FOE Log 17

Federation of Explorers (FOE) 
Homebrew Campaign

Session 17: Introducing Thunderforge
After the party was wiped out last time (TPK), our gracious DM offered to let people play their characters as captured drow slaves with no equipment or to make new characters (who would also be captured drow slaves with no equipment). Our other 2 players wanted to continue on as their characters, but I felt it fitting that my character Thok had met his end since I had already rolled 1 death fail when we had stopped (and he had already achieved his story goal of having his child Thokson).

For my new character, I created the mountain dwarf storm cleric Thunderforge who had been a healer in the dwarf army. Since we were in a "Naked Challenge" situation, I did not have a holy symbol and could not cast my cleric spells yet. But it was refreshing to play a fun, combat-loving joke-cracking dwarf. Onto the adventure...

[I created the image below with HeroForge.com]

Thunderforge

The 2 survivors of the Federation of Explorers (Regnar the human ranger and Zen the half-elf monk) woke up naked in a drow dungeon cell with 3 naked dwarves around them (Thunderforge and 2 of his soldier buddies). They worked together to bend the bars and break out. Zen KO'd the nearby drow guard and the group took his gear. Thunderforge broke off the table legs to use as clubs.

The group continued on, into the halls and nearby rooms, killing: 4 more drow guards and the drow prison warden. This allowed the group to pick up more gear; the location was actually a drow-captured former dwarf manor so there was a shrine to Moradin with a holy symbol Thunderforge could use. Much fun was had in the kitchen, where the group improvised by: turning the stove doors into shields for the dwarf fighters, using the knives as throwing daggers for the monk, and having the ranger collect flour into a pouch (that was later used to help see where the invisible mage was standing).

One room contained a draco-drow possessed by the black dragon in Regnar's acid sword. After the group killed him, they returned to the warden's office and rested for an hour. They found a secret passage that went up to the main manor, where they killed the drow mage that had led the TPK against the group in the previous session.

The final battle in the main halls featured a chain devil and his 3 imp minions, but the group ultimately overcame the enemies and took a long rest before looking out over the underground drow-infested former dwarf city. One of the NPC fighters said he thought he knew of a sewer tunnel that could get the group into the main keep.

Logs 422-430: Dungeons & Bricks!

Logs 422-430: Dungeons & Bricks!
When AJ moved back to the area I saw an opportunity to run a short "holiday" campaign during the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. With me as DM we got AJ, NH, LJ, and MW together as players. MW created a Doctor Who-esque wizard called "The Wizard" who had an artifact that was like the TARDIS, but it was a fat tree (with a door on it) that was "bigger on the inside than the outside" and teleported around so it would blend in easily with most environments. AJ played a wandering cleric of Olidammara (revelry, trickery, travel). NH and LJ played a rogue and fighter.

MW had been playing Pathfinder with people and suggested we use miniatures so I said, "Why not Lego?" I had a huge Lego collection, even back then. I figured out that each Lego stud could represent 1.25 feet and thus a 4x4 plate would be perfect for representing a 5'x5' D&D combat square (traditionally a 1" square on a battle map). Back then I didn't own D&D minis or a battle map.

For the first adventure, I started them off with the first "Naked Challenge" that I ever DM'd by having them all taken prisoner inside of a cave to be sacrificed by the animal cults; that was my way of turning the group into a cohesive team and giving them the common enemy of the cults.

After that, I used T1-4 The Village of Hommlet, The Moathouse, The Village of Nulb, and The Temple of Elemental Evil and modified the adventure to be about animal cults instead of elemental cults. The NPCs included "Croco-Jer" Jerrol, Lord Wemicslayer, Lady Planter (a wemic druid), Bunny the Pirate Captain, and many others.

For the finale, since the campaign wasn't really over, I set it up so the characters were duped by the god of trickery (who pretended to be Pelor the sun god) but they ended up with a Deck of Many Things. I let them draw from the deck to see what they would get (if they wanted to). And that provided at least some sense of closure after they had saved people from the pirates and ran the animal cults out of the villages.