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!

AL PC Update: Thox(ina)

Post-Season 7 Play
Thox is no longer Thoxina, thus for AL purposes Thox(ina) Darkvale. Before playing level 5, I decided to go with a thief rogue build with a future multiclass into barbarian. That way she could wield a rapier, but use strength and guarantee getting advantage (for sneak attack) via recklessly attacking each round.

Adventures
After Season 7 play (DDAL05-2 The Black Road, DDEP07-02 Drums of the Dead, and DDAL05-12 Bad Business in Parnast), she enjoyed Season 8 with...

DDEX1-10 Tyranny in Phlan
During this adventure, she was staying at an inn when a dragon's army attacked. She helped the people of the city fight back, organize, and get the commoners to safety. Her Harpers contact came in handy and she fought off an evil wizard on a wyvern.

DDHC TYP: White Plume Mountain
By far one of the best modules ever, White Plume Mountain is always a fun adventure. Normally I make sure I bring a character who can fly and cast spells to get around the traps, but not this time. Thoxina had to rely on her team and quick thinking to get through all of the puzzles. She was also there for the combat!

DDAL08-13 The Vampire of Skullport
She joined a team in Waterdeep fighting off vampires. Again, she mostly focused on the combat in this one.

DDHC TYP: Tomb of Horrors
Everything changed as a result of the Tomb of Horrors. When Thoxina went in with the others (including Kilrath), she never expected the magic of the place would turn her into a man and change her alignment to evil. Once she went evil, she started hanging at the back of the group and letting the other party members risk getting killed by the traps. In the end, it took barely any effort on her part and she got access to lots of great treasure as a reward (including a belt of fire giant strength).

As a man, the character is now going by the name of Thox (and looks remarkably similar to her/his twin brother).

4U Reflection

Thoughts of a DM...
Oh what a tangled web of plot I weaved for this campaign! The campaign ended up going through phases:
Phase 1: Small town Tholme with nearby elemental evil
Phase 2: (modified Emerald Spire) Obsidian Fang missions
Phase 3: figuring out the Ryali/Kennara/Shar mysteries/plots

The phases sort of fit into the “heroic tier” concept of play, going from small town to larger region to world/universe problems. I feel that, at times, I had made the antagonists' plans too subtle or too hidden for the players to be sure where to go to track them down. Other than the forced Obsidian Fang levels/quests, I ran this campaign as very player-centric with lots of player agency. I wonder if, sometimes, I gave them too much leeway with deciding where to go and what to do because we ended up with some hours spent just kind of roaming around shopping and talking with NPCs without, from my point of view as DM, much focus (for where I thought they should be in the campaign) but the players were happy and having fun and that’s what really matters.

And oh what fun we had! Some of the highlights to me, were:
*Playing with the word “murder” representing a group of ravens;
*mimicking Hommlet and TOEE with Tholme and its problems;
*stealing ideas from the Emerald Spire mega-dungeon, especially the deadly magma dragons;
*making silly NPC shamans/clerics as sub-bosses/antagonists;
*reusing familiar locations from the previous universe, but refreshing them (I'm looking at you, Floshin Family);
*the “Barbarians at the Gate” adventure;
*having 2 Puffs without the players realizing there were 2 of him;
*playing Kennara as one of those evil people who thinks they are doing good;
*letting lose super powerful enemies such as Klauth and the tarrasque;
*being pleasantly surprised when the players finished off the plots before I thought they would.

This will go down in history as our first big campaign that didn’t go all the way to level 20. We finished at level 17, but we were done. The big plots were dealt with and there wasn’t a point in making up some more things for them to do after that. I’m glad that, over a year and a half ago, I realized I could have some fun with some word play of “For You” and “4U” to get this thing started as a transition from our universe that we had been playing in for FOREVER, to get us to something new. To my players, this campaign was 4U.

4U 28-35: Ryali v Shar

The RPG Saga continues in the 4th Universe with the Dream Team of:
Kori the aasimar fighter-cleric,
Aegle the winged elf kensai monk,
Page in a Book the tabaxi rogue, and
The Flake Bros (Wally the Wizard and Cham the cleric) -
with appearances by Puff the gnome/dragonborn druid and Malath the half-elf bard.

4U 28: Aegle returned to Waterdeep with Wally’s body. The team got him resurrected and were going to head into Skullport when the Phoenix rose from its egg and the team had to defeat it at the port. Page bought the sailing ship “The Bull Frog” with a mostly elf and half-elf crew. They sold the Phoenix egg to the Xanathar and then the team (Kori, Aegle, Page, Cham, Wally, and the barbarian King Slayer) planeshifted to the Shadowfell, to the palace of Orcus…

29: The team joined the assault on the palace of Orcus, defeating an army of undead that included minotaur skeletons, bodaks, a lich, a vampire lord, shadows, and a zombie beholder (in addition to the swarms of zombies and skeles). The Skull Lord joined the fight, but S’dothian (Malath’s shadow dragon patron) came and helped the team. The group ended with just Kori, Aegle, Page, and the shadow dragon alive. Cham’s body was destroyed/sent to the Astral Plane along with the destruction of his bag of holding and Aegle’s portable hole!

30: Kori, Aegle, and Page had S’dothian take them to a cave where they were able to get a safe rest. S’dothian told them about Malath, back at home, having impregnated Shalendra Floshin being faced with the decision to marry her. Malath also told S’dothian that the green wizard had been captured by Klauth. With the Raven Queen’s forces now controlling the palace, Kennara was there in charge wearing the Paradox Pendant and guarded by two shaman sisters. The team allied with a hag who helped them defeat the shamans. Kennara teleported out to safety. The team arranged for Malath and Shalendra to have a proper wedding with Lady Faenya presiding in her Feywild palace; the archfey blessed the couple so that they could have an eladrin child. Puff showed up at the wedding reception.

31: Kori, Aegle, Page, and their hag ally teleported into one of Klauth’s treasure caves, where they battled: kobolds, dragonborn, half-dragons, and vetern lizardfolk. They rescued the Green Wizard (GW), though they accidentally spread a bunch of Klauth’s treasure across the Astral Plane (with a bag of holding/portable hole accident). The hag left the team because she was an enemy of GW. GW revealed that Klauth took his TREEdis to Mystara, where it was trapped behind a powerful magical barrier. Klauth’s mistress gave the team some grief before finally letting them have some cursed magic items.

32: The team was assaulted by a tarrasque (from another world), a powerful fire giant lord, and some weird canoloths; Aegle died in the battle. When Kori and Page teleported out to save themselves, they went to Waterdeep to hire an elven cleric, the tarrasque and fire giant also ended up in Waterdeep pursuing them. The team hired Mortimer the monk, a bounty hunter, to join them. The griffon-rider guards finished off the tarrasque, but the fire giant escaped. Meanwhile, the team went to the elven Temple of Elemental Evil, where they fought off some dragons and elementals that had been attacking Puff’s gnome girlfriend. She revealed the truth about Puff – that there were 2 of him because of a simulacrum spell.

33: Kori was teleported away from the others (Page and Mortimer) to participate in a game hosted by the ancient power known as the Quiz Master; he also brought Aegle from the afterlife (who had been in a primordial realm because Lady Faenya is actually the primordial god-being Akadi), the Green Wizard, both Puff and his simulacrum, and Kennara. They were put on 3 teams (Kori & Kennara, GW & Puff, Puff & Aegle) and forced to play a version of Jeopardy. GW sacrificed himself and the Puff simulacrum since one of the teams was going to have their souls devoured. Kori and Kennara won, getting all of the magic items from Puff and Aegle. Aegle had a chance to tell Kori what he had learned from the primordials before getting the Quiz Master to send him to Corellon’s realm in the afterlife. Kennara went back to Waterdeep, where Puff persued her. Kori returned to Page and Mortimer, who had been defeating the remaining elementals coming out of the ruins of the elven TOEE. Kori used her new knowledge to seal the elemental nodes there.

34: Kori, Page, and Morty discussed everything, realizing that Kennara was behind much of what had happened in her plot to ascend as the new Raven Queen; also, Shar was trying to destroy Mystara which was why it was behind a barrier – with the elemental lords actually protecting it, not “imprisoning” it for nefarious purposes. They walked to Tholme and got Brexi to tree-port them to Waterdeep, where they found out Puff’s cult forces had taken the Shaman Supreme after raiding the church of the Raven Queen. After resting, they paid a wizard to teleport them near Elvenport, where the elemental cults were.

While infiltrating the cults of the Steam Lord and Storm Lord, the team found out Puff was going before a tribunal; when they went into the palace of the elemental lrods, it brought forth a repressed memory from Kori’s childhood and she realized being here was her destiny so that she could return to her own universe and help save her own Mystara with this same plan of having the elemental lords (which Ryali has power over) seal the world away from Shar. The team saved Puff, who suggested they go steal the TREEdis and take it home.

Their plan worked. They got the TREEdis, saved Prince Mursalin, put in the dial from the universal tree, and used the TREEdis to return to Kori and Puff’s original universe. There, they met with the church of Ryali and gave them the info needed to save Mystara from Shar.

35: Kori, Prince Mursalin, Puff, Page, Morty, and the team’s hired fighter had saved Mystara and had to decide what to do with themselves; they didn’t want Kennara to get away with things so they made one more trip into the 4th Universe, this time with a Semuanya cleric and a gold dragonborn paladin of Ryalia (named Malia) with them. They gave the orb of transference to Kennara and tricked her into thinking they were on her side; they got her into the ancient frog temple from the Mere of Dead Men and took it to Shar’s domain. They got Shar and Kennara both trapped in the temple, along with Shar’s lover Cyric.

After trapping the god-beings in the temple, they shrunk it down and took it back to Waterdeep and – eventually – Semuanya’s realm, where they gave the sealed temple to the goddess of survival; the cleric they brought with them chose to stay there. They communicated with the elemental princes so they could free Mystara in 4U. They had also spoken to Klauth and his dragon council, making sure they wouldn’t go on a rampage; Kori gave the silver dragon there the book of elemental power that she had been carrying around. In the end, the team returned to Kori and Puff’s original universe.

Epilogue
For retirement:
*Puff went back to his Old Gnawbone, after removing the dial (destroying it) from the TREEDIS;
*Page was living a new life on Toril, in a universe that was new to him (but similar to where he came from);
*Mortimer, like Page, was also living a new life on this version of Toril;
*Kori & Prince Murselan finally got a chance to settle down and have a family, on her Mystara;
*Malia stayed on Mystara as well; and
*Malith was the only one from the core group who stayed in 4U, raising his family with his wife Shalendra Floshin.

FOE2/COMT Reflection

Thoughts from a Player...
I had so much fun playing the FOE 2 (a.k.a. CoMT) campaign. The DM had a really interesting concept for us, clearing out an entire city from monsters, with a link to a cursed Deck of Many Things that summoned the magic to change the city in the first place. When we finished the main mission, the DM modified the Curse of Strahd campaign for us to play it at high level.

Throughout the campaign, as usual with this group, I ended up with the high kill count. I ended up playing:
*Narg “Fox” Stormleaf the half-orc cleric/wizard, who died fighting the monsters in the city streets;
*Derv “Dewey” Dewstone the human fighter, who died helping Seiken escape from the orc fort;
*Mory Brewbeard the dwarf cleric/pirate, who had his brain eaten by an intellect devourer and his soul taken by Shothragot;
*Ovin Snakestaff the water genasi fighter/cleric, who had ended up magically trapped in a room where he got his soul eaten by a succubus after impregnating her;
*Keravel Ual the elf cleric, who retired as the leader of a city; and
*the returning Raylin Sunsoaker the human sun cleric and Director of FOE, who successfully saved his own soul and then went off to spread the Federation of Explorers to other worlds.

That means, over about 45 gaming sessions, I played 6 really interesting characters with fun personalities. There were a lot of memorable moments, from fighting back the “green tide” to plotting to get the druid to fall in love with the necromancer (which didn’t happen), to pretending to be Gith, to surviving a huge airship battle/assault, to secretly setting up the Criminals of Many Things as a subset of FOE, to saving Raylin’s soul. Especially after Mory’s soul was taken, it meant a lot to be able to go back and save Raylin like that. It's bittersweet to end a campaign, but that just frees up time to start a new one...

COMT 31-35: Curse of Strahd

The Federation of Explorers (Part 2) a.k.a. The City of Many Things (a.k.a. The Criminals of Many Things) continued with The Curse of Strahd...

CoMT 31: Seiken the elf monk, Elyrin the human necromancer, and Keravel elf cleric were finished with their mission saving the city from the monsters that threatened it. The elves from the High Forest sent an eladrin ambassador (Daevala) from an ancient elven city that hid from the Netherese; they had elven magic forging abilities and druids that would help with farms. The CoMT setup an elven embassy for them. Keravel went to become the new leader of Naeb, to rebuild that city.

Raylin Sunsoaker, the human sun cleric and Director of FOE, returned to the city, having done a ton of research about Strahd and the Dark Powers – along with a plan to go into the Domains of Dread to try to free his tainted soul. Elyrin and Seiken agreed to go with him. Seiken, Elyrin, and Raylin went shopping with the ancient elves before going to the Twilight Forest and entering the mists of Ravenloft/visiting with the Vistani and Madame Eva. They ended up in the village of Krezk, and a strange Abby…

32: Strahd taunted the team by ordering the peole at the Krezk to attack the team of Seiken, Elyrin, and Keravel before disappearing. After the team defeated the enemies there, they went down the road toward the village of Barovia – stopping at a lake. They took a boat across the lake, looked for a wolf cave, and found an elk that turned out to be the insane Mordenkainen! The team dispelled his mind blank and went into Mordy’s mansion. After resting and sharing info with Mordy, the team left.

33: The team (Seiken, Elyrin, and Raylin) fought off a dozen werewolves and then spent more days heading toward Barovia. They ended up in a “ghost town” where they found off an army of undead with zombie, spirit skeles, and a skull lord caster.

34: After some keepy dreams/visions/illusions, the team finally ended up in Barovia. They dealt with the local church with the priest whose son was a vampire. The team got the info on where to find the crypt of Strahd’s brother, where there was a weapon they could use to defeat Strahd. They went through a creepy graveyard and battled some demons and amges. Strahd tried taunting the team again when they got the sunsword.

Days later, the team went into Strahd’s castle to fight him. They fought off Strahd’s army of undead and defeated the Dark Lord Strahd! They then found themselves planeshifted to a “Dark Powers Council Chamber” with 3 death gods (Bhaal, Talona, Loviatar). Seiken used the scale the gem dragon (Seradeth) gave the team, thus summoning him to join in the battle…

35: Seiken, Elyrin (with his undead minions), Raylin fought Loviatar while Seradeth took on Bhaal and Talona. After finishing off their opponent, the team joined Seradeth. Together, they defeated the death gods and freed Raylin’s soul from the Dark Powers. Seradeth thanked them and gave them each an open invitation to his resting pool.

Epilogue: Elyrin decided to continue life as an adventurer for hire. Seiken started his own monastery. Raylin headed to other worlds to setup chapters of FOE as an interplanar adventuring company. Meanwhile, Keravel had setup a proper, non-evil government, in Naeb and had renamed the city back to Loudwater. He also convinced more elves to move there.