Our ninth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen was played on Monday, July 31, 2023. In this session, we began Chapter 6: The City of Lost Names, The backstory for the city involves the killing of a good dragon during the Age of Might. Which really makes no sense because during the Age of Might the good dragons were all sleeping and/or absent. Whenever … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 9
We played our eighth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, July 17, 2023, continuing through chapter 5: The Northern Wastes. At the end of the previous session, the characters had rescued a dragon egg and some sea elven captives from Camp Carrionclay, and then returned to Heart’s Hollow to recuperate. This left them with a few dangling threads. The leader of the … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 8
Making a good economy in any RPG is a challenging affair. Many players have noticed how the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons has trouble providing things for characters to spend gold on. So, what happens when you invent a new currency for an adventure that the players can spend on stuff? Well, what’s most likely to happen is that the designers don’t think through … Continue reading Economy is Hard: Soul Coins
On Monday, September 25, 2023, we played our third session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. We were missing one of our players but continued with three characters. I didn’t tone down the encounters, thinking it would be interesting to see how it went. Interesting is certainly one word for it! The session began with the characters with Halia Thornton, having realised she was … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 3
We played our second session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, September 16, 2023. This session covered the end of Chapter 1: A Dangerous Journey, and the beginning of Chapter 2: Trouble in Phandalin. We ended our previous session with the characters defeating the Cragmaw goblins and rescuing Sildar. Which led to the fun little interaction of me describing Sildar as a … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 2
The game of Dungeons & Dragons runs on rules. Something I expect the designers of the game to do is respect those rules. In this case, from Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, they did not. In the original version of this room in The Lost Mine of Phandelver, there are two bandits. The revision, which keeps adding monsters to make it a more challenging … Continue reading I hate “Just handwave it”
We played our seventh session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, July 3, 2023, proceeding through Chapter 5: The Northern Wastes. At the end of the last session, the party had rescued the young human Clystran from either drowning or being eaten by giant spiders (or both!) and were now taken by him to the town of Heart’s Hollow. At present, they had … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, sesson 7
Our fifth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen was played on Monday, June 26, 2023. The party consisted of: These events take place at the beginning of Chapter 5: The Northern Wastes. Kalaman was in uproar. Their council had been slaughtered by Lord Soth and his undead knights, and some magic of great significance stolen from the Catacombs. The heroes were summoned before Marshal … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 6
My group is playing through Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk on every Monday evening. (I will get to finishing the Dragonlance reports, I promise – I just wanted to get this down while it was fresh). We are playing on Roll20 using D&D Beyond (Beyond20 integration). Skype for voice. Two players are quite experienced, the third, playing a sorcerer, not so much. An NPC … Continue reading Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, session 1
We played the fifth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on June 19th, 2023. These events occur during the latter portion of Chapter 4: Shadow of War. With the death of Qinh, his player rolled up a new human barbarian, Hrothkar, for the rest of the campaign. One of the real drawbacks of having only four characters is that you have much less room … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 5
