LMoP: Ep. 1: Goblin Arrows

Ok, so I’m back in my old hometown, playing D&D with yet another new group of old friends. This time Ola, from our Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign way back in 2015, returns as we try out the introductory campaign “Lost Mines of Phandelver”. I’ve always heard good things about it, some people claiming that it is the best published adventure for 5th edition, so this was a welcome opportunity. Ola will be playing a barbarian. Playing alongside Ola is Erik, a Thunder Cleric and Caroline, a halfling rogue.

An angry Goblin with a club.

For our first outing, we wanted to get as much game time as possible, so all players chose a premade character from D&D:s website. They’re pretty good, you should check them out if you haven’t got the time to create characters. Each character gets pre-filled sheets with simplified rules for up to 10th level. If the players want to change characters later on it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, I’ll just insert them at the appropriate level.

Miniature Moment: The Villains of Elemental Evil

I promised myself two years ago that I would finish painting the miniatures from Temple of Elemental Evil, the board game. Now I have. Before moving on to other games, I'd like to show you how they turned out and tell you how I painted them. First up, the villains!

Swerglemergle, Arkashic Thunn and Velathidros convene.

Review: Lords of Waterdeep

Today, I’d like to talk about one of my favourite board games, Lords of Waterdeep. Chances are, if you read this blog, you’ll have played it or at least read about it a couple of times already. However, I, being the… careful… thinker that I am, recently realised that it is a D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms, and thus should have a post on this very blog, dedicated to the altar of Ed Greenwood all things Forgotten Realms.

Players get to play one of the lords of said city and strive to manipulate their way to the most victory points in order to win the game. Victory points come primarily from completing quests. It’s not the lords work to complete quests, however, that is a job for the lowly adventurer. The lords send their agents, i.e. place their workers, to various parts of the city to recruit the adventurers. When they have enough adventurers and/or money, they can complete the quest and reap the rewards. Most quests award victory points and some give more long-term benefits.

Book review: Spellstorm, by Ed Greenwood

Spellstorm is an Ed Greenwood novel where the creator of the Forgotten Realms himself gets to enjoy sitting down with some of his most beloved characters and craft tales from his own, older, lore. The main character is Elminster, of course, but Greenwood brings out several archmages and locks them up in an old mansion, where they conspire and act out a story that almost reminds me of Agatha Christie's “And then there were none”. As such, the new installment in the Elminster saga differs quite a lot from the previous adventures and is a welcome addition to the Realms library.

I was quite late to Greenwood's literature, apart from RPG components, as the first novel I read by him was The Herald, the finishing part of the Sundering series. In that book, Greenwood describes the huge changes to the way magic works and feels in the now healed world. The magical confusion continues in Spellstorm, when the owner of the previous mentioned mansion claims that he has found the Lost Spell (I gather that this is a piece of old Realms lore), but that a magical Spellstorm has appeared, surrounding said estate. The storm threatens to rinse the mind of any wizard who enters it, but, of course, the cunning archmages find ways to get inside, only to be greeted by Elminster himself. The grand old wizard of the Forgotten Realms acts as a butler and adviser to the mansion lord and, since magic behaves wildly inside the Spellstorm, the archmages will have to convince the lord and Elminster who should have the rights to the Lost Spell. At least until they start murdering each other and the high fantasy novel turns into a mystery novel. Elminster's old retinue turns up, of course, and helps him on his new quest to find the murderer inside the mansion.

OotA: Ep. 3: Welcome to the Darklake

Last time, we left our two friends and their throng of NPC buddies right in the middle of the Oozing Temple dungeon. They had just decided to head into the main chamber after having discovered the water source that was slowly filling the dungeon.

Shuushar, the gentle fishman

The main chamber held what had once been a presumably beautiful fountain, with only the pool bit and half a statue left. Four indistinguishably shaped sculptures grazed as many alcoves. 

The characters decided to search the chamber and found a magical drow dagger and some coins under the dark water of the fountain pool. Victor's rogue, Schnicktick, decided to steal one of the sculptures, eagerly cheered on by Jimjar. He had just touched one of them when they all came to life and took new indistinguishable shapes as yet more Oozes!

OotA: Ep. 2: The Oozing Temple

Last week, me and my small current group found ourselves behind our coffee mugs yet again, ready to pick up our DnD action where we left it, two weeks ago. The group were in serious trouble, as two rivalling bands of demons had crashed the prison escape scene and started a minor air combat inside the large cave.

Jimjar, Deep Gnome Gambler

The drow captors were suddenly too busy to mind their prisoners, so the rather large group of prisoners decided to act, in the belief that this was the signal from the friendly drow who had let them out of their cage. They jumped down the waterfall and found themselves submerged in ice cold water. Soon afterward, a terrible shout echoed in their minds: ”Flesh for the Faceless Lord!”. It came from an Ooze, while it suddenly attacked Jimjar the scoundrel, by the shoreline.

OotA: Ep. 1: Prisoners of the Drow

Deep Gnome Rogue

Between life, work and, recently, parenting, I've had to pause our main campaign, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, as I don't have the time to travel to my old and trusted RPG group. However, last thursday, me and two of my more local friends got together for some coffee, applecake and the latest DnD campaign.