FOW Logs 11-12 Phostwood

The Fish Outta Water (FOW) Campaign continues with...

Jerrison Shallowstream the half-elf tempest cleric,

Maw the gnome spirit bard, and

Zero-R-Alpha the warforged astral monk!

Session 11

The team has a week of travel with Lord Pierce the Spirit Naga. Since they were near the Gamboge Forest, the meadows, and the river to the Phostwood Forest they had to decide where to go adventure. The team chose the Phostwood because the trees there had a glow luminescence to them. Pierce agreed to a 50% loot split with the party while he stayed back in the tent-covered wagon. Jerrison, Maw, and Alpha entered the woods, where they met up with a group from the army of the Duchy of Tenth. They talked about the Old Faith. The leader, General Brand, recruited the team as irregulars (with badges) and sent them to go fight a group of Iuz-worshipping gnolls while his main forces took on the nearby bandits who were supposedly led by a necromancer.

The team found the pillar/obelisk area and killed some of the gnolls outside...

Session 12

Continuing from last time, the team approached the pillar and realized it was the size of a tower, about 120 feet tall. They took out the gnolls guards outside the main doors, went into each level, and defeated the enemies, which included: gnolls, pack lords, maw demons, shadow demons, a campion, detaches, a portal to a Balor demon, gnoll witherlings, and a gnoll flind! They found a decent amount of loot. Maw found a purple rock he was able to attune to and de-summon the tower (with a 10% risk of losing his identity and being turned into a mindflayer) and a potion of frost giant strength. Alpha got some eyes of minute seeing (which looked like purple gems). The team rested, leveled up, and brought the rest of the treasure to Lord Pierce (which included the flind flail holy weapon of "you-know-who," a tentacle-arrow+2, and some coins).

Discussing their future destinations, the team decided to wear south toward the County and Duchy of Urnst, where they would be able to stop in the city of Radagast to get supplies and such.

FOW Log 2: Chaos in the Basement

 The Fish Outta Water (FOW) Campaign continues with...

Jerrison Shallowstream the half-elf tempest cleric,

Maw the gnome spirit bard, and

Zero-R-Alpha the warforged astral monk!

Session 2

After clearing out the undead on the ground level, the team rested. During that rest some strange things occurred: (1) Jerrison noticed, even though he worshipped the storm god, that the sun god was trying to connect with him; (2) Alpha felt a dark presence, but he fought it off; (3) Maw heard tormented voices in his dreams. The group went down the well, into the basement, where they cleared out a bunch of rooms and tunnels of undead (lots of bodies left behind from some sort of battle, skeletons, dretches, and shadows). They looted some old coins with Pelor's symbol on them. Jerrison was able to seal away chaos energy. Alpha poured demon blood on some Iuz statues and gained glabrezu demon claw powers, and had a conversation about truth and his goals with supposedly Iuz. He then destroyed the Iuz statue and the team entered what looked like the final room with the book they had been searching for in a large glowing green orb.

To be continued...

AL Season 10 Premiere

 Adventurers League Season 10 - OH NO!

First, a little disclaimer with the fact that I have not been playing D&D all the time like I used to do. With that out of the way, I will say I really miss the friends and fun from AL.

The new Wizards of the Coast (WotC) adventure product - Rime of the Frostmaiden - released yesterday, which means yesterday was also the release date for the new AL Season 10 Rules. Except, strangely, all that we got was a "Player's Guide" without a DM's Guide or FAQ or Content Catalog update. I say it's strange because, in previous years, the AL Admins have released previews of the rules a month or two ahead of time and the community has had a chance to provide feedback. And then there were rules updates along the way, as needed.

The feedback from the draft of the Season 9 rules caused the admin team to revise them to better fit the wants and needs of the community. But WotC decided this time not to release a preview ahead of time. Instead, they boldly dropped the "Player's Guide" document with the "seasonality" concept (not said in name) that the community fought against for Season 9.

Basically, to play in any of the new materials and hardcover release, you have to make a new character that is Season 10 exclusive. After getting to level 5, you can take that Season 10 character to previous material, but then you can't come back to the Season 10 stuff. It's so weird and exclusive for, in my opinion, no reason. But then again, I've always thought that AL has a bunch of extra rules just for the sake of making the system more complicated.

The community is very upset. The Facebook group received almost 1,000 negative comments in less than 24 hours. Reddit is full of negative comments. I wish I was on Discord so I could see what the AL Discord groups are saying, but according to people on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit there will be a ton of players and DMs leaving again like with Season 8.

The weirdest part to me is that we have always explained to new players that you have to use the newest season rules to play, but the person who wrote the Season 10 "Player's Guide" wrote it - it appears - with the assumption that the Season 9 rules would still be in effect for non-Season 10 characters. It makes me wonder if the person who wrote the document even knows what AL is or how it has worked in the past.

On Twitter and Facebook the AL admins have been clear that WotC has taken over and they have no power here other than being the messengers of the rules. That's really strange too. Why even have admins at that point?

Overall, the premiere of the AL Season 10 rules has been a failure. Lots of people are confused. The people who understand the rules are angry and threatening to leave AL play. Well, there are always home games to play in.

Peace!

HeroForge Color

I was one of the people who paid money as part of the HeroForge Color Kickstarter, to add color printing to HeroForge.com's printed miniature options. I think the menu options are wonderful. They have preprogrammed "racial" color options and "theme" options. They also allow for color customization for everything. Items and such have preselected colors, but can also be modified. HeroForge.com has come a long way and I love it. Now I just need to decide which miniature I am going to have them print and mail to me.

Here are color updates for some of my characters, in no particular order:

Peace!

FOE3 Log 21-23

I just looked through my notes and realized I needed to post the last three adventure session logs from before the PANDEMIC began...

The Federation of Explorers Generation 3 (FOE3) continues with...
Althar Ovinson the yuan-ti cleric-wizard;
Zeraf the tiefling rogue-ranger; and
A'Beezel the tiefling bard!

Session 21
In the mountains:Althar, Zeraf, A'Bezeel, and Dax went down into a "drow hole" and found a cavern full of evil mushrooms. They had a huge battle with the mushrooms; A'Beezel and Dax were infected with spores, but Dax cured them. After resting, the team went deeper underground. A roper surprise attacked the group and almost killed them, but they defeated it in battle.

After finding paths with a purple haze, the team turned around and found an alternate route down. This led them to fighting a neolithid that killed Althar's familiar and Dax with its acid breath. The group rested after the battle, with the dead Dax and his automaton in the group portable hole.

Session 22
In the mountain caverns:Althar, Zeraf, and A'Bezeel traveled another 10 days before finally finding a dark elf city: Dinzarn. They paid Velgarn the drow merchant to sneak them into a safe house and help them plan how to rescue the captured slaves (A'Bezeel's villager friends who had been captured, including the barmaid Rosy). The drow fighter Qalore (pronounced "Kaylor") also helped the team.

Drow insurrectionists put magical illusions on the team so they would look like drow. The team infiltrated the slave prison and rescued the slave with minimal conflict/combat until fleeing out of the city; the team used diguises, distractions, and explosives to get the slaves out to safety.

The group eventually made it back to Deepwood Fort with the rescued slaves. They gave the gnome tinkerer the automaton and scraps. One of the rescued villagers was a wizard's apprentice; they were mostly humans. Rosy was very happy with A'Bezeel.

Session 23
At Deepwood Fort:Althar, Zeraf, and A'Bezeel had to deal with Steve's shenanigans; Steve threw a fit and exiled himself; the team had the local bard magically message Bagi in Deepwater and warn her Steve was coming. She said she would kill him if he went there.

The team spent 4 months of downtime setting up expansions in Deepwood, including farms and new buildings - along with a set political structure with a council to rule when the adventuring party is out of town or unavailable.

They found out the dark elves killed Steve (though it's possible he gave them valuable intel about the villages and such before dying). The party went to help Deepwater fend off a drow assault, leaving the council in charge of Deepwood.

Deepwater had expanded as well, with large statues honoring Ludo, Zeraf, and Althar; they replaced the town hall with a market (apparently abandoning the commune style of living for some form of capitalism?) and built a "war council" (Bagi, cleric of Mask, and the wizard) two-story town hall.

A drow army led by a wizard and priestess invaded Deepwater...

[Battle next time - though unsure when next time will be?]

AL Updated Jerp

Jerp got a haircut (again)...

Updated AL Character Art

I've been updating my HeroForge-generated graphics for some of my characters and decided to post them. When I have more time, I will make some posts updating the stories of the adventures of the characters. For each one, I'll put the graphic and then the name below it: