New Year's Eve was on a Saturday, and I had a cello gig, but we still played D&D, and had a long session starting about 9:30. The party discovered that the Drow plan to attack Ponoblish Bimpitigora, the gnome island-city. As such, they were able to get there early and give warning, saving thousands of lives and fighting the toughest aerial parts of the battle, which involved a lot of wizards, illusionists, dragons (real and illusionary), drow spelljammers, dryders, the ogre navy/army, the gnome fishing fleet, gnomish balloonists & steamwork "cannoneers," angels, vampires, and a bewildering array of special units, summoned monsters and great heroics. Needless to say, this game session ended sometime Sunday morning when we started to drop as the sun came up.
In each of the following D&D sessions, this battle has continued. Although the action and variety is exciting, I think I'm ready to move on; I seem to have an internal gaming cycle that vacillates from fantasy to science fiction to keep me from getting into a creative rut.
So a couple Saturdays ago, Robby ran most of the session. We used the DMG to spontaneously come up with stats for a typical adventuring party for a one-shot adventure. I got to name all the characters, and have unfortunately forgotten most of the names, except that my ninth-level elven mage was known by Fromage (cheesy, huh). Oh, and Carson's halfling rogue was from Slippery Cliffs, which turns out to be a small village in Roddy's campaign world. Shane played a vengeful dwarven paladin based loosely on Dolph Lovgren, and Roddy played a crazy cleric with a rod of wonder, somebody..."the good." Our quest was to take a horrible gray ring/roll back to its cursed creator, the silver-faced wizard, and somehow destroy it. Though we succeeded in our quest, each of the characters was captured or slain in the process. But some guy has a gummed-up mess in his clockwork tower, a smear that was one the uccursed gray roll. And the cement and utilities in his basement became a hot muddy gooey mess from rock to mud spells; his staff are mostly dead or in the hospital from lightning bolts, magic missiles and physical attacks, and the constables who arrived in clashing-light topped horseless chariots are scratching their heads, asking questions. And laughing.
Yesterday, I continued my Ponoblish Bimpitigora battle until we had a break; I really do plan to come back to it later on. We filled out the rest of an extended session with a new group of Star Wars characters. It's an unlikely group who met by chance on the starliner Goldenjoy, which was interdicted by the Empire (circa episode 6.1) and the captain ordered everyone to abandon ship. Their small four-person escape pod touched down in a dense jungle. After surviving hostile plantlife on Talisman, the group (a soldier, a force-sensitive scoundrel, a fringer, and another scoundrel; three women and one man of various races) was able to escape the bureocratic trap of the mine/strip mall town of Tevvik and eventually work their way off the interdicted world. They were rescued in part by the temporary good fortune of the opportunist Dabbo the Hutt, who recently orchestrated a hostile takeover of Bowman Shipping, and needed a representative to captain a light freighter in the system, and Carson's Noble character was somehow located and called upon for the task. The ship is of Mon Calamari design, equipped with a licenced "mining laser," accomodations for up to 50 (including a crew of 5-8) and a cargo capacity of 50 tons, and capable of underwater operations. It was piloted to the Perrin III system, to Talisman orbital Mainport, by Pieda Bowman II, a clone with an old braintape, who happens to have one level in Jedi Counseler (and one each in noble and soldier). Dabbo Corp. owns the ship now, along with 15 tons of metals & minerals in the hold.
Next session: Sat. Feb. 11.
