Settling into a good stride

It had been two weeks since I had last run the Friday night game, Sam had filled in last week, setting up a story arc where the player characters had a mission to go get the heart of a black slaad in order to for the wizard Lan to complete a ritual to retrieve the soul of former team mate, Cobalt Greymind.. from what he said and the feedback from the rest of the group, he did a great job.
Returning to Silverymoon for a few days of R&R and shopping, the players decided to put some long term goals into motion, so Gyrax Starscream the Genasi warrior thought that buying a plot of land in the city and building a place where all the Genasi could live and feel at home would be great.. it so happened that there was lots of cheap land, due to the spell plague demolishing some of the magical libraries and institutions, and the lingering magical contamination left the land drastically reduced in demand (and value).. he has purchased a large chunk of city property for the paltry sum of 80,000 gold, and contracted a local Earth Genasi artisan and elementalist to construct the land and building complex for 250,000 gold.
Of course, it is a golden opportunity for me to make this the seed of a couple of adventures.

The Ranger/Rogue, Arno, has decided that he wants to build an Ophanage for the city rascals, to get them off the streets and teach them some skills.. he has, interestingly, heavily involved the local dominant church and it's impressive militia of Paladins, who are only too happy to have so many young minds and souls to guide to a lifetime of rightious service.

Don is very tempted by the lure of the new Psion class, and I am certainly not discouraging him from giving it a whirl.. as I said to him "Hey man, I am all about trying out the new stuff!".
However, he is quite fond of his Warden and wants to stick with it.
I like Wardens, they are quite a challenge for a DM, and having another player who has a multiclass Shaman/Druid? Yes, very challenging indeed!

Anyway, things could not stay calm and peacefull for long, and pretty soon, evil was afoot.
Looking through the Forgotten Realms guide, I saw that it was time to change the season to Spring, so I invented the Blossum Festival and had the elves of the city (along with many drunken revellers) march in a magical parade out to the White Lotus Academy (which is far more impressive in my campaign than the little compound seen in Dragon magazine), playing flutes and harps and singing elven song enchantments that caused the wilderness around them to burst into bloom.
As they got to the academy, the expected welcoming display of pyrotechnics and symbolic rain of white lotus blossums, failed to eventuate.. in fact, the academy was forboding and silent.
Something was wrong!
And of course, it was up to the players to investigate.

Approaching the walls of the academy, they spotted some Flameskulls floating along the crenelated tops, some 30 feet in the air, and decided to try getting some answers from them.. this did not go so well, with the Skulls basically telling the snivelling mortals that they were not to try and enter or bad things would ensue.
Meanwhile, the Ro- uh.. the Ranger decided to scale the wall, sneak a look into the academy and find out what other ways in there were..
He did see that there was a circit patrol of Rock Elementals, who were marching through a series of magical circles which made odd noises.. rising in pitch until an elemental passed through, which seemed to reset the tone, which started to rise again.
The players immediately realised that delaying the Elementals would set off some sort of effect from the circles, and gave me filty looks of respect for my cunning deviousness.

The Ranger Arno decided on a more direct approach, and cut the heavy rope which supported the drawbridge style main gate, unwittingly dropping it right on top of the Dwarven warden.. Don took it with good humor, of course, but I thought it was hilarious.
Another case of "When good stealth goes wrong".

The players charged in, the Skulls took up good positions from 30 ft up, and battle was done.. unfortunately, the skulls had no idea there was a deadly ranger on a level with them up on top of the wall, but, they gave the players a good fight before they met their doom.

Next, the players raced across the open ground beyond the gateway, and managed to scale a magical rope to an open landing up a wall before more Flameskulls or the patrolling Elementals arrived.. it was a close call with the defender Gyrax however, who just managed to avoid getting into a fight with the elemental.

I managed to build a bit of urgency and tension in the game by telling the players at each stage, how many rounds they had before the next lot of bad guys would arrive, and I kept this up the entire way through the game, so they were going from encounter to encounter, but only slipped out of round by round action a couple of times the entire way through the adventure.
At first, it was Avoid the Elemental Patrol, then it was Get inside before the Flameskulls Arrive, followed by, Something is Crawling up out of The Pit of Shadows... you get the idea.

A lot happened in this game, but for the players, it was like one big skirmish and race to rescue to hostages.. exactly what I had in mind.

Inside the complex, they investigates a few hexagonal rooms.. one had a Pit, the other had a Summoning circle. and there was a hallway that looked like an obvious trap.. each doorway was activated by a password, and the main door into the complex was trapped with a lighting bolt that hit anyone who touched it.. tricky when trying to keep the thing closed from the inside as Flameskulls try to get in.

What followed was an amusing pot shot battle with undead who were crawling up the pit shaft out of a portal to the Shadowfell down below.. which at one point, the Shaman/Druid fell into..
There was also the arrival of a summoner bad guy and his two undead goons, who put up quite a fight, but in the end, the players managed to win the day and rescue a bunch of hostage wizards, escaping magically back to Silverymoon.

But, they still have no idea who or what has taken over the Academy, other than an idea that it started at the abandoned Halls of Necromancy.

We shall see how things evolve next week...

All the bells and whistles

After a very lack luster game on one Friday, and some feedback from the players, I finally managed to pull together a great many of the things I have learned about the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and the results were quite good.
We were one player short on the night, and as that player happened to be the one who quite often had to work the next morning, we were suddenly free to play as long as the game required.
This ended up being a game which ran from 7.30pm to around 4.30am.. I still can't believe we did that at our ripe old ages..
The game featured a hasty mission into the mysterious chambers beneath the Dwarven city of Sundabar.. ostensibly on a rescue mission for the dwarven king, who's son was off looking for a cure for the deathless plague which the city is suffering from.
The players got their gear together, found an entrance to the city beneath the Cathedral of Moradin, and soon found themselves facing some of the unexpected elements I had thrown together for the evening.
First off, a puzzle.. quite an odd riddle was asked of them by a bunch of ancient guardians..
'What is family, what is face, what is pride of the dwarven race?'
It stumped them.
The answer was 'beard'.
They then got into a scrap with the guardians, but quickly discovered that they were way more powerfull than their opponents, so they finished them all off very quickly, and were in a good mood..
Innovation number one for the evening.. I gave them hordes of mooks to obliterate.
Next up, they had some doors to get through, and decided they would leave them propped open, thus avoiding any need for levers and such later on, though at the time, they had no idea what a great idea they had just had.
Innovation number two.. let players foil your evil schemes.
Next, they discovered that there were demons in the premises, and once more, they were pretty punu examples of their wretched kind.. The wizard of the group managed to do a devastating attack, literally pasting the demons in mid air, resulting in a slick rain of demon goo from above as they figured a way across some odd rooms full of narrow paths, sickening drops into dark waters below and some chains hanging from the roof (some real, some illusionary).
I totally expected the players to just use their flying carpet to get across, but they didn't, they prefered to do it the old fashioned way, just because it was more fun to use their skills.
What followed were more rooms and more fun, somewhat underpowered fights with creatures that were interesting, but not much of a challenge.. it did allow the players to all have fun with their abilities and resulted in quite a few laughs.
For instance, we all refer to Dimensional Marauders as "Warp Chickens" now.
The final encounter started when I would normally be winding the game up with a 'to be continued'.. but we decided to play on.
It featured the following..
An already open portal wall to the Abyss, which periodically spat our more demons.
A Yochlol demon who seemed to be in charge.
A glowing magical crystal hovering above a round shaft in the middle of the room, the crystal being the obvious source of power for the rift into the Abyss. (and yes, we made lots of Dark Crystal jokes)
There were two big Neldrazu demons, a bunch of Rupture demons (which lasted to the very end of the encounter, much to my surprise) and a small army of Dretchs.
The Dwarven King's son was there, manacled to the wall, and the manacles were a trap version I had included in a couple of places on the complex before the players got to this room, so they would know how to deal wth them before the fight started.
During the fight, they had some Gnaw demons show up, as well as some Bloodseep demons.
In the end, it was a combination of defeating the boss monster and destroying the crystal that closed the portal and ended the fight, and by that time, we were all completely frazzed.. Thank goodness for my method of keeping track of monster hit points and conditions on printed copies of their monster manual entries, otherwise that combat would have been a real mess.
But, the players absolutely loved it!
They greatly enjoyed fighting creatures that could not hope to match them, and they really liked the combinations of odd enviroments, terrain hurdles that were mildly challenging, but mostly just interesting to imagine.. and creatures that were pesky, not particularly deadly.
The final fight was great because at the start, there was an actual horde of bad guys.. they were facing ten Dretches, four Ruptures, two Neldrazu and a shape shifting Yochlol.. that is fairly intimidating.. but they charged in anyway.
They were heroic, they were epic, it was a clear case of good guys vs bad guys, and they got to rescue a prince!
What's not to like about that?

I consider it one of my best ever game nights.