B's First Barbarian, and module recycling

B's First Barbarian -- A couple of Wednesday nights ago, I was running Phil through what was going to be the first session of a new solo D&D campaign, this time set in Greyhawk. Phil is playing a half-orc fighter named Dracono Phoenix (yeah, cheesy name but okay), and he is considering multi-classing to some other class later on, perhaps bard. With this in mind, I had outlined three NPCs with the idea of multi-classing them later on as well: A human paladin, an elven ranger and a barbarian (race undetermined). For the adventure, see the notes on the previous session - I didn't have a whole lot of time to come up with something new, and since Phil hadn't been at that session I recycled that scenerio. If you have ever DM'ed on a regular basis, you know what I am talking about. So basically, there's this coastal town under attack by a bunch of evil elves (actually well intentioned high elves who have been seriously misled). It's mostly a peaceful human fishing village. Red Hand's orcish army is hired by the town to join in defending against the evil elves. My daughter B is three years old, and I ended up "babysitting" her that night (though you're not really ever a babysitter when you're a father). She really wanted to play, so I put her in the booster chair and had her play the barbarian. I decided the barbarian should be a female halfling, just to fit better. B had a great time, and she rolled really well, and since barbarians are illiterate and don't know what is going on, her roleplaying was perfect! It goes to show you that anybody can play a barbarian.
Module recycling - Saturday, it was a medium sized group. I had rearranged a bunch of stuff, and couldn't seem to find any of my session notes (one of the great reasons I use this blog) so I ran Tomb of the Overseer, a mini-module from AEG. It seemed to be going well, between Robby and Carson's out-of-game comedy (funny enough to be worth the distraction) and Lance (!) playing Zach's fighter-rogue Dante. Most of the players had been computer gaming pretty heavily before the session. Shane was there too, playing his ranger, though he would have to leave early, as did Lance. Yeah, the game was going well, until Roddy started paying closer attention to the game and remembered he had played in this module back when we had the shop, and he wanted to go to the room with the three crowns that turned the wearer into undead, and he liked the "grateful dead" ending where you give the undead paladin his stuff back. Carson chimed in that he remembered everybody was really bitchy at the shop that day (4 years ago!). I shouldn't have been surprised, these guys have pretty good memories, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's no accident that these comments followed after I came back from going to the bathroom. So I need to go back to my old procedure of penciling in the player names of everybody who has been through a module, and also I need to carry my game materials with me if I leave the table for any reason. Or, I can just do what I did for the second half of the session and run everything right out of my head.
Jaramon the Transmuter, my new arch-villian had a small lab and sub-lair nearby, as it turned out. Revan, Roddy's paladin, detected "evil" on a 2"x 2" button, which opened a sliding stone wall, then the party fought giant lizardmen who shrunk to normal size after being slain and had two potions, one red, one green (polymorph, enlarge, though the party hasn't identified them yet). I haven't decided why the button radiated "evil," except that maybe it was an aura similar to Nystul's Magic Aura except for radiating evil instead of magic; Jaramon is so evil he might have found some strange comfort in this, and it might also have helped him find the button in the dark. One of my goals with Jaramon is to have him use magic in unique and unpredictable ways. The wall predictably rolled shut behind the party. The party fought a bridge battle against more of the 4-armed "Jaramonians" (really some of my WH40K Tyranid minis). Upon getting to the other side of the stone bridge (laid out across a chasm with Wall of Stone), the party entered a plain stone chamber and found a magical trap in the floor, which they avoided. In the next room, a similar one. As it turns out, the first one polymorphs any living creature into a Jaramonian, and the second returns any polymorphed creature to its original form. I had placed a couple of magic mouths here and there, mostly just to laugh at the party and rattle them. What fun for DMs. The first of the Magic Mouths said "what form would you like to be?" to which each of the party members said they wanted to remain as they were, except Taito, who said "I want to be Taito," and was turned into a potato for 4 rounds. The second Magic Mouth said "Rabbits rabbits rabbits!" in the second room, covering the entire floor in white rabbits, two layers deep and forcing Reflex saves just to move around. As it turned out, Jaramon had actually cast a spell of his own, flying invisibly in the room, as was discovered when Dante was throwing rabbits aside to clear a path and search the room, and a rabbit hit something in midair and went straight down, and an unseen voice said "Damn." A popping sound followed, as Jaramon teleported away just before Flegal started launching arrows and everyone started attacking where Jaramon had been. An area of rabbits over the second magical "trap" (the one that turns things back to what they were) was covered in ants instead of rabbits, and any rabbits that jumped over there were polymorphed back into ants, their original form. After some experimentation, the party discovered the abilities of the two glyphs in the floor of the rooms, and decided to destroy the one that changed things into Jaramonians. When Joseph (Robby's cleric) started pounding it with his mace, Flegal (?) was turned into a rabbit, and Jaramon's voice made an offer: "destroy my glyph, and I will destroy you, but if you wish to leave now, you may." After conferring with each other, the party decided to leave (after returning Flegal to normal on the second glyph). "Take the long passageway to the right, straight past the stone bridge, it will lead you out," said Jaramon. And it did. I awarded 3,000 experience points for the session (about 500 per hour, since there was a fair amount of combat). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is a fun villian. So I'm going to be careful to keep him alive until the party gets to be, say... 20th level.

I am the greatest DM ever!

I have been pretty busy and haven't posted a few game sessions. I just read the Olaf unleashed blog, hence the title for today's entry (Olaf is Jim Carrey's Limony Snicket movie character). Since my last entry I have run two or three games. (just posted an old draft)