Intresting liveblog, despite the . Reminds me when I decided to D.M a game of Pathfinder on the spot with a friend. We ended up with a half-orc monk who punched his way through 2 goblins and 3 skeletons, one of which exploded. This is the result of the local bartender, a black dragon, deciding that your tab was way to high to pay back 
.
edited 4th Dec '10 8:46:51 PM by doorhandle
Okay. No game this week because of a friend's birthday party.
Whatever. It's not like anyone is reading this yet. -shrugs-
Hmm...well, dood, it looks like you've got some good friends to play with. Considering that they aren't already trying to go Off the Rails, it looks like this campaign of yours should go smoothly. Best of luck for your pawns...er, players, whenever the game resumes.
Also, is it just me, or do other readers keep mistaking the Elven Druid's name as Egregious?
edited 8th Dec '10 6:35:03 PM by EndarkCuli
I think they won't attempt to derail because they couldn't figure out where to go from there and are content with my plot so far.
As some of you may know by now, my Dungeons and Dragons group has switched over from 4th Edition to 3.5th Edition, and we even have a new member. I thought I should do a live blog of it since I thought that today’s session was fairly interesting, and that the campaign will probably remain interesting as it goes along. It’s also my first time DMing this edition, so if I did anything wrong, let me know. Disclaimer: I’ll tell you know that this group is occasionally rules-lite, though that probably won‘t apply quite yet.
Here goes WEEK 1:
Four adventurers’ travels have brought them all to the well-to-do town of Erokrost, where they all saw posters on the buildings that spoke of goblins attempting to take over Joytown, a small-but-crucial town nearby. They are told to see the Duke Levites Woodworth to get information, since he is second only to the Mayor and has considerably more money.
The adventurers are: Sir Clinton Denton of Easton, my Human Knight, who found this town while traveling the world in search of crises to solve; Leorel Doraka, a Human Samurai who was ordered by his master to see what the Duke wanted; Pestilence, an Elven Rogue who wanted to make some money, knowing that a town in need of heroes would reward him well; and Egreauss Woa (new player), an Elven Druid who wants revenge on the goblins for damaging the forest that she lived in.
The Duke is an incredibly handsome, fairly young-looking man, well-dressed as any aristocrat should be, and he appears to know a fair bit about the situation in Joytown: namely, that the town is a central traveling location and that the goblins’ attack has caused people to stop traveling through Joytown, severely damaging business in multiple towns besides Erokrost. He also says that he asked neighboring cities if any brave people wanted to help Joytown, but only these four adventurers volunteered. Duke Woodworth offered them a horse to carry heavy belongings, but Leorel declined because he wasn’t allowed to ride it, and the rest of the group decided that their current loads were sufficient. The party did, however, accept the healing potions that Woodworth scrounged up for them.
With that, the party sets off to Joytown, taking a two-day trip and immediately navigating the town, hoping to ascertain the locations of the goblins in the town. Pestilence manages to gain quite a bit of information; he learns that the reason the town hasn’t been able to fight back is because the goblins have taken over the armory and have hostages/slaves, and so very few townspeople are well-equipped. Most of those who were are dead. There are six buildings that are taken over, including the armory; a pastry shop, Old Man Bugger’s house, the town bank, the Merchants’ Guild Hall, and the Mayor‘s Office/House/Party Hall. The group, to my idiotic surprise, decides to split up. Knowing that it might be a bad idea to have one person go to each building, I recommend to the players that two groups of two might be much safer (using Sir Clinton as my in-game voice), and so they agree after much debating out-of-character.
Sir Clinton and Egreauss decide to go to the town bank first, since it’s closest, and Leorel and Pestilence go to the Merchants’ Guild Hall, which is also fairly close-by. Sir Clinton and Egreauss enter the bank to find three goblins armed with morningstars and shields behind the desk, with four hostages on the ground, kneeling but not tied up, as we might have expected (we suspect that the goblins were using these hostages as slaves). The goblins disregard the hostages and come after us immediately. Egreauss takes the front and is attacked by the two goblins who can reach her, but she dodges around them, and Sir Clinton makes his way in, going for the goblin closest to Egreauss. The goblins put up a tough fight, but they find themselves unable to hit either Sir Clinton or Egreauss. Egreauss pierces the heart of one with her longspear, and Sir Clinton cleaves another in two with his bastard sword, leaving the third to retreat to the basement. As thanks for rescuing them, the hostage bankers give them both a hundred and fifty gold pieces before leaving to check their homes and affirm their survival.
Meanwhile, Leorel and Pestilence enter the Merchants’ Guild Hall and fight three goblins in the spacious room outside the dining hall. Leorel immediately rushes in and takes on one of the goblins himself, cutting it in half with his katana before being struck. Pestilence hangs back and throws daggers at the goblin that approaches him, although he accidentally impales a chair in the fight. He does impale one goblin’s forehead after being slammed in the side with a Morningstar. The third runs to the dining hall, where Goblin shouting is heard. They fully drink the Cure Minor Wounds potions that Duke Woodworth gave to them and press on.
In the basement of the bank, Sir Clinton and Egreauss enter a room with two desks and find three goblins and a rodent of unusual size waiting for them. The goblins are easy pickings for Sir Clinton, and he even manages to dismember a goblin who climbs a desk to get to him, causing its upper half to fall from the desk. You know, for comedic effect. Egreauss has no such luck, failing to even hit once, and both she and Sir Clinton are bitten by the dire rat before Egreauss retreats to heal. They are currently infected with filth fever, which will hinder them later.
Leorel and Pestilence have a considerably more difficult time in the dining hall, as they are confronted with the retreating goblin as well as two hobgoblins. As there is only room for the goblins and them to go single-file, Pestilence soon finds himself cornered, getting hit in the flank rather nastily before his attacker is slain by Leorel, as well as breaking one of his throwing daggers against a wall on the other side of the room (I know daggers don‘t really have that high a range increment normally, and a wooden wall shouldn‘t break a dagger. But, you know. Fumbles and comedy). Leorel takes the high ground by climbing onto the table in the middle of the room, fighting a hobgoblin from above. After near-disembowelment, he beheads that hobgoblin swiftly. The second, finding an opening, hops onto the table and swings, only to trip on a leftover plate and land on the other side, where Leorel hops down and guts him.
The two parties agree to meet between the two buildings to discuss the next plan. As Sir Clinton struts back to the meeting place, feeling dandy, he sees the rather nasty wounds that Leorel and Pestilence had suffered. After making some passive-aggressive, condescending comments towards the two, Sir Clinton inadvertently propels Leorel to prove himself as a true warrior and refuses to fight with a full party. Problem is, no one is on his side. He repeatedly attempts to sneak away from the group, only to fail because his armor hinders him. Pestilence, however, finds it simple to skulk away from them and reenter the bank, making an attempt to rob it while no one is around. He finds six-hundred gold pieces, but he is only able to carry a hundred and twenty-three. He also cannot tell Leorel or Sir Clinton, for surely they would beat the money out of him if they knew.
While Sir Clinton and Egreauss head to the armory, Pestilence unexpectedly joins them, since he is most likely safer with them. Clearing out the three goblins who meet them there is a fairly easy task, despite Egreauss‘s trip and tumble at the feet of one of the perky little bastards. Sir Clinton, in particular, wallops the trio, even causing a goblin to kill its own ally (fumble + active fighting = why not?). Pestilence, noticing Leorel‘s conspicuous absence, leaves to find him while Sir Clinton and Egreauss press on. Leorel, upon entering the party hall, is opposed by three goblins. Knowing that distance and numbers are working against him, feeling betrayed by Pestilence, he attempts to exit and reenter, hoping to catch the goblins off-guard (he used Wisdom as a dump stat, for the record). He then tries it again, to no avail. Thinking of how best to kill them by himself, he dashes around the building, since the goblins hold fast and refuse to follow, looking for a window. Pulling out his grappling hook, he breaks a window and begins his climb. At the top, he sees that the Mayor’s office has three goblins as well, and the glass shatters under the impact of an angry morningstar. Knowing that retreating could simply be fatal for him at this point, given his height, he unsheathes his wakizashi and begins battle, hoping to prove himself. By the time Pestilence arrives to aid
The first goblin utterly fails to land a hit on Leorel, even despite the great advantage it has, even as his wakizashi hits the side of the mansion and hits the ground. Pestilence, unable to line up a shot, sits at the bottom waiting for Leorel to, hopefully, clear the way. He provides Leorel with his punching dagger when the wakizashi falls, but Leorel quickly drops it in disgust, preferring to fight bare-handed. As he strikes out at the goblin above him, he lands a lucky blow beneath its girdle, its pain hurling it from the window and to the ground below. His wakizashi is eventually returned to him by Pestilence, and he has a much easier time dealing with the next goblin who tries to fight. The third loses its grip on its morningstar while fighting and is forced to retreat.
Against great odds, Leorel wins his fight on the side of the Mayor’s house.
That concludes this week’s session.
edited 5th Dec '10 1:50:50 PM by Everest