Letters From the Front

[quozl]

Me, my wife, my daughter (who is 16 now), and 3 of our friends.

[Dad_Scaper]

Geez. For a guy I've never met, I've known you for a long time.

[Dysole]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Geez. For a guy I've never met, I've known you for a long time.

And I've met both of you. Our current campaign is on hiatus as everyone got very busy but I'm basically dming the DND equivalent of superhero team.

~Dysole, who doesn't want to go into too much detail about what she has planned as W099 is a player in the campaign

[Tornado]

Nice DS. Disease angle is nice. Was it a rat horde?
I was planning on using a horde of radioactive rats against a party in a futuristic game, great 'monster'.

Originally Posted by Dysole

And I've met both of you. Our current campaign is on hiatus as everyone got very busy but I'm basically dming the DND equivalent of superhero team.

~Dysole, who doesn't want to go into too much detail about what she has planned as W099 is a player in the campaign

Very interesting.

Can you at least tell us what has happened thus far?
What kinds of powers do they have?

[Dysole]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Very interesting.

Can you at least tell us what has happened thus far?
What kinds of powers do they have?

So it's being run like a Justice league/Heroes for Hire organization. The party are lower levels of the Champions of Eberron (a lot has happened in this Eberron world over the course of several campaigns and having an organization like this could've prevented some of the worst parts). Now I'm going for more of a superhero aesthetic than something I could just run in a superhero RPG.

Not a whole lot hasn't happened and the party is still technically in the middle of their first mission where they had to investigate disappearances on the border between the goblin nation, the human nation, and a relatively new warforged nation. People and warforged parts were going missing in goblin country. The party found out it's the work of a rogue faction in goblin territory working with someone (they have a name that none of them really recognize) who's found a way to make warforged hybrids. The party has fought a couple hybridized goblin/bugbear creatures and found some of the results of testing on humans. The adventure has basically ended there until we resume it. I know what's in store for this adventure and also the overarching story but I tend to play things fast and loose having NPCs with goals rather than plots because the party loves to do things I didn't plan for.

~Dysole, who could also regale you with old DND adventures she's played or DMed

[Dad_Scaper]

The dramatis personae:
Del ~ half-elf wild mage sorcerer, myself
Finn ~ halfling monk
Sue ~ human beastmaster ranger
Davidius MacFleetwood ~ half-elf (iirc) bard

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, Del had threatened the Big Bad End Guy as follows: "I will burn your [bad word] tree to the ground!" And Del then tried to cast a spell against the BBEG, but there was a misfire, triggering a fireball centered on Del. Unfortunately knocking most of the party unconscious. (Edit: And, importantly, setting the bad guy's tree hopelessly en fuego, enraging him.)

Luckily, Davidius survived, as did Del's zombie minion, and Davidius managed to do some healing while the zombie grappled the BBEG, and the party managed to beat a fighting retreat over a lengthy stretch of underground terrain. Lightly armored and nimble as they are, they could stay ahead of the healthy, spellcasting bad guy while fighting off his minions.

In fact, they managed to get off enough attacks against Bellock, the BBEG, that - though he, enraged, pursued - he began to take more damage than he could afford to give. Though Del stayed just in sight, teasing him on, he could not get the kill shot he wanted on the half elf sorcerer who destroyed his tree, and slowly the attacks from others started to wear him down. And his minions were eliminated, one at a time.

When Bellock realized it was time to retreat, it was too late. The party smelled blood in the water. Well, most of the party. Davidius had been sprinting away for so long that he didn't know what was happening. But Del got in a lucky firebolt that did a lot of damage, and Bellock turned to run, but could not get far enough. Finn caught him and finished him off with a well-placed dart to the back of the head.

The party finished the dungeon - or, at least, finished off the BBEG - and will finally get an overdue long rest. When it recovers next week, it will be time to track down the last missing adventurer (some NPC paladin, lost somewhere in this dungeon), and make its way home.

Thanks for your support, all! The scoundrel Del lives to fight another day.

For those struggling to sleep tonight, here is Del's backstory, and why I call my own character a scoundrel:

Spoiler Alert!

Born a half elf to a remote clan of elves, his troublemaking nature and mixed heritage made him a good choice for tutelage in Tyreen as a guest of one of the noble houses, specifically, the DuCasse family, led by Vladimir DuCasse. The idea was that his natural charm and cosmopolitan education and upbringing would lead to a natural role as a diplomat when his education concluded. Several things conspired to throw this plan off the rails: First, he couldn't & wouldn't stop being a troublemaker. He's a carouser and a more-than-competent con artist, when he chooses to be. Problems with jilted women and cheated a-holes led to problems with his host family, where - despite his charm - he started to fall out of their good graces. Second, it turned out that he had inherited the spark of wild magic that pops up once every two or three generations in his home tribe. His mother knew he had it, which was part of the reason why she was so eager to send him away from the tribe, where she feared for his safety if the tribal powers-that-be knew that a half-breed had inherited a sacred gift. Legend has it that the tribal spark is the gift of a gold dragon, so he wears a pendant that is a shimmering gold ring, formed of a shard of a gold dragon scale.

Anyway, things started to come unglued in town, so he told his host family that he intended to see civilization and beyond, and they were glad to wish him the best and say goodbye for awhile. Now he is a curious adventurer, glad to turn a buck and find shiny things when he can, as he tries to master the blossoming wild magic within him.

I am told we are now level 5, which means I have some homework to do before next session.

[quozl]

I'm jealous, Dysole. I'd love to meet D_S. And please PM me about your campaign ideas. D&D supers sounds cool.

[Hahma]

Saturday morning I played a first game of DnD with my buddy Brian in his DM debut, and 3 of his friends from church. He had been trying to get them to play for a couple years and finally got it going, with me being the 4th player. We had a lot of fun and I was the Halfling Rogue, and shot a lot of goblins through the eye with my short bow.

I had been involved for a few sessions with Brian and 3 other players, and James in Virginia as the DM on the online roll d20 system and chatting via Google Hangouts. But I only joined that because Brian wasn't sure how long his real in person group would take to get together. But now that he did and I joined in that campaign, I dropped out of the roll d20 group. They were fine with it, as they had been going before I joined in anyway. I just didn't want to be committed to 2 groups and still want to play board games with my group as well as some occasional tabletop miniatures games.

I'm going to be 51 in June and a bit late to the DnD scene, but I think it will be fun. The other guys are 30's and 40's, so none of us are spring chickens.

Below is my response to Toronto in the What Board Game Are You Playing thread when he asked me about me shooting the Goblins in the eye.

It started out early, when my halfling jumped onto a dead horse before attacking a goblin with a short sword. Before rolling the d20, I said, " I'm going to stab him in the eye!" Well I hit with the d20 and did enough damage to kill it. From then on out, as we encountered more goblins near and in a cave, I switched to using my short bow. And before rolling the d20 to hit, I would say, "I'm going to shoot him in the eye!" Well I was really good at hitting, as I only missed once out of like 6 shots. And when I did hit, I always rolled good for damage and killed them. So it became a superstition for me to keep saying that before rolling to hit.

Then I did have one critical vs a bugbear that had been already taken a lot of damage from the rest of the party. Plus it was a sneak attack bonus. So basically 3 dice for damage. The DM let me roll 2 damage dice against the bugbear and since it was enough to finish it off, he let me roll the 3rd damage die against a goblin that was about 10 feet behind the bugbear. I did enough to kill the goblin too. So we joked that it went through the bugbear's eye and into the goblin

[Marro_Warlord]

Welcome to the lands of Agris (my own setting), torn apart by war and ancient technology, now struggling under the threat of rebellion.

The party has been trekking through the old remnants of the kingdom of Naylon. Once enlightened by technology, civil war and economic depression caused the collapse of their great empire. Religious fanaticism and honor filled the void left by a progressive idea of fusing magic and technology. But the people of Naylon refuse to quietly return to dust. Organizing themselves into loose resistance groups, they strike out against their occupiers, the Inquisition of the Light. Using an ancient war machine, they've been struggling for years to reclaim their land, and restore their dragon lord, the Firemind, to power.

After a party member lost an arm in a horrific accident, he's been struggling to find a suitable replacement. After poking around at the fortified city-state of Cog Bastion, he found a lead for a mechanical arm. The catch? They had to travel deep into resistance territory to recover the ashes of the Firemind for creating a simulacrum. Throughout the journey, they've been finding more and more clues relating to the forbidden history of the world.

On their way to the ruins of Gearworks, the old capital, they've encountered several "failed experiments", horrid abominations of flesh and metal serving to supplement the lack of the Firemind. Rifts from civil war created by the income disparity from the Naylon scientific revolution still stand, dividing rebels amongst themselves. Within a day's march to their destination, they come across an old military outpost, built across dysfunctional train tracks. Buried below lies the wreckage of the great weapon used by Naylon hundreds of years ago: Crystal Aegis, the 7th mechanized automaton.

Before they get a chance to analyze it, to their surprise, a train rolls in. It's the resistance, searching for old pieces of the mecha to wage war against the Inquisition. After a quick "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", they join forces, swearing to bring down Inquisition occupation.

Apparently mecha and robots fit pretty well into a D&D setting. Who could have guessed?

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by Marro_Warlord

Welcome to the lands of Agris (my own setting), torn apart by war and ancient technology, now struggling under the threat of rebellion.

The party has been trekking through the old remnants of the kingdom of Naylon. Once enlightened by technology, civil war and economic depression caused the collapse of their great empire. Religious fanaticism and honor filled the void left by a progressive idea of fusing magic and technology. But the people of Naylon refuse to quietly return to dust. Organizing themselves into loose resistance groups, they strike out against their occupiers, the Inquisition of the Light. Using an ancient war machine, they've been struggling for years to reclaim their land, and restore their dragon lord, the Firemind, to power.

After a party member lost an arm in a horrific accident, he's been struggling to find a suitable replacement. After poking around at the fortified city-state of Cog Bastion, he found a lead for a mechanical arm. The catch? They had to travel deep into resistance territory to recover the ashes of the Firemind for creating a simulacrum. Throughout the journey, they've been finding more and more clues relating to the forbidden history of the world.

On their way to the ruins of Gearworks, the old capital, they've encountered several "failed experiments", horrid abominations of flesh and metal serving to supplement the lack of the Firemind. Rifts from civil war created by the income disparity from the Naylon scientific revolution still stand, dividing rebels amongst themselves. Within a day's march to their destination, they come across an old military outpost, built across dysfunctional train tracks. Buried below lies the wreckage of the great weapon used by Naylon hundreds of years ago: Crystal Aegis, the 7th mechanized automaton.

Before they get a chance to analyze it, to their surprise, a train rolls in. It's the resistance, searching for old pieces of the mecha to wage war against the Inquisition. After a quick "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", they join forces, swearing to bring down Inquisition occupation.

Apparently mecha and robots fit pretty well into a D&D setting. Who could have guessed?

Risking the entire group to replace an arm. Love it.

Wow, that sounds like an incredibly well thought out and intriguing setting you have there!

Would love to see the stats on that mecha.

[Marro_Warlord]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Risking the entire group to replace an arm. Love it.

It all started when they investigated a strange curio shop suspected of dealing with a dark cult. After breaching the run-down shop of "Madame Torkin's Oddities", they found themselves in a secret basement full of forbidden knowledge. And a dagger. Naturally, the fighter picks up the weapon, only to find that it's cursed, and he can't let go. It's sending him weird thoughts, but he can't seem to make it end. The solution?

"Guys quick! Cut off my arm!"

Since the beginning of the campaign, the fighter really only had one arm. Made it all the better when he single handedly (pun fully intended) crashed enemy lines to save a girl in a hectic brothel battle.

After he discovered an old notebook belonging to a wizard apprentice detailing mechanical limbs, he has become obsessed with getting an arm. This led to the druid threatening him with healing. (They'd found a regenerate scroll earlier. )

[quozl]

Originally Posted by Marro_Warlord

Welcome to the lands of Agris (my own setting), torn apart by war and ancient technology, now struggling under the threat of rebellion.

The party has been trekking through the old remnants of the kingdom of Naylon. Once enlightened by technology, civil war and economic depression caused the collapse of their great empire. Religious fanaticism and honor filled the void left by a progressive idea of fusing magic and technology. But the people of Naylon refuse to quietly return to dust. Organizing themselves into loose resistance groups, they strike out against their occupiers, the Inquisition of the Light. Using an ancient war machine, they've been struggling for years to reclaim their land, and restore their dragon lord, the Firemind, to power.

After a party member lost an arm in a horrific accident, he's been struggling to find a suitable replacement. After poking around at the fortified city-state of Cog Bastion, he found a lead for a mechanical arm. The catch? They had to travel deep into resistance territory to recover the ashes of the Firemind for creating a simulacrum. Throughout the journey, they've been finding more and more clues relating to the forbidden history of the world.

On their way to the ruins of Gearworks, the old capital, they've encountered several "failed experiments", horrid abominations of flesh and metal serving to supplement the lack of the Firemind. Rifts from civil war created by the income disparity from the Naylon scientific revolution still stand, dividing rebels amongst themselves. Within a day's march to their destination, they come across an old military outpost, built across dysfunctional train tracks. Buried below lies the wreckage of the great weapon used by Naylon hundreds of years ago: Crystal Aegis, the 7th mechanized automaton.

Before they get a chance to analyze it, to their surprise, a train rolls in. It's the resistance, searching for old pieces of the mecha to wage war against the Inquisition. After a quick "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", they join forces, swearing to bring down Inquisition occupation.

Apparently mecha and robots fit pretty well into a D&D setting. Who could have guessed?

This sounds so cool! Please post more.