Hard story beats should be as follows.
* Only a small amount of time has passed from the previous session.
* Days
* A week
* Hours
* The threat makes itself known.
* Many skeletons outside the walls.
* People are suddenly getting sick.
* Sky suddenly turns red.
* Players learn a bit more about the problem.
* Scout how big the skeletons are.
* Name of the disease, potential cure.
* Tis the blood moon, monsters abound.
* Players deal with the problem.
* Find the source of skeletons, bust it up.
* Go find the medicine.
* Defend the town long enough.
* Congratulations, you need to move on.
* Adventuring plate gets a notch, go get educated.
* Spread this information throughout the land.
* The king wants to reward you, go to the capital.
I finally got around to setting up this ‘final’ session. Overall, lots of fun was had.
So in preparation I went over the whole XP budget for encounters. Five level five characters have a deadly XP budget of 2500 xp (500 xp per character). But there is a modifier for multiple monsters in a single encounter. If you have 15 or more, their xp cost is multiplied by four. So a cr 1/4 skeleton normally worth 50 xp is worth 200 xp in groups of 15 or more.
The session started a bit later than usual. People had real life commitments, but it wasn’t a big deal.
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Our first flashback time was with Crispin, who is still trying to call himself Thaddius. (Note to self, when their status is inspected by an ‘official’ have them questioned and interrogated about this ‘fake house’ they keep trying to make real.)
Their thing was to attempt to negotiate with Smith about getting some new armour made. They only had seven nibs to their name. So the assumption was that they would promise to perform some favour in the future.
Smith shut that down right quick. They reminded Crispin that they ‘don’t keep promises’ because Greta has been waiting months for him to get her window fixed (Something the player promised to do but forgot about). So he demanded payment up front.
Stymied, they visited Cutter instead and asked about getting a quarterstaff made along with some javelins. Cutter took him out into the woods, they cut down a tree, dragged it back, and said things were made.
Next up we had King. Their flashback was quite subdued. They just spent a few minutes talking with Greta. Keeping warm in the depths of winter. Greta kept trying to pry about the revealed backstory the player spoke about last session, but nothing new was uncovered.
Taro had their moment to shine. They continued to prove the saying of “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.” By heading out into the wilderness and searching for iron ore. Something they had done the previous three times.
They decided to check out the dungeon again though. They found it locked but spotted many bony foot prints outside. They attempted to track the footprints, rolled low, and just ended up back at the doorway again.
They then decided to spend two whole days watching it. I forced them to sit in silence for two minutes. As nothing happened. Their character ran out of supplies and returned to town.
Brother Elon was up next. They attempted to collect on the promise of nibs from a monthly tithe they did with Farmer Bill. Forgetting that farmer bill promised (and delivered) cheap/free grains to Greta. He asked Bill to spread the word on his behalf, got a half hearted agreement, then ate lunch/dinner with the farmer.
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Finally we return to Milo, the player who wasn’t able to attend last session. He decided to do a flashback for why his character wasn’t around. They choose a feat, shadowtouched I believe, and wanted to explore how that happened.
Stared at the stars, found an empty space where a constellation should have been, got sucked up into the shadow realm. Taro player made a YuGiOh reference.
There they escaped some shadow beings, got into a cave with some ‘regular’ denizens trying to escape. Concocted a plan to get to some glowing portal surrounded by shadow beings, then enacted the plan.
They got ‘touched’ as they were jumping through the portal. Shooting pain going up their leg. They appeared back on the snow months later. No one batted an eye about where they had gone.
This is where I forgot I did a thing in the main story. I interspersed the foreshadowing between bits. The glowing stone, summoning of skeletons, dungeon core being pushed up through the dungeon, that kind of thing.
So here at the end, I did a bit where I described the sounds and shapes of the dungeon core, that had been knocked off it’s pedestal. It starts pulsing. It summons a skeleton. It’s pulses, skeleton. Repeating the words in a rhythmic fashion. Ending on the words of wood splintering and a door bursting.
What I should have done, is that bit, but every time we switch between characters flashbacks, I would have done a little bit more of the dungeon skeleton summoning bit. Hindsight is 20 20 and all that.
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The ‘actual’ game begins. The group of five are sitting around the cup and crow inn just vibing as it were. They complain to each other about not getting metal armour and weapons. Same ol same ol thing.
So they all decide to visit the adventurers guild. See what’s up. Check on a quest or two if there is any.
Smith is outside shovelling snow. I’m attempting to keep the whole Smith is smitten by Julia from the guild story going. I don’t think anyone picked up on it, mostly because I didn’t force it the players. Milo does some shenanigans with the ‘shape water’ spell to shovel snow. I allowed it because a ‘modern human’ knows that snow is just frozen water.
They head on inside, talk to julia, Everett wanders in. Some tense words, insults are thrown around. Good stuff.
Everett leaves early, King follows them out. They wander in towards the centre of town where they encounter Tom, the guard, shouting about skeletons!
They rush to the north gate. Climb the wall and spot the forest chockablock full of skeletons. King rushes out to Cutters cabin. Makes a bunch of noise, attracts a few skeletons, Cutter gets out, Kind demolishes said skeletons. And stays out there to bash more.
There are a ‘multitude’ of skeletons out there.
A good method of saying ‘don’t do this’ to the players is to not give concrete numbers to things. A concrete number is a potential encounter they could fight through.
The other players rush out the door to ‘rescue’ King who is barbarian raging. Brother Elon uses their one Turn Undead ability to provide cover and allowing them to escape back to the wall.
Side note, the player decided to share a song “Skeleton Man” by The Axis of Awesome. I know this song well, it’s great. So great that I just stopped to listen to it. As such I said the normal ability, which lasts one minute, lasted longer. Because this song ‘stunned’ the DM.
Everett gets the rest of his team. They start throwing abilities and fireballs into the horde outside the wall. Holding the line as it were.
The group heads to the adventuring guild. Talk with the guildmaster ‘what should we do?’ They get the advice to ‘find what’s causing the skeletons to be spawned.’ and finally decide on a course of action.
One player suggest ‘straight up through the middle’ which is just attempt to plow through the sea of skeletons. They get talked down, and the group leaves out the east gate and heads north into the forest.
The group trudges through the forest in search of the dungeon core.
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Here is where the rest of the evening happens. I decided on three combat encounters ‘in the forest’
Encounter 1: 17 skeletons in a somewhat random shaped forest. Mostly just testing how they handle large groups of enemies. I highly suggest doing the 4e “mook” rules where all the small skeletons have a shared health pool. And every time you do X amount of damage, remove a model from the field.
But in reality, I just sorta hand waved damage above like 7 as taking out one, and numbers like 12 removing two. Just ‘what felt right’ based on the numbers they told me.
Encounter 2: two ‘big’ skeletons (Skeleton Minotaurs) and like ten regular skeletons. The two big ones I tracked their HP normally.
Fun thing. Crispin complained about not rolling initiative for every monster. So in this one I did. And let me tell you dear reader. It was with pure delight that I told him, big skeleton 1 got 20, big skeleton 2 got 20, and the small skeletons got 18 plus 2 for 20.
These first two encounters were mostly for getting a feel for how the group could handle the fights. Were they losing too much HP, using too many abilities? Just getting a feel for what they could do as a lead up for the final encounter.
Encounter 3: two ‘big’ skeletons again, 13 regular skeletons, and the dungeon core.
The fight went well, they screwed around near the beginning of the fight, so I displayed the dungeon core summoning another skeleton, and they started the fight in earnest then.
Fight went ‘great’. Lots of people got hurt, skeletons got smashed, and it was really down to the wire. Everyone had used every ability and spell they could. Maybe two spell level 1’s among the three casters in the group.
The ‘fun’ mechanic was that the dungeon core was still summoning regular skeletons every round. I assigned the core 100 HP, sorta. When it had taken 13 damage, it started summoning two skeletons every round. 26 hp, three, 39 four. And I stopped there at four per round. I figured that was what they could safely deal with on average.
When the dungeon core had take 100 HP worth of damage, I waited for a ‘big hit’ to finish it off. And I think that if the combat had gone a single round longer, things would have been bad for the players. So it all worked out!
This is essentially where the night ended. I was tired, everyone was tired, it was like midnight. We had been playing for six to seven hours give or take. I forgot to make note of the time.
Party split. One group returned the dungeon core back to the dungeon. Neat description about the walls that were filled with scrapes. The path the core took on the way out.
The walls held and when they walked back they found it much battered, but still standing. Everett, Nelly, and Gary were super tired.
The briefest of epilogues where the guildmaster gives them rank 2 on their adventuring plate and kicks them out the door saying “go to gildmoore and get your rank 3 training at school”
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Overall, I enjoyed running this game for my friends. But at the moment, we return to another DM’s game. One that’s more ‘traditional’ D&D.