FOE Reflections

The Federation of Explorers
What a wonderful time we had playing the FOE adventures! I enjoyed playing as Thok the half-orc druid, Thunderforge the dwarf cleric, Tavin the human fighter, and Raylin Sunsoaker the human cleric. Our DM was great because he was fair, consistent with the rules (most of the time), and never played favorites or anything like that. The other players were fun with their characters, pop culture references, jokes, and food.

We had several character deaths, which happens in D&D sometimes. I like that. I think it's more important that the DM lets the dice fall where they may and allows consequences for player decisions than to cheat for the sake of the story working out a certain way. When Thok died from the group TPK, I did have the option to continue playing him as an enslaved prisoner who would have to break out - which was really nice of our DM, but at the time I felt it was better to let the character's fate play out. I later semi-regretted that just because Thok was such a fun character. I was surprised how quickly Thunderforge died; I didn't even have time to give him a first name while playing him. But Raylin turned out to be my best, and favorite, character from the campaign. I only played Tavin for a 1-off side mission, but he was a cool dude to play too; I purposely made something different from what I normally play.

The last few sessions the other players had new characters because of some bad decisions made (you know, splitting the party and attacking people without questioning them first, etc). It's unfortunate Regnar and the other monk didn't make it to the end, especially since Regnar had been there from the beginning. But their deaths inspired me to have Raylin form a true Guild Hall and adventuring company from FOE so that it wasn't just one team, but a true legion that could last for all time. Thus the campaign turned into an origin story for the group known as the Federation of Explorers. And the tales of their stories will be passed down for generations. They will be legends!

I hope I get to play Thokson some day as a half-elf/quarter-orc/quarter-human adventurer. For now, our DM said he wanted to take a break (which is good; DMs need some time to breath so they don't get burn out). I'm guessing we'll have about a month or so before the new adventures, but we'll see.

When we pick up, it'll either be with Raylin and some new recruits at level 10 or we might just be an entirely new team of level 1 characters recruited as a new FOE team. Either way sounds like a ton of fun to me.