AL PC: Jerlyn

Season 7 Play: Attained Level 8 (Valor Bard)

At first I was going to make my new character Jerlyn a life cleric or a paladin, but in the end I went with bard. I have fond memories of playing a D&D 2E half-elf character who ended up becoming a bard and continued on into an epic level 3.5E campaign. This might be a good point to recognize that choosing half-elf is one of the best options in 5E because of the mechanics of the stat points and the abilities half-elves get.

Instead of a backstory, I just wrote a description for this character. Jerlyn is a blond half-elf valor bard wearing Corellon symbols (the eight-pointed star) on everything: his half-plate armor, his shield, his weapons, his backpack, his bedroll, etc. He has a playful demeanor and will often hum a tune or play his lute. The pin on his cloak is clearly a Harpers symbol.

Hero Forge Mini
Link: https://www.heroforge.com/load_config=3719559

For his adventures, he started out with DDEX3-1 Harried in Hillsfar (5 1-Hour Sessions) in which he bought some silvered weapons. Then he helped stop some kobolds in DDEX1-5 The Courting of Fire, where no one wanted the scroll of flame blade so he took it with him. He continued slaying kobolds in DDAL06-01 A Thousand Tiny Deaths, where the team easily took out the big boss. Thanks to a bunch of DM Rewards, I was able to get him up to Tier 2 so he could then go through the legendary dungeon of White Plume Mountain. After that success, he also ventured to Chult for some epic fun (DDEP07-01 Peril at the Port and DDEP07-02 Drums of the Dead).

I love the versatility of playing a half-elf valor bard. Thanks to his quests, he ended up with plenty of magic items and over 18,000 gp. Season 7 was good times.

AL PC: Thokson

Season 7 Play: Attained Level 8 (Moon Druid)

I love playing “Legacy Characters” (the offspring of previous characters). Maybe I put extra effort into roleplaying their personality because I played one of their parents or maybe I just like the emotional connection continuing from generation to generation; I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s fun to do. A while back, in the FOE campaign, I played the half-orc druid Thok. Since I figured I might never get the chance to play his son Thokson in another home campaign, I went ahead and made Thokson for AL – also as a moon druid.

Backstory

Thokson is the son of Thok. His father was a famous orc-blooded adventurer, who fell in love with the elf barmaid Sareal. Thokson never knew his father because Thok died fighting drow invaders. Sareal took Thokson to live with some elves who had a connection to the Feywild. Thokson grew up with a false, romanticized version of his father's culture. His mother taught him that orcs deeply believed in honor and nature. From that, Thokson sought out the elf master druids to teach him. When he found out the truth - that many orcs of the Forgotten Realms were actually murderous savages - it deeply wounded his psyche and caused him to turn to a life of crime. After a successful tenure as a smuggler Thokson returned home, where his mother reminded him that his father was a hero to the people. Thokson decided to reform his ways and he joined the Emerald Enclave.

Heroforge Miniature Design

I actually bought the level 1 Thokson miniature and had it mailed to me.

Level 1: https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D660300/
Level 7: https://www.heroforge.com/load_config=2542688

Adventures
DDEX1-4 Dues for the Dead

This is one of my favorite modules to play in. It’s brutal, especially if the group is bad a resource management. Luckily, at low level, the moon druid has an advantage with those two wildshapes. When not in wildshape, I had Thokson dual-wielding scimitars – not because it was effective, but because it was fun. Luckily zombies are really easy to hit.

DDAL06-01 A Thousand Tiny Deaths
Looking back, this was one of my least favorite sessions to be in. There were seven of us and the DM was letting people talk over each other – which is one of my big pet peeves. When it’s my turn on initiative, I expect the other players to stop talking and let me do my thing. It didn’t help that there were kobold traps everywhere and the characters couldn’t come up with a cohesive plan. We ended up splitting in different directions, but meeting back up later in the caves. I should have had a better attitude about it, but once I was in my large bear form and most of the others decided to sneak through a small-size tunnel, I wasn’t having any of it. Luckily, we survived and moved on.

DDEX2-8 Foulness Beneath Mulmaster
I was in a much better, more relaxed mood for this adventure. After the last one, I just decided to try to be chill when there are seven players in a module written for just four or five. I decided to have Thokson do lots of roleplaying, hanging with the ranged attackers and talking about his ex-girlfriend and that sort of thing. It made it more fun and allowed me to save resources for later in the adventure, though one of the other players was like, “Why don’t you get out up front and fight with those other guys?” Thokson complied, but this let me establish his personality more. From this point on, he would stay in normal form until he was freaked out and then transform into an animal form. After all, as a druid he has plenty of spell options.

DDEX3-9 The Waydown
The beginning of this adventure was weird and one of the player characters was insulting another player character, but once we got past that it was more fun. This was the adventure with the giant octopus battle, thus giving Thokson an awesome new druid wildshape option. I was so excited about that, that I don’t really remember much else from the end of the module.

DDEX3-7 Herald of the Moon
Giant octopus shenanigans were had! While it moves very slowly, its grappling abilities are amazing. This adventure allowed some danger from being up high in trees and being afraid of falling down, but other than that it was pretty easy.

CCC-BMG-10 HILL1-1 Arrival
I think this was the adventure that ended with the crazy hag coven battle. It’s funny, but looking back I remember more of the players joking around and having fun than I do the events of the module. Haha. But that’s ok because I think a good time was had by all.

CCC-ODFC-0202 Palace of the Efreeti
This module was really Thokson’s moment to shine. For several sessions I had him telling stories about his ex-girlfriend and how he was lonely and wanting to meet someone again. And – BAM – there was a beautiful princess in the adventure. There were plots, subplots, NPCs spying and betraying – but all Thokson cared about was trying to romance the princess. Luckily the entire party got into it and was helping Thokson with his own personal quest during the adventure. In the end, he impressed her and she agreed to take some downtime with him after the adventure. That downtime led to the “Legacy Character” concept being able to continue, with another generation on the way...

DDEP07-01 Peril at the Port & DDEP07-02 Drums of the Dead
I love the “Epics” that AL puts together. In some ways, it’s the best part of AL and I understand why some people pretty much just play AL so they will have cool characters to play at large convention events with the epics. I had previously played these adventures as Ro, but it was fun to do them again with Thokson and a different group of players.

AL PC: Ro

Season 7 Play: Attained Level 7 (Tempest Cleric 2; Evoker Wizard 5)

I created Ro Stormhammer, a.k.a. “Nudzir Aht,” to play him at a local gaming convention. I first played him in some online sessions to level him up before the convention. His first adventure was DDEX2-10 Cloaks and Shadows and he probably should have died in that one because the party encountered a wizard that the DM implied had to be “powered down” since we were a “weak party” of low level characters. I enjoyed the climactic showdown at the end of the adventure as well, even though I feared we could we fail. We didn’t.

Pre-convention he also participated in DDAL06-01 A Thousand Tiny Deaths, DDAL07-03 A Day at the Races, the first part of DDHC-LMoP Lost Mine of Phandelver, and DDAL07-04 A Walk in the Park. I used the Adventurer’s League rules to rework him some and level him up before the convention.

When I reworked the character, I realized I could use Volo’s Guide to Monsters as my +1 book for the character and I turned him into a Yuan-Ti. I worked it into his background story, along with a randomly rolled trinket:

Backstory
Ro Stormhammer was not born a Yuan-Ti, but rather had been exiled by his people after he discovered a strange trinket; one day he found a shard of obsidian that always felt warm to the touch. He liked the stone. When he researched the rock, he found out about the mysterious one called Tharizdun. His clan didn't understand that he wanted to worship the "forbidden god" so they exiled him. 

He found a secret lost temple of Tharizdun, where he learned the ways of elemental worship. There, a Yuan-Ti wizard befriended him and convinced him to engage in rituals that turned Ro into a Yuan-Ti. After Ro embraced the ways of the primordials and became a tempest cleric, his only friend in the world was killed. Ro used his friend's spellbook, and a promise to the Lord's Alliance that he would help them, to get accepted to a respected evocation academy. As a member of the Lord's Alliance and a talented cleric-wizard, Ro continues his adventures under the alias of “Nudzir-Aht” (which is Tharizdun spelled backwards)...

The in-person gaming convention was amazing! It was two days, with two sessions per day; that included two epics and two modules that I participated in: DDEP07-01 Peril at the Port, DDAL05-5 A Dish Best Served Cold, DDEP07-02 Drums of the Dead, and CCC-CIC-04 Best Friends Forever. The tempest cleric and evoker wizard multiclass worked out really well, allowing me to use max damage for a lightning bolt.

I also applied DM rewards to this character and I have used him to help trade items around for my other characters via downtime days and extra money. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t play him more after the convention. But I was interested in trying out different classes and different build combinations and most of the online gaming sessions were for Tier 1 characters. Once I reached Tier 2, there were less options for play.

AL S7 DMing

Adventurer's League Season 7 DMing

I enjoy DMing (most of the time) and the Adventurer’s League DM Rewards were so good, I was able to justify lots of DMing during Season 7. I logged:

*4 runs of the module DDAL05-12 Bad Business in Parnast;
*1 play of Storm King’s Thunder Chapter 3;
*An entire campaign of Tomb of Annihilation, with the Tortle Package;
*An entire campaign of Rise of Tiamat;
*An impromptu session of the module DDAL04-2 The Beast;
*2 runs of the campaign for Lost Mine of Phandelver;
*1 run of Princes of the Apocalypse Ch 6;
*1 run of Hoard of the Dragon Queen Ch 7;
*An extra play of Rise of Tiamat Ch 9;
and I had more planned to run, but I ran out of time.

The first time I ran an online session with Discord for voice chat and Roll20.net for the mechanics, the players were all talking over each other – and me, for some silly reason – and I had to figure out how to wrestle control of the group; it was the online mechanics that threw me off. After that session, I established expectations before the start of the game and firmly held everyone accountable for letting one person at a time talk. It meant calling people out for interrupting, but I got used to that. I told people that if they wanted to communicate during another player’s turn to try to just use text chat in the game instead of saying it out loud. That really helped cut down a lot of the meta-game talk and kept players from telling each other what to do.

Figuring out the DMing aspects of Roll20.net were more complicated than simply being a player, but I improvised with what I didn’t know and made it work for the sessions. It’s a really good gaming interface, but there were times that – to speed up the process and let the game happen quickly – I would roll my actual dice instead of using the Roll20 interface. As a DM, that was fine since DM etiquette allowed for “hidden rolls” anyway. Once I had better mastered the use of NPCs and monsters, I ended up using the Roll20 options and allowing players to see all of the DM rolls. That’s just my preference anyway, since in my home games I DM without a screen.

With maps and monsters imported, it was mostly easy to run a session. Once something was setup, it was easy to run it again for different characters. And the more I DM’d, the more rewards I got for my own characters; this allowed me to level up my characters and gift them extra magic items. Looking back, DMing online for Adventurer’s League really was a heavenly experience. It’s unfortunate that the Season 8 rule changes no longer encourage people to DM as much.

AL Season 7

Adventurer’s League!

I had played in game stores during the transition from D&D 4E to Next/5E for the “playtesting” sessions, which was part of the evolution of D&D Encounters; it was mostly fun, especially the “big event” sessions. Eventually I stopped going because, as inevitably happens in various communities, there were some toxic people and I decided it wasn’t worth my time and gas money when I already had people that I knew I could play RPGs with in a home game environment. After all, many people use the game store sessions as a way to get to know others to invite to their home games. And I do despise sitting in traffic to get somewhere.

I had seen an ad for a local gaming convention taking place (in person) during the summer, which made me look into D&D’s current organized play system (now called Adventurer’s League, which was in Season 7 at that point). Along with other gaming sessions, the convention had two “epic” adventures, which are big events with lots of tables playing and the story combining all of their efforts. I wanted in on that experience, but I didn’t want to show up with a level one character so I looked online to see if I could start playing some sessions and get leveled up some before going to the convention. And – oh boy – could I do that!

With the explosion of online gaming options, I realized I could play Adventurer’s League with an almost “at demand” option. There were so many Discord groups and Roll20.net campaigns available that I could literally go online, find a game posting, and be part of a session within a few hours. If you were willing to DM, you could have a game session going within the hour – and I was willing to DM. People were online and just sharking to get accepted into slots for game sessions. It was heaven for anyone comfortable with using voice chat and Roll20.net (or Fantasy Grounds or Tabletop Simulator, etc.).

There were YouTube tutorial videos to explain how to use Roll20.net; Roll20 offered upgrades for cheap or free membership if you wanted the basics. It was easy to learn and, after joining in a couple of sessions as a player, I was happy to start giving back to the community as a DM. The AL Season 7 DM Rewards were really great too, so I was able to reward my characters for the time I spent running online games.

The in-person convention experience was amazing and, quite frankly, much better than the online gaming experiences. Maybe I just lucked out and the con was both ran by and attended by great gamers – but I am happy to acknowledge that I prefer to play D&D in person. Despite that, I pretty much spent all of my summer free time either DMing or playing in games via Discord and Roll20.net. It was truly a “Gamer’s Paradise” heavenly experience to be able to wake up any day, decide I wanted to play D&D, post a message online and game. I recruited several friends to join in on the online fun.

I think Wizards of the Coast should create their own “D&D On Demand” website to capitalize on this possibility. Unfortunately, they did the opposite; when they announced the upcoming changes for Season 8, they de-motivated a lot of the Adventurer’s League community. The Season 8 rules for Adventurer’s League killed my desire to continue with organized play. In my opinion, their attempt to deal with some negative aspects of the gaming community went too far and destroyed any sense of immersion, turning the organized play experience into something more akin to video game mechanics. They removed gold/treasure from the modules (despite the fact that the modules were written with the gold and treasure as part of the hooks/motivations for play).

Imagine you’re an adventurer and you slay a bunch of monsters and find a pile of treasure, but you’re told you can’t keep any of it or spend it on anything. It has to just be left there – for no reason. But there is one magic item, unfortunately, no one can keep it. Instead, you unlock the ability to “purchase” it later (with your out of game meta-currency) for video-gamey mechanic reasons. It’s just sad that the admins had to so drastically change the rules; they also removed a lot of the incentives for people to DM when they changed up the DM Reward options.

I stopped playing AL at the end of August, which means it’s been five months. I’ve got serious withdrawal, with no AL play in September, October, November, December, or January. I want to re-join the AL community enough that I may be willing to go along with the changed rules; I miss the people and the experience and ease of online, on-demand gaming. Unfortunately, when I spent the last few days looking back at the Discord groups and online gaming posts I realized there are a lot less people playing now. Instead of five to ten gaming sessions happening each day in the most popular group I am in, it’s more like one session a day. And on some days, I don’t see any sessions posted for AL at all.

How sad. Season 8 is supposed to last at least until August, with some online talk that it will be an extended season that could last even longer. There are daily complaints, via not only Discord but also Reddit with hopes that Season 9 will bring about rules to bring the community back together. But who knows what will happen?

In the meantime, I think I will try to mentally resolve the immersion-breaking by considering that my characters are actually part of an organization called “The Adventurer’s League” that requires them to hand over all treasure that they find and that allows them to use the organization to purchase magic items, but only after they have encountered it. It’s a bit meta-gamey, but it’s how the new rules work and – most importantly - I want to play again (if there are sessions available)…

State of the Blog: 2019

I suddenly realized I hadn’t updated the blog since July. Oops. It’s ironic because I had been reading a lot of books last year and thought I would end up doing a bunch of book review write ups on the blog during the summer – but that didn’t happen. What actually happened was that people got busy and less in person roleplaying happened.

With the lack of actual tabletop gaming in my life, I sought out online RPGs. I spent much of the summer playing online D&D via Adventurer’s League with Discord servers for voice chat and Roll20.net for the in-game mechanics. I had a ton of fun with that, but my fun was intruded upon when the official Adventurer’s League admins decided to change up the rules for the new season. At that point, my ability to accept the immersion-breaking mechanics of league play were pushed too far and I stopped.

Luckily, some of the regular gaming picked back up. I’m also reconsidering participating in Adventurer’s League because I miss the people and the fun of the community. I should have been updating this blog and documenting my experiences with all of that, but there’s no time like the present, eh? For now, that means “blog” can stand for “back-log” of entries; expect more reviews along with continuing stories about my gaming experiences.

Peace!

CoMT 15: Elemental Knight

The Adventures of the Criminals of Many Things continue with:
Seiken the elf kensei monk,
Elyrin the human necromancer,
Bleaksin Blackscale the kobold scout, and
(introducing) Ovin Snakestaff the eldritch knight/tempest cleric

CoMT Session 15
Homebrew FR Campaign (City of Many Things)
When the group rested down in the basement of the "Brainbeak Manor" they discovered that the person they had rescued was actually a water genasi, not a half-orc; he was Ovin Snakestaff, the "Elemental Knight" (eldritch knight/tempest cleric) and brother of Oozey Snakestaff. He told them his family was missing and he was looking for his sister, who was rumored to be in the region. They told him they knew Oozey and, when finished with this mission, would bring him to her in the City of Many Things; they also gave him use of the group's staff of healing. With his sending stone, Seiken called into FOE Waterdeep and gave them an update, telling them to start paperwork for Ovin.

Elyrin's undead minions were destroyed when the team fought a swarm of cranium rats, a mind witness, 2 gazer, and a gauth. Ovin picked up the maul+3 from the destroyed undead. In side rooms, the group fought a wizard (who teleported out via a circle that they then destroyed) and 2 gibbering mouthers.

When they went up the stairs to the ground floor, Seiken stepped into a gelatinous cube - but Ovin used his acid resistance (and the magic maul) and destroyed the creature. They searched the first floor and rested for an hour so Ovin could make the magic maul one of his bonded weapons. When they went up to the 2nd floor, 6 cultists and a wizard confronted them; the team quickly killed them. Unfortunately, while searching the loot in a side room, they found a bag of devouring that pulled Seiken into it thus destroying itself and Seiken's portable hole (with Mory's body) while also sucking Seiken, Elyrin, and Ovin into the astral plane. Bleaksin was left behind at "Brainbreak Manor" to finish the mission by himself.