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View Full Version : Journal You won't believe it's not turtle leather! (A D&D 4e campaign journal)



Lakaz
2015-03-08, 03:25 PM
Disclaimer: This is my first full-on campaign i've ever DM'ed (After a large number of one-shots), and also my first campaign journal. So bear with me here and watch as things go hilariously wrong. If you're one of my players (And i know who you are), turn back now, 'cause i spoil the plot twist in the first few sentences

I had this idea for a campaign for a while. A semi-intrigue semi-dungeon delve campaign based around the idea that monsters are all but absent from the surface world, but the players discover that they still exist in the underdark, and as the only humans who know of this, decide whether they want to tell the world and start a war of eradication, keep it secret and profit of blackmailing the underground residents to keep it that way, or just mess around underground and amass power.
So i finally decided to run it. I told the players the lore- Pretty much as follows.
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG! The humans, and other sentient or magical races, were made by the gods to fight each other, to prove which god is best at creating stuff. The humans were their gods, whose name is long forgotten, finest creation, being amazing at the art of war compared to the other races. They were in fact, too good. They got tired of being controlled and waged war against their own creator, won, and then promptly wiped out the other sentient races and their gods. And then most magical non-sentients. And then the smarter animals, too, like dolphins, just to be on the safe side ('cause we all know they're plotting to otherthrow us SOME time). There are still a few extraordinarily rare goblin tribes about, but these are often wiped out quickly, and only one confirmed case has come up the world over in the past millenium. As a result of this, as a sidebar, i restricted characters to human-only, and non-divine classes.
Anyway, the human nations have since evolved, become a bit less barbaric, and a few even regret this decision, although monsters are still mercilessly hunter down and eradicated by The Ensorcelled Shield wherever they come up, who also act as mage-hunters on the side. The humans have since fractured from one unified nation to several, who politic and occasionally even fight each other even more effectively as our technological and magical knowledge grows. The players are major figures in a small town, a few miles south of your nation's capital of Ainslass (Named for a folk hero caled Ain. Who had a lass. Long story), a mountain town on the borders between their nation and a neighbouring one. And so the campaign begins.

The party are, IRL, my family (Brother and sister), along with a cousin and a friend who joins during the third session. We've been playing P&P roleplay together for a while out of lack of anybody else to play with, usually playing one-shots in 4e and Call Of Cthulhu, and i'm basically always the DM, as oldest of the lot (Save for the friend who joins later). The characters are thus:
Godrik Krimmson: A monk, and the closest to a powergamer we have, given his character has by far the most burst DPS with his encounter powers than anybody else. This guy is IC'ly the town mayor, after (In his words) "Having come down from meditating on the mountain during a riot, accidentally killed the old mayor, and achieved the position by dead man's pointy shoes". He's largely the instigator, he does a lot of the work to push the campaign forward, although he often goes a bit over the top, and had to be reigned in by the others. The player is the cousin
A sorceror, female, and the player's best attempt at an expy of Vivienne from Dragon Age: inquisition. She's the smart, practical one essentially, in combat she tends to dead consistent, moderate levels of damage, nothing fancy but nothing to scoff at either. Out of combat she's usually the one saving Godrik's hide after one of his "Plans" has gone too far, but rarely the one to come up with anything spectacular herself. She knows what's safe and sane, and tends to push the party towards it when they try something a little too madcap. She's the town magus, resident researcher and dragon expert. Also Godrik's secretary, although whether that's true or he just says that to wind him up is debaitable. The player is my sister
Team bard and healer. Very altruistic, high heal skill, and tends to hang back in combat and heal anybody who's wounded, including obviously hostile NPC's a lot of the time >.> He's quiet, and doesn't do much, although when he does he usually manages to progress the plot more in five minutes than has been accomplished the whole rest of the session. There's not much else to say about him, to be honest, he's too quiet to have accrued much to talk about yet. The player is my brother
Imagine the most determined, energetic and creative powergamer and murderhobo extraordinaire imaginable. Old Man Henderson, The Guy Who Broke Psionics and The Doctor rolled into one. Imagine the guy who wants to play as her has no idea whatsoever how to optimize characters or to accomplish any of this. This is Ilya. A Fistfighter whose most damaging attack deals 1d8 damage, whose strongest at will abilities could hardly hurt a fly. She's the fighter, played by the friend who joins about two sessions in, and who plays the single least powerful fighter i've yet seen, and yet who maintains that he could probably take the monk in a fair fight. The monk who can take his character down to half health in one shot. Yeaaahno. We let him in this game with specific intent to try to curb his murderhobo tendencies, and i'm determined that by the end of the campaign, we shall.

I'll be posting the first session here, the next two ASAP, then we play once every thursday, so... i'll post here every time we finish a game XD
Anyways, the first session!
A messenger burst into the players rooms, yelling something incoherent about the inn and guards. "Ohmygodyouhavetohelpsomebody'sinvadingandtheyrekil lingpeopleandit'sallhorribleandyouhavetohelp ohgodohgodohgod"
Luna blinks and asks the messenger to calm down, at which point they get a coherent answer. Apparently some soldiers have marched into the town inn, taken hostages, and nobody knows what to do. They leave the messenger to mutter "Oh god oh god oh god" to herself, after briefly questioning why she's muttering "God" in a setting without any, and head to the bar to see what's going on.
It's ensorcelled shield. They can tell by the badges of the two men at the door that they're the ones who've taken the inn. They tell the guy at the door they're the mayor and his aides, and so after a diplomacy roll, they head in. They see the place in tatters, the innkeeper, his daughter and other guys tied up, and a guard captain muttering something to an sergeant about a smuggling ring. They approach the sergeant and demand to know why they've marched into the town and taken hostages. "They're all suspects"
Okay, so what are they suspected of?
"Harboring a goblin body parts smuggling ring."
Waitwhat? The party ask to see proof, and are lead into the back room. There's a guy dead on the floor, and several opened barrels of goblin anatomical parts. Highly illegal, of course. Arms, legs, uh... "Parts". They ask if they know the guy in the floor, which gets the following response "He's Elric, the hunter. Known for taking people on tours of the nearby woods, Godrick knows him well, as he'd often lead him out to good secluded places to medidate." Luna mentions he'd also be good at finding secluded places to kill political rivals. Godrick denies everything.
They search the corpse and find a few gold and a note. Godrick takes it out to read it, and says he wants to do it privately, in case there's anything he doesn't want to tell the guard captain. Bobby rolls a stealth check and passes to read over his shoulder. I pass a note to Godrick saying it mentions "Storing the goods and passing it off to a man who'll come in the morning bearing our symbol, show him the way to the cove and then lay low." and is signed with a five pointed star with some symbols inside, which i draw. He points out i drew a six pointed star. I tell him to shut up. "Okay, so we're dealing with jewish organ smugglers then. Great." I mention it's the afternoon, so the meeting will have already transpired, and the party start discussing the new evidence, at which point Godrick decides to leave the room, with the note, to go find this guy with the symbol on him. I have him roll streetwise (Which he has a -1 modifier in. He rolls a one. He doesn't pass), and the rest of the party decide to interrogate the innkeeper to see if he knows anything. They then realise Godrick is missing and Luna goes out to find him, rolls a better streetwise, and finds him "In a church, muttering something about how he's confused that it isn't a brothel". Luna yells at him a bit and drags him back to the crime scene.
The inkeeper, with a heavy scottish accent, denies knowing anything about a goblin smuggling ring. They ask him if he knows anything about Elric the hunter, to which he says "Oh yeah, he's one of my best suppliers. He sells me TONS of turtle leather, i make a killing off all the people who come through". The party blink. "So what are those barrels in back?" "Food, mostly, although i keep some of that turtle leather there, too." They take him to the back room, to show him the barrels, wide open i might add, full of goblin parts, and Luna does "So what, my dear, do you think those are then?" "Well those are the barrels of turtle leather".
To prove the point further, they take a goblin arm out of the nearest barrel "You call this turtle leather?" He inspects it closely, taking it and turning it around in his hand, looking at it through a monocle, before saying "That's the strangest turtle leather i've ever seen"
The party decide at this point that the innkeeper doesn't know anything, and clear out to find the guy with the symbol. The mayor latches onto the term "The cove" and says he starts heading for the nearest seaside area. I tell him the nearest beach is a month's travel east, so he gives up on that idea. He decides that since he knew Elric, he'll go explore those "Secluded areas" he often was lead to, to see if the marked man was asked to meet there too, while the party just generally search the forests for him. Luna takes Godrick's horse, much to his OOC (And later IC) protest, to better explore.
I mutter something about how low the odds are of finding one guy in a huge forest, but let them roll anyway. Luna points out that she has a high survival skill and they get a 19, so i do say they find a hooded, cloaked man, in a horse-drawn cart with many barrels on the back, whose cloak bears the mark they were looking for. Luna and Bobby approach from both sides, fencing him in as best they can, and ask him what such a lonely traveller is doing here all alone in the forest at night. "What are you, bandits? Please, i don't want any trouble, you can have my money. Also, it's the middle of the afternoon."
"No, no, we're not bandits, just... curious, as to why you would be out here"
A series of diplomacy checks follow, along with attempts to intimidate, trying to get information out of him, and after Luna fails several Bobby sighs, draws a knife, and holds it to the guy's throat and asks to know what's in the barrels. "Nothing! It's emptied, i delivered it all, i swear! You can check!" "Well what WAS in them!" "TURTLE LEATHER! I SWEAR! JUST LET ME LIVE!"
At this point Godrick walks in, deciding to stay in the shadows and hide from the party for... some inexplicable reason. He passes his stealth check against the party's perception, so he stays to the shadows of the forest, and just kinda listens in.
They intimidate the hooded man into taking them back to the place he delivered the goblin parts to, whilst they hide in the barrels and with Godrick still following along, and find a single guard stood with a sword stood in a small clearing by a sheer cliff face. No barrels, nobody else, just the one person standing by the cliff face, as though guarding the cliff itself. The cloaked man gets into a conversation with the guard, although it's clear he can't think of a reason for him to be here, and the guard gets suspicious The party at this point jump out of the barrels and attack, both botching their hit rolls, and the guard runs back, through the sheer cliff face, and dissapears. (As a sidenote, At this point i realise i've had no female NPC's so far, so i point this out and after about five minutes of referring to the guard as "Him", say "Yeah, i'm feeling sexist abou the lack of female NPC's, so the guard's a very butch girl now") Luna rolls arcana to see what's going on, rolls a one, and is told "Well you get the feeling that it's not really a cliff face". They hear the guard yelling for reinforcements from the other side, at which point Godrick runs from the forest at full sprint screaming a battle cry, makes a jump kick through the cliff face (With massive jump modifiers to increase it's range), and simply dissapears into the cliff face. The party grumble and run through to help him.
They find a massive cave, hidden by the illusiory wall, with a large underground river stretching off as far as the eye can see. There's a dock and boat onto the river, along with a small cabin. The boat is being loaded with barrels by three workers, and commanded by a man with strange, swirling tattoos. The butch guard is on the floor, being pummeled in the face repeatedly by Godrick, while a second guard is running from him yelling "GET EVERYTHING ON THE BOAT! WE HAVE TO LEAVE!". Thus combat begins.
Godrick continues to pummel the butch guard, punching her in the face over and over until she's unconscious. He uses his encounter power on this, and she only really gets one punch off for a few hitpoints before losing consciousness. Luna lets out a acid orb for the boat, trying to blow a hole in it which succeeds, while Bobby shoots an arrow for the running guard, hitting him in the knee (Prompting the obvious skyrim-inspired joke from him), letting him limp away. The workers scream and hide in the boat and the man in the tattoos yells to protect the boat, fires off a bolt of arcane energy... and misses, the bolt goes through the invisible wall. There's a crash, and the party hear swearing from the robed man from the other side.
Godrick jumps for the running guard, dealing some damage and knocking him prone, and he tries to crawl away. Luna casts dragonfrost at the water around the boat to freeze it, scaring the working into staying down and also trying to keep it from sinking, while Bobby sits down to apply first aid to the butch guard, so she lives and can be interrogated later he says (No, he doesn't tie her up first). The magus summons up a giant stone hand from the ground between Godrick and him, trying to grab him, but missing and only forcing him back a bit. The whole party focuses on the magus now, opening fire and largely missing (Godrick making a run move towards him), and the magus summons ice armor and makes a break for it across the river, freezing a path for himself with the armor as he goes, and the hand follows him down, sinking to the bottom of the river.
Godrick makes a leap for the magus, planning to jump-kick him down through the ice, hence drowning him. After being yelled at by Luna that they want the magus alive, he continues, rolls a one on his athletics, misses the jump, falls into the water half way to the magus, and is grabbed by the stone hand, which (After another botched roll on his behalf) starts to crush him to death. Luna realises it's between helping Godrick or catching the fleeing Magus, and asks if she can roll arcana to counterspell the hand. She rolls very high on it. The hand disintergrates and Godrick emerges from the water, letting out a fierce roar... and then swimming to the shore. The running guard, who had now stood after being left by Godrick, charges for Luna, with a terrified look on his face, but desperate like a cornered animal. Luna says "I simply glare and say "Do you REALLY think that's a good idea?" I roll intimidate". She rolls high, and the running guard urinates and backs down. They figure the combat is over, and they call the Ensorcelled shield to arrest the rest of the guards. The guard captain pays them some gold for their trouble, and Godrick takes the opportunity to demand his horse back. After some arguement over ownership of the horse (Which is listed as Godrick's on the character sheet), they decide to end the session. Bobby suggests using the money from the guard captain to get "A communist horse". They figure he meant "Communal", and also that it's a good idea, and so between sessions the party acquires "Trotsky", the communist horse.