I’ve started running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, the recent D&D adventure for level 1-5 characters. I have a group of five or six players – one is finding himself very busy in the end-of-year madness – who are proceeding through the adventure. Of particular note amongst the characters is a gnome fighter called Dysnomia, who was once part of the City Watch of Waterdeep. This has … Continue reading Waterdeep: Dragon Heist opening stages
Our second game of Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress saw our four characters attempt the first stronghold expedition. To complete the game, the characters need to explore all four strongholds and then the vault. We’d found four clues in the previous mission, so we spent them to unlock this expedition. We also swapped out the robot for a sniper; you can choose any of the eight … Continue reading Blackstone Fortress – Into the First Stronghold
A different group of five players met with me on Saturday afternoon to play through the second of the playtest scenarios of the new Pathfinder RPG. This time, the players would make their characters – so we wouldn’t have the problem of underwhelming spells such as acid splash. I’m not running these sessions as official playtest sessions, but rather for a group of mostly 5E … Continue reading Pathfinder 2 Playtest – In Pale Mountain’s Shadow, session 1
Last night, I wasn’t feeling particularly creative and – with PAX Australia in a couple of weeks – I needed a break from my fortnightly Greyhawk game. So, I inflicted the Pathfinder 2 playtest on my players – the first scenario from Doomsday Dawn. I’m not a fan of Pathfinder. I was a fan of the original 3E rules system, but I find it somewhat clunky … Continue reading A Session of the Pathfinder 2 Playtest
My World of Greyhawk campaign has been interrupted of late by other matters, but we returned to it this week with a classic dungeon crawl. After the past two sessions of a city-based adventure, which had not gone as well as I’d wished, I felt it was time to return to a dungeon. Ah, but which dungeon? There are several megadungeons in my version of … Continue reading Greyhawk – Old Tomes and Killer Plants
Our play of Storm King’s Thunder saw the adventurers choose to take on the cloud giants, at least partly because they had a lot of fire spells which would be ineffective against the fire giants, and they wanted a challenge. So, taking the airship, they flew to the Cloud Giant castle to find the object they needed to reach King Hekaton’s court. This is an … Continue reading Running Storm King’s Thunder: Castle of the Cloud Giants
After 20 three-hour sessions, we have finished Storm King’s Thunder. We started in February; we finished in the last week of June. It was an enjoyable experience. The final session consisted of the six adventurers accompanying five storm giants as they attacked the Ancient Blue Dragon responsible for the chaos in the Storm King’s demesne. The session could have been better. I should have excluded … Continue reading Ending Storm King’s Thunder
Over the past few weeks, the adventurers have recovered all the giant relics from the Uthgardt spirit mounds. This probably took us a week or two longer than I wanted, because it delays the story and a few of the mounds aren’t that interesting. In a lot of ways, this is like recovering the puzzle cubes from Omu in Tomb of Annihilation. Each spirit mound … Continue reading Running Storm King’s Thunder: The Spirit Mounds
My Greyhawk campaign continued this week with an adventure from The Mines of Chult. One of the things I try to do with my Greyhawk game is to run it in semi-sandbox mode. That is, every so often I ask my players what they want to do next. We’d finished the last session with the adventurers saving the town of Brusington from an undead monstrosity, … Continue reading The Mines of Greyhawk
My game of Storm King’s Thunder has just begun Chapter 4. Most of the session was the adventurers meeting Harshnag and travelling to the Oracle, with just the opening part of the exploration. This was a three-hour session. With breaks, we probably got in about 150 minutes of play. In that time, we had the following encounters: Meet Harshnag and aid him against 6 Hill … Continue reading Running Storm King’s Thunder – Fast and Deadly Combats
