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We had a great night of food, friends, and gaming, as usual fueled by the efforts of all, including delicious Thai roast chicken and pork shish kebabs (spell check says I might mean shipboards). The chicken was spiced with an alternative to curry. I didn’t catch the name but it was very good, having much of the same flavor but milder. The pork when finished was as red and hot as a red dwarf star, but painfully delectable. There were also these strange stuffed grape or olive leaves that tasted really, really good, but every person who had one asked at least once what was in them, and despite reading the ingredients, were none the wiser. Marjoram? Shannon has been known to bring odd foods to the table, such as alligator meat, so it is always enlightening to check the ingredients whenever possible. Great dinner.
We had a new player this week, who has some experience with D&D. Despite being a nerd of many years, he only learned 4th edition last year, and taught himself to dm for his group of friends. Playing as the rogue, his character was every bit the rogue. At the end of the night, we were all talking and some one asked him how it was and he obviously had had a great time (just sitting next to whom he was sitting next to I’m sure contributed) but when I asked how he and I compared as dms, he was speechless for at least five minutes, with a sort of glassy look. Finally he said I was much more relaxed. Heh.
I believe he meant that as a compliment, and the evening of play was very consistent with my style of play. We play a very light-hearted game (with occasional short sudden bouts of serious business) and I am a joker by nature, so I can’t help but be as funny as “I can be while dming. Not that I am actually funny, mind, it is just my efforts at humor. The table is also a big mess. Not wanting to draw anything, I decided that with this dungeon crawl, I would use dungeon tiles. This meant that corridors ended up going up and over people’s plates, around a candle, or salt shaker, and often rotated in completely non-euclidian ways. Miniatures were scattered more often by kittens than by stone golems.
I often go into exposition mode and am willing to distort the adventure for the purpose of expanding upon theoretical or philosophical ideas. For instance, I learned this week that the heat density of the universe is lopsided as shown by the cosmic background radiation. The universe is 10 per cent brighter on one side (and there’s a huge cold spot.) This could be linked to patterns in existence before the big bang, since the CMB is supposed to represent the shape of the universe a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang, when the universe was smaller than a single particle. I theorize that this lends credence to the theory of a multiverse, and that the patterns imprinted upon our newborn universe are the latent patterns of the universe from which ours spawned. It seems obvious.
I used this theory of the multiverse to illustrate my point, and even more importantly, to justify why famous characters from across campaigns and editions and levels have all gathered together to go down into a cave. The real reason is that I wanted to playtest the 3/20/13 release of “D&D Next” and one of the included adventures required 10th level characters. Added to this, everyone in the group seemed ready to get back to D&D after four months of modern zombie survival horror. It was a surprise for them to have all their favorite characters converted into 10th level versions for the new playtest. It was an instant success.
Why would all these heroes from different epochs gather together suddenly? Well a small figure in a red robe appeared. He told them he was the master of the dungeon which stood before them, and he explained that all their past lives were nothing more than preparation for this moment. They had only a few hours to break into yonder tomb, and destroy the slumbering corpse of a powerful mud lord and all her minions. Her tomb was in an extra-dimensional space that threatened to break off into a new universe with her mad mud magics, and thereby destroy this reality in the process. Better get a move on!
So that was the set up. They went into a natural cavern, and almost got stumped by the block of granite sealing the entrance to the tomb. For a moment it looked like it might be over before it even started. All the heroes of the ages stood around shrugging, wondering if maybe there might be something better on the other side of the gray mist.
OK, long story short, they went in, ignored the long pools and then the half orc dove into the square pool to retrieve a key the druid had spotted. In the room of tears, they bottled up a vial of acidic tears and found the secret door, then proceeded to get pummeled by stone golems. We had to turn that statue about 150 times as the characters used that room as their hub while exploring all the way to the purple coffin. Poor Cadence the wise stripped off her lucky charm to make room for the new shiny necklace of choke-you-till-your-dead.
It was getting gruesome. she stood there gripping her neck looking hopeless while the party debated what to do. The wizard I mean ranger had the greatest idea. put her in the coffin, cast water breathing on her, which gives gills, and then create water to fill the casket. Or cast polymorph to turn her into a creature with no neck. (I ruled that would not work as the magic item would transfer with all her other items.) Then the rogue remembered the vial of baby-tears acid, which I ruled worked on the necklace because hey magic baby tears. And because it was the best of the three ideas they came up with, but it was a hard call. i would have loved to see the party toting around my wife in a casket full of water all night, heh. In true role playing spirit, she barely said a word during the whole episode. Come to think of it, she might not have talked to me for awhile after that.
(In the module, nothing short of a wish, or a few specific spells could reverse the affect of the necklace. I always like to see the wacky plans my players concoct, things that Abbott and Costello might come up with when they are drunk, and that is how they usually solve things. Crazy antics. It was not the only time that night the ranger used his create water spell. Im just sayin’…)
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
