Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26

As mentioned previously, this new campaign is being DM'd by one of the players in my local D&D Adventurers League chapter, and all of us players were recruited from D&D AL as well. So we're all generally familiar with one another and are pretty good at D&D. A few of us have played Strahd before, but we know that no two campaigns are going to be the same. Our cast of characters this time:

• Mark as Willow Thornbloom, wood elf druid (circle of the land)
• Kim as Potentia Greenveil, wood elf paladin (oath of the ancients)
• Syed as Oliver Gardin, halfling sorcerer (wild magic bloodline)
• Jake as Mort, gnome artificer (battlesmith)
• Yours Truly as Trig Cove, human rogue (phantom)
• Phil as the Dungeon Master (literally everyone else)

We all worked privately with Phil to build out some backstory elements to help tie them into the campaign, and in the last few days, he sent us all DMs with additional roleplay hooks. Trig, my rogue, has been developed between he and I that he was born in Barovia, but the Vistani helped smuggle him out when he was a child after the family home was burnt down because his baby brother was born deformed. He ended up in the city of Waterdeep, where he was taken in by a somewhat kind gang leader called Cobb Likely. That was 15-16 years ago, and Trig has now had to leave Waterdeep after a job went wrong.

The additional hooks Phil sent me are that Trig has, in his pack, three bounty posters. One each for Rudolf van Richten (500gp, wanted dead), Ezmerelda d'Avenir (300gp, wanted alive), and Trig Cove (200gp, alive). And that a mad halfling may have a lead on van Richten. (I assume Phil meant "gnome" as a link to Mort, but I'll have to ask him to clarify.)

I've built Trig to be a lot better at getting advantage on his attacks, so as to proc his Sneak Attack bonus (an additional 2d6 damage). The 2025 edition of D&D's Player Handbook (PHB) introduced something called "Weapon Mastery," which allows additional bonus features if you're using a weapon with which you have mastery. In Trig's case, he has mastery in both his primary weapons (rapier and shortbow) which both have the mastery feature called "Vex," which gives you advantage on the target for your next attack against them until the end of your next turn. So if I can land at least that first hit, I get advantage to proc Sneak Attack every subsequent round against the same target. I took the starting feat Magic Initiate - Wizard so I get a couple of cantrips and a 1st level spell I can cast once per day. For the cantrips, I took Dancing Lights (since as a human, he has no darkvision) and True Strike (which presently offers no additional bonus to attack for me - it allows the user to use their spellcasting modifier for their attack rolls instead of their STR/DEX, but in my case my DEX equals my spellcasting modifier - but it does allow me to switch the damage type from the weapon's type to radiant damage, which might be useful in Barovia), and for the level 1 spell, I took Find Familiar, using the owl statblock for it. The familiar (which I've flavored to be a corvid) can use the feature Flyby to swoop in and out of an enemy's threaten radius without prompting opportunity attacks, letting it give me the help action to distract enemies and give me advantage.

The party all met at a tavern in the middle of nowhere (stated to be at least a day's ride from the nearest sign of civilization) on a cold, misty evening. The barkeep stepped out to go prepare food (kitchen was detached from the main tavern house) and never returned. By the time we noticed, the mists had gotten thicker, and we finally investigated when we heard a scream from outside. The mists swallowed up everything, and when we finally stumbled out of them, we were on a muddy road in the middle of a forest, and soon set upon by wolves.

Amusingly, Kim forgot that rolling a Nat-20 for an attack means you double the dice rolled for damage before adding the modifiers. We promptly told her to pump her paladin's Divine Smite into her attack as well (as it takes a bonus action) so that could get doubled too. Once she understood the explanation and realized she'd be rolling 6d8, she got excited about it.

Probably not as excited as we all got when I rolled two Nat-20s on an attack against one of the alpha wolves, for 2d8+2d6+3 damage.

After our fight with the wolves, we decided to head in the direction of some chimney smoke for a village, but it still took us camping in the middle of the night before we got there. And during that camp, we learned that because we were not in "a place of safety", we only got the benefits of a short rest, not a long rest. Mechanically, this means we had to spend hit dice to regain HP (long rests regain all HP) and we could not recover any spell slots or other features that recharge on a long rest. And what sleep our characters got was not great besides.

We eventually reached the village of Barovia, where the locals gave us all a wide berth, and the only person to speak with us was a kindly old woman called Ophelia, who sold meat pies which aided in getting a good night's sleep. Despite knowing who this woman likely was, I chose to have Trig buy a pie from her. Mort ended up buying the rest of her pies. Ophelia told us about how the realm of Barovia was a trap-- "no one ever leaves"-- and that it was ruled over by "The Devil Strahd von Zarovich."

We went to the local tavern, where we met some Vistani women who were much more welcoming, and whom Willow and Trig were happy to see. In Willow's case, this is when the rest of us learned that she'd grown up with the Vistani, that she'd even been adopted by one called Madam Eva, before she left to join the druids. Trig admitted that he met the Vistani when he was a kid, they helped get him to Waterdeep.

It was from the Vistani women that we learned the local burgomaster, Baron Ismark, had just passed away, and leadership was likely to go to his son, also named Ismark (mockingly called "Ismark the Lesser" by the Vistani). As it happened, the younger Ismark was in the room as they was happening, but he approached the party for help. He explained that his father's home had been attacked, nightly, by minions of the Devil Strahd, and the stress had finally given him a fatal heart attack. Ismark feared for his sister Ireena's safety, believing that the Devil sought to claim her, and wanted someone to escort her to safety at the next town in Vallaki. We agreed to stay at the baron's house for the night and escort her on the next day. Ireena, for her part, wasn't happy to be sent away, but relented and asked to see that their father was buried before she left.

Willow and Trig both set their familiars to keep an eye out in the night, her owl in her room, Trig's crow in the hallway. They both heard some movement, but the crow saw someone descending the stairs and woke up Trig, who burst out of his room with his sword drawn, and saw a tranced Ireena opening the front door. Trig called out to her, and then saw the figure on the other side of the doorway: Strahd von Zarovich himself. He was polite as he greeted Trig and asked if he could come in. Trig, of course, said, "No." Strahd made some comment on how he expected better from one of his loyal subjects, and when Trig said he wasn't one of his subjects, Strahd just chuckled and said, "Not yet." But he turned and disappeared into the mists and Ireena snapped out of her trance, briefly chastised Trig for his apparent disrespectful treatment of her, but he just said, "Your brother asked us to keep you safe." and didn't regret what he'd done.

The next day, we helped transport the late baron's body across the village to the church, where we met Father Donovich, a stressed-out priest whose son had recently been turned into a vampire spawn by Strahd, and was presently locked in the undercroft. Donovich didn't know what to do about his blood-starved son, as he didn't want to kill him. The party sympathized, but we just got to work digging a grave for the burial and last rites.

We got on the road, and apart from a brief bit of spookiness at a crossroad where there was an old gallows-- Potentia turned around as we left to see herself hanging from the noose-- we soon arrived at a Vistani camp at Tser Pool, where the Vistani welcomed us and soon introduced us to Madam Eva, or "Auntie" as Willow called her. Eva's friendly demeanor evaporated on seeing Willow, before rebuking her, "Do you know what your mother sacrificed to help get you out of Barovia?" It transpired that Willow had been born in Barovia. And-- what with nothing being allowed to leave Barovia, even the souls of the departed-- she had been born with a reincarnated soul. And not just any soul, but the soul of Tatyana, the woman that Strahd coveted most of all. Willow did not care, she believed that fate had led her back here, maybe even to put an end to Strahd.

Troubled, Madam Eva consulted the tarokka to see what guidance she could give about defeating Strahd. It was during this that I learned that Phil may be using an unofficial expansion of the module called Curse of Strahd Reloaded. Typically, Eva's tarokka reading provides clues as to where to find several plot macguffins, an ally against him, and where Strahd can be found within his castle. Based on my own meta knowledge, the reading told us that the Tome of Strahd (a book with info on his backstory) was in the werewolf den, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (amulet with potent magic) was at Yester Hill in the Gulthias tree, the Sunsword (powerful weapon to use against him) was in Argynvostholdt, the ally was likely Vasilka, the flesh golem bride made for Strahd by the Abbot of Saint Markovia. It was when the final card was turned, supposed to reveal Strahd's location in the castle, that Eva said his location was obscured and we would need to cleanse the fanes of the land to reclaim it from his evil. While I have not personally read the Reloaded expansion, I am familiar with some of its expanded content to know that the fanes are a key part of that.

We all stayed pretty true to our roleplaying throughout, with little bits of flavor sort of worked in. Mort the artificer is a little kooky, prone to muttering to himself, hitting people with a giant tome as a weapon, quick to dismiss magic in favor of science, and very keen to learn as much as he can about everything. Most of his questioning to some of the NPCs have amounted to "how old are you?" and similar things, which we latched onto as a running gag for bits at the table. Similarly, Oliver is afflicted with some kind of curse and has leaves and vines growing out of his body, usually hidden by his shirt. One of the first things he did when he met Willow, a druid, was to ask if she knew anything about it and opening his shirt to show it. When he did the same thing with one of the Vistani women in Barovia Village, we started joking about a "serial flasher" going around. Syed had good humor about it, but made sure to ask Kim-- who has stated her desire to draw portraits of all of our characters-- not to make him "opening his shirt" the portrait for him.

We all had a lot of fun and we're looking forward to continuing this campaign.

[Nunavut Pants]

Just finished another game of Terraforming Mars. I was playing as the corporation that could make forest tiles out of 7 plant resources, a discount of 1 from standard.

I was able to grab one Milestone (for Building tags), and funded and came first in two Awards (most owned tiles next to oceans, and most forest tiles). That's fifteen points worth! And I still came in second.

The winner got two Milestones, 10 points, and first place in the one Award they funded, another 5 points. Plus they were second in the two Awards that I funded, for another four points. It was very close on other points, but they got me by 3 at the end.

[Nunavut Pants]

Lots of gaming in the last couple of weeks! I am visiting the area that I used to live in and still have lots of connections in. Several games days were hosted by AL. I managed to sleep through another one hosted by LM, sadly, but did go to a weekly meetup at a local restaurant earlier this evening.

12-27:
I played a game called "Junk Orbit" where you maneuver yourself in orbit around Earth, Mars, the Moon, and Mars' two moons (Deimos and Phobos). You maneuver by throwing junk out of your ship, which propels it the other direction. If you throw a piece of junk that has a label for a particular destination and it lands on that destination, you have delivered it and get credit for it. If you end your turn on a space and have junk destined for that space (any number of pieces!) those are delivered there and you get credit for them. After delivering, you pick up any junk that is in that orbit space. Junk is represented by cards, each of which has a size and a destination. The size is the value (in Victory Points) and also how far it moves when you throw it, and how far your ship moves in the opposite direction. This was quite a fun game, but I came in last of 5 players.

Next up was "Echidna Shuffle", where you move cute little plastic echidna tokens around on a board. They can pick up and deliver your particular type of bug if they are in the space where your bug starts or are in one of the spaces that are your bug's destinations. There are something like 15 echidnas for 18 spaces on the board, and you get anywhere from 2 to 7 moves in your turn. It is very crowded and you spend much of your time getting in your opponents' way. This was cute, but I didn't enjoy it. I also was 6th place out of 6 players.

The last game I played was "Quiddler", a game where you get cards with letters on them and try to make words out of them. Each card has a certain point value, kind of like Scrabble. Unlike Scrabble, a few cards have two letters on them (things like "IN", "QU", and such). You get bonus points for making the largest number of words, and also bonus points for the longest single word. The first round you only have four cards. Draw one card and discard one card, then see if you can go out by making words with the cards you have left. If you do, everyone else gets one turn to see what they can make. Unused letters count against your score. After scoring, you deal out one more card than the previous hand, going up eventually to 10 cards. This is something of a classic game, easy to understand and play. I won at the end, but mostly because my opponents re-arranged my cards so that I could actually use all of them (no penalty points!) and so I had a bunch of short words (bonus for most words) at the end of the last hand. I hadn't seen that combination, so I hadn't played it, but they gave it to me anyway.

On 12/29:
We started by playing "Faiyum", which is a game about clearing out and building up part of the Nile for the Pharaoh. It was a worker placement game that used cards to place the workers. I didn't care for it that much, I found it to be too fiddly. One player had to leave about 3/4 of the way through, so while I did beat his score technically, he was in the lead when he left and I would not have caught him if he had still been playing through to the end. So I counted myself morally in 4th place out of 4 players.

We moved on to "Fabled Fruit", in which you move your token onto a card to perform the action that is on it. Those included things like taking a piece of fruit from the "marketplace", or trading your hand (of fruit) with the marketplace, or trading it with someone else, and more. It was a bit chaotic, but enjoyable. Alternately, when you land on a card instead of taking the action on that card you can pay the listed fruit on it to make a "fabled fruit drink" and claim that card. (The card then gets replaced from the deck, sometimes with another copy of the same card and sometimes with a different one.) First person to make three drinks wins. We played three rounds and I didn't win. It was a bit chaotic but enjoyable.

On 12/31, New Year's Eve:
We started out with "World's Fair 1893", a worker-placement game about building attractions for that World's Fair. You landed on a space and picked up cards that were on that space. Some of the cards would advance the game clock, some were the attractions that you could build if you had enough workers at the point where the clock advanced to the "scoring phase", and others would allow you to play more workers onto the board or to move a worker arbitrarily. After three scoring phases, the game ends. Points are scored by those advance-the-clock cards (only 1 per) and also by sets of attractions, which come in 5 different colors. It was decently fun, but I didn't really get it that well and came in last out of 4 players.

We also played "Hare and Tortoise", which I have mentioned before. I have never done well in this game--I am always last or next to last. Well, this time I won it! I tried my luck with the "bunny space" twice, and got "lose a turn" both times. I swore off the bunny spaces after that, and just tried to get my lettuces eaten without resorting to die rolls. I pulled it off, and was able to get into the end in 1st place with something like 7 carrots left, which is good enough!

I finished up the evening with two games of Dominion, which is kind of the classic deck-builder. I wound up in 2nd place in the first game, and 3rd in the second game. Both were four-player games.

1/2:
One friend wanted to play Mahjong, so four of us set it up and played. We went through about four rounds. I won the first one (meaning I went out first), but none of the other three.

At that point, I had to leave to meet some friends that I hadn't seen in years. I promised I would be back in a couple of hours, and I was.

I think the next game was called "Tichu". It's a trick-taking card game played by two teams of two players, a bit like bridge. But unlike bridge, you don't play single cards--you more or less play poker hands! (One of a kind, pair, three of a kind, full house, etc.) Players must play the same type of "poker hand", but higher value. You keep going around until everyone passes, the last person to play takes the trick. There are ways to take the trick without "following suit" (by playing four of a kind, for instance). You score points for the 5s, 10s, and Jacks that you have taken. And for two special cards, the "dragon" and the "phoenix". My team one once and lost once.

Next up was "Hare and Tortoise" again. This time I came in 3rd out of 6 players, which is better than I generally do, so it wasn't too bad. Once again, I found myself at the end of the track with too many carrots to finish. When the second place player crossed the line, the greater allowance for leftover carrots allowed me to immediately finish at the exact limit of what I could have! (30 carrots, in other words.)

We finished up with a number of rounds of "Just One", which is a fun party-style game that I have talked about before.

Dinner tonight, 1/5:
We played "Just One" again. It was fun again. We had one person who I hadn't seen in a while, and the other three were folks who had made it to many of the above events. That person isn't into very heavy games, so Just One was a great choice. We all had fun.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

More largely roleplay-related stuff this week, no combat encounter. (Though next session will likely be another large-scale military engagement when our army besieges a stronghold captured by the enemy.)

While the rest of the party recovered after a punishing battle against Waylon and the Aurak Draconians (we called it "our shawarma moment," a la the stinger from the Marvel Avengers movie), Justinius had been pulled into a confab with the Masters of High Sorcery. Turns out that his new apprentice, Tasha (she of the off-the-scale "magi-chlorian" count) may be something extremely rare to encounter: an Irda Sorceress. The Irda are also called the "high ogres," who existed long ago, but most of their race had devolved into the brutish ogres most people are familiar with, but the Irda were naturally gifted with magical power. The wizards believed that Tasha may have come from an Irda bloodline, and they asked Justinius to give Tasha a special bone wand and have her attune to it. It would cause her appearance to change if she was of Irda stock, and they believed would make it more imperative that she receive proper training with magic to prevent the risk of going mad.

Yadda yadda yadda, yes, turns out Tasha is of Irda descent. She agreed to undergo her training and tests, even after the risks were explained. (Namely, failing your Test of High Sorcery usually results in your death.)

Apart from that, the resistance bands were introduced to the Whitestone Forces, and we had the whole moment of Beric Fletcher (unknown bastard son of the late Lord Derek Crownguard) meeting Darren Crownguard (Derek's legitimate son) and the two hitting it off well -- because they'd practically been raised together. Beric's father (that is, the man who was married to his mother) had saved Derek's life at the cost of his own, which is why Derek had allowed Beric to be trained as a squire. Darren and Beric had been as close as brothers while growing up, and that friendship had not diminished even after years of separation. But neither of them seemed to be aware of the fact that they were, in fact, half-brothers. Because, in their own words, there's a lot of physical similarities between people in Vingaard.

Evrouin finally knew he had to broach the subject and went to talk to them. I had my character Gavin offer to go with to offer some support/backup. Both Beric and Darren took a little bit to actually wrap their heads around it, but Darren took it well, even reckoning that the Measure (the code the knighthood is expected to uphold, and which the Crownguards have been staunch adherents to) did allow unmarried knights to "have relations" with unmarried women-- Derek's wife had died in childbirth and Beric's mother's husband had died in battle, so technically they were both unmarried. DM Bob did sort of roleplay it that Darren was also trying to cope with the fact that his father had done such a thing without acknowledging it publicly, so I had Gavin remark, "You're going through what all men must: realizing that their father, as larger than life as they can feel, is still just a man, with all the little foibles that come with it."

Darren then appeared to accept this, and without further preamble, he had Beric Fletcher kneel, swear his oath, and touch the sword to his shoulders, before bidding him rise as Sir Beric Crownguard, a full fledged Knight of Solamnia.

As Gavin remarked to Evro as they were leaving, "That went better than I could have expected."

Meanwhile, Runa the Barbarian approached the gnome engineers of the WSF with her idea of catapult-launching barbarians. As the gnomes use such technology to get about inside their capital in Mt Nevermind, they agreed on the idea, and the rest of her part of the session involved Runa having to go through parachutist training. But by the end of the session, Runa (and many of the barbarians of her tribe) were now essentially our equivalent of the 81st Airborne.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

I joined in on part 2 (or possibly part 3) of a multi-part adventure, one where the party had apparently been shunted around through multiple alternate worlds to get some macguffins, so there was a little question of how my level 5 rogue was going to join up with the party.

I found out later that these alternate worlds are indeed meant to be worlds from other known properties. Apparently, on the previous session(s), they'd gone through Star Trek and Skyrim. And they went into the next world, and they found themselves in the bedroom of a princess. In Dorne. Westeros, from Game of Thrones. She was shocked to see strangers in the room, demanding to know what they were doing there.

Then the DM turned to me. "What is your character doing?"

I immediately replied, "Putting his clothes back on."

Broke the table for a minute or so. But come on, that was just the perfect opportunity for it.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I'm joining a new campaign group, we'll be meeting alternating Thursdays at the same game store where D&D AL meets. The DM, Phil, is from our AL chapter, came around last week and gauged interest in it, and enough people have said "yes" that we've now got our own Discord to set things up.

It'll be another Curse of Strahd campaign, starting at level 3. I had started thinking up my character, a human Rogue, with the intent to tie his Phantom subclass into experiences in Barovia, but starting at level 3 complicated that. I suggested to the DM maybe starting as a Thief subclass, and changing the subclass after some experience in the campaign, but after I pitched his backstory-- a young man who'd been taken into a gang/family by a Fagin-like figure-- and some discussion about tying my Rogue to the Vistani (not!Romani) in some way, the DM suggested that my Rogue had been smuggled out of Barovia at a young age. I agreed to this, since the Barovia tie will lead to RP hooks, and gives a solid explanation for the Phantom Rogue abilities.

The DM had told us all that he will be incorporating a change into everyone's backstory, for better synergy with the plot/setting. And he then told me that my Rogue's home burned down and he was rescued and smuggled out of Barovia by the Vistani. This dovetails nicely, and will provide more RP flavor/hooks for me, so I'm happy with it.

[Nunavut Pants]

A number of Terraforming Mars games down. Many last place, many NOT LAST. And finally another victory!

My Corporation started with a bunch of Titanium resources, which can be used on Space-tagged cards. Its special power was that the Ti resources were worth one extra money when buying Space cards (discount of 4 each instead of 3 each). My two Prelude cards gave me a Ti production and some more Ti resources, and two heat production plus placing an ocean. My whole first Generation was playing one card, which gave me 3 money production.

I placed a city and got some more money production, plus a card which let me draw a new card and one that let me raise my energy production at a discount from the non-card action everyone can take. I then played a card that got me two plant production, and had two tags on it which let me claim the Diversifier milestone. Which surprised me, I didn't realize I was in a position to claim it until the ability to do that popped up!

I was getting energy production because some cards I had required me to lose energy production to gain other things. Like a city and money production. I also got some more plant production and a few other points here and there. Eventually I decided that I had enough tiles claimed on the lower half of the map to fund the "hold the most tiles on the bottom four rows" Award. The other players made unexpectedly strong plays at taking first in that away from me, but I was able to keep it in part through some good luck.

I got into the "take one action, end turn" thing that keeps drawing these games out. It allows you to take some actions unopposed after everyone else drops out. I should have taken the opportunity to fund the "Space Baron" award, which rewards you for having more space tags than your opponents. I left it too long, and one of my opponents funded "Voyager" which rewards you for having Jupiter tags. This allowed him to catch up to me in total points.

In the end, he only drew even with me, and I won it on the tiebreaker, which is most money left at the end of the game. Scores after 11 "Generations" were 92 to 92 to 90. A very close game!

[Ceir]

Nice score at the FLGS the other day. I picked up a couple boxes for the GF9 Aliens game - it's a fairly lightweight co-op run and gun in the same vein as Space Hulk (big surprise). While I'm not the biggest fan of the Alien franchise, I do enjoy the first couple in the series, the memes, and such; and the game has recently gone quite out of print - GF9 lost or did not renew the license, and they've already scrubbed every trace of it from their web site. Got the 'Another Glorious Day In The Corps' - uh - core set, as well as the one big expansion they did, 'Get Away From Her You B***H' (not my censoring, it's part of the actual title) with the xenomorph queen and power loader models.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Slight bit of amusement/confusion to start. We play at Eric's house after switching to Fridays, cuz almost every game store is going to be stupid busy with Magic: The Gathering players on Fridays. But Eric is moving in the next week (untenable living situation - some of his roommates have been stealing from him), and he posted his new address in our Discord chat - but then forgot to clarify that we'll be playing there for our next session on the 19th. So both Mike and Jesse mistakenly went to the new address first. It was only 10 minutes away, so it wasn't too much of a problem. Jesse was a little upset about the mix-up, but he cooled down quickly.

So we did a bit of a rewind to dial back in on Gavin's discussion with Kevin, the healer of unusual size. He was curious about Gavin's healing magic, which led into Gavin discussing the gods and the worship thereof. Gavin noted he worships all of the Gods of Good, but he's a follower of Mishakal, the goddess of healing. Kevin remained intrigued, and noted that while he would love to be able to heal people better, he also really likes to fight. (Huge dude, yoked out, carrying a war scythe? Yeah, that tracks.) Gavin explained that Kevin would likely best serve as a follower of Kiri-Jolith, the god of war. At which point, Gavin's Amulet of Faith started glowing and essentially spawned a new Amulet of Faith, which he gave to Kevin, whereupon it glowed again and sported Kiri-Jolith's symbol. A new cleric is born.

Meanwhile, Evrouin observed Beric Fletcher, the squire, going around and checking in on all of the resistance fighters, doing all the sort of things a knightly military commander should be doing. (This becomes important later.) Evrouin cast Sending to contact the WSF leadership and inform them of the resistance's presence, and that there was going to be a meeting at the Goodwater Spring in 3 days, to send someone from the WSF to meet up with the resistance, so as to incorporate them in our strategy. This also involved contacting Darren Crownguard to be the one meeting with them, and to our surprise, Darren recognized Beric's name and was actually pleased to hear he was alive, noting the two had grown up together.

That said, I did mention to the rest of the table my worry about Darren's reaction to Beric's obvious resemblance to his father. And there's something else that further makes me worry about Darren's reaction. But more on that later.

Beric invited the Misfits to join them for some hunting. But it wasn't going to be hunting for ordinary game. More, the "most dangerous game." We were going to be hunting BDA patrols. Amusingly, Jesse wasn't quite picking up on what was meant at first, but the penny dropped soon enough. I joked that "Ironic that the wizard, aka the smartest guy in the party, didn't pick up on that faster."

So we set up an ambush on a patrol of Draconians with our resistance friends-- we kept our new "apprentices" (Justinius with Tasha, Gavin with Kevin, and Evro with Beric, along with Tasha's mother Yasha) with us, while the rest of Beric's band were sent to make contact with other resistance bands for the Goodwater meeting-- and things went well enough. Beric literally surfed down the hill on a shield while swinging his greatsword, with Justinius casting Greater Invisibility on Runa so the barbarian could go ham with her attacks without needing to go reckless. (Barbarians have a feature called Reckless Attack which gives them advantage on their attacks, but it also makes any attacks on them also come with advantage. The Greater Invis would give Runa advantage without the counter advantage against her.) Most of the Draconians stayed on the ground, but two of the spellcaster types flew into the air and cast Fireballs on us, which we could mostly tank.

But when we started wiping out the rest of the patrol, those two flyers decided to retreat. Justinius grabbed Evrouin and cast Fly on them and took off after them, but they weren't able to catch up to them. Justinius tried to close the distance with Dimension Door, but the two Draconians both used a similar ability (which was not a spell, so Justinius couldn't Counterspell it) to keep their distance. Unable to catch up, the two returned to the party, and Beric said it was likely they were heading for a fortress called Skelgaard. We decided to approach the place so we could scout it out.

We got close enough to Skelgaard for Runa to use her Clairvoyance ability to spy on the fortress. There were a few Draconians flying around the place as a guard patrol, and more prowling around inside. Runa then saw who was commanding the fort, a familiar black-cloaked individual-- Weyland, the false friend that Catt had known and traveled with before joining up with our party, and who had killed her Uncle Trapspringer. Runa was able to see him get the word from the two Draconians who had escaped, and start sending more patrols up into the air.

We ended after Runa finished her clairvoyance and turned to Catt, "You want revenge? Your friend is here."

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

I played at a table a couple of weeks ago for an adventure that would be a two-parter. We were being hired by a displaced queen to infiltrate her captured capital and insinuate ourselves into the usurper's court. To do this, we would be snuck onto a pirate's ship-- with the captain's cooperation-- and take on a pirate persona.

There was a whole bit where the DM passed out handouts of some possible costume pieces to select, complete with haircut and tattoo options. We were also expected to come up with a pirate name.

I was playing Jito, my Kensei Monk, and after selecting all the options, I was asked what my pirate name would be. I replied with, "I am Yao." Anytime throughout the rest of the session, when Jito was asked his name by someone, I replied in the same way. (It took a couple of repetitions before one of the other players clocked the Mulan reference.)

We'll likely be doing part two of the adventure next month.


Dragonlance--

So the Misfits were riding out ahead of the Whitestone Forces as a vanguard force, scouting a bit, looking out for traps or ambushes that might be left by the BDA, but instead of that, we started seeing signs of some brief clashes with the BDA-- signs of dead Draconians, like scorch marks or broken statues (petrified dead Draconians)-- which weren't like protracted fights, but more like ambushes pulled on the BDA by some third party.

Our characters are now Level 11, so we're now getting into the part of a campaign when characters start getting really powerful. For instance, as we decided to have Catt scout around for signs of this third party, Justinius threw a Pass Without a Trace on her Stealth check to add an extra +10 to it. Between that, her proficiency and then a 19 on the die, she rolled 37 for Stealth. ("You're suddenly in Albia, our last campaign.") Between her scouting and some more done by Evrouin later, we located an apparently abandoned farmstead, and decided to scope it out, for signs about the lack of civilian presence we'd seen in the vicinity.

Well, Catt worked out that the place wasn't so abandoned as it looked-- she set off a bottle alarm (stacked inside the door jamb) and the interior was clean of dust (when the exterior showed signs of at least a month's neglect), so we set up a hide (thanks to a casting of Leomund's Tiny Hut) and kept an eye on it. It didn't take long before a group of about 20 civilians and one person wearing a Solamnic squire's armor approached the house, and noticed that someone else had been there. (Catt had left one of the windows' shutters open.) As they started fanning out, Evrouin and Catt stepped out of the hide to address them.

The squire, Beric Fletcher, was surprised to meet a Solamnic Knight. His own knight, Sir Errol Tallbow, had been killed in battle, and he, Beric, had been injured, but found by the civilians. They were subsistence farmers and hunters, and under his guidance, they'd been effectively hunting the Draconians. They hadn't heard of the WSF-- not unsurprising, since they'd only been a thing for less than two months-- but did like that someone was opposing the BDA.

We all went into the house to speak. Gavin's introduction as a cleric got confused looks-- clerics of the gods were only just starting to become a thing again-- but when he demonstrated his healing magic, it startled everyone, but it got him into a conversation with Kevin, their local healer of unusual size (dude was like 7 feet tall). Evrouin spoke with Beric, who it had been noted was practically a spitting image of Derek Crownguard, albeit with dark hair. Though Evro asked about it, Beric's bewildered remark about "local resemblances" was all we got about it, as we all agreed at the table that he was probably Derek's bastard son. Beric had been welcomed as a squire because his (supposed) father had been killed in battle, but he had no prospects of becoming an actual knight due to his (alleged) lack of noble blood.

Meanwhile, one of the villagers was a young woman (about 19 years old) named Tasha, who approached Justinius, asking how he knew he was a wizard. Tasha explained that she had weird dreams, and could do things (demonstrating the ability to change her hair color, and cast Fire Bolt) that she didn't really understand. Justinius spoke with her a bit, giving her his Wand of Faerie Fire, explaining about how wizards could use them to help focus their magic. He had her try it out, and she successfully cast the spell, causing everyone in the building to start glowing for a minute. Intrigued, he decided to have her attempt an Aspirant's Test of High Sorcery. This involved scribing "Ego Magus" (I am a Mage) onto a prepared spell scroll with the appropriate ink and quill, and if the aspirant had enough potential, the scroll would glow. He did this later that evening as everyone was bunking down for the night. It took her some time (she didn't really know all her letters) but after being shown what she needed to write, she focused and painstakingly scrawled it down.

And then the scroll lit up like the sun. (We made joke references to Phantom Menace about "not even Master Yoda" lighting up his scroll that bright. I quipped, "Her magi-chlorian count is off the scale.")

Justinius then spoke with Tasha's mother about this, saying he wanted to take her to the Tower of High Sorcery so she can be trained, if only so she can attain better control over her magic. Her mother appreciated his coming to her, but said it's Tasha's decision, as she's basically a grown woman. It seems Justinius has found his apprentice.

In the morning, we made contact with the WSF via Sending spells to inform them of local resistance bands (Beric's was one of several) and that they would be convening at a local spring, Goodwater Spring, in a couple of days' time, and for the WSF to send a representative force to meet with them. This was said to be the wing comprised of the Knights of the Rose, as most of them were local to the Vingaard Valley, and would be led by Darren Crownguard.

It hadn't occurred to me until the drive home, and then again when I typed up a recap for our Discord that we're about to have a problem on our hands. The Crownguards are the leaders of a faction of the Knighthood that is dedicated to the Measure-- a dozens of volumes-long set of rules and laws by which Knights of Solamnia are expected to comport themselves. Evrouin, by comparison, is from the opposing faction, which holds that a knight's Oath to uphold their virtues is more important than the Measure. Basically, Knights are of Lawful Good alignment, with the Measure faction holding Lawful being more important, and the Oath faction holding Good being more important. While Darren has some recent conflicts with the Measure (he has intrusive thoughts about slaughtering everyone, since his father died), he still holds to it.

And we're about to have him meet with local resistance fighters that are being led by a man who just might be physical proof that his father was unfaithful to his mother.

[Nunavut Pants]

After a number of losses and a smaller number of "NOT LAST" games, I won again at Terraforming Mars!

My Corporation was Recyclon, who can increase plant production for every other building tag they play. This turned out to be vital--two of the Milestones involved controlling spaces on Mars and having plant/animal/microbe tags. Plus one of the Awards was for having the most plant and animal resources, so I really wanted to get the plants going!

I was able to get 5 spaces on Mars controlled and 4 bio tags quickly, claiming those two Milestones. I then started trying for Awards as well as regular VPs and Terraforming Rating. My opponents were not making much progress on getting the last Milestone, and almost by accident I qualified for it! (Having played five cards with requirements for the state of the board on them.) So I wound up sweeping all three Milestones, which is very unusual!

I had a card that would let me decrease Energy production to get one Terraform Rating, which serves both as the basis for your per-turn income and as victory points. I played several cards to raise my Energy production, which one by one I turned into TR. I also played several cities and lots of forests because of my plant production, obviously right next to my cities to provide victory points at the end of the game. Most of them I played next to spaces that oceans could be played in. This was a good move because another Award was to have the most spaces owned next to oceans. I funded that Award, and the "most plant and animal" Award.

One of my opponents had played Predators, allowing him to steal an animal token each turn from me and add it to his card. With that, he was able to take first place for the "plant and animal" Award, but I easily held first for the "adjacent to oceans" Award.

At the end, I was able to hold out for the win; 90 to 84 to 79 points.

[Ceir]

Recently picked up a couple map expansions for Flash Point, and finally got around to dropping a solitaire game on the Duplex map from one of them. The gimmick on the Duplex is that it's essentially two half-maps completely divided by a (destroyable) wall; and the upper and lower edges are considered to be immediately-adjacent buildings - your fire truck and ambulance can only park on the left or right edges, and it costs double the number of actions to switch sides compared to a standard map.

I actually pulled out a high-scoring win, with 9/10 possible saves (7 is considered a win), but it was a very near thing. I almost ran out of building (if you place enough damage markers, the building collapses and you lose), and I absolutely did not have control of the fire at the end (60-ish % of the board was actively on fire when I scored rescue #9). But it was a nice "end of the TV show" finale, the kind where you have firefighters tossing people out the door and shouting "We gotta go, we gotta go!" before the building caves in behind them.

[Nunavut Pants]

She's a soon-to-retire teacher from Joisey (New Jersey) who shaves her head. Awesome lady! Very punk rock attitude, too.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Especially because one gal kept saying that she was going to use "Blowjob" as her clue every round...

This sounds like the sort of gal I need to be introduced to

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Last week's session was the first time in more than three months we had everyone present at the table. We'd been meeting for some official sessions, sort of working around the absences, but then at the end of August we had to put a hold on the campaign proper, because we'd bumped up against our first major military engagement-- one that would be using mass combat rules-- and DM Bob wanted to have everyone on hand for it. We did some one-shots off and on, while people were on overseas trips and similar, in the interim. For one reason or another, Jesse hadn't been at the table for two months. So there was a lot of catching up before we got started.

Eric: How do you play this game again?
Me: Math rocks go brrr.

When we'd left off, the Misfits and the allied armies of the Whitestone Forces (WSF) had occupied the long abandoned High Clerist Tower, which we'd learned had been a dragon trap constructed thousands of years ago. The Tower also housed the Blue Dragon Orb, containing the greater wyrm blue dragon (basically the progenitor for all blue dragons), which had been used by the O.G. Wizards of High Sorcery to prime the trap and trigger dragons into mindlessly charging head-first into the traps. We knew, however, that controlling a Dragon Orb required enormous willpower and magical know-how. Our wizard Justinius had managed it once, only thanks to a Nat-20 on his roll, and we had no expectation that it might happen again.

The WSF would have to defend the Tower against the attacking Blue Dragon Army (BDA), believing the BDA had multiple reasons for capturing it-- morale (defeating the last real threat to their conquest), strategy (controlling an access point for the WSF's reinforcements from Sancrist), and catastrophic (freeing the blue greater wyrm - thus putting three of the five greater wyrms in play)

Bob explained the mass combat rules, which were a little complicated, but straightforward for us. We had to decide which of the WSF forces to commit, where to arrange them, and then command them ourselves. We had the option to join the battle ourselves (embedding ourselves in one of our regiments and turning them into a "hero unit") or remain in the command position, which prevented us using our character abilities/spells, but did allow us to use special command actions on our go.

It was basically like Dragonlance RTS, when you came down to it.

Right at the get-go, however, the BDA's dragons-- five adult blue dragons-- flew past the battlefield and headed for the Tower. It still took them three rounds of combat to clear the battle, but they were out of range of our ranged attacks/spells, so once they made it past the curtain wall of the Tower's fortress, Justinius left command to run down to the basement of the Tower to the Dragon Orb. He had to pass some high DC Arcana checks to command the Orb, and when he looked like he might fail, he used his Portent ability. As a red-robed wizard, he can use this ability to pre-roll 2d20 before the session, and then as a reaction use either of those rolls in place of any other roll. And one of his Portent rolls that day had been a Nat-20.

So the blue greater wyrm was contained, and by properly sealing it away again, Justinius triggered the attacking dragons to go feral and mindlessly attack the Tower, shoving their heads through the gates. This prompted the portcullises to slam down on their necks, trapping their heads, and then the giant bear-trap arms to clamp down on their mouths, preventing them from using their breath weapon. Unable to free themselves or retaliate, the WSF reserve forces were able to merk them and slaughter them.

The battle wasn't without its losses. Lord Derek Crownguard, seeking to redeem himself through death-or-glory in the front line, fell in battle, and the dragons managed to wipe out two of our reserve regiments before the dragon trap got them.

But we successfully defended the High Clerist Tower, giving the WSF control over an access path to the coast, where the rest of our reinforcements from Sancrist could land, and thus broadly defended Palanthas against conquest. Our next step will be the pursuit of the retreating BDA, so we can reclaim the Vingaard region and free more of our forces.