I had my first player death this week. May there be many more.
Ech. I've yet to experience that outside a oneshot yet.
I've had a good few sessions lately, though I still suffer from chronic under-preparation syndrome for the specific session notes.
I seem to only get into my writing mojo when there's a strict time limit, though it's good I otherwise know the setting.
I actually for the first time ever managed to make a complete battlemap pre-session, using expendable grid paper.
A lot of my dungeon maps are actually just repurposed cool shit I find on the internet, and it's great to be able to actually show the players pictures to help them visualize.
So for this battle, I could have my players look at this image:
And then have them battle on this grid drawn with permanent marker:
I added several props on top of it as well.
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So my players managed to sneak their way to and steal the Mcguffin, disabling the newly found superweapon of the pirate baddies.
They didn't quite manage to pull off the stealthy attack they wished, and ended up immediately alerting the
entire lair once battle did break out, causing combat to become a rush before the lair could descend on them.
Some well placed thunder spells let them jam the thick steel doors long enough to make away with the McGuffin, though they almost had the dang thing
fire off in the process, which would have vaporized them instantly just by being in the unprotected
vicinity of it
(and would maybe have wiped half the town below off the map, and having the other half catch on fire). Even grabbing the pulsing crystal container required a dex check to see if the sorcerer would be able to grab it while the pulse was on the low.
(at the start of this campaign, a similar McGuffin almost one-shotted the sorcerer because he grabbed two of them at once without regard for their pulse rythm)
Then there was an extremely hectic chase as the right hand woman of the arc's BBEG was among the first to breach the chamber(and they were tapped for most their spells, and generally wounded), and I kept a very frantic narration pace as they were running through corridors, and I was constantly pressuring them for what they would do next to sabotage pursuit.
When they finally reached the top, there was a mad dash for the nearby forest, athletics checks all around, baddie hot on their heels.
Yeah like that.
As they entered the forest, baddie used a 300-foot range screech ability to try to paralyze them for a round. Half the party failed and fell to the ground, but the other half managed to lift them away before
Evard's Black Tentacles was used on the exact same spot they fell just moments before.
Had they failed this very last challenge, they would have been done for, but they got away and are at the moment safe from immediate pursuit while dashing through the forest,
though not for long...
I'm basically going to have the pirates
burn the dry forest down after them next session. They'll reason the Mcguffin can handle the heat easily and can then simply be found afterwards.
The party will be hounded by fleeing beasts, and when they try to find rest there will be scouting parties out and about.
And the abandoned farm to the west of the forest, which the town's resistance folk pointed out as a hiding place, will have some unexpected inhabitants as well...
Let's see how the party deals with
that!
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One of my players implied he might buy the
Dwarvenforge starter map tile set, even though he doesn't DM.
I, of course, would be allowed to play around with it.
