean: “You have be in an armored tank to get anywhere in this town.”

Just to make headway in the city we had to hire ourselves a lawyer as even the innkeepers were in the street trying to get us to stay at their place.

Kal hated this city and returned to daydreaming about turning evil and cleansing this town with fire, or at least give it a metropolis-sized enema.

This was one of those time where giving up the illusion school was a mistake.

Our hired lawyer had us get into a cart and fake that we were diseased so that the roads would clear out of our path.

Finally we made it Baron Barcum’s keep and had to wait in a 100+ person line before we saw him.

He was quite pleased to see us, but a little saddened by our opinions of his city. We were greatly disappointed that the party was the next day because we’d have to spend another whole day in that city.

But that’s ok, Kal rolled a natural 20 on his diplomacy skill check (total score 36 at least). That got us an escort to Baron’s semi-secluded guest house and a group of tailors to get us all gussied up for the party.

And thus began the downward spiral for our senses of humor that we haven’t seen sense the Living Lock fiasco in the World’s Largest Dungeon.

I guess as long as we keep it limited to once a year, it’s alright. I guess.

Giggity

We fast forwarded to the next night at the party where we all paired up with the high class ladies at the party.

The Baron awarded us with 1000gp apiece, including Jaxil, and we had a wonderful evening.

Mark sought out a pretty and chaste young maiden to provide him some pious entertainment for the evening.

Culan sought the attentions of a beautiful young lady that turned out to be the Baron’s youngest daughter. He had to compete with other men of high social standing but she spent her time at the party with him.

Kal chose to aim for the attentions of the slightly older women at the party and not to go any farther than that. We were in over our heads on this one and ticking off someone with money and connections could be dangerous. Ok that’s not quite true, I just smelled a trap and didn’t want to touch anything.

Kineo has made some pretty poor decisions in his adventuring career. Including reading from an evil book bound in human skin. But this night he made the worst decision so far; he wooed and “took to bed” the Baron’s eldest daughter. And the worst of it is yet to come.

Meanwhile, late in the evening, Culan was returning to our temporary abode when he was waylaid by a group of thieves called The Band of the Laughing Rogue.

According to them he was carrying too much money and it needed to be redistributed, to them, of course.

Culan began talking with them and found out they weren’t really hard-nosed, evil cutpurses, but were rather a group rogues that had been taken over by “the boss”. They’ve never seen him, but he keeps everyone in line with real threats of death.

After quite a bit of banter, Culan and they came to an agreement; we would take out the boss and the Band of the Laughing Rogue would become his eyes and ears in Darken Glen to make sure that evil would not return to the town.

He gave them 500gp and escorted them to gates, and later sent 1000gp to them and sent a note to the new town council of Darken Glen letting them know about the deals he had made with the Band. If the Band reneged on their deal (which involved not stealing or killing), the town was to consider them outlaws and treat them as such.

The next morning the Baron officially summoned us to his court.

Kineo gulped.

Baron Barcum had found out about Kineo and his eldest daughter, but any issues dealing with that, including any potential complications, would be dealt with later.

Complications such as the Baron having no sons and I hope you can figure out what that might mean on your own.

Kineo’s possible destiny was delayed when Culan filled the Baron in on the agreement he made with the Band of the Laughing Rogue.

The Baron decided to wait until we returned from the city sewers before any further business was discussed.

So with some minor buffing, we found the nearest sewer entrance and traveled down into the muck.

We were quickly attacked by our old friend the elder water elemental (he wasn’t all water though – ugh).

We fought the last one with the benefit of several of us being able to fly, so this time around it hurt us more but it ended the same.

The best thing we found out is that the spell Mass Cure Light Wounds is amazing in the hands of Jaxil.
Normally it heals 1d8+level (max +25), but with Jaxil it is 1d8 + 10 (his level +1 for healing domain) + 10 (Complete Divine feat that adds 2 per spell level for healing spells) + 2 (another feat that adds 2 if a turn attempt is used).

Reduced that is 1d8+22 points of healing to everyone in range (damage if you’re undead).

Now that is a walking band-aid.

To Podcast or not to Podcast...

It’s my birthday!
Gimme stuff!

Oh, like you’ve never wanted to yell that out on your birthday.
At least I didn’t go and kill anyone over a shiny gold ring.

Um, anyway, the more I listen to podcasts, the more and less I want to do one for our group.

There are several really good ones out there and there are some that I just can’t get into.

I like the Dragon’s Landing Inn. They do a lot of work to make their podcast the best one I’ve heard so far. They have their good and bad aspects (good: they are experienced and intelligent gamers who have their “stuff” together, bad: they like Eberron and have an odd fascination with chupacabras). And all-in-all I enjoy listening to them.

Then there is the House of the Harping Monkey, which has two podcasts. One of which I like, the other is something I can do without.
The Round Table is a bunch of gamers chatting about geek-related culture. It’s a good premise, but I get my fill of that at my own gaming table and can easily be overloaded with it at the game store.
But the Misfit Brew I definitely like. It’s 30-45 minute podcast that is a collection of essays written by gamers. And honestly, I’m surprised I like this podcast as it didn’t look interesting to me prior as I checked out the webpage.

The Dragon’s Hearth is a small collection of podcasts from none other than Traci Hickman and friends (the co-author of the original Dragonlance modules and novels). It was very well done but I couldn’t take it. I think it is just too artsy for my tastes.
But if you are someone who likes gaming-related stories, songs, and similar such things, this would be perfect for you. I’m a numbers guy, not an art guy.

The World of Skell is done by a group that has been together for several years and they started recording their sessions in early 2005.
So far I’ve only listened to half of one of their sessions, and I don’t think I’ll listen to much more.
It’s not that I don’t like the quality of their podcast, or their gaming style. I just can’t listen to other people’s gaming sessions.
The same thing occurred when I listened to the people running through the WLD at RPGMP3. I listened to four sessions before I decided it wasn’t for me.

And this is what makes me wonder whether or not anyone will listen beyond a few episodes.
But not everyone is like me because RPGMP3 was quite popular the last time I checked their website out.

I’ve been talking to a guy through MSN Messenger and he asked me if he could listen to one of our episodes. After a two-hour download for session 15 of Dale’s game, he had what he wanted.
And he liked it, which came as a surprise to me because when I listen to our sessions (for notes for blog entries) I can easily zone out on it.

Last night I sent him nearly 200MB of the last 2 sessions of our WLD game (47 & 48, 12.5 hours). He wanted it, and I was happy to oblige.

(I also had him swear that anything offensive he heard would not be held against us. Especially anything Justin said.)

So I’m making a list of reasons to do, and to not do, a podcast.
If you have anything to add, I want to hear it.

Pro: No more long-winded blog entries for gaming sessions. Currently I listen to our session at work and jot down notes of things I’ve forgotten. When I get home I make an entry.

Con: I’ll have to edit the sessions to reduce file size and remove anything that we feel shouldn’t be included.

Con: The amount of time required to edit a podcast will take longer than entering a session into the blog. This may or may not be true, but as I learn how to edit, I’m sure I’ll get speedier at it. I could also spread the work around, but that is iffy.

Pro: There are a lot of people out there who want to play D&D but can’t because there is not a group near enough to where they live or they don’t have the time. This includes some previous members of our group who moved away (Drew & Craig). Listening to a podcast of others playing may temporarily alleviate this for them.

Con: A Lybsin account can cost upwards of $30 a month. This argument and the time argument are pretty big ones. I could beg for money in the podcast, but I don’t I like that. I could get Yottaquest to be a sponsor to offset the costs if Matt were willing to do some sales through mail.

Pro: It would be cool to at least try. Right now it seems to be the “hot thing” for everyone to own a portable player. And if everyone is like me, you get sick of the music you love pretty quickly because you listen to it over and over. Something has to fill the void and books on tape aren’t cheap.

Con: Everyone will see that I am a big jerk. Oh wait. This should be listed as a pro.

Con: We (the Cincinnati D&D Group) might be a little apprehensive about being our usual selves for fear of offending someone. We often talk about our socio-political-religious views and I’m not sure how I can go about dealing with that. Possibly once everyone gets used to it, that won’t matter. The only one of use who should censor themselves more than me would be Justin. And he really doesn’t care what people think of him.

Pro: The gaming podcast is still new and growing with a lot of niches that need to be filled.

Pro & Con: Some people would listen to our sessions and possibly get some new ideas and other such positive things. Others would listen to us and scoff at how we play or how we screwed up a rules call.

Con: The starting requirements may be expensive. Better equipment means better sound quality. One thing I want to get rid of is that icky static & droning sound that I hear a lot of when I record things with my MP3 player.

Pro: We might be able to attract new players without having to do as much work - though we may have to do some better screening.

Con: We need someone who knows how to set up a website much better. I have the bare minimum skills needed to set up a very simple website and mildly modify the blog template. I could probably learn to do that, but I don’t think I’m up for it.

Pro: I could rant on the MP3 player rather than the blog. Eh, maybe that should be listed as a con.

Pro: I want to. I’m on an obsessive binge right now on doing a pod-cast. In case you haven’t noticed...

The Birth of a World - part 7

I’m wearing boots of escaping!

Friday is my birthday.
When looking for a present for me, remember to shop smart, shop S-Mart.

You’re getting a double-dose of the Birth of a World series this week. Skipping a game week or two tends to aid in that.

I originally intended to do a rant, but just couldn’t get it to come out right. So I shelved it for now. Maybe someone will trigger an irritation that will inspire me.

Last week someone brought up a valid point; maintaining balance in a high-level and high-powered campaign is no easy task as those campaigns tend to spiral out of control.

And they are 100% right. Once the party obtains the power to destroy a city, not much prevents them from doing so.

So how do I go about preventing the PCs from going insane with their power?

Here are a few simple steps:

Step #1 – Find some mature gamers for your group.
I would not run this campaign with munchkins, power-gamers, or children.
Our current group structure contains no one under legal drinking age. Most everyone in the group has been a DM before and fully understands how a game can be ruined if you invite the wrong kind of player into the group.
In fact, when we make changes to the rules, we tend to get a group consensus before doing so. It’s not 100% (I’m the only one who really hates the withdrawal from combat options), but we all try to be on the same page when make a rules call.

Step #2 – No evil PCs and no chaotic neutrals.
Aaron has mentioned this, and I’ve seen it as a rule before, but never really saw it enforced; if your PC turns evil then your PC becomes an NPC and you get the pleasure of making a new character.
I’ve ranted before about how pathetic and cliché it is for a player to backstab the party in a D&D session because it ruins the fun for everyone involved except you. Yes there are plenty of times when this is acceptable, but rarely and almost never when I’m at the game table.
And I am so sick of people who think that running a chaotic neutral PC is pure freedom and the rules don’t apply to their PC. They all want a loner “Wolverine” character that does things his way, outside of the law. In any long term game that I run, that PC will not be fun to play.
The same goes for the person who wants to play one of those “good drow”. If you want to talk about a theme in D&D that has become cliché, it’s the sheer number of Driz’zt clones.
Luckily step #1 tends to prevent this antithesis to team-work.

Step #3 – Make them earn everything.
This has been said time and time again by many people, but it’s worth repeating.
A dragon loves to hoard gold, magic, and other treasures, so why wouldn’t he use them?
Sure, your standard dragon can’t get much use out of that longsword +1, but he can easily use that Stone of Good Luck. If he has a Staff of Healing, or even some healing potions, then he can just flee from combat, fly back to his lair, heal up, and then return to take out the party later.
And I’ve spoken before that there will be some powerful magic items. Out there somewhere is a Staff of the Magi, waiting for the party’s wizard to claim it. All they have to do is take it from the lich, his guardians, and any other nasty traps he has prepared.

Step #4 – Keep control of it all.
In this campaign I will be allowing a lot more than I have in any campaign I’ve run since 2E.
But that is not to say that I will be allowing every single thing under the sun. I’ll be allowing several of the classes, feats, etc. in the core books, Unearthed Arcana, PHBII, DMGII, and a few other books I can’t think of at the moment. But I will not allow every single thing in those books, nor will I allow anything from books I don’t own, or any combination that appears to break the rules.

But there’s a fine line between keeping control and being oppressive. So I need to make sure that I only disallow something if it’s broken, it doesn’t fit into the game’s “vision”, or I don’t own the source. Just because a class gets a powerful ability is no reason to outlaw it so long as the whole of the class appears properly balanced to other classes.

You may also have noticed that I have not mentioned any of the “Races of” books. The moment I read the entry for the Whisper Gnome, I knew that someone screwed up. And since I’ve only heard munchkins and powergamers like Races of Stone, and nothing positive about the later Races of books, I decided to save my money and ignore the existence of those books.

Step #5 – Pound the snot out of the party and keep them off-balance.
Nothing scares a party more than the unknown.
There have been times when I’ve ran a simple monster that had less than a dozen hit points and because the players didn’t know what it was, they ran away. It makes for a good laugh when they’re stressing out over how to defeat it when it gets taken down by a lowly Magic Missile spell.
And boy have I made some changes to some of these monsters. E-Tools has allowed me to make some big changes to monster without me having to do anything more than click some buttons and pick some feats.
Did you know that there is no upper limit to advancing the hit dice of the Tarrasque?
Adding levels to monsters is pretty easy too. That whole fire giant troupe armed with ballista-sized crossbows that Shark mentioned is not only possible, it’s entertaining to think about what the look on your players’ faces will be.

Now don’t go thinking that I’m out to kill the PCs. My job is to challenge the players and their PCs. If they survive the 100HD Tarrasque and the troupe of fire giants with 20 levels of fighter, then they have something to be proud of. So long as I give them no reason to believe that I pulled any punches a fight like that will be told by them at their games for years.

I hope these steps are enough to maintain a realistic balance to the game in long term.

And the next topic is cleric and deities.

Do you know one of the truly irritating things about Forgotten Realms and the Kingdoms of Kalamar? There are an insane number of gods.

Kalamar has nearly 50 gods, and each has over half a dozen names.
And the deity roster for the Forgotten Realms keeps changing, and I’m done trying to keep up.

When choosing a deity for a PC cleric there are basically two reasons that you picked your PC’s deity; a role-playing match or “what do I get out of this?”

If your chose one for role-playing reasons, well I don’t have much of a beef with you there unless you’re one of those players who gets way too much into the role-playing a clergy-men it reminds of church. You sir have problems that I can’t help you with (kidding).

But if you are a player that good through domains, weapon choices, and so on to find the right combination for your PC then you will love this.

In this campaign, there are no gods.
Well actually there are gods; I’m just not going to deal with it.
No pantheons, no avatars, and no names.
Just pick your two domains and call it a day.

Yeah, this will probably cause some other problems later on, but I’m sure I can think of a way around it when it comes to that point.

And here’s something that I really need to work on as a DM.

I’ve known about this problem for a while, but it’s not easy for me to fix this.

It seems that I create situations that make the NPCs angry at the players. I don’t do it all the time, but often enough for me to say something about it here.

Part of it stems from the module-types I run. Once, back in that 2E game I spoke of earlier, I even had Talona trick the PCs into releasing a The Stand type mega-plague. When the survivors of the world found out about this, they weren’t too happy with them.

Ok, the survivors formed a lynch mob, but that’s beside the point.

Then this past weekend, during the one-shot, several people in town were killed by a large orc-raid into the city. The leader of each squad of orcs carried a drawing of the PCs (with names). So obviously the town put some blame on the party.

“Had they not been in this town my uncle would still be alive.”

So my solution for this is to try to make sure that not every NPC has a reason to hate the NPCs unless the PCs do it on their own.

And it will be the PCs job to both not give the NPCs reasons to hate them, and to work on their image on their own.

Yeah, I said it.
The group might need to get a PR rep.

That’s a good note to end this entry on.

The Birth of a World - part 6

Oh the humanity!

(I don’t know. I just felt like saying it.)

I’m running dry on topics for the Birth of a World series, so if you have a question or if there is a topic you’d like me to cover, feel free to ask. I always try to respond within a day (real world willing).

Our usual game this past Friday was cancelled on Thursday. Dale had forgotten about a family obligation and I had a last minute family emergency that would have prevented me from showing anyway.

But I still got my D&D fix in. I went to Yottaquest to run a one-shot game to get my DM’ing fix, to see how the gamers there played, and to play test some basic concepts. It also gave me a chance to test out some podcast related equipment and programs.

End results:
- People are addicted to the store owner Matt taking control of the game as the lead player. When he chose to make a character that wasn’t a leader, there wasn’t anyone who could take up the role. I’ve seen this before and there’s no good solution beyond letting the players fend for themselves. But a one-shot isn’t the best time to do that, so he still took over.
- My system for having magic items ready for random encounters might need tweaking. There are too many potions. A powered up barbed devil had a disappointing 3 potions and nothing else.
- CR10 traps might be too rough for a 10th level rogue.
- One-shot groups have no teamwork because they have never actually teamed up before. I’ll have to figure a way to account for this in the future.
- I have a lot to learn about how to use this Podcasting equipment. Lucky for me I have plenty of time.
- Throwing different and modified monsters at a group who doesn’t expect it works wonderfully. When the hill giant made a 3rd attack roll against the party’s fighter, when the player is used to them only getting two attacks, I knew I had struck them off guard. All I did was add 5 barbarian levels to the leader.
- The new shield feats from the PHBII worked perfectly. The same fighter from above was saved from about 25% of his hits because of the shield feats. He used a longsword and shield, so he did less damage, but he was also hit less often. I don’t have the math to look at, but it seemed to be a pretty close trade.
- My base adventure went quite well. I actually had two adventure routes and supplied the group with clues and plots leading both ways. This gave them options to head either way without forcibly pushing along a plot train.
- When running a one-shot in the future, I will start the adventure already in progress. When there is a limited amount of time, some role-playing will get lost. I believe this is called “in media res”, but could easily be wrong.

The game could have gone a little better, but was by no means a bad game. I wasn’t used to their playing style and they weren’t used to my running style. I still had fun but the evening made me appreciate the people I usually game with more

Now on to the continuation of fleshing out this world I’m working on.

Gestalt Characters

On this I will give the group two options; they can all play a regular non-gestalt D&D game or they can all play gestalt characters that gain XP at half the usual rate.

I know previously I said that I’m all for a gestalt campaign, but more information to think on has come to prominence as I’ve played in a gestalt campaign.

At lower levels, first through fourth, gestalt does nothing more than allow you to pull off a combo that you couldn’t previously until double your level, but at higher levels things start to change a lot.

At level 5 through 9 you can consistently take on creatures of +1 CR as if they were your current CR. This value changes from +1 to +2 or +3 if you have the opportunity to buff up prior to a combat.

At even higher levels this CR disparity gap gets even bigger where a group of four 15th level gestalt PCs can take on a balor/pit fiend and not even wince at his assaults. And this is without the round per level buffs.

But there is a nasty little trick in there, if the level 15 party is taken off-guard by a CR20 critter, and it gets a free round of actions, then there may be a TPK.

The power level of a CR20 is about equal to a 15th level group only when they are prepared appropriately. Otherwise they still have about the same hit points and armor class as normal characters of their level.

Any CR20 monster that gets surprise on unprepared level 15 group has a good chance of taking one of the party members down in the surprise round and first combat round.

(Note: The level and CR numbers above are somewhat arbitrary and my opinion only.)

So gestalt gives the players a huge amount of power, but it might also give them some false bravado that could bring them low one bad night of gaming.

Also, the power and versatility of gestalt PCs is almost not needed with the sheer number of classes, prestige classes, feats, spells, and teamwork abilities that are out there.

You can probably make an excellent fighter/wizard now that is nearly as powerful, as either class alone.

From everything I’ve heard a well done Mystic Theurge could be just as scary as a gestalt cleric/wizard.

So I’ll let the players decide as a group if they want double the classes or full XP.

Character Death

I said before I want a PC death to be a hiccup to the game not a brick wall to it.

The availability of material components for the Raise Dead and Resurrection line will be relatively simple. And most towns will have someone who can perform a simple Raise Dead spell.

And PCs level loss due to death and energy drain will result in no actual level loss, they will instead drop to the appropriate XP amount and gain it back at normally. They will not be able to increase a level until all of it is gained back.

This saves time by reducing any need to de-level someone and later re-level, but XP gained will be at the original level’s rate.

These measures should hopefully prevent a PC’s death from slowing the game down and prevent a potential collapse of the game if too many people die at the wrong time.

And if you think that this is a bit unrealistic for a D&D game, you’re probably right. But it certainly is close in spirit to most Japanese RPGs I’ve played. There’s a healer in every city in those games that can bring “the wandering spirit” back to the body.

Teleportation

Nothing frustrates a DM more than the players bypassing half of his module with a single teleport spell.

It’s happened to me and I was not happy, but really because of the wasted work I had done.

After that I found reasons and ways to prevent or limit it from happening.

And this time isn’t any different.

Teleportation in this campaign will only be a tool to travel to a city, and only one way.

There is no chance of failure, no range limit other than “this plane”, nor is there any choice for where you go beyond the city name, and you must have been there before.

In every city there will be a town well that you must have drunk from while casting the spell. From that point on you can cast the spell to return to that well and bring a reasonable number of allies and treasure with you.

Alignment

Back in Basic D&D there were only three alignments; Lawful, Neutral, & Chaotic. I think they should have been Good, Neutral, & Evil but that didn’t matter.

Since this is supposed to be a heroic campaign, the Lawful/Chaos alignment axis just got smaller.

Oh it will still be unchanged for role-playing purposes, and paladins will still have to tow the lawful line, but beyond that there are no bonuses or penalties for it.

Magic items like Axiomatic weapons, Anarchic weapons, and Chaos Diamonds don’t exist.

Protection from Law and Chaos spell don’t exist.

Creatures with damage resistance to law or chaos will have it replaced with an appropriate equivalent, probably good or evil.

Also, The Blood War doesn’t matter into this world. Demons, devils, daemons, and demodands are just as indifferent to one another as a chaotic good ranger is to a lawful good fighter (well not including their usual evil natures).

Another twist, a holy weapon in the hands of an evil NPC becomes an unholy weapon. A potion of Protection from Evil is a potion of Protection from Good in the hands of a blackguard. This makes it easier for me to supply weapons in the hands of the bad guys that can later be used by the good guys.

Well that’s enough for now.

I just noticed that this is the 6th entry for this series, all released on 6/6/06.

If only I could get my wife to go see that movie with me.