Dora meets Godzilla

So Saturday Ava continued running our adventure to find the friendly zombie-rot curing dragon, who might also need our help. We've joked that it's like an episode of Dora the Explorer, "You go OVER the river and THROUGH the swamp and then you get to the BIG, BIG LAKE!" Oh never mind, Lord of the Rings works the same way.

Shamash Kriv and Fy'Ev the Kensai (Dave's dragonborn battle captain warlord and kensai fighter henchman) found themselves digging for rabbits from the Handy Haversack when our friend the Behir showed up again (yes the same one). Diplomacy is great, but concern was arising about what would happen when we ran out of rabbits. "Do not feed the Behirs," would have been a good warning sign for us. Luckily for us, Wikipedia Jones (Mat's Bard) had his Everful Picnic Basket and the Behir (Int. 7) was just smart enough to learn how to use it and appreciate the gift. Roberick Willikers III (Rod's drow rogue) was pretty cheesed off about giving magic items to wandering encounters but we did get full XP and it saved game time to not fight it, plus you never know when you might need a friendly Behir on your side -- they are a force to be reckoned with! More bear puns ensued though, with the picnic basket triggering Yogi and Boo-Boo outtakes that were pretty darn funny. "Hey Boo Boo! Where you going with that pic-in-ic basket?" You get the idea.

We have been relying on the tracking skills of our dauntless ranger, Hadjii and his amazing dog companion Foxy (Garza's character, level 13). So it was a full moon on one of the early watches a bunch of werewolves tried to sneak up on the party. Upon awakening, Shamash proceeded to intimidate the beasties, causing them to hesitate in their attack. Elle Enchanted (B's Polearm master) charged on her horse ("Killer" Bloodhoof) right into three of them as the rest of the party also entered the fray. Good Ol' Sticky Fingers (Shawn R.'s halfling rogue, now played by Alma) and Roberick Willikers were able to sneak up on some of the bad guys and inflict serious damage while also blinding their foes. Aurora (Ava's shifter cleric) was ready for anything and found herself in melee with a couple of them. There was no negotiating with these guys. Meanwhile Hadjii, Foxy, Shamash and Fy'Ev flanked the leader eventually bringing him down too. By the end of the encounter several party members were scratched up but fortunately no one was bitten.

After making some more progress in our long overland journey (side note: most of the party are still getting used to the idea of stars in the sky) we discovered what looked to be a small abandoned gnome town. Just as we began to explore the town, we were attacked by goblin archers, who had been hiding among the buildings. Shamash ran into the central building and climbed to the top, placing himself 5' behind one of the archers, daring him to charge. Shamash also saw something sickeningly big and ugly hiding behind the building, and . The annoying bad guys were able to pick away at us for a couple rounds before we discovered their enforcer: a giant troll of some kind. From that point on most of the party pretty much focused on the troll. Meanwhile we did take out most of the goblins. The troll got up once or twice before Fy'Ev breathed acid on him, preventing any further regeneration. After closer examination of the town,the party discovered about a dozen of the original gnome inhabitants, who were grateful their home had been liberated by us. We got a little bit of treasure (about 350 GP each if I remember). More importantly, we are that much closer to our destination.

For those of you who missed the session, you missed out on Ava's giant Dragon Cookies (yum!). More for us! See you at 3:00 on Saturday February 13.

Ava's Session

Last Saturday, Ava ran our D&D game, still within our shared "Planet of the Dragons" world. It was a good session, the party is on an overland expedition to fix the zombie rot problem. After so much time in the underdark it is good to be on the surface, though the encounters are certainly just as tough. Among our encounters were a giant thorny carnivorous plant (don't laugh, it took the party a few rounds to take it out), a Behir (we were able to diplomatically sidestep that one) and a horrible undead thing that eats souls, I think it's called a Devourer. Since the party wasn't all there, we kept our distance from the Devourer and softened it up with ranged attacks for a while before closing in, and that was probably for the best - pretty scary, but we beat it.

It was a good session both for roleplay, outdoor description and combat. Although there was no treasure we did gain enough xp to level up.

So hey everybody -- DING to 13th!

By the way, if you weren't here you missed out on some excellent cheesecake.

Mmm... cheesecake!

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So now Roddy, Phil, Garza, Ava, Carson and I have all run sessions in this shared campaign, though Carson's session was kind of a prequel. Rob hasn't run yet. I don't know if Marshall or Alma or anybody run games, but that's a pretty good amount of DMs already for 4th edition still being relatively new out.

I think it's fairly intuitive. One of the best things I think a DM can take advantage of is the tactical aspects of terrain - cover, rough terrain, hazards, elevated areas etc.