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View Full Version : Pulling things out of you backside, aka GM'ing without preperation



Darth Stabber
2011-07-17, 06:04 PM
So I am currently running 2 (3.5D&D) games. The first game is on an every other Thursday basis since one of the players has a standing weekly engagement on the other Thursday and I want a little more than a week prep time between sessions. The other 2 players still wanted to play on the off thursdays, but I really didn't want to get bogged down planning for 2 different groups, but I didn't have anything going on those days so I made them a deal: I would run it for them, but I would not plan anything ahead of time, every single thing would be made up right before I said it. Balance would be attempted, but no hurt fellings if I over did it, and non-MM1 monsters would be used as I remember them, so I don't have to pour through my pdfs to get the right stats. And about a quarter of the time I wouldn't even neccessarily be using stats, just rolling dice and seeing how I feel about them. This sounded like it was bound to be a terrible campaign from the get go, but they wanted to play, and without any book work there was no reason not to try.

My initial impressions were way off, this game has turned into some of my finest GMing, and the story is as good or better than the one I agonize over every other week. The freedom to completely make things up gives me the ability to pace the narrative as tightly as I want and keep the session moving without any time spent referencing, and the players are never railroaded even slightly, as I have no plans for them deviate from. The two players seem to like this one more than the other.

Now I am worried that a bad precident may have been set. I am worried that I can't keep coming up with good encounters, plots and NPCs out of thin air, and the bar has gotten pretty high lately. Also if I try this too much, I am worried that I might be tempted to give up planning all together and try to fly everything by the seat of my pants.

Has anyone else ever tried this? If so what were the results?

Has any one ever played one of these where the GM admitted he was doing this, and how did it work out

Morph Bark
2011-07-17, 06:06 PM
Has anyone else ever tried this? If so what were the results?

I have run an entire campaign by winging it and the players still remember it as one of the best ever. (I've run more than one wholly by winging it, but those were much shorter.)

Shpadoinkle
2011-07-17, 06:10 PM
In my experience you do a lot of improvising and scrambling to keep the game from completely falling apart when your players do something unexpected anyway. Winging EVERYTHING isn't that much different from what most DMs end up doing in the first place.

Darth Stabber
2011-07-17, 06:25 PM
The only major downside I can currently see is that they are on the same continent in the same time frame as the other campaign, and I don't know how the epic 30 xanatos pileup in the planned game is going to affect them.

Katana_Geldar
2011-07-17, 06:31 PM
I plan everything well in advance, the whole campaign pretty much. Then on the night I just have to get out statblocks and minis.

Planning in advance also means you can improv better.

gathro
2011-07-17, 08:32 PM
If going on the fly works, stick with it. You might want to try preparing a few NPCs or random encounters to throw in whenever such a thing is needed.

Tyndmyr
2011-07-17, 10:03 PM
Here's how I see it.

Preparing for a game and improving a game are two entirely different, but both extremely useful, skills. Some people are awesome at one and not the other...but the good news is that both are trainable. You can also use one as a fallback for the other should it not work out in a given session. And, if you're worried about both of them, screw it...go print out an adventure module to use if all else fails.

I tend to use a mixed method...I have the grand scheme of things all laid out. I know who the major players in the world are, what their motivations are, and what means they have to achieve their goals. But, players being players, they might well mix things up. So, there really isn't a set path I have planned out. The players at any given point in time likely have a number of leads to pursue, all of which will likely take them in highly dramatic, important directions. I just improv the details.

Mastikator
2011-07-17, 10:31 PM
That's pretty much my style of DMing. I usually decide some important NPCs and their motivations in advance, and what most of the area looks like, but all the details and the mobs and everything else I make up as it goes. Don't really have an endgame planned either, I just figure whereever they go is the story.

For me it works great. One thing I've noticed though it's that it's hard to challange the players appropriately and you easily forget rules that should apply when you make things up on the fly.

Darth Stabber
2011-07-18, 12:50 AM
I did have the world creation ground work already done (it's the same world the other game uses), but I have made a strict pact with myself: absolutely do not do any thinking about it until a session starts. Exceptions: 1)things planned for the main game that have tangential effects on this one, 2) player questions. The players also know that discontinuity errors are likely, and any time information from the two different games conflict, the planned game trumps.

Morph Bark
2011-07-18, 04:40 AM
Planning in advance also means you can improv better.

Not necessarily. It's a different skillset. The advantage you might have is that if you can get into the NPCs' characters very well you are easily able to figure out how they'd react in a situation you did not foresee.

Jan Mattys
2011-07-18, 06:05 AM
I just plan ahead the general plot and the most important npcs and their motives.

The rest I always improvise. I am unable (due to time restraints and to being a lazy bastard) to plan in detail the encounters.
Granted, I do not play d&d any more, there's less numbers in the game systems we use, but I've always felt more adept at improvising than at planning.

According to my players, I hit my highest points when I was improvising, and I rate as low as "more or less decent" when I try to prepare in advance.

Also: I neve ever told my players I make up stuff on the fly. At this point I can well imagine they suspect it, but I never flat out admitted it.

Never underestimate the power of uncertainty. :smallbiggrin:

Ravens_cry
2011-07-18, 06:31 AM
If you do wing things, record what you wing in a form that helps you remember. That way, you can still have consistency, which is very important for verisimilitude and creating a living breathing world that player can care about. And not have to worry 5 sessions later "Hmm, was chancellor the one with the limp, or was that the court mage?" and other details. You might think the players won't remember either, but they always remember that little detail that you threw out as an off hand comment. Keeping a note of it helps create the feeling the world exists when the players aren't looking.

Even in the most planned out campaign, improvisation is an important skill. Now, I do not like the mentality of thinking of the players as ones opponents, but the basic gist of the saying, "No plan survives contact with the enemy" still holds an ample measure of truth. In truth, you can never plan for everything players might do, so interpolating between what you do have planned can help turn the unexpected into the spectacular.

Thank you.

byaku rai
2011-07-18, 08:17 AM
Every single player I play with is hopelessly chaotic. Planning anything ahead of time just leads to "Wait-- What?!?" moments as the players do something completely unexpected. So, as a somewhat nooby DM, I just decided to wing /everything/. So far it's going great. :smallbiggrin: The group is still in the accumulate power/explore the campaign setting stage, the primary baddies have made an appropriately frightening intro, and the party seems pretty happy with how things are working.

It has had some unfortunate consequences, such as an inability to say "no" to all but the most outrageous things (they own an airship... :smallfurious:), and the chaotic stupid factor has increased somewhat. However, things are still rather nice, and all the players have indicated enjoyment.

... They're in the foot of a Titan... (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warlord_Battle_Titan) That's going to be interesting when we meet next... People will die. :smallbiggrin:

lerg2
2011-07-18, 11:41 AM
I make notes, then I improv the rest. I basically adapt set adventures to fit my party.

Thrawn4
2011-07-18, 12:00 PM
I'm going to start off a sand-box campaign soon - very light rules, no plan where it might end up. Okay, I've got two plot hooks just in case I need them. Looking forward to it.

However, I'm also planning a V:tM campaign, and I think it's really hard to come up with a social network of about fifteen characters while playing - which is necessary in a game of disguise and intrigues.

Maybe it depends of the kind of game one wants to play? I guess Call of Cthulhu isn't the right one to improvise.

NowhereMan583
2011-07-18, 02:35 PM
The longest-running campaign I've ever GMed started as a one-shot that spiraled out of control. After the first couple sessions, I ran out of planned material, and just improvised everything. We met every week for over a year, I never planned because I never knew what the players were going to do anyway, and they still remember it fondly.

Sometimes improvisation is the best way to go. Unless you've managed to psychologically profile your players and figure out exactly what they're going to do in the situations you throw at them, you're going to end up improvising anyway. I find it best to just plot out a setting and a few important NPCs, then let things go.

SamBurke
2011-07-18, 02:40 PM
I do this. Every. Time. I run everything without prep. EXCEPT the story. I could care less about the other stuff. If I need to, I'll grab something interesting off the SRD and change it. But the story is pre-planned.

Preplanned, of course, meaning: I know who the villain is, and what the NPCs want/feel, as well as a few (IE, very little) things about the world and important moments, such as the end, and intro of certain characters.

Yeah. I do improv. Works well, though.

randomhero00
2011-07-18, 03:24 PM
OP you've stumbled upon the secret to good DMing. Wing it most of the time and then every once in awhile make it a bit more challenging (like say a boss fight) stat out and plan out the fight, and let it go as it may. No saving players or making it easier (unless you screwed up).

I once winged an entire massive (well for DnD anyway) battle. They needed to save a small town from an encroaching army. I made it play out like a turned based strategy game on a computer.

There was something like 30 NPCs the players could command and 2 ballista vs 40 something monsters they'd never seen before (except for a few). With about 5 different kinds of monsters and one boss. The fight took several hours (low levels, no fireball).

It was one of the best times my players ever had in a single session. I let them use the terrain (trees, high ground, abandoned buildings) and even dropped plot hooks in the middle of the battle. So for like high ground I think I gave them +3 to hit and +3 to damage or something. I had some advantage or disadvantage for each environmental obstacle.

RandomNPC
2011-07-18, 03:29 PM
I keep a major story arc in mind, if the party never gets the plot figured out they've got to duke it out at the last second with the BBEG, if they can foil his plans and take him out early, so be it.

Tyndmyr
2011-07-18, 04:11 PM
I suppose I should point out that though I improv...the characters used are still rules legal. Oh, sure, I may not assign every skill point they have coming, and I tend to use average hp so I can rapidly keep track of it mentally, but I do use actual classes and things.

There's a fine line between improv and being entirely arbitrary.

randomhero00
2011-07-18, 04:19 PM
I suppose I should point out that though I improv...the characters used are still rules legal. Oh, sure, I may not assign every skill point they have coming, and I tend to use average hp so I can rapidly keep track of it mentally, but I do use actual classes and things.

There's a fine line between improv and being entirely arbitrary.

yes, of course. Good point. It helps if you have a ton of monsters' basics memorized.

edit: a trick though, is to just memorize a few at first, and then reskin them as needed so it looks like they're new.

NowhereMan583
2011-07-18, 04:43 PM
I suppose I should point out that though I improv...the characters used are still rules legal. Oh, sure, I may not assign every skill point they have coming, and I tend to use average hp so I can rapidly keep track of it mentally, but I do use actual classes and things.

There's a fine line between improv and being entirely arbitrary.

I find that what really helps with this is using an NPC generator. I use the one here (http://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_npc.php?do=npcgen) for basically every NPC in the game. Not only does it ensure that your NPCs are fully statted out and rules-legal, but it allows you to create them in seconds. And the quirks that come up in random generation give them personality in addition to a stat block.

Imagine, for example, you have a minor NPC that's cropped up once or twice -- for example, one of a group of largely interchangeable advisors to the king, named Lord Albert. All you know about him, and all the PCs know about him, is that he's a low-level human aristocrat. But that's all you need to know. Put "low-level human aristocrat" into the NPC generator, and you get a full stat block. The one I got is below:

Lord Albert, male human Nob4: CR 3; Size M (6 ft., 0 in. tall); HD
4d8-12; hp 11; Init +1; Spd 30 ft.; AC 11; Attack +3 melee,
or +4 ranged; SV Fort -2, Ref +2, Will +6; AL CG; Str 11,
Dex 13, Con 5, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 17.

Languages Spoken: Aquan, Common, Infernal.


Skills and feats: Balance +2, Craft (Alchemy) +4, Craft
(Stonemasonry) +4, Disguise +10, Gather Information +9, Hide
+1, Knowledge (Local) +8, Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty)
+9, Listen +2, Move Silently +1, Perform (Keyboard
Instruments) +6, Perform (Oratory) +13, Spot +2, Use Rope
+3; Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Skill Focus (Perform
(Oratory)).

Now we know that Lord Albert is frail (Con 5) but charismatic (Cha 17). He's a good public speaker (Perform (Oratory) +13), but a little shady (Disguise +10 -- why does he need that, do you think?). He has his finger on the pulse of the city (Gather Information +9), and genuinely has everyone's best interests at heart (Chaotic Good), but doesn't have much respect for protocol and procedure (Chaotic Good), so may not be entirely reliable. It seems he's also a decent pianist (Perform (Keyboard Instruments) +6) and an amateur alchemist (Craft (Alchemy) +4), if that comes up. Personally, I'm kind of curious as to why he speaks Infernal -- that seems like an odd thing for a CG nobleman to be familiar with. If it looks like Lord Albert is going to become a recurring NPC, I'd think up a reason for that to give him some more interesting motivations and plot points.

This kind of thing takes off the pressure of pulling interesting NPCs "out of your backside", as the thread title puts it. If you don't have a good idea for a particular NPC, the generator will do it for you.

Tyndmyr
2011-07-18, 07:47 PM
yes, of course. Good point. It helps if you have a ton of monsters' basics memorized.

edit: a trick though, is to just memorize a few at first, and then reskin them as needed so it looks like they're new.

Hells yea. I'm a big fan of refluffing to fit the situation. Done well, it can provide all manner of variety with only a few basic statlines.


I don't use prergened chars much, though it can certainly be a good tactic. I do sometimes use lists of pregrabbed names, since for some reason, those are the hardest part of inventing a character for me.

Golden-Esque
2011-07-18, 11:23 PM
I used to be a "wing it" guy, but I'm planning out things in advanced now, and it was good enough to get my friends to change their preferred game system (we were 3.5, now we're Pathfinder).

It started out small. I would get a player's backstory (this is also the first campaign where I required AT LEAST an oral backstory) and then start thinking of ways that could link up. And then the entire campaign just took off from there.

Brauron
2011-07-19, 08:32 AM
I prepare at least a general story arc for each adventure (which might take anywhere from a half-session to three sessions to play out), and have NPC/Monster stat-blocks handy. I don't micromanage, and I usually spend most of the session improvising with the prep-work I did serving as reference if the PCs do stumble on to the plot.

As stated, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Gabe the Bard
2011-07-21, 11:29 PM
I prepare at least a general story arc for each adventure (which might take anywhere from a half-session to three sessions to play out), and have NPC/Monster stat-blocks handy. I don't micromanage, and I usually spend most of the session improvising with the prep-work I did serving as reference if the PCs do stumble on to the plot.

As stated, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

This is my approach, as well. I'm pretty new to DMing, but I've found that the sessions that the players found most enjoyable were the ones where I improvised the most and didn't use a lot of the story I had planned. Now my rule of thumb is to have a general starting and ending point for the adventure, but to let the players make up their own way to get there.

Giggling Ghast
2011-07-22, 12:06 AM
I once took part in a Rifts one-shot where the GM winged it. Well, I think he had a plan, but it wasn't really set in stone. It was a lot of fun until the very end, when we pitted against this small mob of fairly powerful monsters that the GM threw at us. (Don't ask me what they were. I only recall that they were reptilian and had really advanced weaponry. I had to practically beg him for that much of a description.)

Once we disposed of these creatures with a level of ease that surprised him, he then threw an army of them at us. I think he expected us to simply charge ahead and get our asses kicked, but we retreated to an abandoned subway/bunker and called in some reinforcements we had.

At that point the whole thing devolved into a two-hour non-interactive cutscene. Sure, we shot guys coming into the bunker, but what does a dozen casaulties matter to an enemy measuring in the thousands? He realized his mistake and tried to give us a missle launcher that would take out the baddies' hovering command carrier, but thanks to some bad rolls, we barely scratched it.

As a DM, I find I need to do a wee bit of planning as far as encounters go, or else the party ends up facing a lot of orcs on flat plains. I also suck at naming people on the fly.

DM: "So you arrive at the inn known as the ... uh, Mancing Pony, located in the village of ... Gree, which borders the halfling lands known as the ... Skire."
Player 1: "What's the innkeeper's name?"
DM: "Um … Steve."
Player 2: "Wasn't that the name of the guard at the gates? And that peasant we ran into on the road? And the princess we're supposed to be looking for?"

Laura Eternata
2011-07-22, 12:36 AM
I'm surprised by how many people prefer to improvise the whole thing. How do you do dungeons? Generators?

NichG
2011-07-22, 01:49 AM
Generally I don't use many dungeons, but when I improvise and want to use them I start the dungeon on some sort of site with either natural or man-made order. I then logically extend the dungeon to have things necessary to the function of such a site. As such, I can wing the contents of rooms or layouts on the basis of 'well, its a mine, it should have an area with spare supplies, an area where ore and rock are separated, an area that is being mined, areas for things to be dumped, and maybe an exhausted vein.' Or 'its a temple: it has a central worship area, cloisters for individual prayer, rooms for the various priests/etc, and maybe a crypt and a small library if its a big one, as well as an area to eat, a kitchen, etc, etc'.

Knaight
2011-07-22, 02:32 AM
I'm surprised by how many people prefer to improvise the whole thing. How do you do dungeons? Generators?

As one of the people who improvises everything, I don't do dungeons. Granted, I don't play D&D as a rule anyways, which means that I have a lot more wiggle room when it comes to not determining exact dimensions, exact locations, etc. and can thus come up with the interior of keeps, star ships*, caverns, and so on and so forth as they come up.

*For whatever reason, on the rare occasions I do something that is at all close to a dungeon crawl, it is always a space opera setting. For some reason it is just much easier to work with.

Gabe the Bard
2011-07-22, 04:08 AM
I'm surprised by how many people prefer to improvise the whole thing. How do you do dungeons? Generators?

I also didn't use many dungeons. The few times when I did make dungeons, I kept them very simple and spread out, so that I could add traps and encounters during the session without worrying about messing up the rest of the dungeon.

I tried to prepare a bunch of different monsters and encounters that I thought would be interesting for the party to fight, and then had the party run into them whenever it was appropriate. It worked better than putting the encounters in a specific place and waiting for the party to stumble across them.

Totally Guy
2011-07-22, 04:22 AM
A dungeon in my mind is a bit different these days.

There's a door that gandalf can't open. The hobbits get attacked by a swamp thing. Then there's Balin's tomb. There are goblins. A chase. The balrog.

That's a dungeon scene. It's a bit shorter than the dungeon crawls we used to do. But they're quite satisfying scenes.


I like to challenge the players in the way that they are most interested in. Each player makes these interests explicit when they define the motivations for thier characters. I use that information as an improvisation aid.

Knaight
2011-07-23, 01:48 AM
There's a door that gandalf can't open. The hobbits get attacked by a swamp thing. Then there's Balin's tomb. There are goblins. A chase. The balrog.

That's a dungeon scene. It's a bit shorter than the dungeon crawls we used to do. But they're quite satisfying scenes.

Amen to this. Alternately, for a more involved, space opera example.

The squad smashes through the side of a starship. They sneak around and disable the local guards. One tries to use a jet pack to take a short cut, but gets noticed by an automated turret, and the alarm is sounded. There is a rescue, hiding, and eventually a bomb set in the starship core. Team steals a fighter craft, flies out, and the larger ship blows up shortly after they leave. Done.

Shademan
2011-07-24, 02:52 AM
for my best campaign I had sort of an outline, but I winged alot of it and most of the major plot points. when they all suddenly came together to a single point the players were like "you magnificent bastard! you planned this all along!"
....
yes
yes I did.
ahem.

Balain
2011-07-24, 04:19 AM
My current D&D campaign, I have a set goal in mind, main npc's with their own goals and a time frame they plan to do things to reach those goals. Throw in some adventure hooks that get the party entangled in the major npc's plans. I plan out where the players currently are, where they are likely to go, have a couple spare maps and list of npc's in case they do something I can't predict( which is often) so I have something I can throw together on the fly.

I huge campaign I had set up, I had the whole world designed, and set up a website with a map, the map broken down into the regions/countries/kingdoms/etc. Click on one of those it would bring up a list of the major cities, the leaders, important npc's what might be going on there, who they are at war with, who they are at peace with etc, etc.

I had a huge web of how all the npcs, kingdoms, etc were related and connected. Before we start, party knows each other all agree to head out for x amount of weeks, to find some adventure and meet back at current location. I see how far they could travel in y direction for x weeks and whwen we play I tell them what they found out about each region they could get to and let them look at the website and see what they want to do.


Hope that made sense since I'm super tired now and should head to bed

GAThraawn
2011-07-24, 04:55 AM
I too improv pretty much everything, and don't do dungeons. I've sat down at a table before with literaly zero preperation and GM'd a long-running campaign. The key for me is making it clear when I sit down with my players that I intend to leave the story up to them: they get to do whatever the heck it is that they like, but they have to have characters that actually have a story to follow and investments that can be used to make a story.

I could never do a dungeon crawl (not without falling asleep, anyway), because a fighter, a mage, a rogue and a paladin isn't a party to me, it's a group of featureless steriotypes. My current party is made up of three almost identically statted rogues and an equally similar GMPC (at the party's insistence, not mine), but the fact that only one of them is particularly well equipped to fight their way out of a paper bag is largely irrelevant, because they're con artists who plan out heists before we get to the gaming table, and getting into a fight means things have already gone horribly wrong.

As an improviser, my job is pretty easy. I've got my players coming up with plans of what they want to do, rather than me coming up with plans of what I want them to do. So once they plan out a con, look for a mark, organize all the moving parts for their scam, and enact it, I actually have to do very little beyond portraying the NPCs and reacting to their actions. They have total freedom to pursue their goals, and I have little to no work to do myself. Win-win.

Zerter
2011-07-27, 02:29 AM
I try to maintain strict control of the early sessions by planning them out. I do this because I know the party and they won't work together (they're all bastards basically) until they have no choice but do so for a number of sessions and it becomes the status quo.

For example, I started a campaign with the party imprisoned in a desert and eventually sending them out to do a quest for their freedom. Each of them carrying a neck bracelet: you take it off and it blows up one other random party member, prevents them from killing each other right away. Right now I'm running a campaign in which they all woke up in a dungeon with no way out but to fight through a number of pre-planned encounters (they're supposed to form a group of spies eventually and this is how they're tested).

After two or three sessions I like to introduce a main-quest giver which they generally follow. In the mean time the world gets more established, other quests and motivations emerge or get followed through on for the party and individual members. As they hit the ground in the campaign world (establish a base of operations for example), I tend to let go more and more. They can always follow the pre-planned storyline if they desire to do so (aka: go to some dude with quests or follow up on some other obvious hook), but the responsibility for what happens next becomes entirely theirs.

only1doug
2011-07-27, 10:38 AM
I suppose I should point out that though I improv...the characters used are still rules legal. Oh, sure, I may not assign every skill point they have coming, and I tend to use average hp so I can rapidly keep track of it mentally, but I do use actual classes and things.

There's a fine line between improv and being entirely arbitrary.

I actually had one of my most memorable GMing moments with a monster that I kept changing my idea of its hitpoints every round...

It was the climax of a 1 shot adventure and the PCs had just found the BBEG completing his ritual in a warded circle, they broke through the wardings and killed him just as he finished the ritual and the monster awoke...

... and would have been immeadiately slaughtered by the PCs the same round, so i fudged it a bit and the monster kept coming. Every round the PCs kept re-killing it at the new figures I had decided so every round they whittled a bit more off the monster (decreasing its attack abilities). Eventually the monster was reduced to individual limbs, each still trying to kill the party.

The party left in a hurry when they noticed the room around them was on-fire and they were most disconcerted to find that they were locked in. (one of the PCs had decided to burn down the building, and the party with it).

Fleeing the dismembered limbs of a monster by climbing down the outside of a burning building...

I couldn't of planned it but it was one of the best games I have ever run.

I never told the Players that I'd arbitarily decided that it would be too easy if the Monster died in the first round of combat and their ignorance of that fact made the game much more fun for them.

As long as it isn't done too often, occasional bosses who don't follow the normal rules of the game are acceptable.

Darth Stabber
2011-09-12, 09:09 PM
Just finished the first story arc, all without the players realizing that I didn't use stats for any thing, I just rolled dice to see how I felt about them, and enemies died when I thought they had taken enough. Though many encounters were handled non-violently due to the pixie beguiler's apt use of glibness and her pixie granted sleep arrows. Now maintaining any sort of wbl went out the window as I just made up equipment that I thought they should have and as it turns out over did it a bit. They are lvl 9, and since I didn't keep trakc during play they have the WBL of a 15th lvl party. Throwing out spell completion items, risky if you aren't keeping track (note to self: be very careful about wands in the future).

The Story: Gaelen(human half vampire hexblade2/crusader7//LA2/warlock7 at the end) and petunia(pixie beguiler9//LA4/fighter4/aerial avenger1 at the end) enter the city of Abenvale to try their hands at adventuring, writing wrongs, protecting the innocent, ect. There are some shenanigans in the first session which are probably dceserving of their own thread. After that the meet with the lord mayor, kill some random zombies, and then, are tasked with delivering a letter to the lord mayor of fogdepth many miles to the south. They leave abenvale on a riverboat, and half way between abenvale and the next town they are attacked by a youngish orange dragon (dragon compendium). The beguiler casts one spell, dragon fails save, repeated mountain hammering ensues. Unfortunately the boat has sustained enough damage to render it inoperable, meaning they are hoofing it. After about a day's hike they arrive at the next town, and aid a farmer in his struggle against a local wyvren. After they leave that city they have a couple of random encounters before they hit the next city. The next city is in the middle of a horrible plague. They are offered the choice to help with the manufacture of the cure or hunting down the cult responsible and hoping they have a differnt means of ending it's blight. They choose to help with the cure and protect the supply convoys from kuo-toan raiders. When the cure is developed they run across an out of place Nezumi (rat folk) who can't help them with the cult they seek, but gives them the location of another cult that is causing problems near by. They pry the information of the main cult's hidout from a captured member, and proceed to capture most of them, killing 2, with only the leader escaping (he'll probably return at some later point). Afterwards they find the location of the cult the nezumi pointed out (near a small town about a half a day from the river). They sneak in invisibly and find out that the cult is just a bunch of human teenagers who take their teenage angst and frustration out on the local half-orc youths. They prevent on youngster from being sacrificed to Nerull, and subdue and capture the "cult", as it turns out the ringleader is the son of the local cleric of Pelor, they left knowing that the kids would be shown the error of their ways, without being too much worse for the wear. When they get back to the formerly plagued town, they purchase a peguses from a local exotic pet merchant, and go the rest of the distance in style. Upon reaching the city they learn of a massive colony of psuedodragons nearby, and the pixie becomes intent on having one as a pet. They arrive, and are soon after instructed to meet with the colonies protector. Upon entering the very large chamber they see a small halfling reading a book. When he is informed that the visitors have been brought before him, a glint twinkles in his eye and suddenly they realize that they are dealing with a fairly old (age category never pinned down) gold dragon. He asks them to do a favor and find a way to keep the nearby grimlocks from stealing the psuedodragon's eggs. They journey throught massive cave systems and after a couple of skirmishes against grimlock patrols meet the tribe's leader. After some cajoling he reveals that the stolen eggs are given to the nearby drow for some nefarious purpose as of yet unrevealed. A pact is stuck between the dragon and the grimlocks for mutual defense against the drow, and the grimlocks moved their settlement nearer to the mouth of the cave. One of the young pseudodragons was so impressed with the heroism and resolve to reach peaceful resolution that he decided to follow the pair around. After aiding the pseudodragons, they set about seeing what adventures they could get into the city. They soon stubled across work guarding a cargo ship from privateer activity, lead by the mysterious Dwead Piwate Wobert (the pseudodragon campanion has a speech impediment, and in a cruel twist of fate is named gregory, though he makes sure every one pronounces it gwegowy). The ship is attacked, and they manage to kill or subdue most of the pirates, but robert and his best men escape with the loot. They also notice that robert doesn't get away in a ship, but meerly dives into the ocean with the goods and doesn't resurface. Upon investigaing the possesions of the neutralized pirates they discover rings of water breating on several of them. They return to the city crestfallen but determined. After plying some negotiation tactics (read suggestion spells) to a few merchants and diplomats in the merfolk quarter they learn the location of one of his secret underwater bases. They contract the aide of a local merfolk inventor and his undersea boat (submarine) to get there. After a brawl with an angry octopus they arrive at the location. Upon entering the base they are attacked by several halfling rogues, who teach them the importance of fortitude saves. They manage to kill or subdue most of the pirate horde, and robert catches a sleep arrow and fails his save. Robert's luetenant manages to get himself and the boss in a pressurized escape vessel (another gnomish contraption, that compresses air and launches a small craft to the surface). They find evidence of a quasi familial relationship (via adoption) between robert and the king of a neigboring elvish nation. After a disassembling a web of intrigue and subterfuge in the elven court they manage to blackmail (via glibness) the king into giving them the location of his undersea wherehouse. Upon raiding it the two heroes nearly die of con loss, but manage to bring the halfling scourge to justice (and subsequently witnessed his hanging).