Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

As restrictive as DM Bob's table rules can be-- which largely just comes down to limiting what source books we could use to create our characters or build out our spell lists and so on, though he's restricted a couple of other things like how certain spells work-- I've decided I like him as a DM because of how he's clearly adapting out the setting to fit how our characters developed backstories and such.

We had an IC bit of backstory revelation about Evrouin's father, Sir Willem. Our group, the Misfits, spoke with him in his study about our recent adventures, and then he took us into a secret library (behind a hidden passage behind a bookcase no less) where we learned about some of the NPCs identified in the macguffin letters we'd received the previous session. But we also learned that Sir Willem had been an adventurer himself in his younger days, until his elder brother's death forced him to return home to take over leadership of the house etc. And Sir Willem's team had much in common with ours.

• Group layout (A human knight, an elven wizard, a kender handler, a gnome artificer, a nomad barbarian-- his group had a dwarven fighter as well, the closest we had was Duggan and that barely counts)
• Group name (His group was called the Rejects; Ours is called the Misfits. Same circumstances too-- signing an adventuring company charter, they had to come up with a name on the spot, and their elf wasn't present for the signing either.)
• Early adventures (The Rejects had been hired by merchants to hunt down bandit raiding groups that were harassing trade routes between the cities, and later got pointed in the direction of an evil city that they knew they couldn't reasonably take on by themselves. Ours was the same, but at sea, and instead of a city it was a man-o-war crewed by wizards and clerics.)

And then after all the lore stuff was done about the enemy NPCs and other events going on around the continent, we had 3 in-game days before Evrouin's knight-promotion conclave was going to happen, so we each got little vignettes sort of letting them all show off a bit or study up or research, and some of us got actual benefits out of it.

Cogburn, my gnome artificer, was allowed to access Willem's gnome comrade's personal effects. Said comrade, Spanner, had died in battle and had no family to bequeath his belongings to, so Willem had kept it in the attic. Cog discovered that Spanner's Life Quest had been to develop a "replacement for horses," and had models of mechanical horses as well as plans and schematics. Cog was able to figure out how to make it all work, and Bob rewarded me with a bonus invention (read: spell) that I could use. It was a version of the D&D spell Phantom Steed, which summons a sort of quasi-real horse for a period of an hour. Except the normal version is a 3rd level spell (which I wouldn't be able to use until Level 4), whereas this spell Spanner's Mechanical Steed (as I dubbed it) is a 2nd level spell (available at Level 3) and basically lasts until it doesn't. (And since we all advanced to Level 3 at the end of the session, I got an extra spell for use in my book in addition to the two other 2nd-level spells I get at Level 3.)

Justinius, our elven wizard, spent his three days in the library, not without an attempt at cajoling Willem into parting with at least one of his books so he could try to trade it for access to the Great Library in Palanthas. But in studying up on how the Orders of High Sorcery had combatted the dragons being used by the enemy in the Third Dragon War, he did gain a permanent feat-- Advantage on any skill checks related to how High Sorcery (aka wizardry) works against dragons.

Runa, our barbarian, was only interested in training in the yard where the knights and knight-aspirants trained. She was allowed to spar with the Master-at-Arms for Brightblade Keep, Master Tarly, who Bob described as a huge guy in full plate armor with an equally huge greatsword. Though all of the sparring was done with wooden training weapons (so non-lethal), Runa still managed to roll pretty well on her first attack against Tarly, for a total of 21. Which Bob noted, "That just hits him." So Runa got two hits on him before he retaliated with two strikes that instantly downed her. But she persisted on training with him for all three days, for which Bob awarded her a feat of her own-- a +2 to her Armor Class when facing heavily armed opponents.

After the knightly conclave concluded, which mostly involved Evrouin giving an account of his adventures in Palanthas and then at sea, with testimony from both the nobleman we'd saved as well as the rest of the party (there was some brief political stuff; there's two factions in the knighthood and the other faction made a token attempt at discrediting our testimony purely because we were outsiders or non-humans-- which got promptly shut down by the head of the knighthood, who quoted volume and chapter of what amounts to legal precedent at the dissenter, effectively pointing out that non-humans once saved one of the dissenter's ancestors) Evrouin got knighted and received his own plate armor, his spurs and lance, as well as his horse.

And then we all advanced to Level 3, which is when Bob revealed that with that advancement, all of our signature items also effectively leveled up. This was something he'd mentioned to us back during our Session Zeroes, that the signature items would have various features and the like pursuant to our characters' classes and growth, and that they would also "level up" at various milestones. Level 3 was the first. The other two won't happen until some point in Tier 2 (Levels 5-10) and Tier 3 (Level 11-16), and even then he's implied that there may be specific quests tied to them. I was especially happy that Cogburn's trusty wrench-- which mechanically uses a club's weapon properties-- now lets him use his INT modifier (+4) for attack rolls, instead of his very basic STR modifier (+0), on top of its other features.

Bob throwing in the little parallels between the Misfits and the Rejects, and the vignettes leading to actual tangible benefits for our characters, plus the signature item thing... I love it.

Side note, I've joked with my roommate Road, who loves RPGs and D&D, needs to join the table. He likes playing dwarves, and I've joked that if he were to join up with a dwarf fighter, we could complete the Misfit/Reject parallels.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Our band of Misfits went out to sea as privateers to go hunting pirates, and .... things did not go well.

The first pirate ship we came across was crewed by nine orcs and captained by a minotaur (dubbed the Bull), and despite DM Bob nerfing the orcs for us (we're all level 2), it almost went into a TPK. While Runa the Barbarian kept the Bull occupied for a couple of rounds, the orcs swarmed the deck of our ship and ganged up on Evrouin the Knight and Cogburn the Artificer. Four orcs attacked Cogburn, dealing a total of 12 damage when I had a max of 10 HP, instantly downing me. A couple of rounds later, I came back to consciousness thanks to a Nat-20 death save, putting me at 1 HP. But Runa went down against the Bull and ended up rolling all five death save rolls across five rounds-- 2 fails, then 2 successes, and then the final roll almost ended her permanently with a Nat-1 but we had "Table-spiration" to burn.

See, DM Bob was impressed with the table's "restraint" during Mike's One-Shot last week: when we rescued the wizard-in-the-bottle which was the point of the whole adventure, none of us had done the OOC call-back by asking her, "Bitch, you okay!?" So he gave us Table-spiration, which was Inspiration that anyone at the table could use, provided everyone at the table agreed to let them use it. Inspiration allows for the person using it to re-roll a d20.

So Runa used it to pass the final death save and stabilize at 0 HP, unconscious but no longer dying. But the Bull and the orcs (even as the latter were being winnowed down by Catt the Rogue and Evrouin) kept downing people. While we managed to kill them all, Catt was the only PC that was still conscious by the end of combat.

Thankfully, we got an immediate long rest afterward to recover, and we found some things on the Bull's ship that were clearly tied to longer-term plot stuff-- enough arms and armor to equip a regiment, a regimental banner, as well as letters being delivered to someone-- the recipient's commission as Colonel in the "Blue Dragon Army" and his orders. We already didn't like the sound of that, especially after the earlier encounter with the evil wererat cleric who had similarly acquired/stolen arms and armor with the intent to equip a not-small group of fighters.

We didn't have much time to ponder over this, because as we were sailing back to port with our prize ship in tow, we were set upon by a massive three-masted man-o'-war, a black ship with black sails, crewed by a massive group of dark-cloaked figures, including at least one black-robed wizard (though the others were probably also black-robe wizards), who hit our ship with a Fireball. We had no hope of outrunning the Black Ship, even if we cut loose the prize ship, and we were hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered.

Then our ship's first mate, the dwarf Duggan Deepdelver, went to Evrouin, revealed his true name was Pikel Truesilver, and gave him a letter and a signet ring, asking him to return them to his , Pikel's, father in Thorbardin. Pikel said he and the ship's crew would hold off the Black Ship as long as they could while we escaped in the lifeboat. So we did. But everyone on our ship is assumed dead or worse.

We rowed back to shore over a couple of days, landing on Sancrist, which was where three of our party are initially from-- Mt Nevermind for Cobgurn and Brightblade Keep for Evrouin. We stopped at Nevermind first to get proper rest, then went to Brightblade Keep where Evrouin met with his father. In the midst of relating his adventures, Sir Willem revealed that word of Evrouin's exploits in Palanthas had reached him, and that by protecting merchant ships at sea, rescuing civilians (and one nobleman) in the city, and defeating the wererat, Evrouin had met all the qualifications he needed to petition for full knighthood. So we have that to look forward to, as we all agreed to testify at the conclave for his petition.

Now we also have this long term quest he's picked up, to return word of Duggan/Pikel's fate to his father in Thorbardin, the home/capital for the mountain dwarves. The problem is, Thorbardin sealed its gates more than 300 years ago, before the great Cataclysm that broke the continent and everything, and no one living today knows where Thorbardin is, or if it still exists.

That's a later problem, however.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance Mike's One-Shot--

One of our players was not available this week, and rather than run three straight weeks without a session (two weeks ago we ended early when a player failed to show up; we couldn't continue without them as this was literally the kick-off of the wider campaign), Mike offered to return to DM duties for a week. We agreed, and he gave us the basic rundown of we were getting hired to investigate an old sorcerer's tower near Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms. He let us make Level 3 characters.

I decided to keep it simple and just ran an Orc Rune Knight Fighter called Uthakk, while Bob brought out an Elf Swashbuckler Rogue called Wesley, Eric ran a Tiefling Grave Domain Cleric called Enigma (and he literally made up the name on the spot when he realized he'd been so caught up in building the character he hadn't named him), while Jesse brought along a Tiefling of his own... an older Tiefling with a limp, a Fiend-Patron Warlock called Pimbley Grib.

We knew we were in for an interesting game when Jesse revealed that Pimbley spoke almost no Common. In our first bit of roleplay as our party of adventurers met with the client hiring us, after explaining what the job was and asking if we'd take the job, we all agreed, until it got to Pimbley, who was silent for just long enough to be awkward before saying, in a slightly too-loud accented voice, "Yes!" And later when he was asked a more direct question that required a more complex answer, Pimbley just nodded and repeated, in the same way, "Yes!"

I immediately compared him to Borat, and Jesse started laughing because I'd picked up on some of the vibe he'd intended.

I hadn't put much thought into what Uthakk's personality was going to be like, but I just fed off Jesse's Pimbley energy and promptly gave Uthakk a thick Slavic accent of his own. Not quite full Borat in my case, but it definitely contributed to the wild, chaotic energy at the table.

We had a lot of fun, and afterward, Mike said it was the "least hinged" we've ever been, but he really wanted to do future one-shots with that crew.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Death House Halloween Special Two-Shot--

Since several of the Adventurers' League DMs will be unavailable on the actual Halloween Thursday, AL won't be running that week. So they decided to do their Halloween Special as a two-shot the past two weeks, running the "Death House" module from the Curse of Strahd setting. Everyone had to create fresh, Level 1 characters with some restrictions (only specific books were permitted for creation) and the understanding that we would not be able to use these characters after the adventure was done. (As the titular Death House is inside Barovia, a land trapped in the Mists of Ravenloft, and which don't allow people to leave afterward.) The house is called "Death House" for a reason, as it can be challenging for Lvl 1 characters.

I had initially signed up for one DM's table, but was asked if I would be willing to switch, since another DM's table had had a few people back out due to RL reasons. I agreed, and had prepped two characters-- a Fighter and a Cleric-- to meet the needs of the table. It was a good thing I had, since we had two Rogues and a Warlock at the table. And it went rough... I was the healer, but ended up nearly dying twice, burning one of my limited abilities to heal myself back up, and then a spell slot to heal someone else before the end of session 1. But I wasn't the first to die, as it turned out-- that honor went to DM David (playing for one instead of running the table) at another table, whereupon I found out that the DMs had pooled together and bought three special gold-painted dice-holders, on which they'd attached a simple plastic plaque reading "I Died First in Death House - D&D Adventurers League '24." Every table had one.

By that point, I was almost eager to be the next to die, but that honor went to Brian, a relative newcomer to AL (though not D&D), when his dwarf rogue got killed by a zombie. He jokingly noted, "I never got to get into his backstory!"

In part 2 of the adventure this week, Brian brought out his secondary character-- as we were in a new session, the DMs ruled he could bring in another Level 1 character, while everyone that survived was allowed to reach level 2 (but no HP or spell slot or limited ability resets). He jokingly said this paladin was here to arrest his dwarf rogue from the previous week-- "I've been pursuing him for years!"-- and asked where he was. "I think we left him back in one of the crypts." He continued the joke by implying he was going to go into the dwarf rogue's backstory, only for all of us to basically, semi-IC, go "No one cares."

We managed to make it to the finale of the adventure, where we were fighting a shambling mound-- a very challenging fight for four level 1-2 adventurers. Things only got more challenging for us because our rolls were terrible, and we just couldn't land any significant hits on the shambler. That didn't mean that it was messing us up, however. Our warlock had Pact of the Chain, which in the current 2024 rules allow him to cast Find Familiar without spending a spell slot. His warlock kept his familiar-- a cat (actually a Sphinx of Wonder, but flavored as a cat) called Asmeowdeus-- out at all times and had it do all the attacking for him. So Asmeowdeus would draw aggro on the shambler, doing some damage, get attacked and sometimes downed and engulfed, but as a familiar, it would just puff out of existence on death, and the next turn, the warlock would just summon his familiar again and have it draw aggro again.

Additionally, our surviving rogue threw a vial of alchemist's fire at the shambler, setting it on fire. While it was resistant to fire damage, that fire couldn't really be extinguished, so every round of combat, it was doing 1-4 points of damage. Given how poorly I was rolling, and how after the first familiar death, Asmeowdeus wasn't getting a chance to attack and was just there to draw aggro, we not-so-jokingly claimed that the alchemist's fire was doing more damage than any of the players. Especially after Brian's Paladin went down in the first round of combat and took enough damage to instantly die.

Brian was handed a stack of pre-generated characters and told to pick one, and if the party was still alive after three turns, he could re-enter with a new character on the same initiative count he'd had before. So in he comes with another paladin, and he managed to survive a few rounds, putting in some significant hits, before he too went down. And the cycle repeated as we were basically cherry-tapping the shambler and kiting it around. Brian returned with a kobold sorcerer, but we weren't able to kill it on his round, and then the shambler was left with 2 HP.

Suddenly, we went, "Wait. Is the alchemist's fire going to actually kill this thing?!" Top of the round, it's the shambler's turn, so the rogue rolls the d4 to see how much damage it would take-- and it only took one. The rogue held his action, wanting the fire to kill it, but on my turn I insisted on making an attack roll despite their objections, since-- after how poorly my dice had been behaving-- it would have been so appropriate if they came in clutch now. Alas, they didn't, so it comes back to the shambler, and it finally dies to the alchemist's fire!

Now we had to run and get out of the collapsing house. Fortunately, we'd found a shortcut staircase with a trapdoor that led up to the parlor, so we didn't have to run through the whole house to get out. We managed to avoid getting poisoned by the choking smoke filling the first two rooms we were trying to get out of, and then had to pass DEX saves to get through the doors (now whirling frames of scythe blades) without damage. We managed to get out the door, but Brian's kobold sorcerer took enough damage in the last door to drop to 0 HP.

I did say my cleric stabilized him, but then the rogue and warlock's players shared a look, and went, "We start stabbing the kobold." I laughed, and gave it some flavor, "Yeah, there we go. I'm like, 'Okay, he's stable.' Stab, stab, 'Nooooo!' And the camera pulls out and back through the Mists, fade to black."

All in all, it was fun, and even Brian had fun despite dying three separate times.

One fun quip at the table--
While Brian's first paladin wanted to heal the rogue with his Lay on Hands ability, the rogue's player said, "You have my consent." And the DM nodded, "Consent is key when you Lay on Hands."

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

I hadn't intended to join this Adventurers League campaign, since DM David had explicitly meant it to be for some of the newer members of the league, in particular those who hadn't played D&D very much. But before the first session, he messaged me on Discord and asked me to join it, so he'd have at least one experienced player at the table to explain mechanics to the newbies. I agreed, and rolled up a half-elf sorcerer called Rhoric, with a vague backstory of a Waterdavian noble that had to leave town in a hurry. Our second session, Wizards of the Coast released the new 2024 edition of the Player's Handbook (PHB) and pushed it out onto D&D Beyond, causing the app to default to using the 2024 version of PHB for everything, while AL was still using the 2014 PHB. And then a couple of weeks later, without giving any kind of prep time, AL as a whole (as in the overarching organization, not our local chapter) forced everyone to start using the 2024 edition, which changes up a number of things. So it's been a learning experience for everyone.

At any rate, Rime of the Frostmaiden is set in the Icewind Dale, the grim up-north of the Forgotten Realms setting, which is locked in a sort of perpetual winter. We've been basically taking on jobs as they come along, and while in the town of Easthaven, we participate in a seance and commune briefly with a local spirit called the White Lady, who gives us answers about happenings in some of the towns we've visited, including Easthaven, telling us that "invisible gray dwarves" have been stalking the streets. I knew-- though didn't reveal my outside-game knowledge-- that this meant we were facing duergar, sort of corrupted dwarves, who have the ability to shrink or grow giant, as well as turn invisible.

We boarded the local, ice-stranded, ferry where we suspected the duergar were hiding, and got attacked by one who was standing lookout. Though he got in a couple of nasty hits on me, we laid into him, and as he got low on health, we decided to try to defeat him non-lethally so we could question him. But when he tried to escape by shrinking down and running, our War Cleric hit him with a Nat-20 Guiding Bolt spell, dealing upwards of 40 damage. Generally when an NPC gets reduced to 0 HP, they die unless non-lethal is specified-- and the DM did state we killed him-- but some of the other players tried to argue that it might still be okay. So then I looked up the rules on "instant death," a mechanic that applies when excessive damage is dealt-- if extra damage past the 0 HP threshold meets or exceeds the creature/character's max HP, they die instantly without death saves. So that duergar got reduced into a smear on the floor. We sort of dubbed him "Floorstain" for the rest of the session.

Then, as we tracked the footprints of one of the other duergar through the town, we saw it had stopped and apparently thrown a rock through a window in the town hall. While we were looking at this, a woman came out of the hall and confronted us, asking if we'd thrown a rock through her office window. Suddenly, our War Cleric says, "No, that's my office." Cue everyone at the table looking at their player, and the DM had the woman identify herself as Captain Imdra of the town's militia. Cleric doesn't back down, and keeps trying to gaslight the captain, straight up lying, and doing rather well with their Deception rolls, but we eventually convinced her that the Speaker (mayor) had hired us to look into it. "That was quick, this was like an hour ago," the captain said. I just said, "Yes, well, time is money!" When the captain went back into the town hall to check, I just went, "Go, go!" and we hurried off.

The duergar angle didn't pan out too well. A few more windows had been broken in town, but with no discernable pattern. Just some kind of general nuisance thing, even if we'd found a map in the ferry where the duergar had mapped out the location of their outpost and their fortress deeper in the mountains. We did encounter another duergar when we doubled back to the ferry, but that one got away before we could stop him. We went back to Captain Imdra to report on it-- I had Rhoric tell the Cleric, "Let us do the talking," --but their player committed to the bit and kept trying to gaslight the captain before we sort of quietly pushed her out of the room. We reported on the duergar matter and showed the map as evidence, but then took a job from the captain to search for some missing fisherman.

We were given a skiff (a small boat) to go out looking for them. No one had any proficiency with water vehicles-- until I realized I'd forgotten to set some feats from my background (thank you, 2024 PHB update), and the DM allowed me to retroactively put the proficiency in my character sheet. (I flavored it as being from his noble background, experience on the family yacht.) We came across a cave on the shoreline and then got attacked by a flock of harpies inside.

Late in the fight, I tried to hit one of the harpies with a Chaos Burst spell, rolling a Nat-20 on the attack roll-- until the DM pointed out I was too close to the target, and hence had to make it at disadvantage. (i.e., roll 2d20 and take the lower roll) I was pissed because my dice (as usual) hadn't been very kind. My second roll was still good enough to hit the target, but as Cleric's turn came up after mine, and they used a Guiding Bolt on one of the harpies, I realized something: Cleric had hit my harpy with a Guiding Bolt on their previous turn, which also gives the next attack roll against the target advantage (roll 2d20 and take the higher roll), which means that it would have cancelled out the disadvantage, giving it a straight roll. The DM allowed it and told me to roll for the extra damage. (Critical hits such as Nat-20s mean that you roll twice the damage dice.) So I rolled for the damage, and it was enough to kill my harpy.

Still fun, all this, even if it meant I missed out on DM Minmaxer's final adventure in the Spelljammer set he'd been running.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Our first dungeon crawl in our new campaign! We'd been hired by Palathas' Department of Public Works to deal with a spike in the rat population in the sewers, with bonuses if we could determine the cause of the spike and dealing with the source if it was due to malfeasance. So investigations had turned up a break-in at a warehouse where martial supplies had been stolen (armor, swords, rope, etc) as opposed to mere food spoilage from rat presence, as well as some surprisingly large claw-marks... these along with some disappearances at several taverns across the past few weeks (all when the victims had last been seen going into the privy), and a strange rat-like man buying an "ooze whistle" (like a dog whistle that works on oozes) for a supposed tamed gray ooze... (Ooze whistles were only a thing because the Sanitation Department's sewer expert used tamed black puddings to clear waste.) We suspected the perpetrator was a were-rat.

One reason we were keen to get on the case and delve into the sewers immediately versus doing more investigating was that the latest disappearance was one of the keepers of the tavern where we were staying.

We had a couple of combat encounters against some rat swarms and Rodents of Unusual Size, with a couple of near-deaths. Our kender Catt got downed when one swarm attacked her and got a Nat-20, and escaped instant death by a hair. (In D&D, if you take enough damage to reduce you to 0 HP and the remaining damage exceeds your total HP, you die instantly, no death saves.) We were one room away from our target (we could hear him chanting) when the party wanted to take a short rest, so the injured could regain some HP.

I argued, in character, that we shouldn't wait. Every moment we waited, Elmira, the missing tavern keeper, was in greater risk of getting killed. Everyone else wanted to rest, arguing back that if the kidnapper intended to kill her, they'd have done it already, so one more hour wouldn't matter. Cogburn, my gnome artificer, grumpily consented to waiting. (The rest of the players did agree that Cog had a point, IC, and complimented my roleplay.)

Then we fought the villain of this arc, a wicked spellcaster (later revealed to be a cleric of an evil god) and his pet gray ooze. Whereas black puddings eat organic matter, gray oozes consume magic, so when the villain sicced it on us, it went after Justinius, the wizard, consuming two of his spell slots before it was destroyed. The evil cleric also used a couple of nasty spells, including Inflict Wounds, which downed Runa, our barbarian. He also used the Command spell to try to force the martial characters to grovel, but it didn't work on our knight, Evrouin.We were able to get her back up with a healing potion, before we managed to take down the cleric, with Evrouin dealing the last blow. ("I told you I grovel before no one!")

We were fortunate that none of the captives had been killed, and found out that the cleric had been planning to turn them into part of his were-rat army. We found the missing stolen goods as well, and for returning with all our evidence and witnesses, we got paid well and got Freedom of the City, effectively making us citizens. Elmira the tavern keeper also promised us a place to stay any time we were in town.

Next time, we set out to go pirate hunting!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Our first proper session was still unconventional, as Jesse was out of town and Camilla will be out of town this week, and we didn't want to delay our new campaign so soon. So we hand-waved Jesse's absence by having Justinius just wander off on his own after arriving in Palanthus, while the rest of us looked for kender-friendly accommodation (kender generally aren't allowed through the gates of Palanthus; but we came in via the harbor, so loopholes!) and started finding various adventure hooks.

Cogburn met another gnome who was working on a steam-powered horseless carriage (which had suffered a steam vessel burst) and excitedly spoke about such inventions and similar. Also learned that the Great Library in the city-- Cog's main reason for coming here-- was not open to the public, nor was its material allowed to be checked out conventionally. It was a research library, they allowed you to request material to be read over in their research rooms. So Cog had to apply to enter and explain his reasons for needing access, and pay a registration fee.

This kind of set the tone for several other things in the session. We next went to the Grand Market to window-shop and look for work on the job boards. Cog saw that some tinkers shops needed workers on a week-by-week basis, which would help his wallet recover after his own expensive fee-payment. Another tavern in the city needed bouncers, so Evrouin and Runa figured this was up their alley, but the job did note it would require them to present their licenses. Additionally, the city was looking to hire someone to help clear out a rat infestation in the sewers.

Both of these meant a trip to City Hall. Evrouin and Runa applied for their bouncer licenses (Cog cheekily asking her "Do you need help with the longer words?") and paid an application fee on top of this. Then we went to take the rat-hunting gig, but the contract would only be offered to chartered adventuring companies, so that meant going to another department to get ourselves chartered (we included Justinius on the charter despite his absence) and pay another fee, before accepting the rat-hunting contract. As part of signing our charter, however, we had to name our adventuring company, and put on the spot, we quickly settled on "The Misfits."

Runa (who has a sailor background-- she left home and found work on various ships before ending up with us) had wanted to buy a nautical-themed belt buckle, but the one she wanted to buy could only be sold to members of the Seamen's Guild, so that was an additional stop (and fee) as well as a belated giggling response from Camilla, because "lol semen." The rest of us had not risen to the bait of snickering at it, so when she broke, we could finally get some laughs out. DM Bob compounded things by portraying the clerk at the Seamen's Guild as a flamboyant, flirtatious sort.

It was after accepting the rat-hunting contract that I pointed out, as Cog, that Justinius had been volunteered for this gig as well, and as expected, everyone else agreed (ICly) that he'd hate it, as his robes would get all filthy in the sewers. Which allowed me to then make the joke, "Justinius the Brown!" and break the table with laughter.

From my TL;DR summary on our Discord--
* Bureaucracy: The Grift That Runs the Mill of the City
* Grist. I Meant Grist.
...
* We're a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.
* Seriously. It's on Our Charter.

[Nunavut Pants]

I found out that there is a FREE Dominion app for phones. At least I can play Dominion now! Been quasi-obsessively doing that, against the phone's AI.

I appear to be between the Easy and the Medium AI in skill. I beat the Easy one most of the time, and lose to Medium most of the time.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

My regular D&D group is now beginning our third campaign, in a modified Dragonlance setting. Bob (previously player of Caradoc the Druid) is taking over as DM. Among his modifications were restricting our character creation options to only three of the D&D books, restricting how the spell Counterspell works (wizards only, you must have the spell you're countering in your spellbook, among some other rules), and we had our two session zeroes the past couple of weeks.

Sesson 0.1 was Bob going over necessary lore for we as players to understand, and then having us roll our stats. We all picked our characters' races and classes, and we started building our character sheets, and figuring out how our characters would all end up in Sancrist on a boat bound for Palanthus. He also gave us some homework, answering some questions about our backstory and character's personality, along with what key traits would be central to our character.

Session 0.2 was where the homework paid off. Bob ran each of us through a solo vignette, focusing on our characters on the cusp of maturity, as they went through some kind of life event and ended up being given our signature item, an item which would give us certain bonuses and which would essentially level up as well, while we went up through the various tiers of play. Following these vignettes, we had a quick little prologue adventure while on the boat for Palanthus, where we fought off a crew of goblin pirates. The next two weeks will be some side quest adventures in Palanthus (two players will be out individually for one of those two weeks each) before the proper adventures will begin with us as members of a pirate-hunting crew.

Our adventuring party--
* Evrouin Brightblade, a young human knight from Sancrist, with a fancy mustache and the warhammer Bright Hope (Mike, former DM)
* Cogburn Tapper, a cranky gnome artificer, who aims to go to the moon in a rocketship, carrying Goddardclink's Spanner (yours truly, formerly Charlie Tango)
* Justinius, a Qualinesti elf wizard, (over)confident high-functioning sociopath, bearer of the Magister's Tome (Jesse, formerly Beckett)
* Catt Cleverjump, a kender handler, a parkour enthusiast with wanderlust, wielding the Jester's Crook (Camilla, formerly Annie)
* Runa Firebrand, a desert nomad barbarian, major anger management issues, wielding the scimitar Desert's Flame (Eric, formerly Vash/Knives)

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

This was it. The finale of our campaign, after 40 sessions across just about a year, our team-- the newly renamed "Stormbreakers"-- stormed the big bad's castle to rescue the Queen of Albia and stop Baron von Schallenberg from re-writing the rules of magic in the world. The session consisted of a series of battles against mini-bosses supplemented by clockwork automata. As the DM described the first two mini-bosses-- specifically describing one as a woman in a pink dress with a matching parasol and a purple eye-patch, and the other as a man in half-plate armor with a greatsword over his shoulder and a scar across his eye, my brain realized something and I said, "I can't believe we're fighting Guts from Berserk and Nui Harime from KIll la Kill..." The DM was surprised I caught Nui, but admitted that he'd been thinking of Geralt of Rivia for the other one. I told him Geralt has silver hair and would have two swords, and Guts fit the description a lot better.

The final battle was against the Baron himself, but he used some magic inherent in his descendancy from Siegfried to somehow transform the Queen of Albia into a giant dragon (basically by calling upon her dormant and distilled fae-dragon heritage), and between his armor and sword stance tricks, proved a fairly tough fight. But we were able to weaken him considerably enough that when he attacked Vash-- his biological daughter-- and knocked her unconscious, she was able to unleash one last Hellish Rebuke before going down, the damage of which was enough to kill him. Eric (Vash's player) narrated the kill as, just before Vash went unconscious, Knives (the devil sharing her body) flickered into appearance and told him, "Say hello to the Queen of Hell."

Then we just had to deal with a rampaging dragon. Fortunately, Annie came in clutch throughout the fights, dealing huge damage with her various skills and feats, boosting people's saving throws when she could, and was the one to clip the dragon's wing and bring her down, as the Queen of Albia returned to normal, if unconscious.

Then the Queen of Hell turned up, to oversee the re-signing of the Fae-Dragon Contract, in the Baron's blood. We had a choice to make in the signing. We could seal away one half of the magical races while unleashing the other (bad for the mortal races), we could seal away both but this would have dire consequences for mortal magic which was already weak, or we could maintain the status quo and as a benefit, renew the potency of the royal bloodline (which was connected to the strength of mortal magic - and so would revitalize mortal magic and undo the Great Withering). We of course chose the status quo.

In the denouement, which was rushed as the store was getting ready to close, the Stormbreakers were lauded by Albia and paraded through the streets, honored by the Queen of Albia, who bestowed citizenship on the two non-Albian members ("Pass," said our fae Irish Druid, only to be told to just renounce it later and not to embarrass the Queen in public) before bestowing knighthoods and damehoods on them all. Everyone got something else as well.
* Joshua Freeman (fka Beckett) had his illegitimate connection to the royal family acknowledged and was elevated to the title of Duke, with a signet ring and all.
* Charlie Tango, being former military, was awarded a medal, the highest military honor that could be given, and now felt he could be comfortable being hailed as a "war hero."
* Annie Leagallow was named the official bounty hunter of the Victorium City Watch.
* Vash was now the Baroness of Koenigsee and head of the Lightning Guild, with aims to reform the Guild to her liking, and remains the living Guarantor of the Fae-Dragon Contract.
* Caradoc ap Gryffed achieved something like the "home rule" that Eiru (Ireland) had been clamoring for, and remains the Fae's agent in the mortal realm to keep an eye on the Draconic side.

Next week, we'll have our wrap-up meeting, to discuss the campaign and our characters. Maybe even give some inklings about what they'd probably do post-campaign.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

So the party were doing an adventure on a planet in Wildspace (Spelljammer stuff) and had to fight off an attack by essentially fantasy Cybermen/Borg, by clearing monsters out of a disused forge complex, which allowed us to get bee-like single-pilot fighter-craft, a freakin Jaeger a la Pacific Rim, and an orbital cannon (aka a "kill-sat") in our favor. We merge from the complex, with our team's monk and bard piloting the Mecha, and everyone else in a Bee-craft. The mechanics of the encounter meant we could apply our melee attacks to the Bees' ranged attacks, as well as launch "seed" missiles, which if they hit, would deal 4d10 fire damage and 4d10 thunder damage to all in range.

I fired one at the enemy ship, and threw my Bladesinger Wizard's Booming Blade on the attack as well, since the DM ruled we could do so. Which would be 8d10+1d8 damage if successful.

I rolled a Natural 20. Meaning I was rolling 16d10+2d8. Knocked a huge chunk off the ship's health, enough for the kill-sat to take it out in the next round. Except then the real final boss of the adventure-- a giant centipede-like kaiju-- emerged, and wiped out the Mecha's shielding in one attack (though they survived).

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia (non-campaign)--

Since one of the players was absent this week (attending a Green Day concert), the rest of us got together to play Bards vs Humility after I'd shown it off last week. We had a good time, but ultimately ended early, since a couple of other players needed to go.

Jesse, Bob, and I stood around talking for a bit afterward, about our upcoming Dragonlance campaign that Bob is going to DM, about TTRPG stuff in general, and about DM playstyles and such. Jesse has recently started DM'ing for some of his friends, and had mostly been looking for advice. But it sort of segued into a discussion of the dynamic at our table, which has been blessedly free of drama. Bob noted this was because three of the players (myself, Bob, and Eric) are all north of 40, and thus have enough maturity to take things in stride without undue drama, and are in a place where we can keep our schedule clear for our games.

Bob broke it down further by noting that every player at the table brought something unique to the dynamic, regardless of the character we were playing. Jesse brought the necessary inquisitiveness to ask questions. Eric was enough of a chaos gremlin to push a button because it was there, but also brought deep backstory and character into his play. Camilla plays the long game, with hidden character motivations or secrets which she kept under her hat until it would do maximum shock. Bob's characters were experienced and fine-tuned to provide maximum support/damage for the party. And me, he said I was a solid, dependable center to the group, keeping things grounded.

And, he noted, when I remarked on my concerns that I sometimes didn't contribute enough in terms of roleplay, my recaps on our Discord more than made up for any perceived shortcomings, something Jesse firmly agreed with. Everyone in the group seems to share that mindset, that my detailed note-taking and habit of posting detailed recaps of each session helped alleviate the burden of Mike the DM needing to do it for us, and helped those who may miss a week or two (or who were absent for half the campaign like Camilla) stay abreast of things going on.

It did help some of my concerns, hearing that.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

After a month's hiatus (various players and/or the DM not being available), we finally met again to kick off the finale of our campaign. We all had missed playing together.

In the wake of the explosions which rocked Victorium (fantasy London) that ended the previous session, Queen Londinia had been abducted by the Lightning Guild, whisked off to fantasy-Germany. A letter had been left from the Guild's leader, the Thunderlord, and as the letter was read out, we realized it was from Baron Sigfrid von Schallenburg-- the fantasy Christoph Waltz we'd met previously-- who invited us to meet at his castle near Lake Konstanze, though he could not guarantee our safety until we were on the castle grounds, as the nearby city was crawling with the Deutsche rebellion's forces, who had helped augment the Guild's forces in their attack on Victorium. (These rebels were connected to the terrorists we'd killed in the same story arc where we'd initially met the Baron.)

We reconvened at the detective agency HQ to make plans. Caradoc the druid could scry on the Queen and saw where she was being held, but also saw that the castle was surrounded by a Prismatic Wall-- a high-level spell that basically requires several high-level spells to break through its layers of protection. While we could in theory call upon high-level wizards to do this, the problem was two-fold. First, there was too much collateral damage that those spells could do to the surrounding city, and there would be civilian casualties. Second, getting close enough to cast the spells without getting spotted by the Deutsche rebels. The fastest way there was to use a Pool of Radiance to go from Victorium to Lake Konstanze, but the rebels were monitoring the lake.

Fortunately, the agency brass were able to provide us with Amulets of Alter Self and Rings of Tongues, with which we could disguise ourselves as injured Deutsche rebels, returning after being repelled by Albian defense. The brass could even provide us with cover identities. We had the rest of the evening and night to prepare, so we loaded up. Healing potions bought, Rings of Protection, etc. Vash and Annie-- our traitorous fifth member-- had a conversation, where they hashed out their differences. Annie was regretful for the deception, but said for as close as she felt to our team, her family took precedence, and she would do whatever she needed to assure their safety. They came to an understanding.

The team had some drinks at the agency's bar, given how this could be their last night alive, with a high-risk mission in the morning. Joshua (the former Beckett) admitted that he never liked the name "Fixer Nova" for our team, despite being the one who ICly suggested it. We mused about changing it, and Charlie (me) suggested something, "The Stormbreakers. 'Cuz we're about to take down the Lightning Guild." This was something we might discuss later.

But in the morning, we did the disguise thing, traveled through the Pool of Radiance to Lake Konstanze, and managed to bluff our way past the Deutsche officers keeping an eye on the lake. We got close enough to the castle to send word inside, and were allowed inside the Prismatic Wall. But once we were in the castle's hall, the Baron spoke over a loudspeaker and declared that it was time to begin the real battle.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Jay's At-Home Games--

Rather than D&D this week, my roommates and I played a different game. I recently received a game that I backed on Kickstarter, a Cards Against Humanity-inspired, D&D-themed game called Bards vs Humility. It primarily works around the CAH-style, where one player is the judge and draws a Setup card, and the other players select one of several Punchline cards to answer the Setup.

It builds off of this with the premise that everyone is part of an adventuring party of bards, going dungeon-diving for loot. Every player draws a "bard card" which names their bard and gives them a special ability. Players start with 10 HP and 2 Inspiration, the latter of which can be spent to use their special ability, play another Punchline card, or stop themselves from dying. They also start with 10 Punchline cards and 2 loot cards (more on them in a bit). There are two other stacks of cards-- dungeon cards and loot cards. You start by drawing a dungeon card with a monster on it (there are "encounter" cards which are more like events as well), which has its own attack/effect at the start of each round. Each monster has a set number of health.

The CAH-style play then begins, and the winning Punchline also deals a specific number of damage to the monster, and awards 1 point to the winner. This continues until the monster dies, in which case the winner also receives loot cards, depending on the monster. Loot cards are either spells or items, most of which can be played at any time (some can only be played in response to something), and some of which can be reused. Play continues until one player ends up with 10 points, or until only one player is still alive.

We had a lot of fun with it, and we all knew enough about D&D to be able to understand the Setups and Punchlines without needing explanation. It's generally been agreed now that our biweekly or monthly house game sessions could just as easily be one of the many games on my shelf instead of D&D.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D Adventurers League--

The DM this week was running "The Frozen North," a module I've done before with Seb, but not with Maleun, my shadar-kai hexblade warlock. Also at the table were Tunk and Logic, a half-orc paladin, both of whom Maleun's done adventures with. So was Cameron, whom I've mentioned before. But Cameron's legendary poor dice rolls spread to Tunk's player, who kept rolling real low for most of his attacks and saves.

At any rate, our caravan got slammed by an avalanche, leaving us effectively stranded in the middle of the Icewind Dale in a whiteout blizzard. Only place we could conceivably shelter would be at a distant mountain, if we could find a cave.

We had a couple of running gags through the session, with various members of the party making ranged attacks at some target in front of Maleun (arrows, javelins, thrown hand axes), so I flavored it that as they'd whizz past, he'd angrily go, "THAT'S MY HEAD!"

Also, Logic the paladin had a fondness for collecting heads from the defeated enemies, talking about stuffing them in her bag. So I naturally referenced Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag when she'd collect a new one.

One encounter was against a pack of four giant owls that attacked us, and when our fighter killed one, he tried to flavor it as him skinning it with the final blow. The DM made him roll to see how well he could do it, and so Logic was gifted the pelt afterward, but it was little more than a mantle, really. Except then the druid decided he wanted to try skinning one as well, was also told to roll for it, and got a Nat-20. It was a better coat than Logic's, but he refused to let the druid try to sew buttons onto it because the druid lacked the tools, proficiencies, and time to do it.

Druid Player: So I have this coat with feathers now?
DM: It's basically a duster.
Me: A feather duster?

Once again, I got a DM to crack up and award me Inspiration at an AL table.

There was some fun with some NPC survivors of the avalanche, a trio of ineptitude, described initially just as "the Expert," "the Spellcaster," and "the Warrior." (Whom we named Jimbo, Bob, and Calvin, respectively.) Calvin the Warrior spent more time in the first encounter trying to get his armor on than trying to fight off the wolves hounding him. Jimbo the Expert was noncommittal about what he was actually an expert in, leading to--

Maleun: "What are you an expert in, Jimbo?"
Jimbo: (scoffing, scandalized) "I can't believe you would even-- I mean, seriously-- what are you an expert in!?"
Maleun: "Killing things."
Jimbo: "Oh shit, you actually answered, uh..."

All three of the NPCs would be dead by the end of the adventure, due to scripted events meaning they got picked off by an angry, awakened owlbear.