schneefink

D&D session 25(!), and it's also been over half a year. Wow. Not much longer though – they now have an in-game two day deadline (though they're not aware yet of how serious it is) so it can't go on for that much longer. (I think…)

The Bunny Cave side-quest ended up lasting three sessions (encountered: a spider and a hypnotic butterfly, gargoyles, big cave bunnies and cave bunny swarms, a gelatinous cube, a mountain spirit, and then they had a minute to get as much of the gold as possible while the cave collapsed), plus half a session when the Teleport spell misplaced them (the odds of that were 3%, so none of us expected it and I had to improvise everything including a random encounter, but they really enjoyed the fight against the Yrthak.) And after all that the casters still had some spells left over! Not many but still. Hmpf. ^^

Then: more bank heist planning! (After a brief interlude where they debated telling the undead queen that the thieves' guild stole the crown the party persuaded the undead princes to give them, but ultimately decided against it because they were afraid the queen would go after them first. I was relieved ^^ ) The party has two rogues, strangely neither of them is very good at lock-picking or trap-finding… They debated what to do for a long time, even discussed hiring a rogue from the adventurer's guild, until I remembered and then reminded them that they do actually have an ally who's a rogue. (Well. He used to be. He's reformed now and a bard. Still got the skills though.) So they have a plan now (it involves splitting the party but I don't think that's avoidable) and probably next time will be the actual bank heist! *rubs hands*

Good things: my skiing vacation last week was great! And today classes started again, and I look forward to them. Pretty much entirely civil law this semester, should be interesting. And I have a job interview on Friday, let's see how that goes. (I think I'm most nervous about what to wear. Bah, dress codes.)

I have to plan a bank heist for the next D&D session – I thought it would happen last session and I would just have to improvise it, but I forgot rule 4 of DMing: everything takes longer than you think it will (except when the party finds a shortcut you never thought of.)
(Rule 1: You make the rules.
Rule 2: Expect your party to do the unexpected.
Rule 3: Improvise improvise improvise.)
So now I actually have to plan out a bank heist. Uh. I'm tempted to just come up with security measures and let the party at it, they'd enjoy a battle with the security golem, but I should probably come up with possible escape routes too…

I didn't have my laptop at my grandparents' and I didn't download many fics, so I read a lot of books, which was great. I'm waiting for a few sequels to be available at the library, but I finished reading the The Gardener's Hand series by Felicia Davin and enjoyed it a lot. Interesting worldbuilding, a decent plot with some nice h/c moments, good characters that are also diverse (more mysteriously helpful librarians in wheelchairs please), and especially so many queer characters and relationships, wonderful. ( Spoilers ) The writing style wasn't my favorite, too, hm, blunt for my taste, but it didn't really bother me much either.

Next on my reading list: Finishing the Old Kingdom books, and then (when available) the Echoes of the Fall series.

Today I got up late, but around noon I did go for an hour-long walk, so that was good. I visited the nearby cemetery for the first time, maybe next time I'll take pictures because I find cemeteries fascinating. This one is on a hill and even has a nice view.

Now to the undead: I had a lot of fun with them at yesterday's D&D session :) Though I think it might have been the rare session where I had more fun than my players. They had to make it through two floors of the ghost castle, and it took them the entire evening. I was pretty proud of myself for setting up a challenging scenario, but they got frustrated a few times. ( More details )

Like last year, on my birthday I played D&D. Last year I played my spellcaster Saint and we used an undead unicorn to kill a goddess, good times. This year I'm the DM, and there was a castle full of ghosts and a magical deck of cards and it was great.

From dreadlordmrson I got the idea to make a variation on the Deck of Many Things based on Cards Against Humanity, so I made a small card deck, I actually printed them out so they could draw them, and it worked out really well :D Even just finding a magical deck of cards got a great reaction from the two veteran players, so then I had to convince them to risk drawing by having their characters know that this is a different magical deck, and then one person started and something funny happened and the next character got something annoying but not too bad and then the third card was something great, and the next one as well, and in the end I had to restrict them to two cards each ^^ And now one of my players has a tiny pet dragon, that's going to be fun. Another one has an illusionary swarm of bees constantly around them…
(If anyone is interested in the specifics of what the deck looks like, see here.)

My players were after an artifact that is hidden in the castle but only appears at night, and I expected them to explore the castle during the day, find the treasure chamber, wait until the night and then only have to fight their way out. Instead they decided to enter the castle at midnight, because of course they did. In their defense they were very well prepared (among others they have a well-prepared Artificer which just a bundle of buffs stacked on top of each other), and then there was some great roleplaying when they encountered the ghost of the young child of the monarchs. With some bluffs and a lot of shameless flattery they got the boy to lead them straight to the artifact. They managed to send him away, looted the treasure chamber, and were then found by the ghost of the teenage son. The trap I'd planned consisting of a narrow corridor with an AMF, spikes, and Black Tentacles worked even better than I'd expected (to the point where some characters were taken completely out of the ensuing fight against shadows and the players were starting to get bored), and at that point it was past midnight and I decided to do the rest of the battle against the undead next time. So next time: more ghosts, more undead, more combat, and maaaaaybe the end of another quest...

I think I'm getting better at this DMing thing! I was very nervous about yesterday's session because I felt I was way underprepared (also because the players could have gone in a number of different directions), and I did have to improvise a lot but it worked out fine. My players decided to split the party, but I tried to switch between the groups often enough so that nobody got bored, even the one guy who decided to be sensible and thus did not get into trouble.

One thing I'm quite proud of in my set-up is that my players are genuinely wary of the city guard. In the previous campaign I played in, as well as the campaigns I watched/listened to, the police was rarely a big factor, but here the party spends a lot of time in one city and the city guard is mostly competent, and half the party got into trouble and got an official reprimand in the first session and now have to regularly check in with their parole officer. It's harder to lie to the guard if they have truth and mind-reading spells :P So now every once in a while the party debates doing something and then decides against it because it would be illegal, which means many things are more challenging, which is great. The side-effect is that I constantly have to think about which things/spells are legal or not, and sometimes I almost forget (I got so used to Detect Thoughts that I almost forgot that using it without license and warning is definitely not allowed – to be fair my players could easily have guessed that and I don't have to warn them – so now they have to hope their parole officer doesn't find out…)

I thought that would be it, as far as complications with the guard go, because they were being careful. Then yesterday one of the rogues tried to break into a suspect's house, failed, and instead of wondering if there might be an Alarm or something similar she hung around for fifteen more minutes trying to figure out a way in. And when the city guard arrived they would have just asked her if she'd seen anything suspicious, if she hadn't when asked what she was doing here replied that she was looking for the very house the guard knew someone had just tried to break into. So they wanted to interrogate her as a witness at the guard station, but she remembered the truth and mind-reading spells and freaked out and ran away. She did escape but she wasn't disguised so now the city guard is looking her. And the party has a friendly contact with the city guard but now that just means he'll definitely recognize her and know who her associates are. *facepalm* That wasn't the plan. At least she didn't actually manage to break in, and she wasn't planning to steal anything just to look for information, but there will still be consequences.

(I wonder if the party will think to ask the Thieves' Guild for help with that. They decided to ask the Guild for help next time, even though they hate them, because they feel like they're stuck with their investigation – they found a person likely part of the kidnapping but she escaped – so now I have to decide what the Thieves' Guild knows, and is willing to share. Also I remembered that I was so wrapped up in their current quest that I forgot to leave more hints about the bigger plot in the background, I'll have to pay more attention to that.)

By the way, I invented a house rule that I'm very fond of by now: There are multiple people who could and conceivably might Scry on the party, but if I asked them for Will saves each time the players would know and it's hard to ignore that kind of meta knowledge. So now at the beginning of each session I ask every player to give me five Will saves for their character and then use these when necessary. It works as intended and is very convenient.

Do you have any favorite house rules?

I hope all of you had as good a weekend as I did :)

On Saturday I went to two beautiful Christmas markets with my flatmate and her mom – no snow since it had 12° all weekend but I did see a rainbow – and bought myself a plush squirrel that was too fluffy to resist. Then half of our D&D group played a Christmas one-shot that featured zombie suicide pigeons, a reindeer with a breath weapon, and a +2 Good frying pan. We also took out the bad guy's minions with blankets. I played a swordfighter, which was slightly frustrating occasionally because it's way less versatile than playing a spellcaster but by the end (almost 3am) I appreciated the advantages too.

On Sunday I went to three more Christmas markets and then went to a birthday party where we had a lot of fun playing board games. MSZ, who is a very good cook, decided that she wanted to make authentic Ramen so she and LK spent half the day preparing the broth and porkbelly and eggs and so much other stuff there was barely space left on the table, and it was delicious. I ate so much.

On Monday I spent slightly more time than planned reading fic, and In the afternoon I made a 30-seconds-video for the retirement party of my favorite teacher in high school: it was quite difficult to put into words just how much I admire and respect her and how much she meant to me, but I tried.
In the evening I celebrated Christmas with my parents, which means good food and a lot of singing. I got (among some other things) a puzzle, I haven't solved a puzzle in years and I look forward to it.

On Tuesday, more good food, and Yuletide! I requested "Elemental Logic" for three years and this year I got an amazing fic for it. It's so good, it's such a great Medric character study and has such good Medric/Emil and so much wonderful family feelings :)

Oh Good, He's Nineteen (7304 words) by nimblermortal
Fandom: Elemental Logic - Laurie J. Marks
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Medric/Emil, Zanja/Karis, J'han/Norina
Characters: Medric, Emil, Zanja, Karis, J'han, Norina, Leeba
Additional Tags: Found Family, parenting, Introspection
Summary: It's winter in Shaftal, and Medric and Emil's pleasant getaway is disturbed by the arrival of their.. family? Perhaps?
Medric thinks of his affair with Emil as an Autumn Romance, two soldiers broken by war finding comfort in each other's arms. The arrival of their - husband and wives? - forces him to come to terms with whether he is a soldier, just who Leeba is to him, and how it can be possible that he is, in fact, nineteen.
Canon Knowledge Required: probably yes

My recipient liked their story as well, so all is good.

Tomorrow we're meeting with family friends for more good food, and I also have plans for the rest of December that I'm looking forward to (apart from the studying, and the cleaning, etc. etc.) Maybe we will even get a few snowflakes again, who knows.

D&D: My party is in the middle of a detective plot, but they were getting frustrated (maybe I should give them more clues, but they're also just not very good detectives tbh; also they keep forgetting that they can do things like read thoughts) and wanted more action, and the same two people couldn't make it again, so I decided to give them a very short battle-heavy side-adventure: They'd attracted the attention of the Thieves' Guild, so the Thieves' Guild led them into a trap, which was a teleportation circle that stranded them in a desert canyon full of dinosaurs. It was fun :) After the session they told me that I'm good at setting up cool scenes&scenarios and I'm happy&proud. (I wouldn't be half as good at it if DD wasn't always happy to help me with brainstorming.)

Next session they'll be ambushed by more dinosaurs (they already spotted the ambush) and then hopefully they'll make it to the oasis where there's another teleportation circle that could get them back to the city, where they now want to destroy the Thieves' Guild in revenge. I should have anticipated that, heh, but if they really do try that's not going to go well for them… Also, the person at the oasis has probably been bribed by the Thieves' Guild, they're good at planning like that, so who knows where they'll end up specifically… ;)

This was now session 11 btw, originally I thought the campaign would go 5-10 sessions. I was so wrong. I'm pretty sure it'll be at the very least 5-7 more.

Soo I was stupid and underestimated plotting a D&D campaign. The players keep moving parts around, you constantly have to adapt, and you're under pressure from session to session, which in my case means I only have a week to prepare and that's NOT a lot of time. I have no idea how our previous DM did this, and for such a long campaign. (At least I wrote weekly summaries. This time one player promised to write summaries but hasn't yet, which makes keeping track of things even harder.)

Because I underestimated it, I wasn't sufficiently prepared when the campaign started and only figured out later that the plot in its current form has huge holes. Now I have to adapt. I managed to buy some time with side quests, like an extra dungeon, at least that was a lot of fun. But now my players are in the middle of a detective plot (whyyyy did I think this was a good idea) and I really need to figure out who's behind it. Ahem. (My players: "it would be nice to get to some actual plot." Also my players: "nah, neither of these quests on the board looks cool, are you sure there aren't any others?" No there are not.)

Soo I would be grateful for feedback and brainstorming help :) Just writing it down will probably help.( Probably it will all end in chaos. )

For today's D&D session I built a dungeon :D My first one, I'm so excited (and we barely encountered any dungeons in our previous campaign either.) It has puzzles and monsters and NPCs for them to encounter and secret doors and of course a treasure room, and even a twist at the end that ties into the bigger plot if they can find it. DD was a huge help with brainstorming. I had to re-skin the monsters and decide on the loot and try to make the puzzles appropriately challenging; since it's the tomb of a dwarf king a lot of the difficulty will depend on whether anyone of the party speaks dwarven, which I don't know, so that'll be interesting.

I got the idea to build a dungeon because at the end of last session my party wanted a combat encounter and they were wandering around in the woods, so I used a random encounter generator and they fought three Gelatinous Cubes. Which was a ton of fun, but later I realized that three Gelatinous Cubes in a forest is very unusual so I tried to figure out how they got there (answer: they were chased out of the cave by the person who broke into the tomb before my party, and who disabled the security system to the degree that my party can find the entrance even though for the past thousand years nobody could, which they hopefully won't find out until late.) Also I was a bit stuck with the larger plot and I figured a dungeon is a nice distraction, and it will also give the party a reputation which can then be the reason why people approach them.

It looks like all players will be here tonight, which is good because all the monsters are probably right at the edge of too powerful for them – but if they're smart enough they don't have to fight any of them so I figure that balances out. I'm so curious how they'll do :D

Today is the first session of the campaign I DM :) To celebrate, our previous DM and still-current host got copper-burnished mugs for all of us and 10 liters of mead. Which we started on before ordering food. ...this might not have been the smartest idea. The mead is really good. I should not be drunk while DMing, but it might be too late.
In any case it will be fun. Of my five players three are here (one cancelled on short notice) and they will encounter enemies far above their weight class, let's see if they survive. I also got very pretty new blue dice :)
Currently I'm waiting while the this-time-a-druid finishes building her character, and I'm probably equally impatient and nervous. Let's see if we even get to the quests I prepared ;) I think it will be fun.