Posts
Standard Introduction
I have been
writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course
of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge. As I have done those a couple times before it
seemed remiss not to jump on this one.
If you want
here is a link to my 30-day
challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day
challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day
challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).
Day 30- Best Game Running Instance
I talked
about a group of players that managed to go the distance on an especially long
campaign with me and there was ultimately a long and cohesive story that got weaved
thru the game. This allowed me to build
up to 2 “Season Finale” episodes and 1 “Series Finale”.
The season
finales revolved around a cloaked figure that had gathered together forces of
giant spiders, jackal men, yugoloths, gnolls, and mummies into a semi-workable
(though multi-level challenging, and that is the important part) battle force.
The first
season finale involved the players rushing in with a cadre of mercenaries and
managing to take down a gaggle of monsters. The hooded figure managed to escape and killed
the party’s monk on the way out (the monk got better). The cloaked figure getting away with a
mysterious item which it had just unearthed from a broken fountain. This all took place in an abandoned castle in
the middle of a haunted wood. Because
spooky.
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| I evoked some Hastur the Unspeakable imagery. |
The second
season finale was the final defeat of the cloaked figure, the revelation of the
item he had taken (along with several identical items the players had found),
and it all took place in a gladiatorial arena and involved the players teaming
up with a small Justice League of other heroes from around the continent who
had shown up to compete in a massive fighting tournament “Street Fighter” style. The monk by this point had gained the ability
to channel positive energy and the cloaked figure was pulverized into undead
mash rather quickly.
The Series Finale
The Series
Finale is the one I especially liked.
Because that dealt with what the cloaked figure had been scared of and
was gathering power to try and oppose. An
alien invasion. This had been set up,
with strange lights in the sky being reported (scouts), damage to various
fields and forests (crop circles), and visions by PC allied spellcasters. It was a big looming threat that the PC’s had
time to prepare for, and they drew upon the considerable resources they had
tapped during their adventures.
During the
length of the campaign the PC’s had found several things that they thought
might be able to help solve an alien invasion.
Giant Pilotable Monsters.
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| BWAAAAAAH! |
First thing
for battling aliens was a dead god of undersea monsters (C’Thulhu in all but
name) whose brain they pulled out and replaced with a control room (they were
friends with a mad scientist). Finding
the giant monster concluded a different quest chain that involved an
archeological Easter egg hunt (I actually talked about it briefly in a
different blog). Acquiring this monster
was a mid-season finale.
Second, was
the giant Clock Tower built by the campaign’s warforged to be a super computer,
one able to figure out the meaning of life (a reference to Deep Thought from “The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) and was then modified with a stolen alien
power core (called “Star Hearts”) to transform into a giant robot to serve as
the new god of Warforged and gifting them all with souls. This too had been set up, as the warforged
leadership had asked the players to retrieve or protect some key components and
texts they needed to write the robot’s “software”.
Third, and
lastly, a group of wizards led by the party’s Druid managed to fall into a
pocket dimension that was the extradimensional prison turned tomb of Oberon,
lord of all fey. After centuries cut off
from the natural world Oberon was now nothing more than a nature spirit, but he
was still a conduit for the natural mana that flowed thru the world. The group rescued his soul from the extradimensional
prison. So freed, Oberon became an
Awesome Sized Elemental switching between Fire/Water/Earth/Air (I would have
had giant Animal/Plant forms too but ran out of time before the game). This was actually a call back to the PC’s
first adventure, being trapped in a game left over from Oberon’s abandoned
summer palace (this was also the Player’s first ever adventure which I used to
introduce them to the game).
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| I can't draw, so enjoy this art from a variety of sources that kind of work for what I am talking about. Source 1, Source 2, Source 3 |
I wanted to
tie in as many previous adventures together as I could so that the adventure
could serve as a culmination rather than just a stopping point. Ultimately the
event came, a dozen tripods landed with energy beams and the players each
piloted one of the monsters. The Ranger
took the Dead God (Chaotic Neutral), the Druid merged with the Giant Elemental
God (True Neutral), and the Monk channeled and controlled positive energy to
pilot the Giant Robot God (Lawful Neutral).
It was a Kaiju versus Tripods Final battle for the fate of the planet.
What was
more, once the players won, it was revealed that all over the world the gods
and higher being of the world had been pulling out weapons and kaiju to fight
the invasion. A two-headed star dragon
helped the Monk’s giant Robot fly into orbit and take out the fleet of ground
troops that was poised to begin landing.
The fact that the gods played out so many of their resources became a
plot point in the sequel campaign.
Also in the
sequel campaign, the players new characters found an area in which the tripod
landing was successful and had to help a resistance movement wake up the
defeated kaiju that had previously failed to stop the invasion doing their best
to hit the unshielded and resting aliens.
My Games
get pretty fucking weird sometimes. But
I feel that the weirdness is earned and enjoyed.
Coming Tomorrow
Tomorrow I
am going to talk about this 30-day blog challenge of which this is the last
actual entry. I will show you the original prompts and list all of the entries so
that if you want to do your own, you’ll be able to.
I am definitely
gonna need some time off writing DnD after this.
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