Our last session of the Friday Greyhawk campaign was not one of my better efforts. It didn’t help that I had a couple of players missing (pulling out at the last moment), nor that I was dreadfully tired. It was also a transition session, where we changed between one style of campaign plot to another. Urgh. We had four short (and quite boring) combats, plus a little roleplaying. It did, however, serve its purpose and, with any luck, things will be looking up now.
There were a couple of good things to come out of the sesion, thankfully.
The first was due to Rich. I’d concocted the story of this band of university students finding an ogre’s cave, getting beat up, and returning with the news of its location to the university. From then on, it became a popular dare to visit the cave and see the ogre. This group of adventurers (with prodding from a new NPC) decided to go and slay the ogre and take its treasure. Upon arriving, Rich’s paladin entered first, with the rogue and ranger sneaking in behind.
Rich saw this menacing ogre growling at him, club upraised, and completely flubbed his Perception check. For the next few minutes, he tried to talk to an unresponsive ogre. Finally, his patience exhausted, he charged it… only to drop into the 20′ deep pit before the stuffed ogre skin. Then the bugbears charged the others in the party!
That was a fun moment. Eventually, Rich climbed out and the combat turned in their favour.
The other important thing that occured was the introduction of Teresa Corthan, daughter of my original AD&D magic-user, Meliander. Nathaniel had expressed a wish for more elements of his homeland of Ulek to be used in the campaign. So, enter Teresa as an NPC – a 16 year-old girl, who’d been sent to Greyhawk to attend the same college as Nate’s character.
Teresa will be a lot of fun; she’s a NPC that I’ll enjoy roleplaying, and she also provides a lot of interesting plothooks. She also firmly fixes the campaign in the timeline. If she’s 16, then it must be 598 CY. I might add a couple of years to her age (and the timeline) once I’ve placed everything properly in the timeline… but I know she was born in 582 CY, so that’s a firm dating point for everything else.
Now to see if I can design a better adventure for our next session!