Jan13
by "Jester" David on January 13, 2019
Posted In: Gaming Blogs

Borderlands Session 26

In the last session of my Borderlands Campaign, the party teleported to the far side of the map in order to venture to a distant theocracy (or thearchy) in order to foster a slave rebellion at the urging of one of the new PCs in the group, possibly aided by assassinating the god-king who rules the nation.

It’s a curious choice of activity and one prompted by the backstory of a PC rather than overt scripting on my part. It’s partially what I wanted from the campaign, albeit a bit more dramatic of an upheaval for the world than I was expecting. While I want the world to change and shift in response to the actions of the PCs, this might be a larger change than I was planning for. Removing a head of state is a big change.

We’ll see how it goes.

But this is still a half-dozen sessions in the future. Right now, the PCs still need to make it to that nation, crossing a deadly, monster inhabited mountain range. The group planned out their route for the next couple weeks of travel, meaning I can loosely plot out the next couple sessions with some degree of certainty. It’s nice to have a concrete plan.

Initial Encounters

I called my session slightly early last week, rather than improvising an encounter I was largely unprepared to run. I was uninspired and drawing a blank.

As the group is high level, a fight with some big humanoids might be fun. I don’t think this party has faced trolls before, and they should be able to take out quite a few at one times. Three or four at least. That might be fun.

And I have some variant trolls in my 3rd Part book Revenge of the Horde by Nord Games, and a Huge size troll makes for a lovely and terrifying boss. (Disclaimer: I did some editing for the book. So I have a soft spot for that product and pull it out whenever I have the chance.) Again, I have some pretty big troll miniatures that can work nicely for said boss, and I do like basing encounters on minis.

Aside: Of all my minis, trolls seem to come with the greatest variation on size. Most of my WotC trolls are fine, but I have a couple teeny-tiny Pathfinder trolls that look like Medium Creature on Large bases. And the next Paizo troll looks Huge on a Large base.

However, looking at the part’s current location in my campaign setting Word Document, the region they are passing through is rife with necrotic energy and overlaps with the Plane of Shadow (aka the Shadowfell aka the Shadow World). So an undead encounter might be more suitable. I can save the troll encounter for later. Heck, even later in the session would be fine, as trolls might work just as well later on, when the party actually hits rough terrain. That becomes a potential climax for the session, or cliffhanger for next session.

Returning to the first encounter, there’s no shortage of undead I can use. Perhaps a bunch of banshees and wraiths. That might be fun and nasty. Nothing says “dead elves” like a banshee. Despite the low CRs, you don’t want to use more than two or three banshees in a single encounter: that’s a lot of saves against AoEs, increasing the odds someone will eventually flub the saving throw against their death wail. Just knowing that if they fail they’ll be knocked to 0 hit points will add some terror to the banshee’s presence.

Secondary Encounters

After the above, I have two good tentpole combat encounters. Along with some travel and roleplaying, this is probably enough for a session. But to aid the exploration aspect of the game, I should add/ brainstorm some incidental encounters for the journey. I discussed incidental encounters in a blog post a long time back. To quickly reiterate, these are small little sites of interest that can break-up the journey and make it more than “You travel across the hills for three days. Nothing happens.” These might be odd ruins, signs of monsters or game, places of mystery, or just animals being weird. Heck, they can even be pausing at the edge of a mountain and enjoying a magnificent view of the surrounding valleys. Something to include in the travel montage. Ideally, these should be interesting enough that the players ask about them or interact with them. So they’re active and engaging in the game and not just listening to me talk.

While I have to combat encounters planned, and have some ideas for a framework to set-up one of them to be more than a random wilderness encounter, it won’t hurt to think of a third or even a fourth encounter. Combat can be swingy in 5e, and a quick nova and some good rolls can cause a combat to rocket past. It won’t hurt to have some smaller encounters on standby to pad the session.

As I mentioned last blog, just having a list of a half-dozen ideal monsters can help. I don’t need a full random encounter table so much as a few options for flavourful fights.

Surprise Plotting Twist

Okay… when writing this blog, I used the phrase “I can loosely plot out the next couple sessions with some degree of certainty. It’s nice to have a concrete plan.” Then, the following day, a player hit me with a warning that they might be missing the next couple sessions.

Crud.

That will derail things. And I hate forcing the story to progress with a PC absent. So much so that I normally I have a rule against playing twice with a player absent. But we’re finally moving along with a homebrew story following the Tomb of Annihilation.

However… the story will be starting in a region where planar energies are bleeding from the Shadow World into the Mortal World. It doesn’t take much to imagine someone accidently stepping from one world to the other via a shadow crossing. The character could be snatched up, and go missing like that, justifying their absence from the story. And then return, possibly after more time has passed for them. This PC also joined the party some time after the campaign started, and was a level behind. Which has been slightly awkward since they were the tank. But it occurs to me that if they are in the Shadow World and having side adventures, this might be an excuse to slip them some extra experience. Also… it might be fun to do a Shadowfell one-shot. Four pre-gens for the other players and then tell the story of the dragonborn pally’s return to the mortal world, letting them be in the spotlight for some time. Do some additional playtesting of homebrew options, like my tactician class. Maybe the artificer if WotC can get that out in time.

Post-Game Report

The initial encounter(s) was nicely terrifying, as two of the four PCs eventually failed saves against the banshee. Meanwhile, another PC failed repeated saves against the Energy Drain of wraiths and specters, and had their maximum hp drastically reduced.

Following the first batch of undead, I had more “spawn”, giving the PCs just enough time to take a short rest but not the long rest they craved. They attempted to continue their rest and more undead “spawned”. Since the party was attempting to rest after a day of travel they had to forced march and hope to get out of the region rife with undead and necromantic energies.

If you *really* want to hurt a party, force them to forced march overnight. Everyone racked up ridiculous levels of exhaustion with just a half-dozen hours of extra travel. I followed this with a final very simple undead fight, which felt much harder given how weakened everyone was.

The rest of the session was generally pretty generic. Saving villagers, killing trolls, minor dungeon crawling. While fun, this was largely like every other session of D&D. If you’ve done it once, you’ve done it a dozen times. Really, I just wanted to have the adventures do something heroic so their reputation and “legend” would grow and spread in that region as well.

Also memorable was an improvised encounter in a small town. The party stopped to ask about magical potions, hoping to find one that removed exhaustion, if such a thing existed. The only one that does is potions of vitality, which are Very Rare and thus 5,000 gp or so. Possibly more. After finding out the price, the PCs opted to just sneak into the vendor’s wagon and steal them rather than pay. A bit of a dick move. Murder hobo behaviour at its finest. Hopefully I can find an excuse to have the party visit that area again and show the consquences of that bit of theft.

Things are also on track for where I expected the party to be in this journey. While I haven’t given much thought to the next session or leg of the journey, it should progress easily enough.

Shameless Plugs

If you liked this review, you can support me and encourage future reviews.

First off, I play in a Star Trek Adventures game every other Saturday at 3:15 EST, streamed on Twitch and archived on YouTube. I  also regularly post STA content on Continuing Mission.

I have T-shirts available for sale over on TeePublic!

I have a number of PDF products on the DMs Guild website including my first level 1 to 20 class, the Tactician. I’m excited by this and think it turned out surprisingly well, despite almost being an accidental creation as the result of message board discussions.
Also available are products like the Rod of Seven Parts, Traps, Diseases, Legendary Monsters, a book of Variant Rules.

Additionally, my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding, is available for purchase on DriveThurRPG or Print-on-Demand through Amazon. The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.


└ Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Jan08
by "Jester" David on January 8, 2019
Posted In: Comics

 

Borderlands Session 25

At the end of the last session, my players decided to follow a plot thread prompted by a player character’s  background rather than wait for me to introduce a new plot thread. Which is awesome, but problematic as it required a lengthy overland journey, of which I was unprepared for. Thinking on this, there were six different routes the PCs could take, and it’s probably not possible to prepare and script for all of them. That’s a lot of work and very little will see actual play. And the alternative—the same encounters regardless of the route—seems to negate the choices of the players. I’d like to have their actions and choice of route have variable consequences.

As such, I’m opting to begin the session with a filler side encounter that I had planned (and previously sketched a map for). This will kill time for some of the session, necessitating less improv. I don’t like to do this sort of forced encounter where I reuse a map for a quest seemingly skipped, but it seems preferable to an entirely ad libbed session.

Snowed In

I’d planned to have a wintertime encounter a few sessions back, to reflect the passage of time from summer to winter, and make use of cold and terrain, such as deep snow. This could also include a partially frozen pond where a PC could break through the surface into freezing water (potentially becoming trapped). Plus, a giant field of deep snow made using easel paper fitting, as the blank whiteness would be appropriate for a change.

I’d draw a path through the “snow” where people had travelled that would not be difficult terrain. This tweaks the flow of the battlefield. I also opted to have some layers, with a “hill” to climb, using several Dungeon Tiles boxes to create a tiered battlefield.

Having hunters lost in the woods seemed like a fun but simple hook. Additionally, a player had named one of the areas “the wendigo highlands”: they were all but requesting that foe. And it was an excuse to use my recently purchased Creature Codex, which has stat blocks for that monster. (Slightly awkward as the wendigo in that book was Medium while the Pathfinder/ Wizkids wendigo minis I had were Large. But that was easy to ignore.)

Improvisational Combat

I’m finding my improv skills challenged by characters of this level. The big sandbox campaign where I react was fine at low levels where I could just say “suddenly… goblins!!” but is much more challenging at high levels. In theory. I can just throw a group of five CR 3 critters at the party and this should be a challenge, but balance gets funky at level 10+, when there’s so much variability in character power level and combinations of PC powers.

Thinking ahead, I should really find CR 3, 6, 9, and 12 monsters that I can list and ready to throw at the PCs. Effectively a random encounter table based less on environment and more on the bands of foes where I can throw 5. 3, 2, or 1 of them at the party and expect a decent challenge.

Realistically, just making the lists should help, as I’ll have a better idea of the available monsters at that Challenge Rating. Having that knowledge should make me somewhat more confident at pulling out a handful of minis and throwing them onto the battlemap.

This is a good DM trick: familiarize yourself with your available resources. Trying to improvise using all the potential monsters in all the potential books just isn’t doable. But having that narrowed down to even a dozen contenders helps immensely, reducing the options to a tenth of the previous possibilities. I don’t need to memorize the stat blocks of the monsters or be overly familiar with their abilities, but just knowing they exist helps.

Mastering Combat

At the end of the previous session, the Swashbuckler asked the River King of Faerie for a boon: something to help him become the greatest swordsman in the world, which is his character goal. This is something I’d been thinking about for a while: the player asked hoping for an item or some other mechanical boon that could be passed on. But that’s not how 5e works. Plus, it seems lame to become the greatest swordsman in the land because you had a really spiffy belt.

But I need to consider this hook as well, and place the “teacher” at a location the party will pass. Or at least not far out of their way. This means the teacher needs to be on their route, or pretty close to their final destination. This might lead to a neat paradox where the party needs to choose between visiting the trainer or fulfiling a major quest.

I also need to draw up a map to said teacher, as one was handed to the players. Well, this isn’t absolutely necessary, but I like handing out physical props. Plus, I heard about using a UV ink pen to add invisible “moon runes” to maps, and I want to try that out.

I still need to think of some “reward” for the training to reflect being educated in the ways of the blade by a master swordsman. Maybe divorcing offhand attacks from bonus actions for two-weapon fighting.

But this is still a few sessions out, so I’m still in the brainstorming phase.

Post-Game Report

An unexpected problem with non-human races came up. With the campaign in the middle of winter, the two cold blooded PCs decided to bail on the remote mountain village the PCs had adopted to summer in the desert. Which makes sense, so I can’t protested. However, when presented with the possibility of a handful of hunters freezing to death, the party decided not to retrieve them via magic and venture out without them. One PC had a replacement PC handy for temporary play, but the other did not. This meant they were sitting out the first few hours of the game.

Meanwhile, I was waffling between having one or two wendigo on the encounter. As a result, on a whim, I opted for two wendigo despite being the group a PC down. That way the player without a character could run one of the wendigo. She was… merciless, and followed my lead of attacking downed PCs. Despite being freshly rested and well positioned, poor rolls against the wendigo’s aura hurt the party and by the end three PCs were down, two dead and one merely dying. The finally PC triumphed and forced the fallen Dragonborn Paladin to quaff a healing potion. They were able to resurrect one PC who restored the other. But for a while it looked like the group was edging towards a TPK. This was unexpected for what was supposed to be a filler encounter to pad the game session and save me a couple hours of improv.

From there, the group took the route I was least prepared for. Which was… interesting. But it allowed for some more worldbuilding (for both me and to the players). And might end up resulting in the most interesting stories and most travel through previously unseen areas. And it lets me describe and detail one of the regions of my campaign setting that I paid the least attention to. But most of all I locked in a hard route and firmer plan for the next couple sessions. Which is a nice change of pace.

└ Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
 Comment