4U 1: Tholme, Sweet Tholme

The RPG SAGA continues with new characters, in a new campaign...

DM Note
Technically, this log is for the RPG SAGA’s session number 1501 - but I’ve realized that’s a lot of numbers and it’s easier to go ahead and restart my counting since we have a new campaign going on. 1501 - wow - that’s a lot of roleplaying over the years! We've had so many wonderful characters, stories, and adventures. I'm going to be trying out new things. I love low level play and decided to homebrew my own village and quests, setting aside the premade modules and returning to my roots as a storyteller. Here we go again…

Side Note: Tholme is an anagram (sort of) of Hommlet; I’m paying my respects to Gargy Gygax and the old T1/T1-T4 modules.

New Campaign Character Backstories
The aasimar arcane archer Koriel Andrast, follower of Ryali’s love domain, was born on Mystara but spent years travelling through the Feywild. Her divine visions told her about a sacred tree that could unlock a portal, allowing her to go quest; the vision included a berry pie, a barrel of darkbrew ale, a widow mourning her lost husband, and an 18 year old miller’s son. Her divine contact took her to the Forgotten Realms, where she went to find the sacred tree in a forest...

The winged elf kensai monk Aegle had been helping the air spirits fight off dragons in the elemental plane of air. After a victory there that left a magical wound on one of his arms, he was returned to his winged elf clan in the hills to the east of the Graypeak Mountains. The clan hosted a party, celebrating the return of their great hero.

The gnome Davic Eldon Bevins “Greenscale” “Puff” Schepper had been spared by a green dragon, who decided to mentor him in the ways of the dream druid. To honor his mentor, once he was on his own as a druid in the forests to the east of the Graypeak Mountains, he had been secretly sending back treasure to his dragon mentor. He had befriended the nearby winged elf clan and was invited to their party. They called him “Puff” because of his trinket (a pipe with smoke that came out in the shape of skulls).

4U Session 1 Log:
Puff met Aegle at the winged elf party and revealed his hermit epiphany about a sacred tree in the forest that had the ability to open up a magical portal. Happy to provide some muscle to help Puff check out the sacred tree, Aegle agreed to come along. When they arrived at the tree, they found Koriel standing there. She and Puff shared the stories of their dream visions, which were similar. Aegle helped them find a magical device on the tree with a number tumbler and a letter tumbler, realizing that they had to put in a special combination to unlock the portal.

Kennara, a blue-haired eladrin woman, appeared from the leaves of the tree and claimed to be the guardian of the portal. Aegle doubted her. The team decided to exclude her as they figured out the riddle on their own and kept her from going through the portal with them (by pulling out the number tumbler on their way through, thus closing the portal behind them).

Puff, Koriel, and Aegle appeared at a tree near a bridge, just outside of a village called Tholme. They went into the tavern “The Singing Sword” and found a tiefling woman named Vivacious delivering a barrel of darkbrew ale. Hilarity ensued as they ate pie, drank ale, and found out about the locals; the party also saw a large community bulletin board with various wanted ads (quests, land for sale, etc.).

First, the "Dream Team" went to the brewery owned by Vivacious and discovered her to be a succubus in disguise (after Aegle and Koriel became inebriated and Puff had to quickly make them some detox potions to save them); Vivacious escaped into the woods and her human servants were happy that she was gone.

The Dream Team's adventures in the village also took them to a half-elf widow (mourning the loss of her husband), to the treehouse of the “Gnomes for Hire” (who happily adopted Puff into their group, with official contracts signed), to the arrogant Miller’s son, back to the tavern (where they met the angry goliath owner Jafferton who wanted his stolen singing sword found and returned to him), and to the young necromancer’s tower (where they needed the notes of the dead old wizard to give them clues about restoring the soul of the widow’s lost husband).

Aegle and Koriel rested overnight at the tavern while Puff stayed with the gnomes at the treehouse. At the necromancer’s tower Puff was almost trapped in a magic circle, but they got the old wizard’s journal and convinced the young necromancer to destroy his undead zombie and skeleton guards. Aegle (whom the necromancer thought was a fiend he had tried to summon) had fun taking the magic wand of scorching ray from the necromancer, over and over again. Aegle thought he heard the air spirits calling out to him...

Thoughts: Tabletop Simulator

Fighting Goblins Online!
My DM wanted to try running some online sessions through Tabletop Simulator so I gave the program a chance. I downloaded it, for free, through Steam. In the Steam community section, they link to searches for free content for Tabletop Simulator. It took a while to find a good set of online dice that I could right-click and re-color the way I wanted, but I figured it out. I am actually really impressed with the program and I think it works well for people who want to simulate the 3D environment of being around a table and actually moving the minis around a map.

Rolling the dice online is more fun than just clicking a button and generating a random number. The dice towers are fun to use in the online 3D environment. I color-coded my dice so that the d20 were purple, the d12 were blue, the d10 were green, the d8 were yellow, the d6 were orange, and the d4 were red. That made for an easy visual cue when it came to zooming in and out, picking up the vritual dice, and rolling them. In fact, going through that process online made me go through my actual dice and organize a new set the same way, with the same color-coding system, as the online dice.

In the last month, I played two online games of D&D 5E on Tabletop Simulator. The first session was just to test the system and get used to the interface. The DM had me (as a war cleric) and another player (a dwarf fighter) battle some goblins and wolves in a cave. We survived, victorious. For the second session, those two characters joined with two more (a barbarian and a warlock) to fight more goblins and their bugbear leader. Unfortunately, online scheduling issues happened with some of the other players and the DM decided to end the mini-campaign.

Of all the online options for playing D&D, Tabletop Simulator has the most immersive, realistic 3D environment. At first, I saw that as a hindrance, because I thought it was unnecessary - but I actually really enjoyed playing in that environment once I learned how to easily zoom in and out. Even for old school gamers like me, the learning curve should only be a couple of hours.

Other than online scheduling issues though, I enjoyed my first foray into online gaming with Tabletop Simulator. I think I’ll give some of the other online RPG programs a chance and report back again, but I would be happy playing in a weekly game on Tabletop Simulator.

Thoughts: DCA 61-67

Thoughts: Dice, Camera, Action Episodes 61-67

#WaffleCrew
Chris Perkins as DM
Anna as Evelyn the paladin of Lathander
Jared as Diath the rogue
Holly as Strix the sorcerer
Nathan as Paultin the bard

Tomb of Annihilation
The #WaffleCrew, combating the death curse, made their way to Chult. These adventures felt less awkward than Season 2, which was a relief. The guest stars this time included a pair of goblins named Chumba and Wumba; hilarity ensued.

Episode 65 was a live Twitch stream, but half of it was lost due to faulty tech. Before Episode 67, Chris Perkins did a "Sock Puppet Theater" show as a synopsis of the plot for Episodes 1-66. It was both funny and weird (I was glad it was only about 30 minutes long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSENvC-E6S4&t=66s

Now that I'm caught up with their adventures, I'll have to wait for each new episode. Week by week. Sigh. But it should be worth it to see what becomes of the #WaffleCrew.

SAGA 1500: Retiring the Party

The RPG SAGA continues...
with the conclusion of the story of Force Green, aka Team Tortuga, aka the Fey Knights Gen 2!

SAGA Log 1500: Retiring the Party
Module: Tomb of Annihilation (Modified for High Level)
On the world of Merth-Yoril:
Pylia the half-elf bladesinger, Blue the satyr paladin, and Artus Cimber the human wielder of the Ring of Winter were in Port Nyanzaru while Drizmar the drow assassin and Blood the gnome cleric were in Pylia's demiplane. The team from the Harpers was repairing the Tortuga for them.

Pylia, Blue, and Artus went on a mission to loot Veersalla's treasures; they encountered five liches, but defeated them after 10 rounds of combat. Blue had to revivify Artus and Pylia had successfully saved the Ring of Winter from falling into evil hands. While investigating, they realized some additional liches might have escaped, but they destroyed six phylacteries and the phoenix-summoning stone. They rested for the night before returning to the port city. After a week, their ship was fully repaired and they decided to use their full power to permanently kill off Veersalla.

They spent about a week flying their ship home to the Feywild, where they brought Artus to the Summer Queen. She was able to destroy the Ring of Winter and free the true city of Mezro from the Feywild. Thus Artus was reunited with his wife and able to convince the Mezro leaders to return the ancient city to Chult. The team also realized Oberon and the Summer Queen were dating.

From messaging their family, they realized that the team who had gone into the Far Realms on their quest had returned. Gargle-Gargle had died, but the rest of that team was back and happy. Azel and Ylara were back in Balder's Gate. Gloria and Borngray I were back in the Sapphire Coast. Borngray II was back in the Jade Empire. Daria and Alt-Oran were back to seeking primordial power.

The "Core 4" teleported to Waterdeep, gathered the Slarkathel cult, retrieved the tome to summon the kraken, and killed off the evil cultists. They summoned Slarkrathel in the desert and killed him. Drizmar went off on a side mission and killed Ivanja. He also invited Laz, who had been friends with Drizzt, to come live on Oerth in Pylia's swamp city.

Blue bonded with Va'Zarbreena and realized the underground mining operations extended beyond their territory throughout the Feywild Underdark. He convinced the Mind Lynx cats to return to Merth-Yoril to go live out their lives there. He also released his Chwinga spirit friend into the Feywild, who gave Blue a divine blessing and recruited more Chwinga spirits to come live there. Alt-Oran came and taught Blue how to become an archfey - thus, after a month, Blue became the Lord of Thorns. Mercy was happy to be relieved of responsibility and planned to spend his time focused on raising his son.

Meanwhile, Pylia: fortified her city on Oerth, made sure Fritz and Brodo of GOAT were staying out of her affairs, regularly went to the Feywild to meet with Va'Zarbreena and Blue, met with Keraptis to let him know he could back off with the fiend-protection, gave her elven soul crystal to her Evermeet allies so they would start teaching her elven high magic, and researched how to make magic items auto-attune without a negative curse.

They had a huge party in the Feywild to celebrate Blue's coronation as an archfey. In the end, he was able to sit on his magical dragonbone throne.

THE END

(for now...)

DM's Note

Ending a campaign is always bittersweet. It's fun and worthy of celebration, but it's also sad to leave behind the characters. We played out this group for a year and half, meeting almost every week for 5-8 hours at a time. But more than that, they continued to explore stories and connections from their family member's stories from the last several years of roleplaying so it really felt like everything came together from years of storytelling.

We have copies of Xanathar's Guide to Everything and are considering options for the next campaign. We want to try something different so it should be fun and somewhat fresh.

Thoughts: DCA Season 2

Thoughts: Dice, Camera, Action Season 2 (Episodes 32 – 60)

#WaffleCrew
Chris Perkins as DM
Anna as Evelyn the paladin of Lathander
Jared as Diath the rogue
Holly as Strix the sorcerer
Nathan as Paultin the bard

Special Moments
There were some really special/different moments this time around:
*Episode 44 = Anna, Holly, and Jared played the group’s pets!
*Episode 51 = live play for Stream of Annihilation (without Nathan Sharp, but with guest Allie Gonino of Girls, Guts, Glory as a tiefling bard who actually played some music).
*Interview from Stream of Annihilation (sans Nathan, as usual):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cMheUEE2xo
*Bonus: Interview for Dragon+ with Chris, Holly, and Anna:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoL4-hf7CSo

Review
I'm a huge fan of the #wafflecrew. Sometimes this season felt awkward, even though overall the players had grown into their characters. I remember, especially, Episode 52 had an awkward dramatic feel to it because the paladin was talking about sacrificing herself and giving her items away to the other party members when clearly none of them wanted her to do that for them.

There was also a lot of “split party” roleplaying throughout the entire season and I sometimes felt annoyed that multiple sessions would go by sometimes without the team reuniting. I did like that Perkins, as DM, brought back the Ravenloft themes and issues even though the season was disguised as being about the storyline with the giants.

Clearly I enjoy watching the group play D&D and I look forward to soon being caught up with where they are in real time so I can go check out their Reddit forum and websites without being worried about spoilers. One of the benefits of them playing online with a huge fanbase is that they get lots of cool fan art:

SAGA 1493-1499: Freeing the Phoenix

The RPG SAGA continues...
DM's Note:
For the RPG Saga numbers, I'm folding in the FOE2 Sessions 1-6 as SAGA #1493-1498 since that campaign is at a transition point and it lines up well with this part of the SAGA coming to an end. A player from the FOE campaign joined us (playing a monk, as he loves to do) for SAGA Session 1499. The players agreed that this would be one of the last two sessions for this campaign season. Xanathar's Guide to Everything is coming out soon and we will be looking at new character options...

SAGA Log 1499: Freeing the Phoenix
Module: Tomb of Annihilation (Modified for High Level)
On the world of Merth-Yoril, the order of monks that protect the mighty phoenix sent out their strongest warrior - Methos, the death monk/wild magic sorcerer - to go rescue their phoenix from Veersalla. He went into the jungles of Chult, met a group of chwinga spirits, and they - through the power of Ehlonna - teleported him to join with Pylia, Drizmar, Blue, Blood, and Artus Cimber in the depths of the Tomb of Annihilation. Methos quickly bonded with the team.

They made it through a maze after hearing Captain Drufi’s giants battle with the yuan-ti in the dungeons, joined up with the victorious giants (who didn’t know Artus was Artus), and led the giants into the trap with the mirror of life-trapping. Only Drufi and two of her warriors survived. The giants split from the group after they went down to the next level. The team killed three shambling mounds and escaped an acid trap before dealing with a mysterious telepathic voice from the water that controlled a minion and strange machines.

The team went down again and found three strange constructs (one of which they killed, before the other two surrendered crying). The giants came in, overheard Methos calling Artus his name, and were tricked into killing the naked clone of Methos before charging forth and killing the three hags. The team solved five puzzles in the side rooms.

Advancing into the final room of the dungeon: the team found a lava pit, the atropal/soulmonger, Cap, and their solar nemesis Veersalla (who teleported out, leaving behind a two-teleport-circle choice of going to either rescue their family in the Far Realms or pursuing her). The three giants turned against the team. Methos almost ended up in the lava, Artus was surprise-attacked from behind by Xandala, Pylia finished off the soulmonger to free the captured souls and end the Death Curse, two of the giants were killed, Blue ordered Drufi to leave (letting her live after tricking her into thinking that the Ring of Winter had been destroyed), and Cap surrendered (explaining the dilemma choice with the ERK-stone).

They killed Cap, teleported to Veersalla’s mansion, freed the phoneix, and Blue give a final knock out punch to the solar to defeat her (after Slarkrathel, who was in a well, abandoned her). Methos bid them farewell after the phoenix thanked them. The team planned how they would keep Veersalla prisoner with a binding circle in Pylia’s demiplane. Blood and Drizmar guarded their prisoner while Blue, Pylia, and Artus went back to Port Nyanzaru and convinced Zindar and the Harpers to help repair the Tortuga. Artus also volunteered to ice-petrify Veersalla for them the next day, after they had rested. It occurred to Pylia that they should go back and destroy Cap's phylactery and loot the rest of Veersalla's place.

Next time the team may be ready to retire from active adventuring, though Pylia might still like to go finish off Slarkrathel, the Ploop cult, and Ivanja. Will they become the Chosen of their gods? Will Blue become an archyfey? Will Blood become a powerful church leader? Will Pylia lead her city and wizard school? Will Drizmar secretly assassinate people? Will Artus find his missing wife in the Feywild?