FOE2/COMT Reflection

Thoughts from a Player...
I had so much fun playing the FOE 2 (a.k.a. CoMT) campaign. The DM had a really interesting concept for us, clearing out an entire city from monsters, with a link to a cursed Deck of Many Things that summoned the magic to change the city in the first place. When we finished the main mission, the DM modified the Curse of Strahd campaign for us to play it at high level.

Throughout the campaign, as usual with this group, I ended up with the high kill count. I ended up playing:
*Narg “Fox” Stormleaf the half-orc cleric/wizard, who died fighting the monsters in the city streets;
*Derv “Dewey” Dewstone the human fighter, who died helping Seiken escape from the orc fort;
*Mory Brewbeard the dwarf cleric/pirate, who had his brain eaten by an intellect devourer and his soul taken by Shothragot;
*Ovin Snakestaff the water genasi fighter/cleric, who had ended up magically trapped in a room where he got his soul eaten by a succubus after impregnating her;
*Keravel Ual the elf cleric, who retired as the leader of a city; and
*the returning Raylin Sunsoaker the human sun cleric and Director of FOE, who successfully saved his own soul and then went off to spread the Federation of Explorers to other worlds.

That means, over about 45 gaming sessions, I played 6 really interesting characters with fun personalities. There were a lot of memorable moments, from fighting back the “green tide” to plotting to get the druid to fall in love with the necromancer (which didn’t happen), to pretending to be Gith, to surviving a huge airship battle/assault, to secretly setting up the Criminals of Many Things as a subset of FOE, to saving Raylin’s soul. Especially after Mory’s soul was taken, it meant a lot to be able to go back and save Raylin like that. It's bittersweet to end a campaign, but that just frees up time to start a new one...

Module Review: Out of the Abyss

Dungeons & Dragons 5E
For this week's fantasy review I'm going to complete another module review since I have so many D&D modules to catch up with. Out of the Abyss quickly became one of my favorite modules. As usual, I made modifications for my players and weaved in some other modules/adventures along the way.

Out of the Abyss
In my opinion, this adventure stands out as the best 5E module yet. Thus, as you read my criticisms below, please know that I greatly enjoyed DMing this campaign and my players enjoyed the gaming sessions. According to the book, the adventure was made for levels 1-15, but I highly recommend starting the campaign at a higher level because the Underdark is deadly.

Our group loves "naked challenges" in which the players need to escape from a dungeon without any of their equipment so this campaign's opening premise of starting out as drow prisoners/slaves, while not original, stood out as a fun possibility.

The book layout centered around chapters for the different locations, which I think helped me a lot as a DM. Unfortunately, this setup also comes with problems because it can be difficult to put all of the story threads together. I find that I have to read these modules at least 3 times for them to really make total sense.

The adventure also contains the most interesting NPCs in any of the D&D 5E modules thus far. With the Underdark races being used, the characters have many different bizarre personalities and motivations. Some characters from D&D novels also make appearances.

For a campaign starting as a slave escape, the adventures easily become a sandbox (after a while). One of the biggest criticisms of the campaign is that half way through, the players make their way to the surface and then are supposed to get support before going back down into the Underdark - but why would they return? While down there, the players have a chance of gaining insanity levels each time they rest. With the additional material that I weaved in, I got my players interested in the drow capitol city of Menzoberranzan:

As usual, these campaign books require some extra work and really skip leveling requirements for XP by using milestone leveling instead of really sticking to the numbers. My players were also able to skip sections since they didn't need to go to each location to achieve their goals (which is fine, but as a DM I had spent time preparing all of the locations).

Overall, I give this module a rating of 8 out of 10 because of the fun NPCs and the high number of usable locations but the best part of the module was the inclusion of 5E stats for 8 demon lords at the back (Baphomet, Demogorgon, Fraz-Urb'Luu, Graz'Zt, Juiblex, Orcus, Yeenoghu, and Zuggtmoy). With those stats, it would help DMs convert more of the old modules that featured these demon lords.

Module Review: Curse of Strahd

The Return of Lord Count Master Strahd
I really enjoyed running this module and my players had a ton of fun, so keep that in mind even though I may sound really critical with some of my comments below...

Considered one of the greatest D&D villains, Strahd maintains a special place in D&D lore. Despite that, I found myself upset when Wizards of the Coast originally announced this module because my multiverse already dealt with Strahd (many times). I know WotC markets to millions of people and my campaign stands out as a rare, special situation in which we actually include over 1,000 sessions as part of a continuing multigenerational storyline, but I wished WotC used a new/different story.

How difficult would it have been for WotC to connect the Strahd lore to something new? Not very. I considered re-flavoring and modifying the campaign for a different character and just using the stats and similar maps, but in the end I gave into the Strahd-craze once again. Luckily, WotC announces their upcoming releases months in advance and I was able to plant the seeds to bring back ancient Barovia into my multiverse (because it had already been destroyed and Strahd was supposedly permanently killed). Having taken care of that, I prepared to re-introduce the setting to the current group.

The module was designed for levels 1-10, but not really. The levels 1-3 part belongs to the "Death House" chapter that they added (in what looks like an after thought - though it is a fun spooky house module within itself). The experience point leveling system in the book relies on "story-based" "milestone" leveling more than actual XP calculation; I prefer actual XP calculation, which means I have to add more into the campaign or weave other modules in with it (which is what I did). If I had the time, I would make a spreadsheet and show the numbers, but it's a busy week; using the monsters and situations in the book, the XP would not equal out to progress a group of 4-5 characters from level 1 to 10, even with a few random encounters thrown in. Other than Death House, I think the book is really just enough material for levels 7-10.

As a positive note - once the group ends up in Ravenloft, it's possible to play the campaign as a horror sandbox and that's what we did. WotC included some nice new locations. Our group had the most fun at Old Bonegrinder and the Amber Temple. The Amber Temple almost wiped the party and, for many groups that know how to strategically fight vampires, that location will be more of a challenge than Strahd's castle (which means the challenge progression is off in the module). That location also includes some fascinating lore regarding the Dark Powers of the  Domains of Dread (but not really, because it's only hinted at). See below:

The ultimate end of the campaign is still to confront Strahd at Castle Ravenloft. I realize some groups may struggle with the combat options there, but my players hardcore plan and the campaign provides all of the magic items they needed to take him down. Honestly, Strahd comes across as a weaker main villain to me because vampires have so many weaknesses built in.

Some of our funniest moments came when Strahd got annoyed with the players and started charming their allies. The NPCs would give themselves away by referring to him as "Lord Count Master Strahd" in conversations with the players; I was inspired to do that based on Xander's behavior on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Dracula showed up and charmed him. After all, Strahd is basically a clone of Dracula.

Overall, I want to rate this campaign module book lower because it forced me to rework my multiverse to bring back Barovia and Strahd (and WotC needs to move on to new material instead of relying on the nostalgia factor and proven success of the past modules), but my players enjoyed it so much that I will give it a 7 out of 10. If someone wanted to just steal locations from this module and plop them into a campaign for fun combat situations, I would highly recommend: Death House, the Bonegrinder, the Amber Temple, and the Baba Lysaga battle.

Review: Sagard Gamebooks

Sagard the Barbarian
Gary Gygax worked with Flint Dille to create four Sagard the Barbarian Gamebooks (which were similar to Choose Your Own Adventure, but with the reader keeping track of hit points and equipment during the story).

I enjoyed reading the books; their very existence created controversy for D&D Greyhawk fans because they seemed to be set on Oerth (though it's an alternate version, maybe Yarth?). I found it funny that the cover for book #1 (above) featured an ice monster on the cover even though the actual ice creature in the book turned out to be lost technology left behind on the world long ago.

Logs 521-565: Justice League Prevails

JFP's Justice League Campaign Ended in a Team Victory!
The adventures of the Justice League continued, with me playing Kamai (the elf martial artist/psionicist).

(Above: Kamai)

*The team met up with Kamai near the swamp and explored the area. The group's horses were eaten by swamp monsters. The trees came alive and attacked the team. PM and Dreylis explored a cave together.
*The group fought a swamp dragon.
*The Justice League was recruited to go off-world (PM, DL, TR, Zahn, Daggin, and Kamai) to a world with the same level of technology as 1920s Earth. There, they were undercover agents working for the elves who needed intel about what their human enemies were up to. TR was a "politician" with PM as his "trophy wife" while DL was a janitor at the military base. Zahn and Kamai worked for the newspaper.
*The team engaged in many spy missions and covert operations on this planet. DL got a magic hanggun. AJ joined in as a gangster. The group was in a car that exploded; Kamai died in the explosion. [Side note: the DM decided to give me a chance to play Merry again - with him having transformed into a bard while in the Domains of Dread - so we did a side mission with Merry confronting Strahd and I rolled a natural 20 to stake the vampire lord in the heart; while Strahd was incapacitated, Corellon freed Merry from the Domains of Dread and placed him back with the Justice League]
*Merry rejoined his friends on the "1920s world" and got himself some electric-powered music gear.
*Successful in their mission for the elves, the Justice League then found themselves sent to Arkon Planet, where they were all magically disguised as elves to infiltrate the dragon king Galas' operations.
*After that, the team was dwarves while Daggin got a powerful magical book.
*Kelsarin joined up with the group as they were killing more dragon kings. After completing those goals, the team was ready to return to Toril...
*[Our DM also gave people a chance to DM what we called "the dream sessions" - in which our characters were effectively "dreaming" and had different adventures on different worlds; this gave JFP a break for a bit and let some of the players who hadn't DM'd have a chance in the seat of power.]
*For "the dream sessions" the team was on different worlds dealing with different challenges.
*On Toril, the group found a crash site in an agre area with "alien" elves.
*The team barely survived combat with 4 badass elementals.
*The team spent time at Kelsarin's Mage School.
*The team successfully became "Honorary Harpers" after helping Waterdeep and the Sword Coast.
*The team had another deadly battle.

(Above: King DL the Wizard/Fighter)

*DL got married to a princess from the Sword Coast and became a king.
*The team fought more elementals.
*Elminster showed up and was involved in a plot with PM's brother.
*PM had to fight a zombie version of herself (from when she had died in the past).
*The group fought red and black dragons.
*The team went to Gadzel's to fight an evil army with zombies.
*In Shadowdale the group got an update on PM's brother.
*The team then had to go to islands with alien zombies and kill them all.
*The alien invasion happend with "trarrasquelings" (modified monsters that were like small trarrasques) and a tarrasque, with an ogre mage. The campaign finale was a huge battle against Jergal's forces that tried to take over the world.
*With the Justice League victorious, the group planned out 10 years of retirement as an epilogue. DL and his wife had their kingdom to run. TR and PM had their keep in Archendale, with Merry there as well. Zahn and Daggin also survived and had their own keeps as well.

Side Note: The Justice League adventures lasted 5 years in real life and were a ton of fun (though also very frustrating at times because we sometimes had no idea what was going on or why our characters were being asked to do stuff or who the bad guys really were, etc.). Sometimes we played several weeks in a row, but other times we only played about once a month. But clearly we had a good time overall and it was great getting to know D&D and hanging out with our friends.

D&D 2E!

Dungeons & Dragons!

This month I plan to give you the logs and info from my D&D adventures. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with 2nd Edition. Let me take you back to my first days with D&D...

Despite having played Heroes Unlimited, BattleTech, and Star Wars - I really had no idea what I was doing when I made my first D&D character: a half-elf thief.

I imagine my character looked somewhat like the picture above.

Book Review: The Spoils of War by Alan Dean Foster

Book Review!

Alan Dean Foster's Trilogy of the Damned greatly inspired my science-fiction superhero RPG saga. Today I want to look at book two in the series: The Spoils of War...

Book Review: The Spoils of War by Alan Dean Foster...
Again, Alan Dean Foster introduced new characters to the series. But getting to know the new characters was well worth it in this read. In the huge war between the Amplitur and the Weave, it looked like the human-allied Weave was finally going to win. But what did that mean for humanity? The birdfolk alien Lalelelang had realized that human aggression could cause the humans to turn against the rest of the Weave. The exploration of this topic fascinated me because, when you look at Earth's true history, it does seem like we humans can't stay at peace.

I enjoyed the book so much that I rate it back at 8 out of 10 like the first book in the trilogy. I highly recommend this series for fans of philosophical science-fiction.

Book Review: The False Mirror by Alan Dean Foster

Book Review!

Alan Dean Foster's Trilogy of the Damned greatly inspired my science-fiction superhero RPG saga. Today I want to look at book two in the series: The False Mirror...

Book Review: The False Mirror by Alan Dean Foster...
I also really enjoyed this book. Reading this tale meant getting to know a bunch of new characters, which can be annoying in Book 2 in a series, but is standard practice for sci-fi and fantasy trilogies. I liked that the story explored the idea of alien genetic manipulation.

Overal I give this book a 7 out of 10 rating because it was good, but not quite as good as the first book in the series.

Book Review: A Call to Arms by Alan Dean Foster

Book Review!

Alan Dean Foster's Trilogy of the Damned greatly inspired my science-fiction superhero RPG saga:

Today I want to look at book one in the series: A Call to Arms...

I really enjoyed reading this book. I imagined the main character as Harry Connick, Jr. from when he was acting in the movie Independence Day since he is a cajun musician who ends up working with aliens. Alan Dean Foster stands out as one of my favorite writers because he successfully blends in philosophical elements to his sci-fi and fantasy works.

Overall I give the book an 8 out of 10 because it was good enough to inspire me to add more fun and interesting aliens/characters to my RPG adventures. My Saga's Evaew alliance was me taking the Weave alliance from this book (and spelling Weave backwards, LOL).

A Super RPG System Idea

An Idea

After typing up all the logs from my old superhero games, it got me thinking about the fact that I no longer play with the Rifts-based Heroes Unlimited rules system. Instead, I am a huge fan of the new Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (5E). I also like Vampire the Masquerade system’s use of experience points to buy new elements (skill points, stat points, abilities, etc.). I think my ideal RPG system might somehow combine all three of the major systems that I like.

My life keeps me too busy to work on this project, but I want to put a challenge on there. Someone should make a system that, at its core, mostly resembled D&D 5E but also includes super powers/abilities/mutations/bionics and allows for leveling options like the Vampire XP-purchasing system. It would require someone to untangle all of the class abilities in D&D 5E and assign values to them. The person would also have to create superhero abilities to mesh with D&D 5E and assign values to them. Then a purchasing system based on XP or something would need to incorporate the values in a “balanced” way.

Impossible task? Perhaps. But that’s my thoughts for today as I prepare to transition to discussing other old RPG games that I have played.

Peace.

P.S. Here’s a look at the druid character I currently play in a campaign, transformed into a bear while fighting a hydra. Someday I hope to give you the log report from this session.

Logs 225-300: Heroes Unlimited Part 9 & 10: Dragon Secret Society, Campaign for Earth, and Final Connections

Disclaimer

I lost my detailed notes from these adventures years ago and I’m guessing for some of these details, but I want to provide a coherent story with these logs so I’m piecing it together as best as possible from my remaining notes.

Logs 225-300: Heroes Unlimited Part 9 & 10: Dragon Secret Society, Campaign for Earth, and Final Connections

I only agreed to GM again if I could scale everything back 1000%. Instead of the zany sci-fi adventures we were used to, I set our new game in the modern world with the players taking on the roles of college students who were recruited into a secret society.

Since I don’t have detailed session logs from these adventures, you’re going to get a summary log again. Our players for the first year of the secret society game included: NH, MW, LH, CF, AJ, LV, JFP, CW, AF, JP, JP’s friend Jessica, JW, and TV. The second year of the secret society game included: NH, CW, KG, LV, JFP, MR, MW, AR, JW, SD, and AJ; most of the time it was down to a core group of about 5-7 people.

JerVerse Adventure 225-263: Dragon Secret Society

The main characters included: Johnnye Morgan, Martina Jackson, Lawrence Pierce, Tristan Silver, Nathan Smith, Val MacLauren, Cami Wyrick, and several others (whose names have been lost over the years). The group’s characters were all students from “Ivy League” places like Yale or Harvard, but had been transferred to a seemingly normal state school in north Texas after joining into The Dragon Secret Society. Inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the Hellmouth, I made their new university a special place that attracted danger.

Their secret society sent them on missions. Sometimes they were investigating mysteries, sometimes they rescued people, and sometimes they were committing crimes. Since we used the real modern world as the basis for the setting I had fun setting up encounters in places we all knew. They were involved in car chases on the roads we use all the time; there was a shoot out at a gas station most of us used. They also went on special assignments to places like New Orleans. At one point I think they were dealing with a cult and weren’t sure if the enemies were actually vampires or just people who thought they were vampires.

Pop culture helped inspire some of the adventure sessions. I used famous people as secret members of their organization, or at least allies/assets. The bands Rage Against the Machine and Alien Ant Farm both got involved in plots. With Alien Ant Farm the group had to save a girl named Annie; they were “Smooth Criminals.” There were actual machines to rage against. I also really enjoyed using the internet and books/maps to turn real world locations into adventure encounter areas.

Through the course of the adventures, the characters developed special powers or found magic items that empowered them. They also continued making important friends and allies in the secret society and politics. Sometimes their networking resources were just as much, or more powerful, than their super powers.

JerVerse Adventure 264-300: Campaign for Earth and Final Connections

The second year of the secret society campaign turned into something much larger as the group had their characters take over global politics, deal with a threat to the entire planet, and they found out I had a twist surprise for the last part of the campaign; the secret society characters were actually connected to the larger RPG saga universe.

Johnnye Morgan, Martina Jackson, Lawrence Pierce, Nathan Smith (a.k.a. Deathstalker), Val MacLauren, and the others were joined by Luman Cross and Jack Tycho (a.k.a. Mephiston). The characters arranged to take over politics, with their secret society promoting its own people into the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.

In their new position of global power, the group learned of an alien threat to Earth. There was an unavoidable apocalypse coming with aliens planning to destroy the world. The group managed to use their resources to find a way to magically shield Earth and swap it out with a fake placeholder Earth. It was very complicated at the time, but they managed to achieve success with each part of the plan and the magic items worked for them.

What ended up happening though, was they put Earth into stasis and fooled the rest of the universe with their plan; some of the characters were in stasis, but others ended up being petrified and later restored to themselves. Their actions linked back into our RPG saga; Mephiston turned out to be the father of Darius Jobe. Johnnye Morgan was soulmates with the little fiend Quizanel (who was really the ancient god-being Bel). Martina Jackson was Femme; Femme’s long-lost memories were actually shielding her original existence as Martina. The Femme body, it turned out, was just a disguise.

The secret society version of Earth was removed from stasis in the RPG saga timeline’s year of 7,778. The secret society characters met up with the old RPG saga characters and we continued having adventures in the larger universe. They had more Universal Council meetings, they dealt with strange alien enemies (including a return of the Keymons), and they planned out the retirement of their characters.

Al, Feli, CM, and Xedus wanted to make sure the future would be safe from Zahadoom before they fully retired from adventuring; they worked with Temptrick to trick Zah. Since Zah had an immortal-fairy-cosmosian body, they tricked him into teleporting inside of somewhere; he was unknowingly stuck in the HI cylinder that he had once used to imprison Al. They convinced Zah that he was living in his own special universe (a third universe since two already existed), but it was really an HI simulation. To make sure the HI-cylinder would never be found and used to free the supervillain, Al tucked it away in the second universe and sealed off all connections from the first universe to the second one.

The End.

Reflections

Planning and running the secret society sessions was a breath of fresh air for me as a storyteller. In creative writing classes, instructors recommend using what you know; the realistic feel of the campaign made my job easier. Sometimes planning could be as simple as me being in line at the bank thinking about how I needed an idea for an encounter and looking around going, “They could be in this bank when someone tries to rob it.” Or I might be at a concert, with hundreds of people crowded around, and I would think - this would make for a challenging place to try to follow a suspect or enemy.

I was really relieved when my players liked the surprise twist - that our secret society adventures for two years actually linked back into the main RPG saga storyline. NH was especially happy to see how Femme’s returned memories played out. Remarkably, without knowing the plan, NH had planned Martina Jackson’s personality the same way she played Femme.

The RPG saga’s last session ended in August of 2003 because I felt I needed to move on. Back then I really didn’t think I’d have the free time or energy to run a game for the foreseeable future because I felt I needed to devote myself to my new career. I had enjoyed my decade-long RPG saga with all of players who came and went throughout the years, but I had to let it go (for a while).

Logs 196-224: Heroes Unlimited Part 8: The Universal Council and Judgment Day

Disclaimer

I lost my detailed notes from these adventures years ago and I’m guessing for some of these details, but I want to provide a coherent story with these logs so I’m piecing it together as best as possible from my remaining notes.

Logs 196-224: Heroes Unlimited Part 8: The Universal Council and Judgment Day

Unfortunately, today’s log suffers from the same issues I faced yesterday. I know the number of sessions played, what days we played them, and who showed up for them, but I lack my notes about what specifically happened at each session so I’m going to provide an overview of this entire chapter of our saga. Players included: NH, AJ, BW, BD, MW, JFP, LH, MR, LV, and HJ.

JerVerse Adventure 196-224: The Universal Council and Judgment Day

The major player characters were back in action: Femme, Feli, Valas, Raven, Al, Charr, Thomas, Turlock, Nelor, Lott, Sledge, Goliath, and even Greg Haylege. The characters surveyed the environment in the year 7,777 and realized they needed to form alliances with the major ancient races and intergalactic organizations. Thus the group formed an intergalactic congress that they called the Universal Council. Essentially, they formed a one-universe UN-type assembly that tried to protect people and keep the peace.

Believe it or not, the players enjoyed spending many sessions debating intergalactic politics instead of just engaging in combat all the time. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of disputes came up that caused conflicts and combat; but when possible, the characters used diplomacy to resolve their issues. NPCs such as Mayhem, the Connected Meerkat, and Pyr were just as good at getting into trouble as helping the group solve problems. Villains attempted to bring back the Dark Ones and end the universe, but the heroes prevailed. I wish I could remember more details about the middle adventures, but I know some of the details and I have some typed files about the end events.
Along the way major threats came from Temptrick and Lady Temporanna (who had been the lover of Arcanus and mother to both Zah and his brother). With her time travelling powers, Lady Temporanna was able to go back to when The Dark Ones still existed and bring some of them into the current time to bother the players.

This is probably a good place to also mention that, somewhere along the way, the characters inadvertently created a second universe. They had dealt with dimensional counterparts from their own universe, but they ended up having to deal with universal counterparts as well. In the second universe Feli’s counterpart was Mar; Mar had a child with her version of Zahadoom named Maladoom. Lott’s counterpart was named Ttol. The universal counterparts were evil/opposites like the Mirror Universe in Star Trek.

I remember creating a long-term (though subtly introduced) plot with the concept of the 4-Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Over the course of many adventures, certain characters were brought into the plan to destroy the universe and bring about the ultimate apocalypse. Good ol’ Dr. Lane was possessed by the ancient goddess of thievery Vanesli and became Pestilence. Jinnai was brought back to life to serve as War. Dread had been calling himself Death and was the obvious choice to take on that role. Someone else represented Famine. As per the mythology, the “horsemen” arrived one at a time. If all four of them came to a world, it would be destroyed.
The end events came to a head with a predetermined “Judgment Day” (from the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse) that the characters had to prevent. After they saved the day, we concluded our story with Turlock’s wedding to his NPC love interest Lady Ashley. For his reception, Turlock hosted a tournament and promised a special reward to the winner [side note: the player LH came up with this idea, but it worked great for ending the RPG saga adventures since we liked having tournaments].
AJ’s character Valas won the tournament, but everyone was shocked (and disappointed) when LH announced that the reward Turlock was giving the winner of the tournament was the chance to face Turlock in combat. For months LH had his character quest to get an ancient Shaper body and had his soul put into it; the ancient Shaper being could steal the powers/abilities of anyone he fought. It turned out LH wanted to see who was the most powerful and then steal that person’s powers. What he didn’t realize was that AJ’s character Valas had a soul-swapping ability. AJ asked LH three times if he was sure he really wanted to have Turlock and Valas fight. When LH insisted they battle, AJ won initiative and used his soul-swapping powers to steal Turlock’s Shaper body; Valas teleported out and Turlock was stuck with a powerless body.
Turlock tried to convince his family (everyone related to Draconias) to go to war with Valas and the rest of the Vemniriscotts, but they refused his request. The rest of the main characters in the story were very happy that they had achieved peace in the universe and they were not willing to sacrifice that accomplishment for a personal vendetta.
Reflections

Ending with a wedding, a tournament, and player v. player shenanigans gave our RPG saga the special send off that it deserved. At that point in my life, I was finished with my RPG multiverse. I enjoyed wrapping up all of the storylines and ending the saga. Within a month though, I found myself running a one-off session for friends; I used the Heroes Unlimited system, but gave my friends (NH, BD, AJ, BW, and JP) character sheets to play themselves in a modern setting. We had a lot of fun with that RPG session and my friends spent months talking me into starting up a new game.

Six months later we were making RPG characters who were in college, as part of a secret society...

Log 155-195: Heroes Unlimited Part 7: His Power & The Forgotten Ones

Disclaimer

I lost my detailed notes from these adventures years ago and I’m guessing for some of these details, but I want to provide a coherent story with these logs so I’m piecing it together as best as possible from my remaining notes.

Log 155-195: Heroes Unlimited Part 7: His Power & The Forgotten Ones

I really messed up my game when I took time off during the summer between my first and second years of college. I was working a lot and I decided to write a novella to progress the story. I had no idea how devastating my two month break from the game and my novella would be for my players because I failed to consider the ramifications of removing so much player agency while moving the story along in the direction I wanted. We also entered a time in our lives in which everyone was working and/or going to college. Schedules were much busier and, once they had fallen out of the routine of regularly meeting to roleplay and hang out, it wasn’t easy to get my players back.

JerVerse Adventure 155: His Power

I wrote a 117-page (62,610 word) novella that I titled His Power to detail new events in the RPG saga. While I absolutely loved planning and writing the story, I must admit when I look back at the work that it clearly was written only for an audience of my players. As an epic sci-fi fantasy novel, the book contained so many characters and references to our gaming universe’s events that someone unfamiliar with our stories would surely be lost trying to make sense of the plot.

The story focused on the secret return of Zahadoom and his rise to power as he found a way to attempt to become Ruler of the Universe so he could achieve god-like omnipotent power. I wrote Zah as the ruthless, conniving villain that I know AJ always wanted him to be. In fact, out of all of my friends who read the book, AJ liked the story the most. The rest of my players rightfully complained about how I portrayed their characters. Mostly, they were bothered with how Raven betrayed the Scaline Empire to assist Zah and how easily Al and Feli were tricked by Zah. The good heroes were all sidelined: some of them were imprisoned in an HI cylinder, some of them were petrified/turned into statues, some were distracted by a mission to a “Forgotten” part of the universe, some of them were put into stasis in a mystic painting, and others were killed off.

The book also contained a subplot in which Draconias was secretly helping Zah in exchange for the children of the adventurers. When the good guys were all sidelined, Draconias and Meli took their children and raised them in the temporally-different dimension that Draconias owned. When I was writing the book, I intended for this to allow for a new generation of characters to be able to come to the forefront of the story. But why did I do that? Looking back now, I realize I should have asked my players about this. Did they want the children of their characters to take over the story? Apparently not. Oops.

I also advanced the universe over 5,000 years (though the people in the “Forgotten” space only experienced weeks and the people in Draconias only experienced about 15 years). The plot culminated with Zah and his brother Temptrick relying on Al’s son Kenshin, who had been raised by Draconias, to help Zah activate a special artifact that would shift his soul into it and allow him to ascend to godhood. The Connected Meerkat tried to stop Zah and Kenshin pulled off a special three-way soul swap that caused Kenshin to be the one to become Him (the Ruler of the Universe) while putting CM in Zah’s body and Zah in Kenshin’s (half-elf/immortal-fairy-cosmosian) body.

JerVerse Adventures 156-195: The Forgotten Ones

At this point, I need to share some bad news. Even though I no longer have my detailed notes from the campaign adventures, up to this point, I have been able to rely on general summaries, old NPC notes, and character sheets to piece together the details of the adventure sessions. Going forward, I have the opposite. Instead of those types of notes, all I have are the lists from my daily planner that I kept back then that show what days we gamed on and who was in attendance at each session.

For this part of the RPG saga I need to just provide more general summaries instead of session by session reports about the adventures. We played these sessions during my second year of college. Players included: NH, LH, BD, AC, MW, JFP, BK, TK, AJ, and BW - but initially, for about 3 months, the sessions were just NH and LH with me as the storyteller.

Femme, Scrarr, Sarxen, Pyr, and Turlock went on a mission in a portal that was said to go to a “forgotten place” in the universe because their friend the Connected Meerkat (CM) had gone in there looking for some sort of secret ancient artifact. Even though CM ran off without asking for their help, the group wanted to pursue him and find out what he was up to; the Scaline High Priest approved their mission and wished them luck. Thus they left Posnarah and the normal universe behind…

When people entered through the portal to the forgotten place, they were given a new body -  except for Femme. She found out this was because something about herself was shielding her body, protecting it from changing. She also found out that she had a bunch of forgotten memories and the NPCs of the forgotten place encouraged her to find them. Since CM had come through before the group, the "new bodies" issue meant he could be anyone.

The group explored a fantasy world with farms, where Turlock took ownership over a vampiric cow named Norman and tried to romance a witch. When Turlock and the witch argued with each other, she cursed him to temporarily leave the forgotten place (but he soon came back). When Turlock was back in the normal universe, he realized there was a time differential going on such that each day they experienced in the forgotten space was happening at the same rate as a month going by in the outside universe. Femme and the rest of the team couldn’t worry about that. They had their quests to complete.

On the trail of CM, Femme and Turlock’s team encounter ancient beings. They fought against and later befriended Mayhem and Chaos (an ancient dragon and bat duo). They found the missing Cassandra Fox and teamed up with her to solve some of her problems.

When Scaline Special Forces sent more people into the portal Femme met up with Charr, Thomas, Xoq pox, and Nova Kaine. Femme’s team discovered a “forgotten” race of ancient beings caleld the Vemniriscotts. One of the Vemniriscotts, a man named Valas, joined them for some adventures. Valas also enjoyed going on several side missions on his own.

When Lott and other members of Scaline Special Forces showed up, Femme grew more concerned about the urgency of her mission. They brought news about problems back in the Scaline Empire and the suspicion that CM was seeking an artifact that could allow him to retake the universal throne and attain absolute power. When the team found CM they realized he had been difficult to find because his body in this place was that of a woman. CM also took the time to have a child with Pyr, not because they were romantically in love, but because they wanted to help repopulate the fairy race.

The team worked together to help CM find the artifact he needed, but CM and Sarxen ran off with the item before the group could stop them. By the time the rest of their team escaped the forgotten place, they were far into the future: 5,737 years had gone by in the outside universe. It was the year 7,777 and Femme still didn’t have her forgotten memories back. They found out about how both CM and Zahadoom were thwarted in their quests to take over the universe by Al’s son Kenshin (who used his abilities to perform a triple soul swap, leaving CM in Zah’s old body (the Maximus body) and Zah in Kenshin’s body.

Due to an agreement between Temptrick and the heroes of the Scaline Empire, Temptrick took Zah 2 billion years into the future so he couldn’t hurt anyone in the present timeline.

Reflections

For a game that goes on for years and years, I think it’s important to change up the setting every once in awhile. That’s why every six months to a year I would try to send the team to a new place or a new time to have new people and places to meet and explore. I originally called the "forgotten place" the Forgotten Realms, but later realized it was confusing since D&D's planet Toril was referred to as the Forgotten Realms setting.

While I realized after the fact, based on the reactions of my players, that I shouldn’t have written the book as part of the RPG story, I really enjoyed the process of writing. Even just reading back over the book to write this log has made me want to write a new book (one that won’t impact any of my current D&D games). Hmm...

Logs 126-154: Heroes Unlimited Part 6: The Scaline Empire v. The Dark Ones

Disclaimer

I lost my detailed notes from these adventures years ago and I’m guessing for some of these details, but I want to provide a coherent story with these logs so I’m piecing it together as best as possible from my remaining notes.

Logs 126-154: Heroes Unlimited Part 6: The Scaline Empire v. The Dark Ones

During my first year of college several more people wanted to join our RPG saga. Our story’s original characters had advanced so much over the years that I had to find ways to balance their powers and abilities with the new characters. I felt somewhat bad for people who joined us unaware of all of the previous adventures and inside jokes we had going on, but most of the new players quickly adapted. I also needed powerful threats to challenge the high-level characters, thus I continued creating new aliens and ancient foes.

We established the Scaline homeworld Posnarah as a base of operations so that teams of characters could teleport out or fly out in spaceships for missions and then regroup with whomever was available for the next RPG session. That way we didn’t have to worry as much about people coming and going from the adventures. The main threat that held this part of our saga together was that the ancient Dark Ones were angry about having their plans foiled so they were on a rampage, destroying worlds and causing problems.
Players during Part 6 of our RPG saga included: BD, AJ, NH, BW, JFP, KG, SS, MW, MR, LH, BK, SO, and JS.
JerVerse Adventure 126: Home Sweet Posnarah

The active characters were recruited as members of Scaline Special Forces and provided with housing by the government of Posnarah. The characters setup homes on the Scaline Empire’s capitol planet Posnarah; Feli and Bren had twin children (a boy named Tristan and a girl named Sancha) while Al and Karcinerell had a son (named Kenshin). Charr and Rajanna were also living together. King Gemini and the High Priest were ruling the Empire, but Raven also had a claim to leadership from the past. Together, the leaders sent Scaline Special Forces on missions to protect the interests of the Scaline Empire.

JerVerse Adventure 127: The Negotiator

King Gemini didn’t want to war with Raven over leadership of the empire so he funded a massive warship for Raven called The Negotiator. When aliens threatened the Scalines all they had to do was send in The Negotiator and it deployed an entire space armada from its ship bays. Raven tested out his ship and its resources on some of the aliens that had been problems in the past. His ship and crew proved very successful at eliminating problems or forcing enemies to negotiate terms of surrender.

JerVerse Adventure 128: Introducing Lott

We worked together to help our friend MW create his character. MacLain Lott was a powerful psionicist from the world of Camaas, a world the Scaline Empire was interested in negotiating with for a treaty. When the team went to Camaas for the negotiations, they met Lott. Scaline Special Forces recruited Lott, who happily joined them on The Negotiator.

JerVerse Adventure 129: The Return of Doc Roc

When Draconias’ imprisonment dimension was threatened by the Dark Ones, Raven and Lott helped Doc Roc magically teleport Roc’s kingdom’s people to safety and hid them on a planet near Posnarah. The Scaline High Priest was able to put up special shielding so no one would be able to detect the isolationist people of Thistle. Raven and Doc Roc enjoyed one last adventure together as they fought some ancient beasts with Lott and other Scaline Special Forces members at their side. Meanwhile Draconias managed to make some sort of agreement with the Dark Ones so that they wouldn’t destroy his dimension.

JerVerse Adventure 130: Threats from the Dark Ones

The ancient beings known as The Dark Ones continued threatening and destroying worlds with their destructive powers. The team failed tried to save several worlds and realized they needed a new plan to combat the Dark Ones, who would announce to worlds that they only had a short time to evacuate before their planet would be eradicated by the Dark Ones.

JerVerse Adventure 131: Introducing Captain Sledge

MW’s friend MR also joined us. His character was quite similar to Han Solo or Capt. Reynolds from Firefly. Captain Sledge had his own ship that he used as a mercenary and smuggler in some of the less populated regions of space. When Scaline Special Forces found Sledge, they rescued him as his ship was destroyed by aliens. Sledge joined the team and decided to work with them to defeat their common alien enemies.

JerVerse Adventure 132: Introducing Turlock

Our friend LH was the next person to create a character and join our game. For his backstory, I decided to link him to several of our other characters. Draconias sired several children (not just Al and Verali); one of the lost children of Draconias was a dragon named Turlock who ended up trapped in the body of a 12-year old. Turlock’s main superpower was called multiplicity and allowed him to create numerous copies of himself. Turlock’s recruitment mission for Scaline Special Forces allowed him a chance to test out his abilities fighting ancient beasts.

JerVerse Adventure 133: Team Negotiator v. the Keymons

Monkey-like men from the planet Keymon threatened the team onboard The Negotiator. Scaline Special Forces and the crew had to fight the aliens and convince them to surrender.

JerVerse Adventure 134: The Insane Psi

The ancient race known as the Psi were the original psionicists of the universe. Their mental abilities were so powerful that if one of their people went insane, that person could alter reality across an entire planet; due to interference by the Dark Ones, a Psi went insane on a world that had Feli, Nelor, Raven, and several of the others visiting. The insane Psi’s powers fed off the fears of the characters and caused their worst fears to come to life. This tragic event brought Zahadoom back to life as a result of the reality-altering powers. The team finally eliminated the threat by curing the ancient Psi’s insanity. Nelor used his sword to decapitate the resurrected Zahadoom, thus gaining the respect of the Scaline people.

JerVerse Adventure 135: Trapped in Space

Raven took a team on The Negotiator to explore a strange anomaly in space (due to a trick by the Dark Ones), but the ship was pulled in and trapped there - cut off from the rest of the universe. Femme, Turlock, Sledge, and Lott were part of the team onboard. Together, they faced several alien foes.

JerVerse Adventure 136: The Scaline Gods

Raven and his team were still missing. Back on Posnarah the High Priest alerted Feli, Nelor, and Darius that the ancient beings known as the Scaline gods (of Might, Honor, and Wisdom) had returned to wrestle control of the planet from the new aliens leading them [the player characters]; the High Priest suspected the Dark Ones had sent the ancient ones there because the Scaline gods had abandoned the world long ago.

Feli killed the ancient being calling himself the god of Honor, Nelor killed the one of Wisdom, and Darius killed the one of Might. The Scalines declared this trio their new triumvirate since they each consumed a yellow “god essence” from the beings they killed; the group had to figure out how they were going to share power with King Gemini and the High Priest.
JerVerse Adventure 137: Meli & Draconias in Love

Feli had to deal with family drama when she found out her mother had fallen madly in love with the immortal Draconias (after he had fled from the destruction of his pocket dimension). Feli also found out about Cassandra and Bran’s son Charlie Fox, who had been to a temporally-altered dimension and grown up super fast.

JerVerse Adventure 138: The Great Spider One

Nelor took his son Ahrack to their homeworld when Ding (whose real name was Trevor Maxwell) revealed a quest to Nelor to recover an ancient artifact that was the necklace of “The Great Spider One.” By completing the mission, Nelor became the leader of his people and integrated them into the Scaline Empire.

JerVerse Adventure 139: More Negotiator Missions

The team on The Negotiator completed more missions while trapped in the galaxy within the space anomaly.

JerVerse Adventure 140: Escaping the Anomaly.

The Negotiator’s crew finally defeated the enemies within the anomaly that were preventing them from escaping. They returned to the Scaline Empire and had to deal with the political changes. Gemini, respecting Raven, abdicating the throne so that Raven could continue to exercise legitimate political power in the Empire as King Raven. Gemini decided to train under the High Priest.

JerVerse Adventure 141: Agent of the Dark Ones

The Dark Ones wanted a new agent that could annoy and distract their enemies in the Scaline Empire so they resurrected Zahadoom. The team of heroes came together and defeated their enemy once more, but they didn’t realize that The Dark Ones had given him the power of coming back to life each time he died; thus, when the group left his body dead in space, Zah kept coming back to life and went insane.

JerVerse Adventure 142: Introducing Starface

Charlie Fox had grown up and gone insane as well (due to his crazy parents Cassandra and Bran); Charlie took the form of a constellation that was antagonizing Al and called himself Starface (since he looked like a face made out of stars). Al sprayed out an insanity cure on that sector of space, rescuing Charlie. He agreed to adopt the young man since Cassandra and Bran were MIA.

JerVerse Adventure 143: Introducing Akira Maximus

What Al didn’t realize though was that the insane Zahadoom was also in the part of space where he cured Charlie. The insanity cure also worked on Zah, who transformed himself into Akira Maximus and donned a new costume with a mask. The Dark Ones insisted Maximus continue working for them, but he went on missions dealing with ancient beings that were a threat to his new masters.

JerVerse Adventure 144: Feli’s Family Trouble

Feli’s children and husband were always getting in trouble and in need of rescue of some kind. If not them, then her mother would be in danger. After getting her friends to help her rescue her family over and over again, Feli grew tired of the threats against them. She decided they all needed to stay at home on Posnarah. She also realized she was pregnant with another child.

JerVerse Adventure 145: Ficaria v. The Dark Ones

The Dark Ones threatened the homeworld of Al’s wife Karcinerell. Unfortunately, despite the team’s best efforts, they were unable to save the planet.

JerVerse Adventure 146: Camaas v. The Dark Ones

Lott asked the rest of Scaline Special Forces to help him when The Dark Ones threatened his homeworld Camaas. Finally, the team scored a victory over the Dark Ones when they stopped their ancient foes from destroying a world.

JerVerse Adventure 147: Maximus v. Arcanus

In helping the Dark Ones, Maximus (a.k.a. Zah) also tracked down more information about the ancient wizard Arcanus that he had feuded with back on O-H-M Earth. Arcanus claimed to be Zah’s true father and said that Zah was adopted by the parents he had back on his home planet. Unsure if Arcanus was messing with him to gain control over him, Zah decided not to ally with the ancient wizard; that meant Maximus missed out on learning how Arcanus was linked with the Dark Ones and what secret ritual that they were planning.

JerVerse Adventure 148: Children of Draconias

Draconias asked for help from his children Al, Verali, and Turlock when he found himself in danger. That meant Scaline Special Forces had to come in and save the day. Some of Turlock’s brothers were also involved in the adventure [though their names were meant as puns: Dread was Dreadlock and there was also a brother named Gladlock].

JerVerse Adventure 149: Turlock in Hell

In a quest to retrieve a powerful magic item, Turlock ventured into a Hell dimension. While inside, he located the previously-thought deceased Thomas the Leprechaun. Thomas had been trapped in the Hell Dimension ever since Raven killed him. Together, Turlock and Thomas escaped the Hell dimension with plenty of gold/treasure after they defeated a greed demon.

JerVerse Adventure 150: The Golden One

The members of Scaline Special Forces convinced Thomas not to seek vengeance against Raven, explaining that Raven was a changed man dedicated to justice in the universe. Instead, Thomas (being the greedy ancient leprechaun he was) got their help in a quest for more treasure. As a result of the success of the mission, Thomas became “The Golden One.”

JerVerse Adventure 151: Ancient Blade

Trevor Maxwell helped Linus go on a mission to retrieve the special ancient mystic sword that had been stolen from him. After Linus re-acquired the mystic sword, he found out that it could cut through the special armor of The Dark Ones; Linus successfully teamed up with ShadowAngel and fought multiple groups of Dark Ones.

JerVerse Adventure 152: Destroying the Dark Ones

The characters teamed up on a mission to retrieve a secret ancient artifact linked to powerful universal chaos energy that could be used to eliminate The Dark Ones. The heroes debated this issue, but ultimately decided to use the ancient energy to destroy the Dark Ones; some of them ended up feeling guilty about committing genocide against an entire species, but felt that the actions of the Dark Ones demanded their annihilation.

JerVerse Adventure 153: 3rd RPG Tournament: Part 1

The Arena invited the characters together to again test their skills against one another in a simulated combat tournament. The players who opted to play in the tournament competed in the preliminary elimination rounds. Darius and his sons, all of whom opted out of the tournament, were attacked by ancient beasts and killed. Raven showed up in time to slay the beasts and recover the “god essence” of Might and consume it (thus joining Feli and Nelor in the ruling Scaline Triumvirate).

JerVerse Adventure 154: 3rd RPG Tournament: Part 2

We finished up the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals of the tournament hosted by the Arena. Feli won the competition this time. As a reward for being the Arena’s new champion, the Arena announced to Feli that he felt the universe no longer needed him, but he was giving her a special gift that included the ability to summon the Arena back into existence if a crisis demanded his attention.

Reflections

During this part of the RPG saga I played several former player characters as NPCs for various reasons - they had gone insane or been possessed or were mainly involved in downtime activities. I also struggled with the fact that several of our players were just showing up whenever they wanted and missing sessions without giving prior notice when I had planned out huge storyline possibilities that depended on them being their and getting their characters to react/make decisions.

I understood that life could get in the way with work, college, and family but I had to adapt to the changing priorities of some of the players. We also had a couple of people who showed up but seemed like they wanted to purposefully avoid the adventure hooks and/or cause problems for the group. My core group of players were still great and there most of the time, but my frustrations were growing.