Tuesday, December 31, 2019

FOE3 Log 19

The Adventures of The Federation of Explorers, Generation 3 continue with...


Althar Ovinson the yuan-ti cleric-divination wizard;
Ludo the firbolg barbarian;
Zeraf the tiefling rogue-ranger;
Koh the human monk; and
Tali'Anya the drow druid!

Session 19
Tali'Anya gave back the staff of healing before heading out to bring the rescued dryad to its home. The rest of the team continued going through the corrupted temple. At the earth elemental ring test/trap Ludo died from suffocation when it pulled him underground; the rest of the team had to kill the corpse flower and earth elemental that came forth in order to get the ring and Ludo's dead body.

The team went to rest outside the temple and give Ludo a proper funeral by burning his body. After about an hour, 3 lycans showed up and attacked the group (a wereboar, a weretiger, and a werebear). Koh, Zeraf, and Althar killed them.

The next morning the wandering tiefling bard A'Bezeel joined the group. Varis let him wear Ludo's red dragonscale armor. Althar started using Ludo's +1 battleaxe. The team went back into the temple and killed 4 black puddings that ambushed them from the ceiling of one of the rooms.

Sunday, December 29, 2019

SAGA Logs 2000-2011

The RPG SAGA continues...
I have to admit I wasn't sure what numbers to use at this point for my main game logs. For the last campaign, I relabeled it as 4U since it took place in the "4th Universe" so to speak. But I also played a lot of FOE sessions and a ton of Adventurers League. Thus I am just going to guesstimate the number at 2000. And it's starting with a 0 number, not a 1 because we had a true "Session Zero" to start the campaign...


For the beginning of this campaign, I took the adventure concepts and used NPCs from both Waterdeep Dragon Heist and Ghosts of Saltmarsh and weaved them together while also relocating the campaign to the former pirate town of Purl (in a location of the Forgotten Realms that doesn't have much lore - "The Shining South" nation of Dambrath - and thus my players had something fresh to explore).


Session 0/2000: The players established expectations and created the main characters. I told them about the setting. The characters created were: Mylitta "Litta" Erenaeth the high elf wizard/anthropologist, her brother Tharivol Erenaeth the winter eladrin hunter ranger/folk hero, and Varis "Starflower" Anastacia the wood elf sun monk/guild artisan. They made a party of all elves. I made a note because that would definitely have an influence on the campaign going forward.

Varis was married to a halfling woman named Cora, a local ranger who retired to be a part of the leatherworker business. They already had children, who would be established NPCs in the village. Litta and Tharivol had a mystery concerning their parents and origin story. Tharivol and Varis decided they would know each other as hunting buddies who were just returning to the village to meet up with Tharivol's sister. The village of Purl was basically Saltmarsh with some Waterdeep Dragon Heist elements added in.

2001: The story began with Varis and Tharivol having befriended one of the two human princes of Dambrath, Philipe, during their hunting excursion. Litta met up with the others and they got to know the politics of the village. Prince Philipe hired them to help him find the lost treasure, starting with a special rock.

2002: The trio dealt with the missing prince and body double issue, the warehouse with the kenku, and the circus people who had arrived in town (included Zord, the colorful dark elf).

2003: There was a fireball explosion in the town; the team investigated and dealt with guard politics. Varis spent some more time with his family. Litta and Tharivol investigated a noble family's mansion. Tharivol freed the kenku prisoner.

2004: The team went to deal with the haunted house on the hill since they heard some other adventurers were trying to beat them to it. They dealt with the animals, monsters, and pirates there; Ned betrayed them. Back in the town, the cleric also betrayed them, but they managed to capture a pirate ship and free a tritan slave named Sunaeco.

2005: The trio took ownership of the "haunted" mansion and spoke with the political leaders about the potential threat of the lizardfolk stocking up weapons sold to them by pirates. They also continued their quest of finding the missing 500,000 gp worth of treasure that the prince wanted. Zord tried to get them to betray the prince and work with him instead. When they found the vault and dealt with the dangers inside, the prince let them keep 10% of the treasure. They used that money to fix up their new home and hire a crew for their new merchant ship.

2006: They sailed out on their ship to return the prince and treasure to the capital city of Dambrath. Along the way, they stopped at a sea elf island for trade and they were followed by the circus pirates. In Dambrath, they received special treatment as Royal Rapiers [an appointment similar to the Musketeers of France]. Varis adopted a street orphan named Victor. The team killed a giant crocodile and presented it to the king, who worshipped Malar (like Tharivol).

2007: Sunaeco bought the ship and made a business arrangement with the trio. The royal wizard "Stang" was jealous of the group, as were many of the other Royal Rapiers. Stang teleported the team back to Purl, where they helped the captain of the guard deal with the lizardfolk threat. Philipe's brother had been assassinated and the halflings from the nearby nation were blamed. Tensions were mounting to what looked like it would escalate to war!

2008: While discussing what to do about the Sahuagin threat, the trio of heroes were [for a special Friday the 13th adventure] captured by two rogue agents of AO (Vim & Vigor) and ended up fighting some undead spirits at a camp ground and lake. The Agents of AO were concerned about Litta and Tharivol being in the wrong time period (because of the mystery of their parents/origin).

2009: Vim & Vigor's ship exploded when they tried time-traveling with the group; the team was confused about whether they were in the future or the past, but it turned out they were in the present time that they had been living in. The team used the lizardfolk to trick the pirates and arrest them. They also dealt with an island with an abandoned temple.

2010: The trio had decided the only way to stop the humans from wrongly slaughtering the halfling nation was to assassinate the king and have the prince rise up in power. Meanwhile, Veran the elf from Litta's adopted family arrived and said they had inherited an estate in Evermeet. The sea elf ambassador seemed interested in Litta. Varis' wife was upset with the team. They had helped arrest Zord, but now Zord was pretending to be his "twin brother" Dorz. They continued dealing with court politics.

2011: Keylam, one of the Royal Rapiers, befriended the trio. They worked with Prince Philipe and decided to sacrifice the king on the Malar centaur alter in the woods. The plan worked and they killed the king. Philipe gave a speech to his servants and they celebrated the coronation of him as the new king. He cancelled the war with the halfling nation. The trio were going to go visit the border monasteries and then the halfling nation, but a mysterious island appeared at sea so they investigated it instead. Ryali's son "The Merry-Maker" was on the island and took them to Mystara, where they learned that Litt and Tharivol were the children of Malath and Shalendra Floshin (from 4U). At the end, they visited the magical marketplace.

FOE3 Logs 1-18

The 3rd FOE Campaign (FOE3, or F3 for even shorter) has been a blast thus far! I am a player in this game, which started with the core trio of players and same DM from the FOE2/CoMT campaign. We were joined by 2 more players and they add even more fun to the sessions. We also had a special guest player for one of the games, though at that point we were out of seats at the table. LOL.

One of the players wanted to play a firbolg, but it's not easy to find miniatures for firbolg characters so I suggested we get a bugbear and the DM painted him to look like a firbolg. I think it turned out great (see below):

F3 Log 1: I play Althar Ovinson, the yuan-ti cleric-wizard who was born a tiefling (the son of Ovin and the succubus that killed him during the FOE2/CoMT adventures - but went through yuan-ti rituals to convert). I am the only "legacy character" from the bloodlines of previous characters (thus far). My character is joined by the tiefling rogue Zeraf Drake and the firbolg barbarian Ludo. We were sent through a portal to another continent to establish a settlement, along with a bunch of NPCs [similar to the idea of Australia, I suppose]. We sent a lot of the first game session learning about the NPCs and finding a safe place in the woods near a lake to have a hidden forest village.


2: We have been gathering animals and crops and busy farming/ranching it up, as well as assigning all the NPCs important jobs/duties in the village that we named Deepwater (since we originally were sent here from Waterdeep). We also spent time securing the nearby mines, which meant defeating kobolds and a young red dragon.

3: We explored in the nearby mountains and were abushed by goblins. We ended up having to kill a bunch of goblins and their wolf. We found a cave with drow and spiders that came up to fight us. We had to kill them too.

4: We took supplies back to our village and then went back to the cave to explore the "drow hole" as we called it. We found an ancient dwarf temple. The dark elves attacked us and we barely escaped alive. We managed to get the books and such from the dwarf temple. We also went to a ruined settlement and fought off a strange lich spirit. After more resting, we ended up exploring out to a bear cave and taking on a mutant werebear.

5: A 4th player joined us as Koh the human monk. He showed up with some failed settlers that we had come join our community. We spent a bunch of time coordinating the breeding of animals and growing of crops, along with building more log cabins in the woods. The monk then joined the main trio with some backup NPCs to go on one last mission into the dwarf temple to retrieve relics and more books before blowing up the tunnel.

6: Our 5th player joined in as a drow druid (though, unlike all the other dark elves, she was on our side) named Tali'Anya. We quested for more interesting crops, like carrots and cabbage, to add to our farms. In the wilderness, while exploring, we fought 2 owl bears and slept in the mountains, where we were abushed by a party of drow. We defeated them.


7: We continued exploring in the mountains. We battled 4 air elementals and dealt with weird traps. We went through mountain caves with dark elves and duergar. We ambushed the enemies and took their equipment.

8: We rescued slaves from the caves and brought them back to your nice forest village community. We worked on our cabins/farms for a bit and then continued exploring. The core team went to explore a mountain river path and we found an unnatural wasteland. A magic voice in the sky announced it was taking back energy and souls. We witnessed the wild magic from the area go north, into the wasteland and past it. We went to a giant dead tree and killed the corpse flower monster there.

9: The team entered the dead tree lair and dealt with all of the traps and monsters inside. We won over a sphinx via a riddle competition. The main battle was against a wizard and a druid. They almost killed us, but we managed to get out alive.

10: We brought the sphinx back to the village with us. Our guards had seen lizardfolk nearby so we decided to go deal with them. In the swamp, we had to destroy a party of undead (a wight and 4 will'o'wisps). We made a deal with the local lizardfolk to be allies. They took us to their village and introduced us to their leaders - a half-dragon and an ancient obsidian dragon. The obsidian dragon tasked us with killing his rival, a gold dragon. Who were we to say no?

11: As we traveled, we found cows that belonged to orcs. We had to kill a bunch of orcs and Althar became the new orc chief. As their chief, I convinced them to share the cows with our community and to have 4 young orcs continue with the adventure party to go deal with the yuan-ti and such. We found a yuan-ti village and fought some of them. The NPC orcs died in battle.

12: We battled more yuan-ti and then, in the city, there was a weird astral plane projection thing that happened to some of us. We had to defeat a yuan-ti spirit. In the end we won and ended back in our bodies.

13: The normal campaign paused for this week as we played a special session. Instead of our normal characters, we got to play as creatures from the Monster Manual. I was Patyr the Satyr; we picked randomly. We also had an orog, a lizardfolk shaman, a dire wolf, and a giant spider. We were helping a Dragonborn ranger to stop some summonings. We fought a bunch of kruthiks and cultists and then had to knock a glabrezu into a portal (the dire wolf sacrificed himself). In the end, we woke up and it was a vision our main characters had of some sort of potential future.

14: Back to the normal campaign: Althar, Ludo, and Zeraf dragged along the unconscious monk and druid. As Althar, I returned the stolen yuan-ti eggs and tried to throw them off so they wouldn't follow us anymore. We went into the mountains and befriended some kobolds who took us to the community of the gold dragon (where they lied and said there was an ancient gold dragon, but his spirit had been split into different people). We befriended them.

15: As another diversion from the main campaign (since we were missing 2 of our 5 players again), 3 of us played as characters in a gladiator type arena. I was Jerek Feyblood the half-elf barbarian, joined by Terrence the tortle tempest cleric and Beelza the tiefling bard. We had been captured by the evil wizards/druids and forced to fight in their arena. We escaped after some fun battles and then rested in the sewers.

16: In the normal campaign the gang was all reunited in the secret gold dragon cave HQ. We told them the truth about the obsidian dragon and decided to all work together to go put an end to its reign. We took the army of dragonborn and kobolds through the forest and swamp; along the way, we recruited the orcs to join us (though we sent the kids away to Deepwater with the cows and the old folks). We had a huge battle at the lizardfolk city in the swamp, with our side winning! Belthoth, the ancient gold dragon reunited its spritual self back together to help with the victory.

17: The gold dragon rewarded us and we decided to let the remaining lizardfolk live in peace there. The dragon's people mostly returned to their secret cave. We also decided to start up a new village at the abandoned orc fort. The cows had been slaughtered by dark elves, but the children survived. We figured out the politics and farming and spent a year of downtime. Unknown to the rest of us, Koh was being manipulated by the evil dragon spirit trapped in the ring of spell storing (ROSS) that I had given him (that I had gotten from the battle).

18: On the way to the temple that Koh told us he had a vision about being corrupted, we were waylaid by a froghemoth that almost killed Koh. We made it inside and had to deal with a bunch of elemental-based traps and puzzles. We freed a dryad prisoner and ended the session half-way through the dungeon.

Saturday, December 28, 2019

AL PC: Jermanthor

AL PC: Jermanthor


My first Season 9 character is Jermanthor of Cormanthor (the name works on so many levels, as references to me as Jer, to Thor the god of lightning, and to the elven forest of Cormanthor), the half-elf tempest cleric. I had the character take a level of wizard since there were so many great spellbooks rewarded in the beginning of the Season 9 hardcover Descent into Avernus and the party had no wizard. 


This is my current Saturday character in the Daddywarbux campaign (about to level up to level 7). In a lot of ways, I feel like I am simply treading familiar ground by playing a multiclass cleric-wizard (since that is my main type of character these days), but I spiced things up by making him worship Umberlee. I had no idea that would get such a negative reaction from the other player characters. LOL.

As a sidenote, Season 9 for AL is written to give advantages to playing either an aasimar or a tiefling, but I really wanted to play a half-elf again so I went with my gut rather than with the mechanically-advantageous option. Now that two-thirds of the party is flying around with wings, I will admit I am a little bit envious but I love this character so I'm not that worried about it. Surely, before Season 9 ends, I will make an aasimar name Jer-something (Jerangelus - no, no, that's a little too on the nose)...

AL PC: Jern Bogwalker

AL PC: Jern Bogwalker


In Season 8, for an AL LMOP campaign, I created a kobold druid named Jern Bogwalker (to honor the old Bogwalker campaign that I had DM’d years ago). He made it all the way through a long campaign of LMOP and White Plume Mountain. I also gave him some DM Rewards and, for Season 9, converted him up so that he is now level 14. 


He has benefited from me being able to trade items down from my other druid (Thokson). I love playing druids. The creativity that comes from the wildshapes is always fun to play out. He is another character that I haven't played in a while that I would like to revisit in Season 9.

AL PC: Jerisimo

AL PC: Jerisimo



For a Waterdeep Dragon Heist AL campaign, I was able to play the Jer-est character of all: Jerisimo the human arcana cleric. I played him through an entire campaign for that hardcover. While the rest of the party was concerned with the actual objectives of the game, Jerisimo focused on a romance with Yagra Stonefist (the half-orc from the tavern). We had a great time with the campaign and Jerisimo ended up marrying Yagra, taking her last name, and having a son (Jerisimo Junior – a character that I will surely play at some point in the future). Jerisimo ended up at level 7 and I haven’t played him since, but he got a full story with owning Trollskull Manor and settling down in retirement (thus far).

AL PC: Jerizzt Do’Urden


AL PC: Jerizzt Do’Urden


In Season 8, I created a drow eldritch knight who believed himself to be the bastard son of Drizzt Do’Urden, named Jerizzt (because I love to name my characters things that start with Jer). I started him out with the Season 8 modules, but he also saw some action on the Black Road, with some CCC fun, and some DM Rewards. 


Thanks to the Season 9 conversion, he ended up at level 11 and maxing out the allowed number of magic items. To make the character even more fun, I made his familiar a black cat similar to the panther in the Drizzt novels. What’s funny to me though is that not a single person that I played with commented on the Jerizzt/Drizzt connection or the cat/panther connection. Maybe they haven’t read the novels and don’t know the lore?

AL Season 9

Adventurers League Season 9 began, not with a bang, but with a whimper (at least from my point of view). As usual, when the AL Admin team sets up the beginning of a new season of organized play, they change a bunch of the rules and that tends to upset the community. Having endured the Season 8 changes, I wasn’t that bothered by Season 9. I was actually looking forward to some of the “fixes” for the system. What was nice was that the admins placated the community by giving a free “level up” and potential free items from character unlocks during the conversion process.

I spent hours just converting my characters and then I was afraid to play them for a while, in case I had gotten something wrong. Also, it took the admins a while to get the updated content catalog document (the ALCC) out. As predicted, the ALCC changed some more variables. The biggest change from the ALCC was a retroactive reward system for White Plume Mountain. I actually still need to go back and check my characters to make sure I don’t have any fixes for that. And the White Plume Mountain changes should be considered a positive since they give us players access to the epic items from the adventure, but it meant people had to go back and remove previously rewarded items if they weren’t from a narrow list.

I was playing at home or on 2 main Discord servers (the TAL server and Daddywarbux’s server), but there are SO MANY freaking players on the servers now that it’s tough to get into games. Luckily, I am in the regular Saturday “morning” game DM’d by Daddywarbux (twitch.tv/daddywarrbux) so I do have that going on. But most game postings now fill up within 2-3 minutes. It’s crazy how popular the system is right now. I suppose that means Season 9 is working, despite the lack of a proper DM Quest system like before.

The saddest part for me though is that some of the fine people I played AL games with back in Season 7 and some of Season 8 have dropped from organized play and I either lost touch with them or I can’t convince them to come back. In the meantime though, I will continue gaming…

End of 2019: State of the Blog

Oh yeah, I have a blog... LOL


(Those poor maps have been through a lot over the years.)

I forgot to update the blog for the 2nd half of the year. I hope you'll forgive me. That means I need to type up the updates for (1) DMing my home game, (2) playing in the FOE game, and (3) Adventurers League. No problem. Let me get right on that...

Meanwhile, I will say that sometimes I suffer from RPG burn out and it helps to turn to some other hobbies. I will read books, play computer games (like Minecraft), or build something out of Lego. I should probably blog some about the books I've been reading and include some more inspiration posts like I used to do.

Luckily my friends and fellow players keep me interested in the RPGs. We have great times together and there are always fun stories to tell. I hope you will enjoy them as I try to breath life back into this blog. Peace!