Session 7&8: What the hell is that?

The Plot
Gigi and Norbith wake up once again in their respective beds in town. They have few memories of the night before but terrible hangovers. Norbith plays a prank on Burga that causes her to wet the bed. They meet up with the party near the well again and Norbith posits that iron is often used to break magic. While no one can verify this no one has a better idea either and they take a couple of iron hoops from one of Johnny's empty wine barrels out with them at nightfall.

Hori and Chantrix tie Norbith and Gigi to two separate trees. They then loop the iron around them to see what happens. Voola uses her druid form to turn into a dog and see what happens in town when the sun goes down.

In town - Voola watches the sunset and then, as though a switch was flipped, the town begins to attack each other. However, they ignore Voola in her dog form. She goes back to the rest of the party after verifying that one - everyone is dying - and two - they don't care about animals.

Back in the trees the, Hori and Chantrix  are sheltering up a nearby tree. When the sunsets, Gigi flexes and breaks the ropes holding her to the tree, only stopped by the iron which begins to emit a high pitched shrieking noises. Chantrix leaps gracefully from the tree, runs over, and twists the iron in the back which stops Gigi from escaping although she continues to struggle.

Norbith also began to escape his bonds, the iron around his waist falling to his feet as he struggles out of them. Hori falls out of the tree exactly as gracefully as a cat isn't and manages to get to Norbith in time to grab the iron and trap his ankles. Norbith is not pleased, spitting and snarling and cursing in Doridal dwarvish. Chantrix and Hori together manage to wrestle the iron up onto his chest and twist it tight. The sounds gets louder as they do.

Hori pokes at Norbith with a stick. Unsurprisingly, Norbith grabs it and begins trying to swing it at Hori and Chantrix. When Voole returns the three take turns sleeping far enough away to not be bothered by the noise until sunrise when Voola returns in time to see the townspeople's corpses disappear.

Encouraged that the iron seemed to do something, the party spends the next day finding more iron and making a cover for the thing in the well. Voola goes down to check on the thing to see if she can see anything different but it makes her so nauseous she can't get close. Hori agree to lower Norbith down and Voola goes as well, riding as a lizard in Norbith's pocket. Despite the lizard vomit on his shoulder, Norbith managed to put the cover over the sigil in one mighty hammer blow. There is a loud noise, a feeling of pressure on Norbith, and Voola changes back into her full form. After some scrambling, Voola turns back into a lizard and Hori pulls Norbith and her out. They reach the top and congratulate each other on doing.... well... something.

There's a crack of lightning and a figure appears in front of them. Its shape seems to constantly change but it is vaguely reptilian with sharp teeth and red glowing eyes. The creature admonishes them for disturbing its magic and tells the party they need to undo what they have done. Chantrix and Hori both attempt to attack the creature but are very unsuccessful.

That night, the party repeats the previous day. Nothing much has changed except that the loud noise that was coming from the iron around Gigi and Norbith now seems to be coming from everywhere at once and is utterly deafening. The villagers do not seem to notice. No one gets any rest.

Gig and Norbith compare notes that the sky in their dreams was bright and rainbow-like, like the surface of a washing bubble. Hori suggest that they try the cover again, this time while the town is in its rage state. Voola will wait at the top of the well in dog-form, Hori will lower Chantrix down with the new cover, and then Hori will wait outside the village where she can still see but will hopefully go unnoticed.

The sun sets.

Chantrix pulls the old cover from the sigil in one hard yank, pocketing it quickly despite the fact that it seems to warm and writher in her hand. She place the new cover and hammers it into place. There is a loud noise again and the rocks on the fall in front of her begin to cave in. One strikes Chantrix and she begins to try to scramble up out of the well.

Voola watches both Chantrix and the villagers. After the hammer blow every villager drops to the ground motionless. Voola returns to form to help with Chantrix and Hori arrives around the same time to lift her out of the well before the side collapses in on her.

The creature appears again and attacks on it are similarly rebuffed. It chides them again for disturbing its magic before disappearing.

Cautiously, the three approach the town where Norbith has had his face slashed open by Gigi. Both are alive and Voola immediately begins helping Norbith. The rest of the town are not so lucky. The party help who they can but those who were injured before the magic broke do not restore in the morning. Despite their best efforts throughout the next day, 14 people do not survive - including the town Mayor, Harim. Grief-striken, Gigi begins to play a dwarvish dirge, translated to common, about things being for the better and sacrificing yourself.

It does not go over well.

Harim's wife intercepts them before the villagers, slowly gathering pitchforks and torches, can corner the party. She tells them that while they may one day be grateful to be free of the magic, the cost was high and not all of the villagers are grateful now. The party finds Beowyn and Sunna and sneak out of town before they can be lynched.


Days spent in Thunderbliss: 5
Pranks Pulled: 3
Whiskey and Coffees drank: 7 
Thunderbliss residents at start: 45
Thunderbliss residents on departure: 31

---

DM notes
This was interesting because I had some vague ideas of how to break the magic but left it open for players to think of something clever. When Norbith's player suggested iron it was funny because that's a fey folk legend - but considering the background of magics in this world and the other-worldly v. nature magics - I decided it would do something and I'd decide what when they decided what they were going to do. Seemed like a good compromise.

One of my new toys for these two sessions is snap camera which overlays snapchat filters onto any video stream. My players had no warning and when I showed up using the 'gorgon' filter they lost their shit in a most satisfying way. Lots of "no no no no" and "make it go away."

Got a long post about upgrading my roll20 account coming up. We also have another session tomorrow night.

Session 6: If we bury them alive they can't kill each other.

The Plot

Hori, Chantrix and Voola wake up to their cohorts gone. No blood on the ground where they were, just an impression in the grass and no one in sight. They cautiously make their way back towards Thunderbliss. When they get to town they see more than one person that they either saw die, or killed outright the night before. This is confusing.

When they get to the village green they see a vaguely dwarven shape near a cistern off in the distance. When they approach they find Norbith with a GIANT cup of coffee and Gigi mostly down the well. Norbith and Gigi explain that they only vaguely remember what happened the night before, it's very dreamlike. The others are quick to tell them exactly what happened to them. Gigi and Norbith let them know what they learned - the townspeople die every night and don't remember it the next morning. They also can't leave, no matter how far they get in a day, they'll wake up back in Thunderbliss the next morning.


Gigi also explains that there is magic of some kind down the well. The party decides to get some rope and lower her down to look at it. She uses her new 'identify' spell and finds out that this spike in the well is causing the events of Thunderbliss. And it will keep getting stronger and stronger the longer it goes on. To break it, they must overcome the baser nature of people which Gigi interprets as no one getting killed at night. Gigi describes the symbol on the spike - like the one on Voola's arm it sounds vaguely elvish, dwarvish and dunar all at once.

Back out of the well, the party confers. Hori posits that if they kill everyone before sundown then they won't kill each other at night. Curse solved. After some tweaking they consider just burying the townspeople up to their neck but realize that none of them have enough persuasion to achieve convincing people to do that.  A better idea is to get everyone drunk, but Johnny tells them he doesn't have anywhere near enough alcohol for that. Second idea is to put everyone to sleep. They try to convince Harim to help them but are not very persuasive. Voola and Chantrix go find Old Nan and ask about local herbs that might help with that and get directions to a nearby Tala treet where they can gather leaves that put people to sleep. Voola, Chantrix and Hori go off to do that while Norbith and Gigi attempt to convince the town to take the tea when they get back. Gigi is moderately successful - Norbith probably made more enemies.

They get back and brew the tea over a big bonfire. Gigi begins a performance and the convince some of the townspeople to drink, but not all of them. Burga, the somewhat racist merchant, starts telling people not to drink it because and orc made it. The party gets the town to turn on Burga. When the sun goes down, about half of the town has taken the tea, including Gigi and Norbith.

Voola, Hori and Chantrix leave well before sundown and make camp about a mile outside of town.

DM Notes

Most of this game was learning things and making plans. There were some opportunities to do some ability rolls in town (persuasion, medicine, acrobatics) and build up confidence in skills that aren't "let's stab that thing." I thought the tea idea was great and I am committed to giving them whatever they want to make their solution work (within reason of course) so of course there's a tree nearby that medicinally could work.

The range of things they talked about trying were great - although I had to do a whisper aside convo with Hori of "YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE LAWFUL GOOD." I actually made a lot of use of the whisper function in roll20 to talk to Gigi about the spell since she did the identification. it was funny to watch everyone in the shadowed boxes start talking about why was God speaking directly to Gigi.

I had written the spell to be immune to being asleep (people will just wake up and go about their murdery ways), so this isn't going to work. But I like the theory! Just wondering how long it will take them to realize it didn't work.

Session 5b: Death becomes them

The Plot

Norbith awakens on a cot in The Blue Flask. He sits bolt upright and notes that while his clothes are ripped and torn at the neck and in various other places, there is no blood and he is completely healed with no scars from the nights before. Johnny is at the bar cleaning some dishware and sighs when he see Norbith. "If I'd known you were going to ignore us I'd have made up the bed for you."

Gigi awakens in a frothy pink room with lacy curtains. She calls out and discovers she is in the spare bedroom of Harim's home. He is downstairs making tea and offers her a cup. They speak for a bit and Gigi learns that the villagers don't remember what happens at night. They have some vague nightmares but as time has gone on they forget more and more.

Gigi and Norbith find each other outside. They also find Burga, the vaguely racist woman they spoke with at the tavern who turns out is kind of a lot of racist. She was traveling through about a week earlier and was the first stranger to be trapped in town. Now, no matter where she goes or what she does, she always wakes up back at the Blue Flask.

Beowyn wakes up confused and unhappy and goes to find his cart. Sunna finds Gigi and Norbith begins yelling about her dead husband. When Beowyn shows up she immediately faints and they carry her upstairs in Harim's house. Norbith gets a cup of coffee and he and Gigi go outside and cast 'detect magic'. Gigi sees a mist hanging in the air and condensating on all the humans in town - but not the animals like the horses and a squirrel.

Wandering around, Norbith and Gigi find a well on the edge of the green. Looking inside, Gigi sees a brighter spot about halfway down the well.

DM Notes

So I wanted to give the dead players more info about the world and sort of ease them into their new plight. So I did a special session with just them. This way they could explain what happened to the rest of the group and also have a chance to do some reconnoitering without everyone having to wait on that to happen.

Session 5: Remember you trust me

Well that went as well as could be expected.

One of the problems I've had in this game is that my lovely players have ignored every quest hook I've dropped for them and have been running headlong into absolutely certain death at the hands of a level 12 Sorceress. They wouldn't even scratch her right now - in fact I've been trying to figure out what she could do to brush them off like flies that would have consequences without outright killing them.

(If you're wondering - she's the one who put the compulsion on Voola (although I was planning on it wearing off just before they get to Old Rock. Enough that they know "there's a big bad here!" without being drawn all the way into the sorceress's web.) She's also ultimately responsible for their memory loss as Gigi had stolen something from her and she'd one of her underlings to get it back.)

So here I have this party - all of which are going to either die or be transported to the other end of the world if I can't slow them down some. And then I thought - if they're so keen to die, let 'em die.

And Thunderbliss was born.

The Plot

We open with Voola being gently awaken by the soft nuzzling of one of her rabbit friends. The rabbit indicates someone is coming down the road and Voola spies the rest of the party. They meet up and exchange details of what they've been up to. Voola talks about the awesome tree she found that helped her break the compulsion on her. Hori is confused, "Wait, what tree?" They exchange their differing accounts of the encounter with the tree and Voola cautions them about stabbing orc magic Chantrix. Voola shows off her new sigil and by show off I mean resignedly allows Chantrix to touch it. Nothing happens to Chantrix.

The party stops for the night and everyone regains their HP. They travel onwards and arrive at the town of Thunderbliss about an hour before sundown. They are met by a tall human man who tells them they are welcome to stay and trade there but they must leave by sundown. Pretty much everyone protests this but the man, Harim, is clear about this. They MUST be gone by sundown.

Hori asks if its a full moon and after being told it's a half moon the party wonders about half-moon werewolves. The go to the tavern for info and immediately split off in five directions for five conversations.

Gigi talks to the Halfling who owns the tavern who is happy to sell her some pasties.

Hori makes almost no progress with the human woman she speaks to.

Voola is told by the human woman she talks to that Beowyn must be her master as all orcs have masters.

Norbith makes some progress with a human/elf man he speaks to but he's very reticent.

Chantrix convinces the halfing she speaks with to go with them.

As Gigi is collecting the pasties Harim bursts through the door and yells that they had to leave at sundown. The party rapidly exits the tavern just in time to see the last fading light of the sun drop quickly. The town goes eerily quiet.

And then the screaming starts.

From around the party and the nearby buildings every member of the town begins to spill into the streets. They are enraged, fighting each other tooth and nail. When they see the party they focus on them and begin rushing that way. Everyone goes back into the tavern after ascertaining that their animals are being ignored by the bloodthirsty killers. Gigi arrives in time to see Beowyn be brained by a tavern patron. His wife Sunna is screaming and seems unaffected by whatever is effecting the town. Johny, the halfling tavern owner, rushes down the top of the bar and snaps her neck. 

The aftermath, not pictured the 10 or so people the party killed.

The party get into a fight with the people inside the bar while also trying to keep the door barred to keep anyone else from coming in. Gigi is stabbed through the gut and falls to the floor quite nearly dead but is healed by Voola. The party dispatch the people in the bar with them but take heavy damage. The townsfolk are absolutely feral and seem to have only one thing on their mind - to kill.

The party head out the back door and into four townspeople who were fighting each other but immediately turn their focus to them. Gigi tries to hide in an alley and gets her head bashed in and falls dead. Chantrix takes out that villager with one blow of her mace. Further away, Norbith gets into a fight with a small girl who rips his throat out with her bare hands.

After conferring together, the party decide to leave the village and hide out in the woods for the night. Hopefully, they can stabilize their injured party members.

DM Notes

I joked in our group chat when this was over that this session started with bunny kisses and ended with two of them dead.

I knew this would be a risk. From the start, I held it in my mind that I was going to have to rely on my players trusting in me a lot in order for this to work. So, earlier in the day, I PM'ed each of them with "If things go as I think they might tonight something might happen to [character]. I need you to remember you trust me."

And so as people died I was frantically typing, 'Remember you trust me, remember you trust me.' But I was also getting messages from the nondead players who were like "I want to focus all of my attention to keep this thing from happening" and I would reassure them "I am talking to that PC, I promise this is okay. Do your in-character things but don't feel a need to be crazy."

And so 2 players died. I completely forgot about death saving throws but honestly for the purposes of my needing someone to die it wouldn't have mattered. They were dead, even if only for a minute.

Which means they are now a part of the curse of Thunderbliss - which they'll discover next session when Gigi and Norbith awake in Thunderbliss and will wake up there every morning for the rest of their lives unless they break the curse.

If anyone is wondering - the idea came from A Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. In it there is a village called Hinderstrap with this same issue.

My players were definitely very confused that after having one encounter with a tree (or hunter) they were now up against 45 opponents who were doing 8-10 points of damage when worst. I based the feral villagers on a wolf stat base.

I leave you with the playlist that Gigi composed for us after the session ended. She does this every time so I'm going to make a point of copying it over :)

Session 4.5: Special session with Voola

I spoke with Voola's PC last weekend and we worked on fitting her into the game as well as what some of his (the PC's) expectations were and what were him and what were on me. We're playing with Voola's class - she may turn druid or dual class druid/cleric - and fleshed out some of her story more. One thing I offered was to do a one-on-one session with him of "What happened when Voola left the party." He missed two session in a row so was behind on XP so this gave us a chance for him to make some of that up as well as give him some control of what is happening to Voola.

The Plot*

After being touched by the full-blooded orc Voola felt a wave of heat wash over herself. She took off along the road to Thunderbliss. Mentally, she could still think through but it felt as though her body was outside of her control. She fought the compulsion and after traveling for about a half hour managed to regain control of her senses and pull her horse up to a more reasonable pace - although she was unable to stop her northward journey completely.

Within an hour Voola arrived at a tall, black spire of a tree. Once she was in sight of it the compulsion lessened and a feeling of peace and healing emanated from the tree to her. She could still feel the compulsion but was able to ignore it. She approached the tree and read the warnings written there as well as touching the heart sigil. If she sees the person who wrote the warning she will recognize them on sight. The magic tied to the tree feels earthy to her - and obviously has the flavor or orcish doing. She recognizes the beating heart in the bag as powerful warning magic and knows better than to touch it.

Voola cautiously moves away from the tree. As she gets farther the feeling of peacefulness recedes and she can feel the tug telling her she needs to go to it. Trying to turn back is physically painful. She moves slightly further down the road and hears a noise in the trees.

Stopping, Voola investigates the noise. Unfortunately, it's difficult for nearly seven feet of orc to move stealthily and she makes quite a bit of noise. As she tries to sneak along the brushline she comes across a pair of boots that have snuck up on her. They are attached to a large man that is at least half elf. The man does not speak to Voola. 

Sigil on Voola

   

 

Sigil on the Elf

Voola attempted to speak to the man but he doesn't respond until he notices the sigil on her arm. His hands go to touch a sigil on his cloak - it is not the same. "You serve her?" Voola denies serving anyone. "You wear her sign." Voola tells him that someone put that sign on her. The man immediately attacks, pulling two hand axes and slashing across Voola who take quite a bit of damage. Voola defends herself, whacking him with her quarterstaff and knocking his senses loose. He ends up on the ground and Voola goes after him, hoping to tie him up and ask questions. He kicks out at her and escapes off into the woods on his horse, heading perpendicular to the road.

Voola spies a clearing slightly off the road and decides that as it seems like it is not a good idea to continue forward, and she cannot physically make herself go back, she will wait for the party to catch up. As she's settling her horse in she spies a rabbit who she begins to speak with. She asks the rabbit if he's ever seen a sign like the one on her arm and how to get it off. The rabbit recommends grooming it off like the rabbit would do to his fur.

Voola's investigation of the rune reveals a deep red color slightly raised on the skin that looks like blood but does not budge when she pokes it with a twig. The sigil feels warm on her skin, and even when she casts healing on herself and feels the cold wash of the magic, the sigil continues to feel warm. And make her skin crawl. She tries covering it with mud which does nothing and finally wraps a piece of her blanket over it to hide it from prying eyes.

She offers some oats to the now two rabbits who offer to watch out for her while she sleeps. The exhaustion of the hard ride, the fight, and the magic catch up to her and she falls asleep.

*I'm copying this verbatim from what I write up for the players so if there's weird tone changes that's why.

DM Notes

I'm REALLY glad I did this session with Voola. Having the PC for Voola added some to the story and gave her some agency back. We've had a lot of discussion of how Voola specifically, as an orc, fits in the world. She has a special relationship with this world's magic that the others don't. Making that balance out is difficult and we're still finding it. I think the druid/cleric dual class will be helpful. We may end up making our own class entirely for her.

I'm also really glad I talked to the PC. His biggest concerns were things I could easily fix. I also offered him a "way out" in that another mutual friend of ours is starting a game so he could play but maybe a more serious game. He chose to stay with us which I was very happy about. 

I am entertained that Voola and the rest of the party had such different experiences with the tree. Voola is going to have some choice words for Chantrix I think when they all get back together. Voola is being pulled towards a sorceress in the North. If something specific happens in Thunderbliss the compulsion could be broken.

I had a TON of fun playing the rabbits. They are helpful in their own way. When Voola asked about removing the sigil I thought "What would a rabbit do" and the look on the PC's face when I suggested Voola groom it off was priceless. And she very kindly thanked the rabbit who was very proud of himself. I love my rabbits.

Next game will pick up now just after the tree (which Voola slept through her friends being attacked, and the rabbits didn't think to wake her up) and they will have a long rest in the woods before moving on to Thunderbliss, arriving about an hour before sundown the next day. I hope I get to play Thunderbliss after sundown.

There is something very wrong in Thunderbliss.

Session 4: "Chantrix, despite Norbith's protestations..."

The Plot:

The journey to Thunderbliss begins!

At the start, everyone has their weapons and armor (if they have it) from the peddler. These are on loan until the party takes him safely to Old Rock. The peddler - Beowyn - is also with his wife Sunna who is much more skeptical of the party than her husband.

The peddler told some tales about the roads in this area getting more and more unsafe. There is a large old tree he's used as a landmark for years that started turning black in the last couple of seasons. It started at the trunk and has spread out on the branches.

About two hours outside of town, the party met a rider on the road. The rider was a full blooded orc. He did not respond to Orcish but when Hori spoke to him in common he responded "Must go Benne." When spoken to more he simply repeated variations of "Must go Benne" and eventually "Must go Benne Windford.

When Voola got near to him he reached out and grabbed her arm, leaving a red mark behind. Voola got a distant look in her eyes and immediately rode off down the road to the Thunderbliss as fast as her horse could go. (DM Note: I asked that they let her go so the party did not follow, see more DM notes below.) The party tried to keep the orc and Hori used her sleeve to cover her arm and get the orc to grab her too. The orc left a perfect red handprint with a strange, shimmery sigil in the center of the palm. The orc was basically an immovable object and kept going and the party did not try to stop him. He rode south towards Startead.

On examination the following things about the sigil were discovered:

• The red stuff is blood
• It did not seem to have an effect on Hori. This could have been because it never touched skin or because she's not an orc, or any number of other reasons but those were the two the party focused on.
• The sigil looks vaguely like a dwarven rune meaning 'mine' or 'ownership' but also not really like that at all. It is not dwarven and was not recognized as elvish.
• Gigi cast detect magic and saw the last fading aura of magic and then it the sigil went quiet (no aura).
• The party told the peddlers that Voola was scouting ahead. Beowyn was more convinced that Sunna but neither questioned it. Gigi's detect magic spell does not show that any member of the party has any magical item on them although Beowyn, Sunna, and the peddler's cart all have various faint glows.

This is a rue from the Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Archives
which hit the right blend of elvish and dwarvish for me.

At lunch, Beowyn stops at the tree he always stops at but the tree is no longer there, just a burned towering spike of what's left of a tree in the middle of a large clearing. The peddlers insist on stopping but keep their distance.

The party did not.

Chantrix gets near the tree and sees a band of cloth embroidered with Infernal glyphs. Her vague translation gets (Infernal is not her best language): danger, warning, healing, avoid. It is sort of the equivalent of a marker that tells you how high a tsunami might go on the coastline. Or a "bridge out" warning.

There is also a bag tied to the tree embroidered with gold thread and pulses faintly and rhythmically when touched. Chantrix opens the bag to find a still beating pig's heart. Despite Norbith's protestations Chantrix touches the heart with her dagger. As soon as the metal touches the pig's heart it shrivels and turns black. The ground erupts with tree roots that immediately begin attacking the party.

I'm not going to blow for blow describe the fight but Gigi gets out early and casts Bardic Inspiration to help people still trapped in the range of the tree. Hori gets out next but gets caught again while trying to rescue Norbith. Both Hori and Gigi try to set the tree on fire but it doesn't work. Norbith asks Beowyn for help but all he comes up with is healing potions. Norbith and Hori get out and Chantrix gets out with the help of a rope thrown by Hori. Everyone takes some damage.

The roll20.org map we were using.
As my players are more inexperienced I included the circle showing the range of the tree.
As they gain levels, I'm going to up the generally difficulty by dropping these hints but that's not necessary right now and I think would hinder their enjoyment.

As soon as everyone is clear of the tree it stops moving and the ground returns to normal, as though nothing ever happened. There's no signs of the fight or that anything had erupted from the ground.

Beowyn offers the two potions at 3sp each. Hori argued that they got in a fight on his behalf and therefore he's agreed to supply healing. Beowyn argues that it was their own stupidity and curiosity that got them hurt, he and his wife were never in danger and in fact Chantrix is the one who caused the danger anyway. He offered to give a deal (4 healing potions for 10sp) that Hori accepts and pays for. Norbith attempts to steal the cart but it is enchanted in some way and tries to unseat him. When he tries to get the horses to go they kick the cart. Sunna walks over and he abandons the thievery idea.

Chantrix, despite Norbith's protestations, goes to look at the bag and heart again. She tests the ground and when it doesn't rise up goes to the tree and lightly touches the bag. There is no pulse. Satisfied, she returns to the party.

The party continues onward.

DM Notes:

I'm going to need to create a macro for "Chantrix, despite Norbith's protestations..." because Chantrix will poke anything and Norbith is like Cassandra off to the side yelling "Why are you poking the thing? Why are you even that close to the thing??"

The player for Voola and I spoke this week and he was not available to play again tonight. He and I also had some talk about the campaign and his character because he's not sure it's a good fit for him. Some of it is party based - they're goofier than he was expecting and doesn't know if Voola fits into that - and some of it was my own DMing. I've been giving role-playing XP for big character moments but Voola is a much quieter character and he felt she was being short changed because of that. Which is totally valid criticism. We are going to talk in person this week and see what is a product of my being a new DM and what is a function of the game itself and decide if Voola is staying. That's why she ran off. If he stays, they'll catch up to her in the next town. If not I'll continue that arc and she'll be written out of the game.

The plotline the party is currently following includes a sorceress who is enslaving and using orcs to feed her magic. That's why the orc they met was acting weird and he's ensorcerelled Voola to go to her. Because she is only half orc, if the player stays in the game I have an out to have her shake it off in the next town. Or not if he doesn't.

Picture from here and uncredited there.

The tree was a tree trap from the D&D essentials kit I bought with some modifications to what was attached and set it off to fit my story. Had Voola been there she would have recognized the pig's heart as orc magic and that it was not to be touched or messed with. This is a tree that is specifically setup to warn orcs about the sorceress and how dangerous these lands are to them.

I didn't realize until we started that the trap was intended for Level 5 or 6 players. It's not a full encounter so it wasn't a big deal, it was not grossly overpowered, but I did make some adjustments to AC and the damage done by the tree on the fly as the first hit nearly killed Chantrix outright. if she wasn't a barbarian it would have. It was also immune to all but slashing damage and as it was a construct could never actually be beaten, just escaped. It took a while for them to figure that out. They never did figure out that only slashing damage worked.

I really enjoyed the character interactions this week. There is a starting period I think is common of "I'm playing this character and can do all the things" that we're starting to move out of and into "Who am I and what does my character actually want?" Which is great. Hori is still completely incapable of being lawful good and Norbith's PC actually went over and tripped her off her horse to keep her from talking. Which is a very in-character thing for Norbith to do. But he's also pretty sneaky. There will be consequences in Thundernbliss for trying to steal the peddler's cart.

Norbith also has the (brilliant) idea to buy some lockable boxes in the next town that she can put a few copper pieces in and hide in places where it looks like Chantrix is going to start poking around. That was Chantrix can be curious and Norbith doesn't have to get attacked by trees all the time. I love this so much and it's so in character. For both of them.

Overall, this was an easy introduction to combat for my new players. They got some plot info (from the orc and the tree) and got some extra XP as well as me getting Voola out of the session for a bit. I am not confident enough in my DMing to be playing a character that long and DM effectively. I asked if they wanted another encounter before they reached town and we've agreed to start the next session on arrival in Thunderbliss that night.

Session 3: I don't think you know what the term "Lawful Good" Means

Oh Hori, you beautiful barbarian.

The Plot

We picked up from the last session with everyone back at the The Blue Flask (the local tavern). We were two players short so I picked up Voola and Norbith (wearing a green scarf to "be" the former and with a tire pressure gauge as a pipe to be the latter).

Early discussion happened (thankfully) about the group staying together. They all acknowledged they have the same memory wipe and some careful questioning of the tavern owner let them know they all have the last memory of bit over a year before. They also got their hands on a map of the general world area they are in. Everyone recognized some part of the map - but no one had been to this town before (that the knew of).

In the end, they decided to follow the rumor about a halfling who had arrived in town the Chantrix the day before but has been missing ever since. So they will be heading West - toward Old Rock.

And the sorceress of Old Rock who is, ultimately, responsible for their memory loss so good on them for noticing that. But if they decide to fight her at the level they're at now she is going to banish them off the furthest reaches of the known world.

So that will be fun :)

Because we were short on people this session was more rumor gathering. Gigi met up with the mayor who had her armor. He claims she lost it in a wager but it doesn't fit him anyway so he told her she could have it back if she sang a song for his wife.

Chantrix got her battleaxe back from the stablemaster and there was some discussion on if his need for their stuff (to check on his brother) justified the taking of it.

A peddler showed up in the evening as well and he had the majority of the rest of their weapons. Claimed they were sold to him by townspeople. Hori doubted this muchly. She did quite a hit of intimidation before rolling a perception to see if he was telling the truth.

Nat20.

He was. He's an honest guy. Hori was still all for beating him up and just taking their stuff back. This led to a long discussion on if Hori was really lawful good. She does not seem to have a good grasp on what that is. She may chaotic at best - evil at worst.

In the end, the peddler agreed to a trade: they protected him and his wife on his trip to Old Rock in exchange for their weapons back. Since this was where they wanted to go anyway they agreed.

Gigi did do her performance for the Mayor who is desperaterly in love with his wife who 100% wears the pants in the family. Again, Hori's preferred tactic was to intimidate him instead. Voola refused to participate as she believed the mayor to be honest and the rest of the party were too set on violence.

They leave in the morning. Next session? We get our first fight.

DM Notes:
I finally managed to push them out of town. I said at the beginning they were welcome to stay in town as long as they wanted but if so I needed to know so I could build it out more. The goal for tonight's session was to pick a general direction so I could build out a cone from that path.

Playing the 2 PCs was difficult but not as bad as last session with multiple conversations. My biggest issue ended up being that every person who lived in Startead has the worst southern accent you've ever heard. I don't know why. I couldn't stop myself. It was so so bad. The mayor sounded like Foghorn Leghorn. I am not kidding.

We have not been happy with google hangouts as a video system. Not because of any technical issues but because there were some features we'd like like being able to talk one on one or to change the name tags to our characters names.

So we switched to roll20.



roll20 is a lot. It has a lot of features that we are not using. But it does have a pretty robust video system and as you can see, we can have a map and track player positions. I am not using it to it's total efficacy. I know this.  At some point I'm hoping we can really use all of the features. But right now - as video and player position tracking, it gets the job done.

One thing I had asked everyone to do was logon with me last week to do a technical test. Not everyone did. We ended up starting this session 45 minutes late due to tech difficulties. The worst ones, however, came from the only person who had done the tech test so I don't know. Definitely recommend doing a pre-session of just working with roll20 and creating accounts, changing names, etc that isn't a play session

Yes, I am God.

Session 2: No, that's okay, just go talk to five different people at the same time. It's cool.

deep exhale

That was a lot.

The Plot

The party went down the stairs into the front room of the tavern tits out (no, for real) and discovered that they were not wanted for murder or owing money (Norbith's biggest concern) and in fact they had had a wild time the night before including various wagers and Hori's axes getting stuck in the ceiling. They then immediately went to five different corners of the room to have four conversations in three languages.

Help me.

Luckily because we were using slack for languages other than common I could (moderately) keep two text convos going and still try to talk to people in Common. But none of the conversations were any good. I barely got in any rumors or exposition that I needed to. After a while of this we managed to get everyone at one table with just the innkeeper - who told them some of what happened the night before and dropped a rumor about a quest up north.

An elf in the corner dropped hints about something happening to the south.

A dwarf told them about his missing sister last seen in the north but likely heading south.

They found out from a couple of halflings that Chantrix had shown up the day before with another Halfling man that has since disappeared.

I did not manage to drop any rumors really about the east or west.

The group did manage to all find their mounts which included this fun convo:

Gigi: "I slip through the slats of the fence and approach the friendliest looking horse."
Me: "So you're going into that stable yard - with three horses at least two of which do not know you - yes?"
Gigi: ......
Me: "Why don't you go ahead and roll a d20 for me."
Gigi: "You know what, I'm just going to walk up to the fence and see what happens."

I've had this beautiful horse photo for years.
I have no idea of its provenance.

Gigi and Voola also had a request to go check in on someone's brother out at a ranch. In the course of that, Gigi was slapped in the face by a young woman she was apparently supposed to run away with the night before but never showed up. Back at the inn, Norbith got innkeeper gossip about a spider problem in Windford.

This session was mostly finishing gathering people's things, getting their mounts, and getting some rumors and ideas of where they might want to go. They've decided to stay the night again in town and maybe they'll wander by the shop. I hope they do because a LOT of their weapons have been sold by townspeople to the shop-owner.

DM Notes

I got very worried about this session. Because everyone split up there was a lot of "Okay Norbith, you're doing this. Blah blah blah" while everyone else was kind of just sitting. It felt weird to me because I felt like they were being left out which is kind of the opposite of what D&D should be.

It was even worse with the convos in side languages. Sometimes there was just silence while I gathered my thoughts about what was going on and tried to respond to one person with more than one or two words. I'm going to need to either find a balance there or maybe not do this the way we have planned.

I know - I'm learning. I'm trying to be very kind to myself. Regardless of how I feel, my group seems to be having a very good time. I did manage to drop a couple more hints about who is responsible for getting all their memories wiped. So far one or more party members knows:

• Gigi was the only person whose stuff was ransacked overnight
• Norbith got a warning that dwarves have been going missing in these lands for the last year or two
• Chantrix found out that she had shown up with a friend who has disappeared without a trace

When Hori gets her horse back she'll find out her possible involvement (a wanted poster for her in her saddlebags). Voola, the orc, is my only current question mark. I'm trying to play this region as a place that's not particularly orc averse. Mostly because they hardly see them.

I did get a second monitor which made all the difference in the world to my ability to DM so huge thanks to Stephen for that.

No session next week so I'll try to find something else to blog about.

Session 1: Waking Up

Wow.

Our first session is done. And it was... something.

It took us about 45 minutes to get everyone on and some technical difficulties worked out (which was to be expected the first time) and we were once person short until the last half hour or so because of the day switch.

The Plot

I had warned everyone not to get too much of a recent backstory because we'd be starting with amnesia for everyone. So I had everyone roll pre-game to see how screwed they were, then we started the session with an initiative roll to see what order the woke up in. They woke each other up in turn except for the Orc who slept through all the initial nonsense and woke up when her player arrived.

And when I say "woke each other up" I mean "made a noise" because absolutely everyone was too cautious to wake anyone up on purpose. Which was hilarious.

My Note Categories for Session 1

So you know how they say your players will always surprise you and don't get too set on anything and so on? I had believed this but still thought I was ready for at least the first hour or two.

And then these fuckers immediately picked a fight. Like - woke up, failed at thievery, and got into a brawl on the floor until interrupted by a nude barbarian. The barbarian rolled a 1 on her wakeup role. These things happen.

Once awake, they proceeded to ransack the room looking for their stuff and in some cases clothes. There was also a dog in the room who was IN LOVE with the halfling. She was the halfling's mount which quickly became apparent. But dog.... well let's just say that dog was last in her class at riding dog school. When everyone decided to sneak out the back the dog immediately ran off chasing a squirrel and the halfling required the help of the other barbarian to get her back.

They then proceeded into "exposition introductions" which were FANTASTIC. "Hi, I'm Hori. I'm a half-elf barbarian." It was great and I loved it.

While they were discussing what to do outside the Orc woke up, ransacked what was left of the room, and opened the window and called down to the group.  We ended with everyone back at the room and I think next session they're going to try going down the main stairs.

DM Notes

Wowza, that was a lot. I was laughing so hard for so long I got a headache. Really, I just gave them like three pieces of info and they proceeded to entertain me like trained monkey for two hours.

Highly recommend.

I was very worried about my DM skills considering I have never done it and haven't even played in nearly a decade. But I'm very much a "sure, you try that" person and rolled with what was happening.

I do need to get better about not putting my own impressions on the characters. For example I made the comment that two characters were brawling and one said "I'm not brawling" and the other said "We're about to." I had jumped the gun rather than letting them get to it. I also mischaracterized some talks and conversations based on what I wanted rather than what was happening. I'm aware of it and it's something I'm going to try to work on. I'm used to paraphrasing and taking out all emotion entirely, but in building the world I want to give those emotions to make everything feel more real.

We had a couple of rolls to take care of which is what I've been most worried about - but they were pretty basic non-combat with a good mix of successes and failures. Hell, someone rolled a natural 20 on waking up!

Right now, in my plan for next week, I'm seeing how to get the party into easy reach of their mounts and weapons. Some are easy to get back, some less so. I don't expect they will necessarily find everything but I want to at least give them hints on everything even if they don't pursue it.

I'm also trying to plant the seeds that every character could be responsible for their amnesia. I've already got three of five planned - one actually already seen "on-screen" - working on the others.

I did realize, very very fast, that in doing everything online I need a second monitor. I need to have the group up somewhere separate from my working screen. I had four windows open and usually in and out of at least one more. That's too many. Hopefully tonight I'm picking one up from a friend.

One thing I'm going to do this weekend is make something for the site that describes all the players. I can see now I need that.

My next post will be about how we're using slack. As you saw from my last post, I ran into a wee bit of trouble there. If you have any ideas of how to make these posts more visually appealing please let me know.