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SurvivorX
2009-02-09, 11:57 PM
So I've seen a few campaign journals on the forum so I'm assuming this is the right place to put such things.

It's pretty much a 100% homebrew campaign, we don't use any published adventure books or anything like that, I just make everything in the campaign myself. It's a pretty informal game - we're using 3.0 rules, but only because that's the rulebooks I have, so unless someone has a dispute over a rule, and the gnome player gets his 3.5 PHB out first, and the 3.5 rule version makes more sense to me at the time, that's what we go with. It's perhaps a bit arbitrary, but it's worked so far and everyone seems okay with it. If something looks like it's about to get unbalanced, I just slap down a house rule right then and there before it gets out of hand.

The party started out at level 2, with:

Sumire, 2nd-level human rogue. She's mostly a 2-weapon fighter and lock-picker, but thus far she's not had the best luck with die rolls.

Munqus Knimblegruff, 2nd-level gnome bard. He mostly is the group's voice of reason and negotiator, and doesn't play much of a combat role.

Spunky, Son of Bumpy, 2nd-level dwarven fighter. He's your generic meat-shield/greatsword user. Also seems to have a penchant for getting himself in really deep doo-doo. The previous incarnations of this character were Stumpy; Lumpy, Son Of Stumpy; and Bumpy, Son Of Lumpy. All this in reference to their ancestor Grumpy.

and Jael O'Deorain, 2nd-level human sorceror. He didn't take many good combat spells (started with comprehend languages and spider climb) and has a homebrew war-rake (which is exactly what it sounds like, an iron rake thats sharpened and used in combat). Yes, it has occured to me how bizarre it is that the spellcaster with only 12 AC and 3 HP prefers to fight up front. If that war-rake didn't have reach, he'd probably be completely useless.

Yeah, I know. The builds aren't any semblance of optimized. But hey, we have a truckload of fun with it, and that's what matters.

The way I had it set up was, there were 4 cities and 6 dungeons to pick from, and I let them pick which dungeon they wanted to start in front of. They picked Khanzukhadim, the busted-up ancient dwarf city.

Anyways, campaign journal. It probably goes into a bit more detail than other campaign journals might, but their antics are rather funny anyhow.

Session 1
The first area was about knee-deep in water, and the first thing they do is spend literally an hour of in-game time of Spunky and Sumire trying and failing to open a simple locked, trapped chest. After greatsword-hackings and trap-defusings alike fail, they decide to just stick some swords in the slits where the blades come out and pick the lock that way. The fruits of their labors? A single masterwork shortsword. Yaaay.

Spunky promptly walks facefirst into a gelatinous cube, and then they spend some time fighting it before the dwarf gets sucked in and deals the finishing blow from the inside. Much laughter is had at Spunky's expense.

They then found a lot of Draconic graffiti saying things like, "Go away" and "Not like you". Spunky swore curb-stompings against the lizardfolk who wrote it. They found said lizardfolk, and Spunky indulged his previously stated desires.

They continued on, climbed out of the water, and Spunky walked into a pitfall trap. At negative hit points at the bottom, they took Jael's cure light wounds potion, and Sumire lowered Munqus down on her rope to administer it. They pulled them back up, after Munqus took one of the spikes from the bottom (who knows why.)

They then found some cobbled-together chests, and Munqus smashed the side of one open to find a crossbow trap inside it. The other one had some silver pieces in it.

They continued onwards and found some more statues. Speared on one of the statues' weapons was a piece of parchment that read, "You kobolds are stupid. Not put trap by water. Take it away today or no more shinies for you." Confusion all around.

They listened at a door, heard some arguing, and decided to pass. They continued on, fought some kobolds, and killed em. After Munqus tortured one and made him be a meat-shield for a crossbow trap, I made him Chaotic Neutral instead of Chaotic Good. After that, they found some ghouls and killed em.

They moved on, and found two ways they could go. Sumire decided to go alone one way while everyone else went the other way. (Not the smartest move considering Stumpy had about 2 HP left and they were still only level 2 at this point).

Sumire found some dwarf dude on a throne. She spun some bull**** tale. He saw right through it, but was amused by her ramblings anyways. (The dwarf dude was actually a duergar and was trying to figure out a way to use her to his advantage). The others walked in after finding squat, and he gave them a job offer to go kill some undead and bring back a magic item for him. They accepted, went out, killed 3 ghouls, almost got killed themselves in the process, and went back to town for heals.

Session 1.5: Character Sideplots

At this point we had about three weeks in between sessions, so I set up some quick, short little solo adventures for people.

Sumire went off, joined the town's thieves' guild, and they sent her out to rob some safe house. She went there, found out that some goblin thieves had beaten her to it, and she hired a caver to follow them back to their lair. After antagonizing the bugbear leader a few times, they chased her up a tree. The bugbear climbed up after her, and tried to pull her down the tree. She caught herself halfway, and it reloaded its crossbow and aimed down at her, and just at the last moment she stuck her rapier up and scored a critical hit (with sneak attack damage since it was up a tree and got no Dex to AC). Down went bugbear. She came down to finish the other goblins, and walked away with about 450 GP (after guild deductions of course.)

Meanwhile, Stumpy went off, went hunting, wrestled a dire weasel into unconsciousness, and some giant eagle gave him a mission to get its eggs back. (Corny, but its all I could come up with on the spot.) He snuck into the lizardfolk encampment, and helped the eagle get them out, and then the majority of the lizard people came back and he had to fight his way out. Then he got cocky and went back without the eagle to back him up, when he had no element of surprise. He recieved three STR-poisoned javelins to the back, and they captured him to use as a war-beast. He didn't escape until next session...

Munqus and Jael took up an offer from an abjurer NPC to go loot a kobold tomb. Munqus got himself poisoned from some trap, and the abjurer got hold of an obsidian tablet (Epic spell tablet, but they don't know that. It's gonna be a big thing later on). They found the abjurer's rival and some other dwarf cleric and they got in a big fight. In the end, the cleric threw the abjurer down a pitfall and the rest of them were forced to leave, and got chased back to town by a displacer beast skeleton.

Session 2

We spent most of Session 2 finishing up Munqus and Jael's side-plot, so we didn't get too far with this session. Basically, they went back into Khanzukhadim, fought about a dozen lizard people, and then the lizardfolk sent Stumpy out in chains to fight them. Spunky fought the lizard people, and they eventually struck a truce with the lizardfolk chieftain - they would become a part of the tribe, and then they would get free passage in and out of the dungeon, provided they do some things to help ensure the tribe's survival (since they killed almost half the tribe over the past in-game week or so.) They agreed, and the chieftain administered a "rite of tribehood" in which the characters got the tar beat out of them by a dozen angry lizardmen. The chieftain then admitted that there was no actual rite, that was just to make the lizard people feel better about not getting to kill them. They went back to town to heal the poison damage and such.

Now, there's another character coming in next session:

Luneus, the elven abjurer (not the same as the abjurer NPC from the side-plot). Half-crazy, looking for the meaning of life. Her familiar is a celestial monkey named Tyli Pydi. I expect much silliness to ensue.

So, what do you guys think so far? Ideas, suggestions on how I might improve the overall campaign?

Willfor
2009-02-10, 12:47 AM
I made him Chaotic Neutral instead of Chaotic Neutral.

Chaotic Neutral 2: Chaotic Boogaloo.

It sounds like a pretty awesome campaign. Can't wait to hear some more of their shenanigans.

SurvivorX
2009-02-10, 03:13 PM
Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out :P

evil-frosty
2009-02-10, 08:01 PM
Sounds like a lot of fun. I want to hear more, and if i can steal some of your ideas all the better, I have a tendency to steal peoples idea for something because i cant think of anything or dont have time. Sorry if your offended by that

SurvivorX
2009-02-10, 08:37 PM
No problem at all. :)