Showing posts with label Order of the Platinum Dragon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Order of the Platinum Dragon. Show all posts

Monday, February 27, 2017

Weekend Gaming: New Blood and Would-be Queens

Huge gaming weekend this past weekend.

Friday night my youngest son ran his game of D&D ever for three of his friends.  It went great and the kids sounded like they had a great time.  One even showed up with a homemade character sheet with his character ready to go.  I guess his dad had helped him put it all together.

Sunday we played an extra long session of our 5e game.  The boys had just finished the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl and were headed to their next adventure when they saw a girl, potentially a snow elf, running across the tundra chased by Winter Wolves.  This was the start of the first mini-adventure "The Frost Giant Jarl's Daughter".

The adventure is obviously based on the Conan story, The Frost Giant's Daughter.  But there were other influences as well.   The first encounter was with the wolves.  Winter wolves are actually pretty tough in D&D5.  Next I had them run into the skeletons of long dead Frost Giants.  I didn't have minis for that, but I do have my collection of old AD&D toys.


They worked out well.  I included them as my homage to this famous Dragon magazine cover.



They chased the girl to a cave where they found her behind a wall of ice.  They were attacked by the brothers of the Frost Giant's Daughter then.

For this part I adopted a little bit of 4e as mentioned in this post.  This made the frost giants a little tougher and gave them some interesting and unique powers.


Finally, after defeating the brothers, the girl reveals herself to be the Frost Giant Jarl's daughter, and now the new ruler of the Frost Giants. I guess she was a Countess.


The adventure takes place right after G2 (I am calling it G2.5, but I guess G2.45 is a better code).  The party must cross a glacier to get to the next point in the series.

I went to 4e for help on crafting the encounters; a group of Winter Wolves, Frost Giant Skeletons and finally her two four Frost Giant brothers.  The Jarl's Daughter is a Frost Giant Ice Shaper from 4e.  She has/had ice powers and was the one that crafted the ice wall.


The adventure could end in two ways (well three if you count the PCs getting killed, but that was not a design goal). Either the brothers are all killed and the daughter entreats with the PCs to come to a truce or the PCs kill everyone.  The Daughter is quite powerful and I'd prefer the PCs not having to fight her.

I am thinking of working up the adventure for downloading.  The idea is to "be playable after any adventure dealing with Frost Giants but before moving on to Fire Giants".  This works with G2 and G3 and the Storm King's Thunder adventures.

After we did that the Order of the Platinum Dragon moved on to discover a Cloud Giant Castle full of Mountain, Fog, and Firbolg giants.  Basically all the AD&D Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio Giants.

Here the bastard daughter of the Storm Giant King and a Cloud Giant witch has taken control of a cloud giant castle and is dealing with the drow.  I based her on the 4e Eldritch Giant and made her a Cloud Giant warlock with a Primordial pact.  Her pact is with the Elder Elemental Eye.

For this adventure, I combined a number of "Cloud Giant" related adventures.


Again, both of these mini-adventures come from my misreading of "Storm King's Thunder" as "Storm King's Daughter".

Going through the Storm King's Thunder, Saga of the Giants, and Curse of the Cloud Giant Queen. I noticed a lot of similarities. Not that this is a big deal really; all the adventures are drawing on the same source materials. Namely the classic G series and the mythology in D&D about Cloud Giants.

The adventure in the Storm King's Thunder is nice and tight and I loved the masks.  The Curse of the Cloud Giant Queen has a great dungeon and some ideas as well. The Saga of the Giants' Cloud Giant Castle is also a nice adventure.



Reading them all over I got the idea of a floating castle in the clouds, ruled by a Cloud Giant Queen. I have always, always wanted to do a floating castle! She is supplying materials to the Frost and Fire Giants below.  Plus the Drow getting the Cloud and Storm Giants would be a huge coup.

The PCs were able to get in and defeat the imposter Cloud Giant Queen and free the Storm Giant King.  The Fog Giants gained control of the Castle again to get it back into the hands of Cloud Giants.  I decided that not all giants chafe under the yoke of larger giants; fog giants are happy to serve the cloud giants.

Given that so much of this cloud giant adventure was really a mis-mash of other people's work, I won't work that one up into anything to be used by others.

So now the Order has defeated Hill, Stone, Frost and Cloud giant enemies. They have faced Storm, Mountain, Fog, Firbolg, Ettin and Cyclops giants.  All that is left are Fire.

Next time we meet at the table it is G3 Halls of the Fire Giant King!

Will the Frost Giant Queen or even the Cloud Giant Queen return in my War of the Witch Queens? They were a witch and a warlock respectively.  Who knows.

Monday, December 12, 2016

Sad Weekend Gaming

So in terrible news, JonBunny; my oldest son's pet rabbit, died this weekend.  He jumped off my son's bed, landed wrong and broke his back.  He ended up being paralyzed in his lower half.  I guess this is a known issue with this breed of bunny.  My son is (and all of us are) devastated.
We really miss that little ball of fur.


I did the only thing I could do.  I ran a marathon session yester of D&D to keep their minds off of what happened.

The Order of the Platinum Dragon went to the lower level of the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl.  They managed to free the daughter of the Storm King and defeat the remaining frost giant guards to get to the Jarl himself.   I got rid of his wife for a few reasons. She was just going to be another encounter; and not a very interesting one at that. I replaced her with a frost giant senechal who was also an ice powered warlock. Also I was going to have the Jarl attempt some weird ass forced marriage alliance with the daughter of the Storm King, so he needed to be single, or at least available politically. Also I don't have a female frost giant mini.


Everyone looks like they are going up a level after this.
After this the Order will head to the Storm Giants for aid, but little do they know that an evil Cloud Giant Queen has taken over the Storm King's Castle in Castle of the Cloud Giant Queen.

I also rewatched Galaxy Quest for some ideas on my Star Trek game.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Weekend Gaming: Return to the Land of Ice and Snow

This weekend had a massive amount of gaming.  The Order of the Platinum Dragon continued their foray into the lands of the Frost Giants to discover more of their plans.

Long the way they had to fight ice trolls, yetis, winter wolves the size of elephants and white dragons.


The party took more damage in the last two days than they did in the last adventure total.  They have taken to sniping at their foes using the rogues to sneak attack and assassinate where they can.  The recently discovered Hammer of Thunderbolts has proved to be an excellent aid in fighting the giants from afar.

They also have rescued a Storm Giant princess (daughter of the "Storm King") that has given me an "in" to add a rogue band of evil cloud giants.

The G series lives up to my memories and to the hype as one of the best adventures printed in the classic era.  We are having a blast.  Can't wait to see what happens next!

Friday, September 23, 2016

Or...I can do some giants...

Well. My son's game fell through due to illness of half the players (schools are Petri dishes...).  So it looks like we might be doing our Come Endless Darkness game this weekend.  Which means going after some Frost Giants.

I wanted to finish up the G series at Gen Con, but we only got through G1(hill giants) and the unofficial G4 (stone giants).    On the plus side it has allowed me some time to consult some other references.


Storm Giants really didn't fit into my original idea, but I am going to give these a read and see what they have to offer.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Endless Darkness: The Road So Far

I have been talking online with a lot of people who are doing the same thing I am; running the Classic Modules from 1st Edition using the new D&D 5 rules.  So I thought I would post a summary and talk about where I am going next.

The Background
The characters all belong to a group known as the Order of the Platinum Dragon.  They are mostly made up of the children of the DragonSlayers (my 3.x game).  They began their adventure like so many others....or so they thought.

Here are the adventures in chronological order (links take you to the blog post where I talk about their game).

T1 Village of Hommlet (forgotten by the characters, played as a flashback)
B1 Into the Unknown
B2 Keep on the Borderlands
L1 The Secret of Bone Hill
X2 Castle Amber
I6 Ravenloft
C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness
A1-5 Slave Lords
C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
G123, G4 Against the Giants  (where we are now)

Then we do:
D12, 3 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Vault of the Drow
Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits
(Q2) Queen of Lies
CM2 Death's Ride
H4 Throne of Bloodstone

The adventure began in The Inn of the Welcome Wench (T1). Here they discover the main plot of the "Cult of Chaos", but a battle with Lareth the Beautiful and Bargel left their memories wiped and two of their party missing (the Warlock Croulie and the Pyromancer Cynder).  The remaining party delved into the Castle Quasqueton (B1) and it's dungeons where they discover one of the Chaos Stones.  This leads to a vision/memory of a long ago battle.  They travel to the nearby Keep (B2) where they take on some hirelings, Uno, Duo, Tres, Quatro and their leader Cinco ("played" by Danny Treo) to investigate the Caves of Chaos.  Here they discover a temple dedicated to ancient demon god and more on the Cult of Chaos.

They then traveled to the monastery on Bone Hill (L1) and a group of missing wizards. Again there is a rumor of the Cult of Chaos, but also the involvement of several "Hyena Men".
Following the trail of the Hyena Men, the party is sucked up in a mysterious fog, here they find themselves in a strange land (actually the past) and a strange Castle (X2). More knowledge is gained about the Dawn War and for the first time they hear the phrase "Beware the Endless Darkness".  Here they meet up with the "wizard" (actually a warlock) Skylla.  They travel the mists for a while till they come upon the Villiage of Barovia and the terrifying Castle Ravenloft (I6).   They stop Strahd and his plans to blot out the sun, but not before Skylla is taken away by an army of ghosts.

They meet up with another party and tackle the famed Ghost Tower of Inverness (C2).  They recover the Soul Gem and hear the phrase "Beware the Endless Darkness" again.

Leaving the Ghost Tower they hear rumors once again of the Hyena-Men (Gnolls and Gnoles) and a slaving operation. They have long suspected, but now get confirmation that Gnolls are servants of a Demon Lord (keep in mind my players don't have the wealth of history of D&D we all do). They also find out that the slaves are all being transported elsewhere by human agents.  They discover the Cult of Chaos is also behind this operation and the Drow, long forgotten, are also involved.  
The Order manages to destroy the slaver operation and even convince an Earth Dragon and Red Dragon to reawaken the dormant volcano to destroy the island.  Before leaving the island with rescued slaves the Earth Dragon (an actual dragon) tells them to "beware the coming darkness".

Returning the slaves to the Duchy of Urnst they see the Sun go completely black.

The sun is out and there is a council of the greatest mages (ie their characters from the 3.x game) in Greyhawk.  The plan is worked out to relight Moradin's Forge.  It's light and life giving heat will keep everyone alive till the sun can be put right.  In the meantime the world is besieged by monsters and undead.   The Council of Greyhawk scrys for any remaining sun-related magic items.  Even the Sunsword from Ravenloft is out. The party is sent to a jungle (C1) because an artifact is found there that is related to the sun.    The "artifact" is the dying Mystarian Sun God (Immortal) Ixion, whom the characters knew better as "Cinco".  He and his four brothers were all gods of the sun, they were killed by vampire god Camazotz.   Cinco/Ixion gives the character his heart, Camazotz was not able to get it in time, to use to relight Moradin's Forge.

With the world now on life-support, the Council sends groups of adventures all over the world to find out what is going on.  The Order of the Platinum Dragon is sent to investigate raids made by some giants...

They know they are fighting against the clock.  Moradin's Forge is a powerful artifact that the gods used to create life, but once it is lit any one can use it. Undead are swarming all over. New monsters and monstrosities are everywhere and the Priests of the Sun gods are powerless.

Chaos, it seems, is winning.

What happens next is now up to my players and their characters.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Gen Con 2016 in Review

I am back from Gen Con.  As always we had a great time. I am on my lunch so I thought I would fire off an update.

Every night was devoted to the Against the Giants adventure. We didn't get as far as we wanted, we only got through G1 The Hill Giants and +Thork Hammer aka R.C. Pinnel's G4 The Stone Giants.




They encountered their first drow of House Eilservs from Erelhei-Cinlu.
Since I am running this all under D&D 5e I am making the Drow of House Eilservs all partially Warlocks of Tharizdun, whom they know as the Elder Elemental God.  The G4 module played into this rather nicely.

I bought some things of course.  Mostly stuck to Castles & Crusades books.


Can't wait to dip into Victorious!

Went to the ENnies.  I didn't win, which I will admit was disapointing.
I'll post more later on this.

I did get a chance to meet +Zak Sabbath, Stoya and Charlotte Stokely at the ENnies and that at least was cool.  Zak took home 3 of the 5 ENnies he was nominated for, that was also cool.  My son loved his speech thanking Satan.  My son threw up some horns for that.  I also got my copy of Maze of the Blue Medusa signed by Zak and Stokely.



Opted to play a lot of different types of games this year.  Played a great game of Castles & Crusades.
Played some Exploding Kittens (really fun) some Munchkin (also fun), got into a board game at the Mayfair group, but didn't really care for it.  Tried to find a board game we all liked, but no success there.

I got some more art for my game room from Wayne Reynolds.  I think I want to get one of those frames that holds three pictures at once.



Wonder how much he would charge to do some art of Larina....

I picked up a copy of Gettysburg for a friend.  Picked up some more dice. Signed up for the Star Trek playtest.  Was going to pick up Pathfinder Horror Adventures, but there wasn't really anything new in it for me.   I might grab it later at my FLGS.

Loved all the Cosplay.  My son went as Jacob from Assassin's Creed and found a like-minded friend.


There were tons of "Harley Quinn"s but also a lot of "Rey"s from Star Wars. I thought that was cool.


While the con is still dominated by middle-aged, bearded white guys I am seeing a lot more families and kids.  This is a great thing.

Ate and spent WAY too much.

Not sure if I can make it next year.  It is later in August and my kids' school starts before Gen Con.

All in all a great time.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Getting ready to start running the Giants series next week!




Since I am going to be running this under 5e I made some conversion notes and print outs to help me along.




Not to mention some great user supported material online from various sources including WotC.






It's all coming together rather nicely I have to say.

I put these all together in a binder and opted to print one side per page so I could right notes on the other blank side.   It is nice to have over 36 years of material created for these adventures to help me along today and make the experience one I know my players will enjoy.  Can't wait to get into to this!

Monday, July 11, 2016

Monstrous Monday: Camazotz & Weekend Round-up

This weekend I took the Order of the Platinum Dragon through the classic module C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.  I ran it semi-tournament style. That is I focused on the areas from tournament play where suggested, but I did not keep the scoring.  Given the trap crazy nature of this module I also gave XP for clever ideas on how to defeat the traps.

I changed it a bit to fir the current "Come Endless Darkness" storyline. The party was teleported there after the Council of Greyhawk scryed for anything that might help them re-ignite the sun.  The crystal pointed here and off the party went.
They appeared in a jungle with a pyramid of into the distance and an opening in front of them.

Yeah, so it was an Egypt project my son did...
Entering the tunnel the soon where confronted with traps of a sort.

I played up the "Temple of the Sun" bits and focused a lot on the various god depictions in the dungeon. In particular the ones with the bison, coyote, bear, serpent and eagle heads.   They encountered the evil neried and decided to drain all the water out of the room with a portable hole. That convinced her to tell the party what was a "safer" route.

They mangaed to find their way up to the temple where a sight of horror was found.  On the temple floor were hundreds of dead humans and among them four dead gods. Each god was dressed in Olman garb wearing sylized headgear of the bison, coyote, bear, and serpent.  All of their hearts had been cut out.  On the altar was a god wearing the Eagle head gear, his heart was also cut out.
They party recognized the gods not only as the gods from the frescoes, but also they were the Cinco Hermanos, their retainers from the Keep on the Borderlands.  Standing over Eagle/Cinco/Ixion was the demon bat god Camazotz.  In his hand was the heart.


The paladins attacked right away and managed to force Camazotz back to his home plane of Xibalba in the Abyss.  But Cinco (as always played by Danny Trejo) was dying.  He told the Order that he tricked Camazotz into taking his liver instead of his heart (gods can do the sort of thing), but he was dying anyway.  He convinced them to take his heart so they could use to relight the Forge of Moradin.  This would give them enough magic to at least keep the world from frezzing to death.

The forge was relit with the help of the only surviving members of Greyhawk's great wizards, Bigby, Tenser and Mordenkainen. But at the cost of their own magic.

Now the Order has been sent to investigate the possible outbreak of attacks by a group of giants.

This adventure was a big one.  It set up the next act of the campaign, it brought back the Cinco Hermanos (though only for them to die) and revealed the Orcus connection to the death of all the Gods of the Sun.

It also allowed me to bring in Camazotz as a demon lord.
Here are the stats I used, Maybe not 100% accurate for 5th edition, but it worked yesterday and the kids did not have to fight him much.

Bat King by FangWangLlin
Still getting the hang of these monster stats, but they are based on my Labrynth Lord/Petty Gods stats for Camazotz and the D&D5 stats for Yeegnohu.

All in all I like it.  Can't wait for the kids to run into him again in Throne of Bloodstone!


Don't forget to include the hashtag #MonsterMonday on Twitter or #MonsterMonday on Google+ when you post your own monsters!

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

They Keep Killing Aleena, Back to Basic Part 3

This last weekend the kids finished up their foray into the Moat House near the Villiage of Hommlet.
Secrets were uncovered, but more mystery was also discovered.  Lareth the Beautiful, Dark Hope of Chaos was killed.  He did manage to break his Staff of Striking releasing the last 38 charges in a final strike that left everyone unconscious until the ranger Elmo arrived to return them to the Inn of the Welcome Wench.

Bargle, however, managed to escape, taking Cynder with him.
He also killed the cleric, Aleena.




When the characters woke up they were back in the present days with their memories intact.

Next up is a bit of break for these characters, but I hear there are some troubles nearby with some giants.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Back to Basics, Part 2

Yesterday the Order of the Platinum Dragon was called to the Council of Greyhawk to help figure out what to do about the sun.  Panic is setting in and the world searches for a solution.
Eventually, the great wizarding minds of the land come up with the idea to re-light Moradin's Forge. This is an asteroid that orbits the planet, but in the Dawn Time it was used by Moradin to create the Dwarves.  He then loaned it to the gods of the Elves (who created Gnomes) and the gods of the humans (who created Halflings).    He even let the gods of the Orcs use it, but they created monsters.  The Forge was then put out.

While this is going on the Order has been accused of opening the Temple of Elemental Evil and the murder of Aleena, something they have no memory of.  

We went back into their memories and uncovered their very first adventure. It was not B1 as they previously thought, but rather a visit to the Village of Hommlet where they met a cleric who wanted to know if they were adventurers like her.

We got about half-way through the Moathouse and the conspiracy theories are running rampant now.  The boys have pieced together every little detail they remember, including many I forgot!


For example, one character, who dropped out early on, is brought up.  "Where is Cynder?" refers to an elven elemental fire wizard that just stopped going with the group.  We totally forgot about her, well at least I did, until yesterday.

So far they have tied Lolth, Yeenoghu and Orcus together.  They remember the Tome of Strahd had a partial spell to block out the sun.  They remembered clues from when they went to Halfway.

For investigating the adventureI took some cues from the novelization of the "Temple of Elemental Evil" and had a goblin raid on the town and a fire at Rufus' and Burne's tower.  They never really engaged with Elmo, so I dropped him.

Frogs. With dirty little lips...
They battled the giant frogs, like everyone does.  They learned quickly that Basic D&D is much more deadly than D&D3 or 5.



Personally, I thought it was a blast.  Tables and charts that used to be second nature to me are now less familiar, but thanks to +Richard LeBlanc's GM screen and packet it was a breeze.
I will say it is one of the best GM's Screens I have used in a long time.  Much more useful than the D&D5 screen and on par with the AD&D1 screen.

Some things still need to happen.
- Aleena has to die. Sorry, but fixed point in time.
- Their memories need to be erased of this event.
- Cynder needs to disappear.
- The warlock, Croulie (that's how he spells it) also needs to be kidnapped by gnolls.  That one is easy.
- They still need to meet up Lareth and Bargel.  Lareth can be killed, Bargel is going to get away.
- Discover more about the "Elemental Eyes".

This is going to be great!

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Back to Basics

So today this is happening.


The Council of Greyhawk is meeting to discuss the emergency of the Sun going out.  But in the process, Lady Ironwolf accuses the PCs of causing the death of her cousin Aleena and opening the Temple of Elemental Evil!  The PCs (and the Players!) have no memory of this.

What happened? How does it relate to the current crisis?

Won't know till later today!

Special shout out to +Richard LeBlanc.  His GM screen and sheets will get much use today.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Next Stop, The Temple of Elemental Evil

For the next phase of the Come Endless Darkness campaign, I am going to do a flashback episode.  I am taking the characters all back to first level, or more to the point 0 level, and they are going to meet for the "first" time in Hommlet.



Here they are going to meet other adventurers such as Morgan Ironwolf, Rufus, Burne, and Aleena.  I might even throw in Emirikol the Chaotic just for fun.

Why go back and do this?  Well, I wanted to run Temple of Elemental Evil now for a while.  But T1 Village of Hommlet is for brand new characters.  I also have been dying to do some Basic D&D again.  I have picked up all this really cool Basic-era related stuff lately and I think it would be a blast.

So this flashback episode will serve to introduce the party, give them a reason to be together, and uncover the reason why they had forgotten it to start with.

I am going to throw this out there, but despite my own personal objections to the women-in-refrigerators like plot device,  I am still going to kill Aleena.  Partly because I want to later use The Shrine of St. Aleena, but also because of my stated goal of giving my kids a full D&D experience.

Though I also admit I have always wanted to run a game called "They Keep Killing Aleena" as a time-travel adventure.


Tuesday, May 24, 2016

On this day the Slave Lords have been defeated!

Over the weekend the boys escaped the Dungeons of the Slave Lords and started a revolt in the city of Sudderham to defeat the Slave Lords.  They managed to kill them all including the leader Stalman Klim.


I decided that Klim was not a cleric of the Earth Dragon cult, instead, I made a more tangible connection to the Elder Elemental Eye.  Yeah I could go all convoluted with the connections and cover cults and fronts, but really the boys have enough details to juggle.

On the Water Dragon on their way back to the Duchy of Urnst I hit them with the big plot point.  The Sun just went out.

In typical fashion, my youngest announces that someone is killing Sun Gods.

While they were unconscious in the Dungeons I told them they had a flash back to an adventure very early in their careers, and one they don't remember.

So for the next adventure, I am going make 0-level B/X Basic versions of their current 7th level D&D 5 characters and take them through T1 The Village of Hommlet.

I was going to do this using 4e, but a few things have happened recently that have made me really want to do this as Basic D&D.  Plus this is a flashback to when the characters were "younger" so a simpler system is really what I want to give it that right feel.

Any XP they get in Hommlet I am going to give to their 7th level characters.  Afterall, if they just now remembered the adventure that could not have had any advantages from the XP till now.

Also, the nice thing here is I am going to take advantage of D&D Basic's features as features (and not as I thought of them then as bugs).  So the sorcerer and the warlock are going to be Magic-Users. The elven ranger will be an Elf.  The Paladin will be a Fighter and so on.  The only sticking point is the Dragonborn.  I think he will be a Dragonborn.  Just like a Dwarven fighter would be a Dwarf. So yes I am going to use Race-as-Class for this.

I also got all my B/X GM's Screen stuff in the mail yesterday from +Richard LeBlanc so Basic is on my mind.  More on that though in another post.

The Sun is gone. The Order of the Platinum Dragon has a lost memory to recover.  And now they hear of giants coming down from the hills to brazenly attack villages...

Monday, May 2, 2016

Weekend Gaming: Against the Slave Lords!

The Order of the Platinum Dragon made it to the throne room of the slave lords and encountered the first five.


The battle was fierce with many HP lost on both sides.
I did notice that in some cases the Playtest version of Next has slightly different monster stats than the final version of 5e.  I have used both more or less interchangeably.

Sadly the heroes were all knocked unconscious and awoke in a deep, dark dungeon with no weapons, gear or armor.   Adventure A4 begins next!

Of course while they were unconscious they had more dreams.
I am using dream sequences and flashback to give them tidbits of information about what is going on in the world or the past.  I am going with the old adage that it is better to show and not tell.  Each different dream sequence or flashback I use a different version of *D&D.  The next one uses AD&D 1st Ed for a trip back 30+ years ago (natch).



I have used Basic already and even have one planned using 4th ed D&D.

I have my summer gaming mapped out.  This is going to be epic!

Monday, February 1, 2016

The Order vs. the Slavers Stockade and introduction of the Drow

Over the weekend the Order of the Platinum Dragon completed the Secret of the Slavers Stockade.

The managed to kill all but one of the Slave Lords in the stockade, freed 140 slaves including a Tiefling Warlock name Crowley who is staying with the Order.
The Rogue discovered two short swords of sharpness and quickly named them 'Snicker' and 'Snack'.

The Order enters the torture room

The order was leading the slaves out when they encountered the brainwashed Markessa's double, whom they also saved.  As they were leaving a group of Drow leading 20 more slaves in.  In typical fashion my youngest made a called shot (I am aiming for her eyes) and rolled a natural 20.  Solid.

They are now spending some time returning some of the Slaves to their homes in the Duchy of Urnst.  They left Highport and are travelling by ship up the Wooly Bay following the river in.  This gives me a chance to get them used to this area of the world, including Greyhawk, AND a a chance for the Slavers to recover a bit more to be ready for them.

All in all a great time this weekend.  No one leveled up, but the treasure was nice.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Weekend Gaming

The Order of the Platinum Dragon picked up a new character this weekend.  Crowley, a tiefling warlock had been captured by the Slavers in A1, he decided to stay with the group as they journeyed up the Drachenslab hills to A2.

So far the Order has done well. They have killed Markessa and are about to encounter the Ogre Mage.

The maps from the new Against the Slave Lords PDF came in very handy!


They have all already looted close to 50,000gp worth.  I might need to adjust the treasure for future modules.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Slavers Defeated!

Last night the Order of the Platinum Dragon crushed the gnolls working in Slave Pits of the Undercity and defeated the slavers!  The slaves were freed, including some orcs which vowed to help the PCs when and if they could.  Detailed maps were discovered and the group is off to stop an even larger threat.

We finished module A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity last night.  I ran it under 5th Edition and made a lot of tweaks along the way.  While I felt the players had an easy of a time when going through Castle Amber, I made som changes in how monsters were dealt with and felt that last's night session was much more balanced.  Plus a lot of great things went on.
I used gnolls instead of orcs.  In truth I am tired of orcs and wanted something new.  So I used a lot of material from +James Mishler's Hercynian Grimoire #1.  I included his Gnoles, werehyenas, and even a gnoll assassin and a gnoll witch. It made for a lot of fun.
Since I am also tying in more to the Out of Abyss adventures I included some gnoll demonic adepts which was great fun.  I took the old adage that the campaign is written by the paranoia of the players my oldest son decided that these demonic-gnolls must mean that ultimately demons are in control of the slavers.  Sure. Let's go with that!

To really have some fun since there were ghouls in this adventure I added a Thoul enforcer.  Now back in the day I always thought thouls were part ghoul, part troll and part gnoll, forgeting all about hobgoblin.  So I decided I would honor my 35+ year-old mistake and have a thoul in my game that was decidedly gnoll in heritage.  If you never played Basic/Expert D&D then you might not know the thoul.  Well here is the man himself, Perdustin over at Thoul's Paradise to educate us on what is a thoul.  Mine was a little different than the one in the BECM(I) Rules Cyclopedia.
Thankfully I found this great tool that helps create a D&D5 style monster stat block.
http://thegeniusinc.com/dd-monster-maker-download/

I can build monsters all day!

The characters are on their way to the Slaver's Stockade (A2) but along the way they are going hit our "Christmas Special" and have to deal with Krampus!  Hey since I have the software open...
Here is Krampus.



Can't wait to tell you all about it!

Monday, November 16, 2015

Kid's Games

I totally missed Friday Night Videos the other night.  Sorry. Insane day at work. I didn't even know about Paris till I got home Friday night.

OneBookshelf is running their annual "Teach your Kids to Game Week" with lots of sales on introductory material for kids.


While I totally applaud such efforts, I think back to how I learned and how I taught my own kids and we all started with D&D.

In fact my oldest son has been playing for close to 11 years now.  He is still playing his first character in our Dragonslayers game.  We began the game in early 2005 with "The Cave of the Stinky Goblin" and now have a host of epic-level bad asses.

This weekend we even took some time to play the children of the Dragonslayers, the Order of the Platinum Dragon in the next part of the Slaver's series.  The big "reveal" is coming soon and I can't wait to spring it on my players.

Monday, November 9, 2015

Attack on the Slave Lords!

While searching for a ship that will take them home the Order of the Platinum Dragon discovers that  there has been an increase in the slaving activity to the north.  They decided to put a stop to it.

The first half of A1 went very well.  The characters discovered a lone cart from a caravan with slaves.  A few well-placed sleep spells and a few more well-placed arrows and the slavers were dealt with and the slaves freed.  An illusion later the party, with a couple of freed slaves looking for revenge manage to get into the north entrance.  So now they have an orc helping them.


Things went rather well so far.  The cleaned up much of the upper temple and have now dealt with the apis and the giant ants.

I did replace the orcs and half-orcs with gnolls and gnoles, respectively from the Hercynian Grimoire #1.  Replacing Gruumsh with Yeenoghu was an easy swap.  It also allowed me to play up the whole "demon" aspect since Gruumsh is considered a god and not a demon.

The high priestess in the chapel on the first level was also turned into a were-hyena witch.

Can't wait to see what the next session brings me!

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Assault on the Slave Lords

Things are heating up for the Order of the Platinum Dragon this weekend.  They have been dropped into some unknown part of the world after they left Barovia.

While trying to charter a boat they hear some rumors of a group of slavers.

I went through this series years ago myself, so I am really looking forward to running it.  I think I still have a thief that was trapped in the basilisk room.
Of course I am going to make some changes to these adventures. The Slavers themselves are working for a group of vampires.  One or more of them are vampires themselves in fact. Not sure who though.

Also, I am going to replace some of the orcs with gnolls. I am planning on incorporating some more gnoll themes in the Slavers series. I am replacing Gruumsh with Yeenoghu and capitalizing on his role as "King of Ghouls" and "Vassal to Orcus". I am going to use a lot of the material in Hercynian Grimoire #1 from +James Mishler too.  It's just too good NOT to use.

I am also considering throwing in thouls just for the fun of it.

Here are some other postings on this module. Always interesting to read what others have experienced.
http://www.metagamemastery.com/2011/09/26/annotated-a1-slave-pits-of-the-undercity/
http://www.thedelversdungeon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=227
http://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/2012/02/re-imagining-slave-pits-of-undercity.html
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/11/retrospective-slave-pits-of-undercity.html
http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/search/label/a1-4
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/12/review-a1-4-scourge-of-slave-lords.html

Edited to Add, Peter's detail into each adventure.
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/10/review-a1-slave-pits-of-undercity.html
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/10/review-a2-secret-of-slavers-stockade.html
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/10/review-a3-assault-on-aerie-of-slave.html
http://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/2014/11/review-a4-in-dungeons-of-slave-lords.html