Unruly Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 Thinking about "Rocks fall, everyone dies" scenarios got me thinking about a game I ran in high school. At one point, the characters met an avatar of Odin. He was drinking from a well, with fresh blood flowing from his now-empty right eye, and he was trying to warn them about the price of knowledge. One of them thought it was a good idea to poke him in the empty eye socket. Odin stopped him, but he kept trying, and after the fourth or fifth attempt Odin struck him dead. Then Huginn and Muninn swooped down from the trees and picked his body clean in a matter of seconds, before Odin and the well disappeared entirely, his warning left unfinished. I informed the players that the only way for the dead character to be resurrected was through a Miracle, as someone struck down by a deity has no recourse other than divine intervention. It actually went over surprisingly well, and given that his character was struck down by a Norse deity the player decided to burn his character sheet to give him a "funeral pyre." 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dilvish the Deliverer Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 Well, the way I see it, there are a few ways to wrap up the campaign. 1) Go out in a blaze of glory! Whether it's pulling the perfect heist, delaying the approaching horde so that the city can evacuate, or launching a sneak attack on the big bad, the party goes into certain death. 2) have them accomplish their goals and retire. 3) have something happen that takes them out of the world (Spelljammer, dimensional portal, fairie ring) and have them go off into the sunset and explore new worlds off camera. 4) promote them to nobles/head of guilds/instructor at the wizards college and retire them as NPC's. Bonus if one of them buys and inn and spends his/her days boring new adventures with tales of their exploits "before I took an arrow to the knee". 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unruly Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 15 minutes ago, Dilvish the Deliverer said: 4) promote them to nobles/head of guilds/instructor at the wizards college and retire them as NPC's. Bonus if one of them buys and inn and spends his/her days boring new adventures with tales of their exploits "before I took an arrow to the knee". No. Just no. He needs to mention how he's hearing that they're reforming the Dawnguard. You know, vampire hunters or something. Because when I bought the GOTY edition that had all the DLC I never heard the "took and arrow to the knee" line once, but every other line out of the guards' mouths was "I heard they're reforming the Dawnguard. Vampire hunters or something." 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crowley Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 Given that it's a purely megadungeon campaign, saving the city from an army or other such glorious acts are out. They don't really have any big goals besides loot.... Taking them out of the world might work! As would "rocks fall, everyone dies" 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator OneBoot Posted March 30, 2017 Moderator Share Posted March 30, 2017 2 minutes ago, David Brawley said: Given that it's a purely megadungeon campaign, saving the city from an army or other such glorious acts are out. They don't really have any big goals besides loot.... Taking them out of the world might work! As would "rocks fall, everyone dies" Best of luck, MrBoot had to deal with this when we suddenly moved here, a mere month and a half after he unexpectedly got a job offer. It was really rough, since we were only halfway through the story, which had been running for two years already. It was like reading through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then suddenly having to stop partway through Two Towers and compress the last book and a half into 20 pages. In your game, perhaps one last, epic throw-down battle to let them either go out in a blaze of glory, or become filthy rich and retire to their own kingdom. If their driving motivation is loot, then feel free to dump a mountain of it on them as the finale (since it's not like they can do anything with it after that anyways!). Huzzah! --OneBoot :D 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 I still haven't decided what I am going to tell Molly - she is a lovely young woman... and way older than the kids in the game. (More than twice as old....) Also, I use each game as a proving ground for the others - so that would mean not being able to crib encounters from either game to inflict on the other.... So, I guess that I am leaning towards 'no'? The Auld Grump 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knarthex Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 42 minutes ago, TheAuldGrump said: I still haven't decided what I am going to tell Molly - she is a lovely young woman... and way older than the kids in the game. (More than twice as old....) Also, I use each game as a proving ground for the others - so that would mean not being able to crib encounters from either game to inflict on the other.... So, I guess that I am leaning towards 'no'? The Auld Grump I think the dynamic of the game would likely get thrown off if you add a player twice as old as the rest of the group.... Even if they are friends, the younger players might start looking to the elder to lead, and / or resent the fact that their game is being crashed by an oldster.... It could also be that the older person, would subconsciously try to lead because "I'm older / more experienced" and that could tend to ruin the kids initiative and drive.... Just my 2PP... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 Pretty much my take as well - I think that Molly wants to recapture the feel of her first games, when she was also surrounded by a bunch of folks of like age. Either that, or she just wants to sneak in another night of gaming each week. (She broke up with her significant other a few months ago, moved out and into her own place - she has been gaming a lot more since. (The SO did not approve of gaming.)) The Auld Grump - somewhere, in my head, Molly is still eight years old, and the idea that she even had an SO, let alone lived with him, is very, very strange. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auberon Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 9 hours ago, David Brawley said: Given that it's a purely megadungeon campaign, saving the city from an army or other such glorious acts are out. They don't really have any big goals besides loot.... Taking them out of the world might work! As would "rocks fall, everyone dies" In this day an age you do potentially have the option of just pushing pause, waiting a few months to get settled in, and then meeting up with everyone again on roll 20, fantasy grounds, etc for a weeknight game. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sylverthorne Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 One of these days, I'll figure out why my kneejerk reaction to roll20 is to shudder and make a warding sign, I will. Until then, I'll just have to shrug and agree with the general sentiment of the suggestion; virtual table tops are definitely an option. So are gaming forums. ^^; 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 So, since the next module I'm going to run, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (thanks Yawning Portal!), is a 5th level adventure, and the party is ending their current adventure at level 4. So I'm trying my hand at an original adventure for the first time. Something nice and short to get em to fifth level, without feeling like a filler adventure. I could use any pointers more experienced DMs can give me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auberon Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 22 minutes ago, BlazingTornado said: So, since the next module I'm going to run, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (thanks Yawning Portal!), is a 5th level adventure, and the party is ending their current adventure at level 4. So I'm trying my hand at an original adventure for the first time. Something nice and short to get em to fifth level, without feeling like a filler adventure. I could use any pointers more experienced DMs can give me. Are there any loose ends from the previous adventures that you want to finish off? Or in the other direction, any groundwork you want to do for the next module? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 6 minutes ago, Auberon said: Are there any loose ends from the previous adventures that you want to finish off? Or in the other direction, any groundwork you want to do for the next module? Neither, really. The loose ends from a previous adventure returns after they clear out White Plume. The evil cult near the Keep has been laying low since their defeat, and amassing power, while the players have been increasingly distancing themselves from civilization... This is sort of my "consolation" for not introducing the Yuan-Ti proper in Dwellers of the Forbidden City. There is a lost temple hidden in the jungles, that still has the means to summon a demon for a bargain. While disguised, she and her escorts (two brutish orcs and a posh hobgoblin) hire the party as muscle to resolve it. She basically wants to strike a bargain with that demon, offering the adventurers as sacrifices, in return for losing her petrifying gaze, because tragic villains are neat. The path has already largely been found thanks to the last party she hired, but they all got picked off by the various jungle hazards. The party is luckier. So they have to get past the gate, and the foyer of the pathway, down some grottos that have now been settled in by Grungs... Then outside the temple proper, in this swampy center of a large hollow hill, they find the reason the temple was abandonned... A dark experiment that clearly went awry... A faceless Naga (because I'm a referencial dork and DFC removed the face of their naga when TSR threatened legal action). Inside, there's still doorways to figure out, and the last living inhabitants of the temple, two broodguards who've been tending to the now-long-dead skeletons of the purebloods and halfbreed priest that perished there. And those will animate and fight, too. Just sorta... looked at the battlemaps I had on hand, picked a really good set, figured a reason to go there, and built the surroundings around it, then figured an ecology. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unruly Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 Just wrapped up my stint as DM for my group this time around. I could have wrapped it up when we met two weeks ago if I had realized that the basilisks in the sewers were an empty threat and there wasn't a fight with them written in, because I went through the last actual fight in the module last time. Which meant that this session would have been literally a 5 minute session as I said "you make it to the sewers, find through hem empty, and are able to lead the people through them to safety." So I added in a fight with 2 basilisks, and then a new capstone fight when the sewers opened up to the river. Put them up against a priest that I removed from an earlier fight for balance reasons, and two hobgoblins. One of the players came into the session at 10 health, and while they were able to short rest in the tunnels, it only brought him back to half health. Surprisingly, he wasn't the one who almost died. One of the other guys provoked an AoO from one of the hobgoblins, which crit, while the hobgoblin was within 5ft of an ally who was also threatening. And since the hobgoblin hadn't gotten to use martial advantage yet, he popped that. Which meant I rolled 10d6 damage on a single hit and it brought the guy down to 8hp. The only reason he didn't go down was because the priest got knocked out before he could deal any damage. It ended well. Now the party is returning to Sigil, where we'll be contracted for further adventures, this time with me as a player and one of the other guys being DM. Trying to decide which character I want to play. Dwarf abjurer in heavy armor, half-elf thief, or human lore bard. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 Somehow, in a dream last night, the dragon had a radical change in personality - developed a Scots accent, and a collection of rude garden gnomes.... I am... thinking about making the changes official. Also, for some reason, the gnomes were made by a medusa... not by petrification, but with a chisel and blocks of stone. Another statue, outside her lair, has look of exaggerated horror, a collection of smoked spectacles and a sign saying 'Please Wear These'. (If the players ever encounter her, and don't wear the glasses, well... she is a medusa....) She... is not that great a sculptor, but her sculpts do have personality. No, I have no idea why my mind came up with that... but she seems a happy enough abomination. The Auld Grump - I blame Old Man Henderson for the gnomes.... 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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