How to Run Tales From the Yawning Portal

I am going to take a stab at two things right here. First I’m going to try and explain this book to people who are new to D&D. Then I’m going to give an example of how to link all of these adventures together and make a campaign out of the whole thing. You can buy Tales From the Yawning Portal right here.

The content in this column is part of the pdf version of my Guide to Tales From the Yawning Portal:

This book is a collection of 7 adventures. They were originally made for previous editions (with different rules). These have all been updated to the 5th edition rules.

Famous: Some of these adventures are very famous in D&D circles. White Plume Mountain is known as a “funhouse” dungeon, a place full of weird and wacky rooms. The Tomb of Horrors is a dungeon full of traps (and almost no monsters at all) designed to kill almost anyone. Gary Gygax himself made this dungeon and it is meant to be the ultimate challenge.

Start with Sunless Citadel: If you are going to start a group, you’ll want to use the Sunless Citadel first. That’s for brand new, 1st level characters. This adventure came out right when 3rd edition was released. 3rd edition was really popular at the time, and a lot of people played it.

It’s a good dungeon for new players and DMs, because it was designed for them. It starts out a bit basic, and grows in complexity as you go on. You begin by entering a dungeon that’s inhabited by feuding kobolds and goblins. At the bottom of the place is a druid and a tree tainted by the blood of a vampire.

Preparing: If this is the first adventure you’ve ever run, you need to read the whole chapter. I wrote a guide to this book, and I prepared the adventure as best as I could for you. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to look up monsters and stuff beforehand. If you look up everything at the table, everybody will get bored. It is important to be prepared. You want people have fun, not fall asleep or wander away.

You might want to get a piece of paper or something and write down stats for a kobold, goblin, and a twig blight. Also, write down what some spells that are in the adventure do. That way, when you’re running the game, all you have to do is look at that sheet and you can just keep right on going with no break in the pacing.

Also remember that every DM makes mistakes every single session. It’s no big deal. Just roll with it. It doesn’t matter, all that matters is that everyone has fun.

Keeping the Game Moving: If your players are new, certain things can slow the game down. Make sure everybody knows their plus to hit, how much damage they do, their spell attack bonus and the DC for their spells. It gets real old when the same player keeps having to figure out their bonus to hit and it drags the game down.

Setting up the Adventure: Check out the hooks on page 10. You might want to talk with your players before the game to see if they have any ideas as far as their character’s backstory. The missing adventurers could be relatives or mentors to a character. A character might need the magic apple to heal a sick loved one who is going to die soon without it.

If there’s a player that is into vampires, you could play up the story of Gulthias and work that in. What might be cool is to say that if you make a stake out of the wood of the Gulthias Tree, maybe it does special things to vampires. Normally a stake paralyzes them, maybe this obliterates them or turns them into petrified wood or something. Or maybe a character knew Gulthias and through the tree they can get something from Gulthias that they need, like a drop of blood or the answer to a riddle, or the location of a lost family heirloom/magic item.

Meepo: On page 16, there is an NPC named Meepo, who is something of a famous character. Most people who play this adventure have some weird or funny Meepo story to tell. Sometimes Meepo joins the group and goes on many future adventures with them.

Meepo is an opportunity for you to showcase your style – your brand of D&D. Every DM does something different. Sometimes he’s a traitor, sometimes he’s a coward, sometimes he’s a brave but weak ally. You might want to put some thought into how you want to run Meepo. That’s the cool thing about being a DM, you’re like a director of a movie. Tim Burton would portray Meepo very differently than Quentin Tarantino or Michael Bay. You get to to do whatever you want.

Pacing: This is a big dungeon. It might get boring. Do not be afraid to junk rooms or move things along. If exploring a certain section is becoming a drag, make some of the rooms empty and get to the end of it. There’s no “right” way to run a dungeon. The authors expect you to change it, so don’t feel like you’re doing it wrong. It’s impossible to do it wrong. You can change it however you like.

Forge of Fury: Let’s say you’ve been running your group through a bit of Phandelver from the boxed set, or maybe you’ve just been making stuff up on your own. The group is 3rd level and you want to run the Forge of Fury.

If you can, set it up a bit in advance. While you’re running whatever you’re running before forge, slip in some mentions of the legendary black dragon Nightscale, have someone find one of those ancient dwarven weapons crated by Durgeddin. Maybe you can have the group go to Oakhurst and fight some orc raiders who actually came from the forge.

It’s always good to plant seeds ahead of time if possible. If the group has been hearing about Nightscale the dragon and how terrifying she is, they will be much more pumped up when they actually realize that they are going to have to fight her at the end.

Warn the Players: I also recommend telling your players before they start that the monsters in this place don’t act like monsters in a video game. The whole dungeon will attack them at once if the group isn’t careful. We are specifically telling them this because the very beginning part of this dungeon has a very involved encounter with the orcs, who have a detailed strategy on how they handle intruders. If the group is not careful, they are going to get their asses kicked.

That beginning part is not easy. They’ll need to be quiet, cautious and smart. They probably won’t survive if they just barge in. It’s fair to give them a warning, especially if they are new and don’t understand how the game works. The monsters can do whatever they want just like the characters can. The monsters aren’t tethered to a room.

Pacing: This dungeon is really big and it is likely that it will start to drag and feel stale/boring. Do what you have to do to move past it. Get rid of boring encounters altogether if you think it’s going to make the game suck. The point of the game is to have fun. Bottom line, the players aren’t going to want to play anymore if it’s really boring. Nothing in this book is written in stone, DMs change stuff all the time.

Rivers: The trickiest part of this adventure is the fast-flowing rivers. The explanation is spread out over a few pages and it can be a little difficult understanding how everything fits together. Make sure you get a good handle on that and jot down some notes beforehand if you need to. That river goes from bad to worse and it is very deadly. You want to make sure you run it right, because if a character dies, you don’t want it to be because you forgot something or made a mistake.

Tamoachan: This one is hard to prepare. The details of the rooms are very intricate, you’ll need to set some time aside to make sure you understand how some of the rooms work. It’s very easy to forget that the whole bottom area is full of poison gas, so make sure you note it somewhere if you can. That gas is there in part to put pressure on the players. They can’t just keep taking rests! They’ll die. That’s part of why it’s there, to prevent groups from just taking a long rest after every room.

White Plume Mountain: This is just an epic adventure. If you can, plant legends about the artifacts well ahead of time. Blackrazor in particular is just a ridiculously cool weapon. They’re all extremely powerful. Maybe the ancestor of a character had Blackrazor and eventually got their own soul sucked out.

Maybe a character is the descendant of Keraptis, the bad guy who made this dungeon. Snarla the werewolf wizard has always stuck out as a memorable NPC. Maybe the group knew Snarla before she became a werewolf. You could work that into a prior adventure, where in the end she becomes a werewolf and runs off with Burket (page 101) to the mountain.

Dead in Thay: There’s actually an adventure that sets up Dead in Thay. It’s Scourge of the Sword Coast for D&D Next, which is the playtest version of 5th edition. You might have to change a few things, but it had some cool stuff in it.

Dead in Thay is really big. You might want to streamline it a bit and have the glyph keys take the group to the areas you want to run.

Against the Giants: This is really high level, so I would assume you don’t need much advice on this. I think that part of the key to bringing this to life is to make sure you emphasize that the giants are "giant." Their footsteps shake everything, the door handles are way up in the air, just getting onto one of their chairs requires a climb check and maybe a rope and grappling hook. Even their loot is gigantic.

Killing them means their massive body falls to the ground, causes a big tremor and kicks up dust. You could say that the group needs to make a DC 10 acrobatics check when a giant dies to see if they fall prone. Also, there’s a chance the dead giant falls on a hero, right?! That would do damage! Dex save DC 10. Fail: 7 damage and restrained? Need a DC 10 escape check to free themselves?

That could add a lot to the game, but make sure that you don’t use it against them. Keep it fair and random. This is meant to impress upon them the “giantness” of the giants, not a weapon to use against them. It’s just something to add to the fun and danger. The uniqueness of battling a giant. The scale of what they’re doing is enormous (ho, ho) and thus they are that much more heroic and impressive when they defeat the giants.

Tomb of Horrors: Technically you could run this for characters of any level. But low level characters have absolutely no chance whatsoever of defeating Acererak. They could, however, get pretty far into the tomb just by being clever and cautious. The thing about this dungeon is that it’s somewhat random and arbitrary. In some cases, you can’t figure out the “rules” of the room because there are no rules. This is a cruel place that messes with your head.

Not For Everyone: Also.. I can’t stress this enough. There are a lot of players who will not enjoy this adventure. There are plenty of D&D players who really hate the lethality and cruelty of this place. To some people, it feels like it’s the DM vs. the players, which is never a fair battle because the DM can do whatever they want. Some players just do not handle it well when their character dies or they suffer some kind of horrid setback (like losing ALL OF YOUR ITEMS and appearing naked at the start of the dungeon).

Nobody wants to lose all their magic items, that does suck. So generally, sending characters who have clawed their way up to 12th level or whatever aren’t a good choice to send here unless the player is cool with it. They need to know that their beloved character is probably going to have horrible, horrible things happen to them.

Some players will love it. Some will hate it. Make sure you know before you decide to run this, because one unhappy player will ruin the entire session. Everybody has to know what they’re getting into and they should definitely be allowed to make up a character to go in rather than use their normal one.

You could have each player make 3 characters, so that way if one dies, they can bring in another one. Or, maybe you could have it where an NPC owes them a wish. That way, if something terrible happens to the group, they can use the wish to undo it and wash their hands of the tomb (or courageously decide to return without the safety net of the wish spell!).

Making a Yawning Portal Campaign

I’m going to take a stab at placing all of these adventures into one cohesive story. It’s just meant to be an example of how you could do it.

Let’s put all this stuff in Undermountain! I mean, why not, the entrance to Undermountain is in the Yawning Portal, right? The one tricky thing here is that it seems a bit unfeasible to put the giant lairs down there. You could, but it doesn’t feel right. The glacial rift in a dungeon underground? We’ll work around it.

First Session: So let’s start off with the group at level one. They are in Waterdeep. It’s entirely up to them if they know each other or not. All that matters is that it’s night time and they happen to be in the same general vicinity.

Suddenly, shouts and explosions. Waterdeep is under attack! The red wizards have gated in to the city and seem to be going after certain targets. So we’ll start off a bit like Hoard of the Dragon Queen started – the heroes are in a settlement under siege.

The most difficult thing here is that they’re going to rub elbows with high level bad guys that they have no chance of defeating. We’ll have to be real careful. The true purpose of this is for the players to get a look at all of the bad guys they are going to have to kill in this campaign. We are going to build anticipation so that the group will be extremely excited when they finally get to try to take them down.

1. Twig Blights: The group sees a bark-skinned guy (let’s make this Karakas the Ranger, who is on page 21). The bark-skinned guy orders some twig blights to swarm a lone guard of Waterdeep. The guard has no chance without help. Hopefully the group helps, if not the blights are coming for them next, anyway. If possible, Karakas runs away.

2. Black Dragon: With that done, and hopefully with the guard saved, the group hears the flapping of wings over the screams and clatter ringing throughout the city. There is a black dragon, Nightscale, swooping down toward them! It’s not going for them, it breathes acid on a building. The building partially collapses. The group hears the cries of those still trapped inside. They can try and rescue them before the place collapses completely.

3. Centaur Mummy: With that done, they see a surreal sight. The centaur mummy from Tamoachan is leading a few zombies (the zombies from page 73) toward a band of brave but skill-less citizens trying to protect their city. We should have the mummy touch one of them, so the group can get a look at the mummy rot effect. The group can take down the zombies, they’re just zombies. The mummy has bigger fish to fry and rides off down a street.

4. Wight Wielding Blackrazor: On a rooftop, the group can see a wight wielding Blackrazor (the wielder’s soul has been drained, Blackrazor controls the wight). Guards are coming at Blackrazor, but they’re getting cut down left and right. We want to play up the ridiculous badassery of Blackrazor here.

The group is safe, and they can use range attacks or clever ideas here to help the guards. They could try to knock Blackrazor off the roof, or collapse a portion of the roof. Actually, it might be really cool if the heroes see that the building that Blackrazor is on has a bunch of barrels of elemental fire in it. The store sells magic unguents or residuum or something. They can blow the whole building up with a fire spell or flaming arrow. Blackrazor’s fate is unknown. That would be fun.

5. Red Wizard: At that point, the group’s luck runs out. Tarul Var, the red wizard, come upon the group. He is clearly one of the people in charge of this assault, calmly issuing orders to sub-ordinates. He tells one of them to “Tell the giants to attack.”

Nearby, an old woman is holding the symbol of her god, praying for aid. Tarul Var looks down at her..

The group could hide and observe. If they don’t, Tarul (stats on page 244) can address them. The group is no match for this guy. He can counterspell and paralyze like crazy. He might paralyze one character and then detect thoughts on them, curious.

Whatever happens, suddenly, a shaft of light appears and from it steps a deva. Lumalia (page 153) shows up, answering the woman’s prayer. Lumalia starts kicking ass and urges the group to help, either get the woman to safety or take some some shots at the red wizards.

6. Giants: Whatever the group does, the giants are outside the city and they rush the walls and chuck boulders. A massive boulder hits a building that collapses, kicking up dust everywhere. Any characters who look for her see that Lumalia is down and the wizards have her. She’s gonna be a statue in room 92, page 152.

7. Acererak: Before the group can do anything else, another heroic figure appears – Elminster the legendary wizard. He tells the red wizards to unhand the deva. Tarul Var craps his pants. The group is more than welcome to stand with Elminster and maybe get some shots in or nasty words. But what they don’t know is that this attack is all about drawing out powerful individuals, so that they can be put in the shrines (dead in thay, temples of extraction page 155).

A flash of light appears behind the group. It’s a floating skull with gem eyes. Acererak! The demilich drains Elminster’s soul into a gem. Then perhaps Acererak looks the group over – a chance for them to interact with the ultimate villain of the entire campaign. Then he’ll tell Tarul Var, “We got what we came for” and they all teleport away.

The group can catch their breath, and hear cries from a nearby building – the Yawning Portal. There’s some twig blights in there, twig blighting it up. The group can run in and save the town drunks, earning the appreciation of the owner, the mysterious Durnan (page 6).

As a reward for their help, Durnan can offer the group a room to stay in for free. Let's make it a cool suite kind of thing to maybe entice the group to accept the offer. There’s a few wounded citizens that could use healing. The group can interact with the NPCs here and realize that they can live here if they so desire. They’ll see the well and we’ve got our setup for the campaign.

Yawning Portal: We’re going to have some NPCs, regular customers, here in the Yawning Portal for the group to interact with.

• Pencheska: She is an entertainer that really likes to drink. The truth – she’s one of the succubus spies who report to Acererak (Pencheska’s in room 5, page 120). We’re going to try to keep her deal secret for a long time, so play it cool. If the group figures it out, good for them! There’s another succubus spy elsewhere in the city. She is Idalla, the dark-haired woman from room 49 on page 56.
• Endroth Knag: Member of the city watch being pressured to retire. He ponders unresolved cases as he sips ale.
• The White Lady: An elderly elf wearing plain white robes. She comes in every night and whispers cryptic statements over and over.
• Brother Sepulcher: A bald priest who wears grey robes and long, white gloves who likes to stare at a skull he keeps with him. He worships Jergal, the exarch of proper burials. Brother Sepulcher likes to record the name and description of each person who enters Undermountain.
• Old Stannoc: An elderly halfling who is a gambler and odds maker. He tries to evaluate each adventurer before they go down so he can set proper odds.

We should also make it a point to note that the adventurers who went to the Sunless Citadel are:

Karakas the Ranger (pg 21), Talgyn (pg 25), Sharwyn (pg 30, stats pg 242), Sir Braford (pg 30, stats pg 243)

They went into the Yawning Portal well a week ago and haven’t been heard from since. We changed Karakas, so have it where the group does not find his body or his stuff on page 21.

Next Day: The next day, the city is in extreme disarray. The group learns that the bad guys specifically targeted the Harpers (a vast, secret organization of good guys). They killed as many Harpers as possible.

The heroes don’t know this, but Idalla and Pencheska, the succubus spies, have spent the last year identifying as many harpers and harper strongholds that they could. The bad guys want to kill all the heroes to draw out the most powerful heroes so they can stick them in those shrines in the temple of extraction (we’re getting rid of the Chosen and doing this instead).

Meeting: All adventuring types of the city are gathered together. The giant army must be defeated. Durnan knows more than most (he’s practically immortal). He knows the real problem is down in Undermountain, not out in the giant lairs. Their lairs aren’t too far from Waterdeep. It’s assumed that the red wizards are operating from there as well. If the group goes to the gathering, they are not accepted as part of the giant-slaying force. If you want, have Acquisitions Inc be there, ready to lead the charge.

The point here is to answer the question of “why are we dealing with this rather than higher level heroes in the city?” All NPC heroes of level 3 and higher are out hunting the giant army or are following orders to guard and protect the city. Nobody is going to indulge Durnan’s wacky ideas. And anyway, Durnan knows the deal. He knows the group can do it, that’s how this adventuring thing works.

Durnan's Story: Durnan tells the heroes that he once went down into Undermountain (he was in there for two years). He faced off with Acererak – he tried to get into Acererak’s tomb alongside his friend Mirt. Durnan says that the tomb was like hell. They entered a hallway full of horrible traps. They came into a series of rooms where darts kept flying at them. They had no choice but to flee. Let’s have Durnan show the group his scars. His chest is covered with over a dozen holes/scars.

We’re saying here that the Tomb of Horrors is so deadly that Durnan and Mirt only made it through the first area, and then they had to run away. That way, when the group gets there, they’ll say: “This is that hallway. Oh no.” And they’ll be looking for the darts, which is good because that area is really brutal and they deserve a warning.

Black Gates: Durnan explains that Undermountain operates through glyphs and glyph keys. These are from Dead in Thay, we’ll use them throughout the whole campaign. We’ll put black gates in every dungeon in this book. This is how Acererak and Tarul Var communicate and coordinate with their allies.

Durnan urges the group to go down below. He offers up some of his old gear – an ancient +1 sword (with the seal of Durgeddin from forge of fury on it), maybe some dust of disappearance or something, and two potions of healing. He tells them that he has a friend in Downshadow who can help them.

The group goes down below. The patrons cheer and bet on whether the group will survive. The group is free to bet on themselves.

Downshadow: Downshadow is this collection of poor people who live in Undermountain close to the well. They are detailed in a number of places, including a novel and this issue of Dungeon magazine.

Let’s stick an NPC linked to each dungeon here so the group can get clues and learn a little about them if they want.

• (Sunless Citadel) Bianca: A woman who was a thrall of the vampire Gulthias and misses him. She’s crazy, creepy and spaced out. She still has the fang marks on her neck and she wears gothic clothes.
• (Forge of Fury) Shakla: A half-orc who abandoned the orcs in the forge of fury. She is quite happy in Downshadow
• (Tamoachan) Xiyatyl: A mysterious woman who claims that her parents, Cipactonal and Oxomoco, have been asleep for centuries and she is waiting for them to wake up. Then, it will be her turn to sleep. Her parents are the sleepers in room 22, page 75. We should have it where she plays Pelota (page 78) with the scamps and sad sacks of Downshadow. Any characters who take the time to learn the game and play a bit should get special bonuses once they get to room 29 of Tamoachan.
• (White Plume) Geddi: A dwarf with horrible burn scars. She once wielded Whelm, but it was taken from her by Nix and Nox, the efreeti of White Plume Mountain. She suffered permanent injuries and now spends her time beating people in drinking competitions. She is a direct descendant of Durgeddin and is the rightful owner of the Forge of Fury.
• (Dead in Thay) Bart the Beggar: Let's say that Bart was a red wizard who really didn't like the things that were happening in the Doomvault, so here he hides. Maybe he has a glyph key?
• (Against the Giants) Ruby: A powerful, red-haired half-giant. She’s an unwanted daughter of King Snurre. She also likes it in Downshadow and is the unofficial protector.
• (Tomb of Horrors) Adenian: An ancient elf who went into the tomb of horrors and has never gotten over it. He’s shellshocked still, muttering about a green devil face. When he trances, he has flashbacks. Every time the group visits him, he gives them another clue to the tomb of horrors. We’re going to use him to help the group get through that adventure. He should tell them that they NEED the gem of seeing from the gargoyle statue and he’ll hand them 10 gems. He'll also tell them to make sure to extinguish all fire near the adamantine doors and that healing the doors is the key, and do not approach the lava pit - there is nothing there but death. Add more, whatever things you think the group might need to know. It’s up to them to take this advice, but we want to give them a real chance to get through the tomb. It would suck for this campaign to end in a TPK and we want to help them in a way that doesn’t feel contrived. This way makes sense. Adenian survived the tomb. He can give them clues.

Then a few utility NPCs:

Shara Shaana, cleric of Amaunator. She can heal the group, maybe.

Izzy the Appraiser, an elderly gnome. He can appraise stuff and identify magic items.
Let’s say that the group has to pass through Downshadow to get to the Sunless Citadel.

Sunless Citadel: So the group goes to the sunless citadel, goes through all that stuff. Maybe you should change the white dragon wyrmling to a black dragon – it’s the spawn of Nightscale, of the forge of fury.

The heroes defeat the druid and the tree. They see a black gate down there. The druid has a glyph key. Durnan or Bart of Downshadow can explain how it works. It leads to the Forge of Fury.

Resting: I would say that when the group sleeps at the Yawning Portal after this, bark-skinned Karakas the Ranger tries to kill them in their sleep. How did he get up the well? Pencheska. The group won’t know this for a while, ideally.

The next day, the giants and Nightscale the black dragon attack Waterdeep again. Nightscale is here to take out to take out some straggler Harpers and to hopefully draw out another powerful hero that they can put in a shrine in the temple of extraction. It works.. this time they get Farideh the tiefling warlock, the star of the Brimstone Angels novels.

Durnan: If we can, let’s also show a clue that Durnan is really old and potentially really powerful. Maybe they notice him lifting something that only someone with giant-strength could lift.

Also, let’s establish that Pencheska is the one who operates the winch that raises and lowers people in the well. She just likes doing it. That’s true, but we’re setting it up for her to sabotage this thing later in the campaign.

We go through the forge of fury. Epic battle with Nightscale. When Nightscale dies, try not to mention her bones. We are hoping that the bad guys can make an undead dragon out of her. If the players mention her corpse at all, we should say that her hide has been mangled by their spells and blades and there’s no dragon parts left worth harvesting, except maybe the heart and eyes. The hide is too damaged to make armor out of.

Remember, if the group ever comes here again – the corpse is gone. The bad guys have stolen the remains of Nightscale. They’re animating her and making her the guardian of the Phylactery Vault.

Once the group has slain the dragon.. now they have the attention of the bad guys. The group also finds a deed that shows that Geddi of Downshadow is truly the rightful heir to the forge. If they give it to her, she gathers up dwarves from Waterdeep and starts the forge back up, perhaps making weapons and equipment for the group.

We find another glyph key and black gate. That one leads to strange caverns which ultimately lad to Tamoachan.

Back at the Inn: At the Yawning Portal, the group has a visitor. It is a beautiful, silver-haired woman named Elia. She is secretly a silver dragon named Otaaryliakkarnos. She works with the Council of Waterdeep, and she got word that the group took out Nightscale. She hated Nightscale, is impressed and wants to get a look at the heroes and see exactly what they are doing down in Undermountain.

But right when the heroes have made friends with her (or whatever), there is a ruckus. Yup, the bad guys are back. It is Blackrazor, Nix and Nox, and more of those tamoachan zombies. Elia assumes her dragon form to fight them off. Maybe the group takes out the zombies and fights a few terrifying rounds with Blackrazor. Then, once again, Acererak appears and draws the soul of the silver dragon. Mission accomplished – they are teleported away.

At this point, Bart of Downshadow is looking for the group. He wants to admit to them that he knows the plan of the red wizards. But before he can get to them, Pencheska kisses him and kills him. The group will find his shriveled corpse and can be told that he wanted to talk to them.

Tamoachan: Then we go through Tamoachan. In that room on page 91, if you sit on the throne, you have visions of the past. Let’s have it where the character who sits on it sees an ancestor, a hireling alongside Mirt and Durnan. This is over 1,000 years ago. The character watches them dig out an entrance to the tomb of horrors (one of the false ones). Then the vision is over.

At the end of Tamoachan, another glyph key, another black gate. Each black gate takes us down a level of Undermountain.

Durnan's Story: At this point, the group might question Durnan. He’s got quite a story. Maybe he spills the beans and confesses that he became immortal through a wish granted to him by an efreet (one of the trapped efreeti in Dead in Thay).

A messenger enters the Yawning Portal looking for the group. Their presence is requested right away at the town square or something. It turns out that a solar (angel) has come to Waterdeep looking for Lumalia, the deva. The group can explain what happened to her.

Recognition: At this point, there is a crowd and Waterdeep officials here. The ruler of Waterdeep, Lady Laerel Silverhand is here as well. She is very powerful in her own right. We have a discussion where Laeral realizes that the group is a bunch of badasses and that they are on the right track. So the whole city knows now that the group killed Nightscale and they might be the city’s best hope to end these attacks. The beautiful Idalla is nearby. She tries to catch the eye of one of the heroes. She’s the other succubus spy, and she knows that the group needs to die.

Suddenly… a portal opens up and a horde of bad guys pour through. It’s a chaotic melee in the square. Red Wizards everywhere, Nix and Nox, Blackrazor. The group can fight some wizards, or Blackrazor. Don’t worry too much if the group grabs Blackrazor. We can just have it injure and reject the wielder, but do it in a way where it is clear that Blackrazor could change its mind down the road.

White Plume Mountain: OK.. time for White Plume. It’s underground. In Undermountain. It’s an underground volcano, I guess. Who cares, it’s an awesome dungeon.

The group goes through White Plume Mountain. If the wight wasn’t destroyed, we can have it be in the room with Ctenmiir. The group loots the place and defeats the bad guys. Another glyph key, another black shrine.

Whelm: Whelm wants to defend the forge of fury. That’s what it did long ago. The group can hand it over to Geddi, or they can keep it. A character in the group gets Wave, the artifact nobody in my groups ever wanted.

As the group returns from their successful mission and are heading down the tunnel to the well that leads up to the Yawning Portal, they pass by a weird thing – a panther. It’s a famous panther, but they probably won’t know that.

Trap: The spies have laid a trap. Idalla is ethereal at the bottom of the well. Pencheska operates the winch and cranks the heroes up. But she’s pre-sabotaged it. Once the group is up 120 feet of the 140-foot well, the rope snaps. The heroes plummet and take 12d6 dmg, or none if someone has feather fall or a clever idea. The idea here is that they fall and then Idalla surprises those who are still conscious, and kisses them to death.

We have a failsafe here. The panther is owned by a fellow named Drizzt Do’Urden, the famous drow adventurer. If necessary, he emerges from the shadows and helps them fend off and defeat Idalla the succubus.

Durnan can fix the winch and attach a new rope. He’ll get the group up in no time. Pencheska will act sad and will bolster the idea that Idalla must have messed with the winch. She sees Driz’zt, her eyeballs explode and she knows Acererak needs to get here ASAP. But she’s got to play it cool for at least a few hours to smooth things over, if necessary.

Drizzt: Drizzt wants to sit down with the group and go over what they know. He can commend the group on the work they’ve done. He’ll be incredibly alarmed if one of the group has Blackrazor, but hey it’s a cool item. Let’s have the panther, Guenhwyvar, befriend a hero, preferably a ranger or druid. It will provide a handy clue for them soon.

The group probably knows the deal by now. Acererak is going to snatch Drizzt. So let’s let them think that and do something goofy.

Sylvanna: Let’s introduce Sylvanna, the rebel red wizard. She’s against what Tarul Var and Acererak are attempting. She meets with the group covertly in some dark location of Waterdeep. Unfortunately, she’s being watched. Portal opens, in comes the red wizards and that adult red dragon from the Hall of the Fire Giant King!

The roof gets blown off the place if necessary. The group is in an epic battle. They see something in the night sky flying towards them.. then, nearby, Acererak appears. Oh no, he’s going to get the soul of Drizzt! Wait, that thing in the sky is the Acquistions, Inc airship. Jim Darkmagic flings a bunch of autographed portraits and gets ready to launch spells. Acererak assumes Jim is a powerful wizard, sucks his soul, and the bad guys bail out. Acererak is soon after disappointed in Jim, but sticks him in a shrine anyway.

During the battle, let’s have Drizzt really get his butt kicked. The dragon breathes on him, all sorts of stuff. The rest of Acquisitions Inc, Drizzt and the group go back to the Yawning Portal. The Acq Inc guys talk about the giants a bit. They foreshadow Snurre and the Frost Giant Jarl.

Dead in Thay: Now it’s time for the big one. Dead in Thay. In our version, the Doomvault is acquiring souls for Acererak, not Szass Tam. Acererak is the one trying to become a god. Remember that Pencheska is not down here, so take her out of the room.

The group will have the chance to rescue Lumalia from her transformation into a statue. If they do, she’ll join them and become a trusted ally.

Wish: The heroes can free the efreet who made Durnan immortal. I say the efreet offers the group one wish as per the spell, with one additional choice: One of them can become immortal like Durnan. This doesn’t mean they can’t be hurt, it means they don’t age anymore. Let’s say that the efreet can only grant this wish once every 500 years, as per the orders of the Sultan of the City of Brass. The Sultan reviews all granted wishes issued by the efreeti and he’s already going to be angry that this efreet didn’t put a sinister twist when granting this wish, but will let it go because the red wizards dared to enslave a mighty genie.

The heroes get to rescue all the NPCS – Elminster, Farideh, Laerel Silverhand, Elia, and Jim Darkmagic. They’re all drained and weak, and they will be for some time.

The end is tricky. We can’t have Acererak die in the Phylactery Vault. He’s the bad guy at the end of the Tomb of Horrors. So in the final fight, we'll have the opponent be Nightscale, who has been made into an undead dragon!! Now we’re talking, right?! She could be a skeletal dragon, a ghost dragon, whatever.

The group might wonder why Acererak isn’t here. They’ll find out when they get back to the Yawning Portal.

Return to the Inn: When they get home, the heroes find the place to be trashed. A huge fight took place and there are dead bodies all over. Acererak finally realized the best time to steal NPC souls is when the group is busy in a dungeon. He attacked, maybe with the red dragon again.

The group spots Pencheska leaning over Drizzt’s body. What’s she doing? Kissing him! Draining his lifeforce! The group finally sees that she is a succubus spy. They need to stop her right now before Drizzt is dead forever.

After the fight, the group might wonder where Durnan is. He’s in one of Acererak’s gems. There are no more shrines because the group cleared the Doomvault. That means that Durnan is just an eternal prisoner in the gems of Acererak. The only way to save him is to take down Acererak.

So there’s two things left to do. Take down the giants and then go destroy Acererak for good. The group learns that the giants are the only ones with a glyph key to the Tomb of Horrors.

Against the Giants: We go through Against the Giants. We can change the notes from Eclavdra to Acererak if you want. We can just take the drow out of the final adventure – the dungeon’s way too big, anyway. Or, if you want, keep them in. Maybe they’re looking to finish what Acererak started.

The group kills the giants, kills Snurre, and finds the glyph key and a black gate in the lair of the red dragon.

Tomb of Horrors: The group can use any black gate to go to the tomb. When they’re ready, they go. They brave the tomb of horrors and hopefully destroy Acererak and shatter his gems. Hopefully with the clues Adenian was giving out, the group can survive the most deadly traps. They can rescue Durnan, go back to Waterdeep and be hailed as heroes.

Maybe this incident has spurred something in Durnan. He wants to wander again. He hands over ownership of the Yawning Portal to one or all of the heroes.

There you go! Remember, that's the initial plan. The group will do things that will adjust everything. You'll also have awesome ideas as the campaign goes on, so you can add those in. Remember that nothing is written in stone until it is said aloud at the game table.

Good luck! I hope your games go well.

Dungeons & Dragons - Tales From the Yawning Portal Review

Now that I’ve completed the guide to Tales from the Yawning Portal, I am ready to give the book a thorough review. This is the new adventure for Dungeons & Dragons and it isn’t like the others. There’s no overarching story. The book contains 7 separate, classic adventures updated to 5th edition rules. You could play them in order if you want to and make a campaign out of it with minimal effort, I guess. You can get this book at amazon right here.

I want to give general thoughts, then I’ll talk about each adventure, the presentation, and then I’ll ramble on and on about the adventures that they chose to put in this book.

Short Version: It’s pretty good. I think newer players will enjoy this book. The rules conversion is really well done and they did a great job cleaning up a lot of confusing entries. That said, I am really tired of these same adventures being trotted out in every edition, so this book didn’t do that much for me. Warning: Most of these adventures are absolute hell to prepare.

Initial Observations

The Tavern: The framing device of the Yawning Portal, a tavern in the Forgotten Realms, is a bit odd. I like it, I guess I just wish they gave us a few more pages of detail on it.

Also, the fact that the Yawning Portal connects to Undermountain makes this a little strange, too. This book has nothing to do with Undermountain. You could stick these dungeons in Undermountain, I guess.

The Main Hurdle: The biggest problem with this book is simply the fact that some of the dungeons are way too big. Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury and Dead in Thay in particular. I’ve found that players like dungeons, but if they’re in the dungeon every session, things get bland and boring. Dead in Thay is really cool, but that is an awful lot of dungeon to crawl through.

You need to break it up a bit with socializing with NPCs, hanging out in town, and exploring a less limited “zone” so to speak.

Backlog: I definitely think that making this kind of book was a good decision because people are still playing through the other adventures. I know this isn’t a big indicator, but right now the guide that people read the most every day on my site is Curse of Strahd. I think that a lot of D&D players haven’t even started Storm King yet.

I have to say that I have become fond of the two adventures-per-year format. It’s fun. I really like how this edition is not relying on a constant flow of sourcebooks. In 4^th edition, they burned through  everything so fast within the span of, what.. 3 years? It’s been almost the same amount of time for 5e, and there’s still so much stuff to explore. They thought this edition out really well. The rules are holding up, everything is smooth, it’s awesome.

The Adventures

OK, let’s talk about the adventures. The good part is that these conversions are great. They did an awesome job explaining things and taking weird, arbitrary rules from Tomb of Horrors and translating them into 5^th edition rules. It seems like nothing at all is lost in translation, and many adventures actually benefit from the 5e rules.

Sunless Citadel

The most memorable part of this dungeon is Meepo, the kobold NPC. It seems like each group did something a little different with him, but everybody has a Meepo story to tell.

There are a lot of really cool, basic traps. I really like the one with caltrops. Nobody ever uses those things. I love the potion-dispensing statue, and the wyrmling is fun.

Overall, though, I have never liked this adventure. I don’t like twig blights, I don’t like kobolds and I don’t want to get into an epic struggle with a tree.

It’s also a bit of a bummer that the transformed adventurers can’t be saved. Why? It’s just evil bark, scrape it off.

Forge of Fury

This is another 3rd edition dungeon that is way too big. When an adventuring location is this full of stuff, it just feels like a chore to read and play through. I don’t think it’s an accident that White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors are so well-regarded and yet they are only about 20 pages long at most.

I understand that, in the 3e era, they needed to put in enough XP worth of monsters to make sure the group hits the right level for the next adventure, but it’s still pretty excruciating.

I can say that I absolutely love the whole section with the black dragon. It is fantastic. Dragon fights sometimes aren’t what they should be. You definitely want it flying around and generally being the threat that it is, and exploiting its lair fully. This is one of the coolest dragon fights I can remember reading.

The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan

There’s good and bad with this adventure. The good part is that the set-up is awesome. You fall into a dungeon and you have to fight your way out. There’s a lot of really creative, highly-detailed rooms and encounters.

The bad part is that this thing, the 5e version, is extremely painful to prepare. There are so many details you need to juggle. It’s impossible! It’s just too much. You get depressed at the idea of sitting down and preparing a section of this.

The final encounter has always been a weird thing in this adventure. I prefer the 4e version. I mean.. a hyena? That’s it? It feels flat. The group might be so drained and exhausted that they don’t even touch the altar. They just go home.

The main thing I wonder about Tamoachan is whether or not it really is a classic. I ran this in 3rd edition and it was completely forgettable. I also ran it in 4th, and the only parts people remember are the jokes I made out of the talking slug-thing and the werejaguar with six nipples.

I will never understand why the werejaguar has 6 nipples. Why do we need to know that? I had a player use the skin to make a 6-nippled vest/healing potion dispenser, so it worked out for us.

White Plume Mountain

I love this adventure and this conversion is stellar. It’s so short and yet so full of content. It’s amazing.

I am really glad that they went out of their way to make detailed art of the terraced room. That place has always been so hard to describe. It’s such an awesome room, it deserves the full treatment.

The frictionless room seems like it lost just a little something, somehow. It’s still fantastic. They kept the super-tetanus, which is the most important part.

They also did a great job of clarifying that hovering river, which I had a hard time with when I ran the original.They also described the crab room really well. It's a bit tricky explaining the "bubble" to players.

To me, this is the best adventure out of all of the ones in this collection by far.

Dead in Thay

I’m glad this is in this book. This a really fun dungeon and it deserves to be acknowledged as such. One of the things I like most about this is that you can pull out dungeon sections and use them however you like. Basically, you’ve got 7 or 8 dungeons to use as you see fit.

I’ve never fully grasped the glyph keys. Why is this so complicated? What’s the point?

It was only in this reading that I fully understood the phylactery vault. The phylactery vault is fantastic, a truly epic final encounter. I think I kind of blew it when I ran it the first time and I really want another crack at it. I mean.. a place full of lich phylacteries! That’s just awesome.

Also, the rooms where the Chosen are held in magic shrines are fantastic. Each shrine encounter is completely different and they are all either fun or really scary. None are boring. You could grab any one of these rooms to use as a final encounter for an adventure of your own making. Any time a bad guy steals someone to siphon the life force out of them, you’ve got plenty of encounters already made for you.

Against the Giants

I have never run or read this before. Now that I have read it, I guess I have mixed feelings about it.

Hill Giants: The Hill Giant lair is wide open. The prospect of running it is unnerving as a DM. There’s so many possibilities that you need to be ready for. I just feel like, if your group recruits those orcs downstairs, how the heck are you going to handle that? I mean.. you can’t roll that out.

Frumpy: Something doesn’t sit right with me when it comes to the descriptions of the giants. Here’s the description of “Frupy,” the fire giant king’s wife:

“She is, if anything, uglier than Snurre. Topped by a huge mass of yellow-orange hair that looks like a fright wig, Queen Frupy’s face is a mass of jowls and wrinkles set in the middle of a very large head that seems to grow directly out of her shoulders without the benefit of any neck. Her body is lumpy and gross, her skin covered with bristles the color of her hair. Her little pig eyes, however, are bright, suggesting intelligence unusual in a giant.”

First of all, there are plenty of us D&D players who have a low charisma (comeliness) and a high BMI. When I run into descriptions like this and then I think about who I’m running the game for, I have to change them because the game is not about insulting the people at the table.

Second, this description basically says, “Man, this chick is ugly. She’s so gross.” There’s too much emphasis on the way she looks rather than the threat that she’s supposed to be. Even her name is insulting. It’s one letter away from “Frumpy.” It feels like all that matters is how the female looks, when in the game it’s almost completely inconsequential. She’s there to be laughed at by all of the “physically perfect” men playing the game of Dungeons & Dragons.

I think this description should have been cut from the book or changed to something else. 

Frost Giants: The Frost Giant lair is pretty great, but I just don’t get the rift. Where am I walking? How do I get down there? This might just be my own poor reading comprehension skills, but it was a thing for me.

Fire Giants: The Fire Giant Hall is really cool. I love how you fight the king right away. Then you wade through the complex to find the real mystery villain of the scenario. I think they did a stellar job with the 5e version of the temple. It is really fun, really crazy.

I love the dragon, I wish a little more detail/personality had been given to it. The big problem with this fire giant section is that the dungeon is just way too big. It’s a quagmire and I can see most groups zoning out for entire sessions while they fight ropers and gnolls.

Agony: This adventure was such a pain to prepare. It was horrible. There is so much stuff to look up, it’s ridiculous. So many poisons, items, monsters, and of course the slimes, which is the most annoying thing to find in 5^th edition except swimming/underwater rules.

You definitely need to know that Against the Giants is a real project to prepare. It really does feel like it takes more time to prepare it than to just make your own giant lair, and it shouldn’t be like that.

Tomb of Horrors

I always had a lot of trouble with the 1e version. Things were explained and worded in a very confusing manner. It was a cool dungeon, but it was difficult for me to grasp the more complex areas.

This 5^th edition version fixes that completely. Completely! I remember the juggernaut being this big thing, complete with art (and it looked weird) and all these details. In 5e, the juggernaut is one sentence. And it works so much better. Amazing!

Preparing this one was a joy. It took awhile, but I didn’t mind because none of the rooms were that big, there was very little to look up (seriously) and things were described very succinctly. They didn’t change the adventure, they just vastly improved on the presentation.

General Thoughts
 

The Usual: I have the same complaints I always have with these adventures, and the same caveat – if this approach to how they make and present their adventures is working (and I think it is, big time) then they should keep doing it. I don’t like it, but apparently most other people are fine with it.

I really don’t like how you have to look everything up. Every monster, every magic item, every spell. The DM has more homework running a published adventure then just making it up their own. The whole point of a published adventure is so you don’t have to put in a lot of work! I’m paying $50 for homework? When I say homework, I mean a book report that will take you weeks to get a good grade on.

On top of that, they make it hard to look stuff up by not telling you the page number, they tell you the chapter instead. It’s maddening. Finding poison, suffocation and slimes is always annoying. In addition to that, you have the magic items that duplicate the effect of a spell, which you then have to look up because they don’t explain it in the entry.

The Art

I have the same feelings as I usually do when it comes to the art. It’s all good, but nothing is “holy crap” good. There is no modern Larry Elmore. I mean, there is, but that person is not making art for D&D stuff.

If you go on deviantart right now, you will find a pile of incredibly awesome fantasy art. There is a mind-boggling amount of truly talented and inspired artists out there who are making fantasy art for free, just because they love doing it. I don’t get why they are not being hired.

That’s not to say that this stuff is terrible at all. Across the board, the level of quality is high. If you look at, say, the 2e Player’s Handbook, you’ll see art that is really great and other art that is really not-so-great. In 5^th edition, we have a consistent level of quality, but it seems like there’s a ceiling when it comes to good art. I still think the best 5e art is the landscape art, which is really weird.

The Maps

It’s hard to talk about D&D maps now in this post-Schley world we live in. Mike Schley is so awesome that you wish he just did all of them. It has gotten to the point where you feel like if you don’t have a Schley map, it’s not a D&D adventure.

Look at the Dead in Thay map. That’s insane. Is that the greatest D&D map of all time? It’s really not fair to compare him to anyone else. He’s been doing this for so long. I would honestly say that I think Mike Schley is the D&D 5e artist.

The Choice of Adventures

I have a beef with the adventure selection. I don’t think that both Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury should be in this book. They’re from the same path. Both of them were selected instead of including a 4th edition adventure.

Now, I know a lot of people hate 4e, but I also know that there are a bunch of awesome 4e adventures that, in my opinion, are much, much, much better than the citadel or the forge.

I get that they wanted to put adventures in the book that could be played in order. So I was wracking my brain to find a replacement for Forge of Fury (I like the forge better, but sunless is pretty iconic to most 3e fans) and I realized that the adventure that I would have liked in here is Siege of Bordrin’s Watch (I can't believe this, but it is available right now for free on the wizards site).

It’s got a classic theme, it details an awesome city (Overlook) and the final encounter, “The Nexus,” is one that my group talked about for years after they played it. They still bring it up today, almost 10 years later.

I get that converting 4e to 5e is a unique challenge, but I don’t think it’s impossible at all.

There’s other worthy 4e adventures. Let’s stick to dungeons because that’s what this book is all about. I think that Last Breath of the Dragon Queen is superb. That’s Tiamat’s Lair. It’s so inspired and so epic, it would be a great final adventure for this book.

Another adventure that could have/should have been in this book is the 4^th edition update of Baba Yaga. The 4e update, unlike the 1e original, actually gives you the finished details (for the love of god, thank you) and it has Mike Schley maps. The 4e version is awesome. It is completely overlooked and it definitely deserves to be in this book.

Also, I should point out that I went through the Chris Perkins 4e version/update of Against the Giants and it is fantastic. I really do want to convert it to 5th, I’m just worried about dungeon fatigue.

Paizo Stuff: I am very tired of the remakes of the 1e adventures. There are so many gems in other editions that are completely unheralded. From what I understand, the Paizo stuff won’t be used for legal reasons, but I can think of a bunch of Paizo-era adventures that deserve to be in this book.

The first adventure in The Shackled City is a freaking awesome dungeon. It’s fantastic and it is so well thought-out. Then, further in The Shackled City path is the kuo toa dungeon, which is probably my favorite dungeon of all time.

Now that I think about it, what about Gates of Firestorm Peak? That one is huge and really dense, but that would be a fresh choice to trot out.

While we’re at it, what about Labyrinth of Madness? I have literally waited 20 years to run it. I ran that for some ridiculously powerful characters and they bailed out on that place about 4 rooms in. I’m still waiting to run it again. It is a dungeon in the vein of the 1e classics and it is spectacular. At that time, Monte Cook was on fire. He still is, really. Despite how popular Monte is, I feel like his work is not appreciated as much as it should be.

Why These Adventures were Chosen: I believe that only a few adventures get remade because people haven’t played that many, even people who have been playing D&D for decades. That’s because of a few reasons:

1. A lot of people don’t play pre-published adventures.
2. A lot of campaigns fall apart after 6-7 sessions.
3. It takes people a long time to get through one adventure, especially if they only play once per month. So people haven't played that many.

We have this situation here where there are hundreds of adventures from previous editions which very few people have played. There’s a lot of great stuff that is virtually untouched, and I think now is the time to shine a light on it. There’s all of this D&D lore waiting to be explored and exploited.

People just keep creating new things without implementing the concepts that are already there. To me, it’s a waste. The ingenuity of past designers deserves to be recognized, collected and dissected. It should be incorporated into the overall tapestry of D&D rather than be forgotten.

More Books Like This: Maybe they’ll do another book like this some day that collects adventures that are not dungeon-centric.

I think that if Wizards and Paizo agreed to put out a 5e conversion of Savage Tide or Age of Worms, it would be like a money bomb went off in their pants. Savage Tide is so ridiculously good that I am still picking content out of that Wolfgang Baur adventure (Enemies of my Enemy) a year after I started using it!

Overall 

If you and your group like dungeons, you should get this book. It is nice to take part in scenarios that many D&D players have gone through. You share the experience and have something to discuss and laugh about when you meet new players.

If you don’t like dungeons and you prefer to run a campaign that is more sprawling, event-based and story-driven, there’s a ton of stuff to pull out of this. It’s a good resource when it comes to using or making encounters. Even if you just need a treasure hoard, there’s a bunch of them that are ridiculously detailed in the book.

Thanks for reading! I’ll try and get the “How to Run Tales from the Yawning Portal” done as quick as I can.

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 43 - Storm King's Thunder

Episode 43: Meltdown

• Watch this episode on Youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

The group is in a tough spot this week. There are fire giants everywhere and the heroes are scattered in a bunch of rooms.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

Chris starts with a long recap. He points out that that the salamander is still alive after it exploded out of the hellhound’s body. Strix is in gaseous form. Diath is sneaking around. There’s 4 ogres on the gantry who are just standing there, confused.

I get confused by this kind of thing, so I decided to use the maps to show where everyone is:

Paultin is cut off from the foundry by a wall of stone. It is dark. He can hear something big coming up behind him. A big stony hand settles on his shoulder. A voice says: “Abandon your friends and come with me. I will help you, and you will help me.” He's a dao (an earth genie). Paultin agrees to go with him.

Evelyn is flying by a fire giant overseer. She activates her armor of invulnerability, so she takes no damage at all. As she activates it, she calls out: "You can't hurt sunshine!" which appalls the other players.

Evelyn flies away. The overseer attacks Strix. She's in gaseous form but she can be hit. Evelyn summons her horse, Mourning Glory, and orders her to distract the giants. The horse almost immediately destroyed and it is de-summoned.

Strix sees a new giant enter the area, wielding a maul. This is Duke Zalto, the fire giant who runs this whole place. On the end of his maul is a cage with a dwarf in it. Strix flies over to Evelyn, shuts off her gaseous form and is hanging on Evelyn, who is still flying.

Both of them fall to the ground. Diath is right there near them. He grabs the dust of disappearance off of Strix’s belt and uses it. They all turn invisible, hold hands and try to creep about.

Duke Zalto tells the heroes to surrender or he'll kill the dwarf in the cage. Diath notices that one exit is blocked with a wall of stone.

Evelyn is sent to go open the giant-sized doors. Strix and Diath try to sneak down the stairs to the lower level, but fire giants are coming up. One of the giants brushes into Strix and stops.

Strix lets go of Diath's hand. She wants him to keep going. Diath throws a gem to try to get the giants looking in another direction. It works.

Evelyn flies down to the door on the lower level. The giant tries to dump the dwarf into the molten lava. The poor dwarf is holding onto the cage. Evelyn flies up to him, still invisible, and grabs on to him.

Meanwhile, the dao and Paultin come to a huge room and see massive parts that are meant for a gigantic golem. They pass through the big room, go down to a lower level, and avoid some goblins while sneaking into a war room (page 183).

In the room is an inert iron golem with a rune-covered iron ingot embedded on its forehead. The dao wants to steal it. He knows the command word but doesn't want to activate it, because the golem follows the orders of fire giants. He wants Paultin to use his magic to handle this.

Paultin isn't sure what to do. Eventually, they look inside it. In it is a hovering magical flame - this is the spirit of fire that animates it.

Paultin can't figure out how to disable it. He sees a sigil on the side of the armature. Paultin thinks this golem was made by the Bronzefire clan of dwarves. He points it out to the dao, who says he wishes Paultin hadn't noticed that.

The dao grabs his hand more tightly and Paultin lets out a thunderwave. Good idea! The dao is hit and lets go of him. Paultin runs to the giant-sized door. He needs to make a strength check to open it. He rolls... a natural one. Oh man.

The dao orders the golem to knock Paultin out. It hits him for 25 points on the first hit and a critical on the second! 44 points of damage and Paultin is down.

Back in the other area, Duke Zalto tries to shake the dwarf off of his maul and into the molten lava. The dwarf falls and Evelyn slingshots him so he lands on the floor. He takes a bunch of damage, but he is still alive.

Meanwhile, Diath and Strix, still invisible, go down the stairs and start racing across the foundry. They meet Evelyn at the giant-sized double doors. Diath asks Strix to drink the potion of frost giant strength, so that she and Evelyn can push the door open.

Duke Zalto jumps into the molten pool, sending globs of lava onto the floor near the group. They frantically push the doors open and run through. The dwarf is making a run to the door.

He gets in. Duke Zalto tries to get to the door but the group shuts it. Duke Zalto yells: "Fuck you!"
 

The Cisterns

The group is still invisible, but the dwarf is not. They grab the dwarf and try to hide next to the door so that Duke Zalto just walks right by and hopefully doesn't see him.

Duke Zalto comes in, shuts the giant double doors, puts his maul down and sees the dwarf. The group is in a room with three big cisterns full of water. This room connects to another. From that other room comes another giant, a female wearing a gown made of black dragon hide.

She says "Zalto, is that you?" She is holding a giant iron cauldron. This is Zalto’s wife, Brimskarda.

Strix uses her frost giant strength to push the maul out of the way so they can go back through the door.

Evelyn suddenly realizes that her harness is empty. Waffles the baby owlbear isn't there. Neither is Mr. Stinky and Juniper, the pet mice. This must have just happened in the past ten seconds. The animals were spooked.

Evelyn takes out some food and makes a noise to call them to her. Zalto hears it. That’s where we stop.

Overall

Good show! The players definitely felt stressed, and they reacted in a way that I really haven't seen before. I would say that Jared and Holly handled it especially well.

Next episode, Paultin can't make it. The group is going to play the animals, who fled into the vents. It will go like this:

• Holly: Mr. Stinky the cranium rat
• Jared: Waffles the owlbear
• Anna: Juniper the mouse

I noticed that they are doing shows every single week, which is pretty awesome. During Curse of Strahd, there were a lot of missed weeks, which I thought hurt the campaign a bit. This whole season has been very good.

I will be bummed when these characters die/retire. Hopefully that is a long way away. I can't imagine these characters at 16th level. Strix in particular will be so powerful, I can't picture what the game would be like. What would they play through? Would Chris make adventures up?

Adventures in Eberron - Nine Draws From the Deck of Many Things

We're now 9th level in the Eberron campaign, in which I run a sorcerer. I got to pick a 5th level spell, which was extremely difficult. Ultimately, I went with cone of cold because I do too much fire damage. I feel like I might need more utility spells, but I have fly and invisibility, which covers a lot of bases.

We use an actual deck of many things. You can get one in a 4th edition boxed set called Madness at Gardmore Abbey. It comes with the deck, some pretty nice poster maps and adventure booklets. Even if you don't run the adventure, the deck and the maps make it worth buying. Some people say this adventure is the best of 4th edition, but I ran it and it kind of sucked.

Right now it's at $40 on amazon, ebay and half.com which, IMO, is too high for a deck and maps.

We had finally made it all the way through the Shadow Castle. Our fighter had died, so we brought him to get resurrected at one of the clan houses (Jarasco?).

We Met Corellon: We learned that this warforged we saved was actually Corellon, god of the elves. It's part of the overall metaplot. In the campaign we played previously (4th edition), we defeated Lolth and Orcus. Both of those entities had placed a portion of their divine spark here in Eberron so that it would be possible for them to be reborn. One of the rakshasas serves Orcus, the other serves Lolth.They're trying to revive the two demon lords.

Corellon came here to try to help oppose them, but he ended up trapped by the bad guys in the Shadow Castle.

Rakhasas: As we made our way through the city of Sharn, we were accosted. We finally ran into the rakshasas who have been up to no good throughout this campaign. They had charmed some guards, who were closing in on us.

We were on the center of a bridge high up in the city of towers. I cast fly on myself and Art/Corellon. We had a little trouble with the guards, who were very weak. One rakshasa cast fly and came after me.

On the bridge, our fighter fired off some arrows into the rakshasa. It turns out that they are vulnerable to piercing weapons used by good-aligned creatures, and he did piles and piles of damage to it.

We had researched rakshasas and I knew they were immune to spells 5th level or lower (!). So I started flying around, leading the rakshasa on a chase. Ultimately, I timed it so that when the rakshasa flew near a statue on the side of a tower, I cast shatter on it so it broke off and fell on the rakshasa. I rolled and it worked!

The rakashasa crashed onto a bridge far below. I went down to see if it was still alive, but it was gone.

When I got back to the bridge, the group was finishing up the other rakshasa. When it died, it turned into mist. We saw that it wasn't dead, it was just reforming elsewhere.

Art/Corellon was nowhere to be seen. He had said he wouldn't be around for long.

Deck of Many Things: We returned to our base and had a long discussion about what to do next. We questioned a charmed guard and didn't learn too much.

What ended up happening was that we let our succubus ally draw from the deck of many things. She had asked to do that last session.

The day after the battle with the rakshasas, we went to the cemetery (we figured that was the safest place) and we let her draw.

She took two cards. I was wondering if the DM had pre-planned the cards she'd take. He didn't! He actually let one of the players draw them. She drew:

• Key: This card gives you a magic item. She got a magic dagger.
• Void: Her soul got sucked out of her and is trapped in some unknown realm! Wow.

Basically, we got a magic dagger. I think we're going to try to find her. She's a bit of a wild card, we're not sure if she's an enemy or ally.

Our wizard has a mysterious book of shadows. In the book, it says that when each of us have drawn three cards from the deck, something will happen. We debated about whether or not we should just do this now. The wizard is very hesitant. I told her I wouldn't draw from the deck if she wouldn't rubber stamp it. She did.

So.... we all drew from the deck of many things. It was terrifying.

Here's what I got:

• Key: I got... a staff of power! Blew my mind.
• Fool: I lost 4 points of intelligence. My Int is now an 8. No big deal, Charisma is my go-to stat.
• Rogue: An NPC ally has become my enemy.

The fighter drew:

• Key (I swear): Magic arrows of slaying, I think.
• Rogue (!): An NPC ally has become his enemy.
• Moon: He can cast wish two times! Wish! He's saving them for now.

The wizard:

• Euryale: She has a -2 to all saving throws from now on. Ouch!
• Fates: She can erase one event from the past. We laughed, as that meant she could get rid of the -2 saves if she wanted. She's saving it for now.
• Star: She got +2 to a stat of her choice. She went with intelligence.

That's it! That's the best draw from the deck I've ever seen. In any campaign I've been in, nobody survived 9 draws. We got really, really lucky.

The Book of Shadows gave us three riddles/quests. In order to save the world from Orcus and Lolth, we need to go to three Eberron places:

• The Mournland
• The Nation of Droaam
• The Eldeen Reaches

It was pretty clear that this is a task that should be undertaken after we've handled a few other more pressing matters. I think the DM didn't expect us to draw from the deck at all. We'd actually declined to do so a few sessions prior.

Not only did he roll with it, he came up with three cryptic riddles on the spot, each of which incorporated the names of the three cards we had just drawn.

We were giddy off of our draws. I immediately attuned to my staff of power and began bragging about all the cool magic items I have:

• Staff of Power
• Wand of Wonder
• Dagger of Venom
• Ring of Spell Storing
• Bag of Beans (3 beans left)
• Well of Worlds
• Circlet of Blasting
• Handy Haversack
• Periapt of Wound Closure
• Goggles of Night

Boom! That's over two years worth of real life time spent accumulating that stuff. The nice thing is that most of them don't require attunement.

Well of Worlds: We eventually decided to take on another quest. We needed to use our well of worlds to travel through three different planes to find three towers. Once we'd done so, we'd be able to go to a 4th tower that was the true object of our quest.

In the last campaign, our heroes lived in a green tower in Fallcrest. I assume that's where we're headed. It's very interesting to cross over from Eberron to the 4th edition Nentir Vale setting, very cool.

We went to an underground safe place and opened up the well. I rolled a random plane from a list of Eberron planes the DM had.

We lowered our fighter in, and basically he was in the Eberron equivalent of the far realm. I can't remember what it was called. It's the home of creatures called the Xoriat. Apparently, they created illithids and beholders.

We pulled the fighter out and he was covered in worms. We quickly decided we were not going in there and I started folding up my well. We'd just wait d8 hours and roll again.

But as I was folding up the well, something invisible came through. We quickly threw gunk and dust at it, so we could see it. It was a beholder!

Eye Rays: I was blown away. I can't think of when I'd last fought a beholder in any campaign. 4e beholders are especially scary, because they can fire eye rays at the end of other people's turns!

I won initiative and I cast hold person from my staff of power. It failed its save! The staff gives me +2 to everything, including AC, spell attack bonuses and the save DC of my spells! So the DC from my spells is now an 18, which is insanely high. My character is much, much more powerful now. I don't usually make spellcasters so this is very fun for me.

The beholder was held and we destroyed it with lightning bolts and arrows. We killed it in about 3 rounds. It was held the whole time!

We waited eight hours and tried the well again and this time, it led to some kind of Eberron feywild. We dropped into a crystal cave behind a waterfall. Outside was a city that seemed to be in the middle of a mass battle between armies on flying mounts. That's where we stopped.

Overall

Awesome session! We did a lot of big things and made a lot of progress. I'd say this was my favorite session of them all.

The DM rolls with everything very well. He was more than happy to indulge me when I led the rakshasa on that flying chase.

Good stuff! Looks like we'll play again in May.

Planescape: Blood War VII. The Shadow Sanctuary

This one is pretty dirty and stupid so if you don’t like that kind of thing, don’t read this!

I was in a goofy mood when I prepared this, so I came with a lot of really dumb stuff that made me laugh and it made them laugh when I ran. Mission accomplished!

I’m trying to alternate between sessions focusing on actual mass combats and more traditional adventures linked in some way to the conflict.

Tonight was all about downtime, which is something I really love. For whatever reason, it always ends up being the best part of any of my campaigns.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard  
 
Last time, the group actually destroyed an avatar of Lamashtu, the demon lord who is the main villain leading the demon Blood War armies against the devils. The heroes are on the side of the devils, and have successfully taken an abyssal layer.

One thing I learned long ago was that you have to make sure things have impact. The world should react in some way big or small to what the group does. So, in this instance, since the group defeated an avatar of Lamashtu, the devils respect them and hold them in high esteem.

The group has been traveling with a minotaur/cow lady named Bovina. I dug her old sheet I wrote a year or two ago, Tibba Bovina is her actual name. She’s a member of the Godsmen, a faction that believes anyone can become a god by passing certain cosmic tests.

Baphomet

So I’m saying that Tibba has decided that since she rolled a natural 20 and shot a ballista bolt into the chest of the daughter of Baphomet, demon lord of minotaurs, that she thinks she can become a god of minotaurs and perhaps destroy or supplant Baphomet.

This fit in really well with one of the Wrath of the Righteous adventures which is set entirely in Baphomet’s maze. I can’t wait to run that one.

I gave her a stat block. She’s a swashbuckler from Volo’s page 217. If she survives for a while, I think she’ll become a Master Thief from Volo’s. The group let her keep the wand of darkness, which can summon a nightmare.

Two-Week Downtime Montage

Theran’s Castle: Theran runs Tornbend, a floating castle/settlement that some devils live in. I had the one of my Donald Trump NPC (Gonard Flumph, jr.) show up. He offered to buy a tower of the castle and put a bank of Samora (the settlement Flumph runs) in it. He had two Samoran banker with him (with Russian accents). Obviously, this was going to be some kind of money laundering scheme involving a shady kleptocracy.

George was in a mood tonight. He’s 13th now and has a new spell that he was itching to put into use: Finger of Death. Out of nowhere, he used it on Gonard Flumph, jr.!

His wife, Miss Tradegate (the Flumph family runs “Miss Universe” type events in the Outlands) screamed but realized she just inherited a fortune. Gonard rose up as a zombie under Theran’s control.

The ramification for this should be severe. It actually works with real-life events. Next week, I can have Flumph launch some kind of missile strike against Tornbend. I guess that would be a meteor swarm in D&D, right? Flumph would have to hire a wizard for that, and I think Iggwilv would do it a he is not too thrilled with the group right now.

Graz'zt

Then, Graz’zt gave him a visit! Right now, Graz’zt is trying to hunt down his old adviser, Verin, who has sought asylum in another abyssal realm. Graz’zt’s army is mustered there but they can’t make any progress. Graz’zt wants the help of the devils (Graz’zt’s ultimate plan is to unite the demons and devils against the angels, the group knows this).

Allagash: At Bidam’s demon-making farm, his order of five Agonists was completed. A new type of demon was made as well. It is an Ivory Banshee, another creature from the Teratic Tome. It's a woman whose lower half is made of three bladed "creme-colored tentacles."

The Agonists like to bring arrogant people of power down. So, Bidam sent them to Samora to try to take down Gonard Flumph. This seems like a golden opportunity to parody the spy stuff going on.

BurningWater: Over the two weeks, Bidam did a lot of family stuff with his demon lord wife and his two demon/dragon wyrmlings:

• Make Dinner: Bidam cooked up so demon crustaceans and rolled really well. Delicious!
• Clean up dragon poop/scold children: Success!
• Deal with a demon peeping on his wife getting dressed: Beheaded with the Sword of sharpness.
• Magic Healing: Bidam once again got the power to pee positive energy (Bazuuma is infused with positive energy), which can overheal the target. I’ll spare you the details.

Tibba Bovina: The group rescued Red Shroud, a pretty major D&D NPC from Planescape and Savage Tide. Red Shroud taught Tibba how to fight. So she’s a swashbuckler.

The group was given a choice. Red Shroud wants to stay in Sigil and work as an information broker. She wanted to live in Deadbook Square, which is the heroes’ section of Sigil. The group said no. So he’s living elsewhere. Fall From Grace, daughter of Red Shroud, was disappointed.

Festhall Wars 2: I did a whole thing with the Sigil festhalls. The group now own three brothels: The F**khaus, The Palace and the House of Yearning. The other festhall owners are taking a hit financially. So one of the owners decided to do something about it. His name: Dildo T. Baggins. My group loves this guy.

Long story short, Mr. Baggins had a succubus go charm people to sabotage the various festhalls:

• The Palace: The torch singer became a comedian who viciously “roasted” the regulars from the stage.
• The House of Yearning: Got a bad review in the Sigil Scroll.
• F**khaus: Someone sabotaged the flesh golem lady and it was gross.

The heroes put the pieces together. They resolved the various issues and went to confront Mr. Baggins. Guess what happened? Theran gave him the finger of death right out in the streets of Sigil. Murder!

Did not expect that! I’m going to have to do a whole thing about this. You can’t just kill people in public in the city (unless you’re in the Hive, where there’s no police presence).

I have long wanted to do a session that is all about a trial. Some of my favorite episodes of the Simpsons were about trials and Lionel Hutz, attorney at law. I just had a bunch of ideas that I wrote down, I think I can make this happen. I’ll probably set it up next session and run “The People of Sigil vs. Theran the Wizard” the session after that.

The group nailed a message to the chest of Zombie Baggins. They had it go to each of the other festhalls of Sigil as a warning that basically told them not to mess with Bidam and Theran.

Elemental Earth: The group own two mansions in the Plane of Elemental Earth. They have a bunch of dwarf slaves/employees digging up precious metals for them. They’d found 10,000 gp worth of lapis lazuli for the group.

The architect genie finished building the swimming pool/moat. I did a thing where the dwarves kept saying stuff like: “Sure is hot down here..” and, “Whew! Really working up a sweat.” The group got the hint and let the dwarves go for a swim.

Zariel, Ruler of Avernus

That's an art commission I got done of Zariel. She's supposed burned much more, but  like the way she looks here. Her armor is made of baatorian green steel and she has animated skeletal wings.

The group was asked to visit Zariel, the ruler of the first layer of Hell. There I very, very little information on her in published D&D products, so I mad my own. I had art made for her and everything.

On their way into her burned citadel, the group bumped into a 30-foot tall, two-headed pit fiend. He shapeshifted into a two-headed devil dragon. This is Mordukhavar the Reaver, a spawn of Tiamat and a pit fiend from an old issue of Dragon Magazine. He congratulated the heroes on defeating Lamashtu’s avatar and claiming a layer of the Abyss.

I took a stab at statting out Mordukhavar:

My idea here was that the group would be given medals and they’d have a chance to get a look at the story I made up about Zariel. It’s a whole long thing, but basically she has these 12 severed angel heads she talks to and they talk back. She is making secret plans with them. No devils know about this.

The group, Tibba, the Death Hurler (the damned soul/siege engine), and Drokkarn the pit fiend general went to her scorched throne room only to find it empty. They could inane muttering coming from a corridor. The group decided to sneak around and check it out.

They peeked in a room and there was Zariel talking to her angel heads in Celestial. Theran quietly cast comprehend languages and hear her scheming with them. The angel head she was talking to was trying to talk Zariel out of some crazy plan.

One of the angel heads saw the group and mouthed the words: “Help me.”

I thought that would be it. Cool little thing, there, right? Nope. Theran walked into the room and said, “What are you doing?”

I was in a bind. There’s really nothing to do here but the obvious. After all, they revealed that they were spying on an archdevil!

She turned, her eyes glowed yellow, and Theran was set ablaze! He made his save and took 30 fire damage. Then she closed in on them. Thankfully the group didn’t swing back. I think they knew she was too powerful for them.

My Zariel has skeletal wings that she can use as weapons. She stabbed Theran once and he was near death.

The group talked her down and promised not to tell anyone. The angel heads backed them up. Zariel was impressed that Theran was still standing and decided to let them live on the condition they tell no one.

They went to the throne room. The group were given Asmodean medals of honor. The NPCs got Asmodean medals of valor.

Then, standing right there in front of Zariel, Bidam actually started talking about the heads! Ugh… Bidam was set on fire before he could finish the sentence. The group ran out of the citadel before they all died.

Lilith and the Shadow Sanctuary

I got a commission of what I think a devil lilitu would look like. I don't like the 3rd edition depiction of them and I thought this was more in line with what they would look like.

So we finally got to the adventure part of this adventure. A few sessions back, Malcanthet, the demon queen of succubi, asked the group to go visit Lilith, the devil queen of succubi. She charmed Bidam and has a psychic link to him.

The group busted out their magic pirate ship and sailed up the River Styx. Drokkarn gave them a writ of passage. They sailed through many layers of hell:

• Avernus: There are styx devil checkpoints every 10 miles where the devils look at your paperwork and subject you to a full body cavity search (this is right out of the Fiendish Codex). The styx devils realized that the group were the people who killed an avatar of Lamashtu, and their mood completely changed. High fives were exchanged and no cavities were probed.
• Dis: The heroes sailed past the city of Dis. Two erinyes flying by stopped and talked to the group, realizing who they were.
• Minauros: They sailed back Jangling Hiter, the city of chains. Sagirsa, the ruler, said hi to the group. She has a thing for Drokkarn and asked them to tell him to visit sometime.
• Phlegathos: The group sailed by the pit of flame, a huge column of fire that devils are thrown into as a punishment for some transgression. The bone devils who run this place and some of the devils who were about to be thrown in saw the group sailing by, realized who they were, and cheered them.
• Stygia: The group sailed by the Tomb of Levistus. Levistus is trapped in a glacier but he can communicate telepathically. He had a brief conversation with the group.
• Malbolge: This realm is covered in a layer of living flesh made up of the last ruler of Malbolge – the Hag Countess. The group could see the flesh churning and groaning, obviously suffering. They watched an imp gleefully stab the land with a pitchfork. They felt sorry for it and I’m probably planting seeds for an adventure down the line. I love the idea of the hags of the multiverse getting together to try to restore the Hag Countess to her former form.
• Maladomini: Finally we’re here.

As the group pulled up to a dock, they saw a red-skinned bard waiting for them. She was talking to an imp in the giant language, certain that the heroes wouldn’t understand her. Theran again quietly cast comprehend languages and basically learned that Antisia is a spy. She’s in Baalzebul’s court, spying for her father Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles and Baalzebul are at war with each other.

Antisia is from an old magazine. I think it was Dungeon 140, I might be wrong. She escorted the group to the Palace of Filth, where the group met Baalzebul and his court.

Lilith

The story I made up here is that while Baftis is his consort, Baalzebul wants Lilith to accept him and be hi #1 consort. He has a ring of joining, and she has the other. If she puts it on, she will be infernally bound to fully be his consort for at least 100 years.

Malcanthet quietly told Bidam that they needed to get that ring on Lilith's finger.

The heroes headed over to the Shadow Sanctuary, a defiled temple of a good deity. They went in, and saw a lillitu (super-succubus) playing a massive organ. The heroes had a halo taken from a demonic lillitu. They waned to see what it would do on a devil lillitu. Malcanthet wanted to see, too.

The group ended up sneaking by this lillitu. Their rolls were insanely high from this point on.

They snuck their way upstairs. They surprised a lillitu guard and slapped the halo on her. She fell to the ground, twitching. Malcanthet found this to be hilarious.

They bypassed some traps and explored Lilith’s gothic/emo bedroom. They found the ring of joining in a trapped box. They took it and crept down to the dungeon level.

Lilith’s whole thing revolves around torturing paladins of good gods. I only use goofy torture in my games, so Lilith was reading bad fan fiction to a chained-up paladin, who was aghast at the terrible dialogue and gaping plot holes, begging her to stop.

There were a total of 40 imprisoned clerics and paladin who worshiped many different good deities. I was wondering if the group would try to save them. They did.

They rolled ridiculously high on stealth. Theran quietly tried to mage-hand the halo onto Lilith. Lilith suddenly stood and turned. She held up her hand and telekinetically blocked the halo.

We rolled initiative and the group rolled ridiculously high. Bidam grabbed the halo and slapped it on her head. Lilith fell to the ground twitching, shifting between a physical form and a shadow form. They slipped the ring of joining on her finger, freed the prisoners, and got them all on the boat as a massive swarm of devil flies tried to chase them down.

They got away and sailed back down the Styx. The heroes had paid off their debt to Malcanthet and had undoubtedly made a new enemy in Lilith.

Overall

It was fun as always. Lilith’s story in some of the official books is that she’s apathetic. When she was a good-aligned angel, she was tricked by Asmodeus into joining his rebellion. She thought she would be his consort, but Asmodeus lied to her. He asked Bensozia to be his consort instead. So she’s brooding, apathetic and bitter.

I am going to say that this halo infused her with chaotic energy, enough to jolt her out of her doldrums and make her more proactive and a bit unpredictable. I think Lilith is cool and I feel like not enough has been done with her.

I really like the idea of the devil succubi and the demon succubi fighting each other, so that’s where we’re at.

I think next week the group is going to go and fortify the portal that links Onstrakkar’s Nest to the Plane of 1,000 Portals. I will need to look up some kind of magic item that creates a barrier that would keep the demons out. I guess you could use a wish spell but I’d like to use some official thing if I can.

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 42 - Storm King's Thunder

Episode 42: Home Fires

• Watch this episode on Twitch here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

We catch a listen of some pre-show banter. We learn that Holly likes to wear a lot of clothes and Jared has no fashion sense.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

Last time, The heroes took down some yakfolk stragglers and headed into the fire giant lair of Ironslag. Their job is to find out what is going on in this place.

There are four dwarf slaves watched over by a big, fiery salamander. A D&D "salamander" is a big, fiery snake/man. We roll initiative.

Diath leads the salamander to the group. Paultin hits it with a thunderwave. The salamander attacks Evelyn, whose armor of invulnerability cuts the damage in half. She had taken this magic armor off of the dwarf NPC Krak, who has gone missing.

Strix casts polymorph and turns the salamander into a frog. Chris points out that if they damage the frog, it will turn back into a salamander.

Polymorph is a concentration spell that lasts up to an hour. Strix will have to hold it! They are looking for a pit to throw frog in. Paultin ends up chucking it in a bucket. This bucket ends up on the line in the foundry.

The group frees the dwarf slaves and Chris does a great raspy dwarf voice.

The dwarves say a certain word at the end of each sentence. One of them says “doh.” Anna proceeds to ask baking questions, quietly trying to get the dwarf to say "dough-doh." I am dying laughing.

Strix wants to turn into a rat and scout ahead. Man, I do not like that idea at all. Why not gaseous cloud? Strix is too squishy to scout, in my opinion. It freaks me out.

She enters a massive foundry where giants, dwarves and ogres are working. One giant is bullying a dwarf, dangling it over a furnace. The group doesn't know it, but this is Zaltember, one of the named giant NPCs.

Strix goes back to tell the crew what she found. The group decides to free the slaves. Strix assumes gaseous form and returns to the vast foundry area. She sees four huge dogs in a pen. Strix considers cutting them loose. Anna works in a "Who let the dogs out" reference... my god, she is on fire today.

Strix avoids some ogres and indeed lets the dogs out. The dogs go grab some dwarves and start dragging them back to the pen. Those poor dwarves. Then, Strix is spotted by the bad guys.

The group hears the commotion and runs to the room. As it becomes apparent that something is amiss, the giant who was bullying the dwarf actually drops him into the furnace.

Paultin tries a crown of madness on an ogre, but it makes its save. The group is shocked. Evelyn spots the frog/salamander in a bucket.

Diath crawl-dashes, sneaking past ogres. Evelyn grabs the frog and throws it in the hell hound pen. The hound swallows the frog, who turns into a salamander and it's not pretty. They end up destroying each other.

The fire giant sees Evelyn and attacks her. She takes a lot of damage, but Evelyn's armor helps her. She takes a total of 29 points, that's halved thanks to her armor. The group really doesn’t want to fight fire giants. That’s where we stop!

Overall

Good show, as always! Everyone was being funny and Anna just killed me. This is a very pleasant group and it makes this easy to watch every week. I hope people new to the game watch this so that they can see the mindset players might want to have when playing D&D. If you go to play a session with the intention of contributing to the fun, I think you have a great attitude.

Planescape: Blood War VI. The Taking of Onstrakkar's Nest

I had big plans for this evening. The group was going to fight the avatar of a demon lord!

How do Avatars Work? I have never really understood how avatars and aspects work, exactly. Does the actual demon lord know what they know? When an aspect dies, does it hurt the demon lord? Can an aspect "go rogue"?

Aspects and avatars are a really nice way to throw a weakened version of the god-like bad guy at your group. I based mine on the stats of a young blue dragon and I added lair actions.

I used Lamashtu, a pathfinder demon lord that I think is pretty cool. I found some Pathfinder stats for her here, but it doesn't have much in the way of flavor or anything. She must have some cool powers, right?

New Monsters: Bidam has this place where he's making new types of demons. I was struggling to find creatures to use, and then I remembered that I had the Teratic Tome, a 1e-style book full of demonic, weird monsters! I immediately started raiding it, as it is absolutely perfect for this.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard  

Our heroes had just successfully rescued a spy from the palace of Malcanthet, the succubus queen. They'd also freed Red Shroud, mother of Fall From Grace.

The group did some downtime stuff in Sigil and elsewhere:

Prisoner: They put Red Shroud under the watchful eye of guards while she rested and healed.

Pleasers: They began to set up their link to the Yearning House, the demonic festhall they'd made a business deal with.

Radiant Sisters: The group had taken the magic halo of one of the radiant sisters. When a lillitu dons it, they become one of the 13 radiant sisters, elite agents of the succubus queen. The heroes decided to bring it to Lilith, the devil who also has lilitu servant. They were curious to see what would happen if a devil-leaning incubus donned the demonic halo.

I thought that was an awesome idea. The group is going to visit Lilith next session, so I will have time to mull it over.

New Demon: The group went to Bidam's demon-making farm and saw that the Mother of All had spawned a new creature - an Agonist! She has glowing runes on her, a tail with a spike and her mission in life is to bring down those who are "arrogant and stiff-necked."

I am saying that these demons grow to full size almost immediately after hatching.

Bidam loved the Agonist and "placed an order" for five more.

Trump Shenanigans: Theran went to check out his earthmote, and it turns out my Donald Trump NPC has been trying to destabilize the place via disinformation. I did this whole thing where the populace was getting mysterious notes that were making all sorts of controversial claims.

Ultimately it was all a set-up for a goofy joke. The culprits were a pair of trolls with Russian accents. Russian trolls! Thanks so much, I’ll be here all week.

Then Bidam spent some family time with his demon lord wife and his two dragon wyrmling kids. We did a montage set to this balloon song that used to play in the toy store that I worked in years ago.

Bidam has pretty much chosen to change his lifestyle. He can't figure out his new philosophy, though.

Hurling Death

Ambulator

I did a thing where Bidam learned that he can pee positive energy one time, but I think the less said about it, the better. Jessie is really fired up about it.

The next day, the group rejoined the devil army in Lamashtu's abyssal realm of Onstrakkar's Nest. They marched to the pinnacle of the realm, where the demon army was mustering.

The group rode the Death Hurler, a sort of mini-ziggurat made of damned souls set on massive rollers that squash anyone in their path.

The group reluctantly took Bovina, the cow lady NPC with them. She rolled ridiculously well last time. Tonight, she didn’t roll as well but she was quite useful.

The devil army marched through the Umbilical Forest, where huge amniotic sacs hung from thick branches. The demons made a surprise aerial assault. It went like this:

1. Zovvuts flew overhead and fired their eye beams down on the devil army.
2. Vrocks swooped down, unleashing their spores and their stunning screech.
3. Then, the realm itself attacked. All of the amniotic sacs burst open! Inside were some of lamashtu's children - spider-things each with a giant eye known as ambulators!

Five of the ambulators made their way up the sides of the death hurler. Bidam used his horn of blasting to destroy three of them and they made quick work of the other two.

The devil army destroyed the ambulators and regrouped. They had been worn down a bit, which was the goal of the attack.

They made their way up to the pinnacle, where the sinister fortress of Lamashtu awaited. The group would have to ride the death hurler and crash through the protective wall to give the devils a way inside.

The tricky part here was that the group had to cover a vast open field to get to the wall. The demons would be able to fire off all sorts of ranged attacks at them as the adventurers approached.

The hell knights took flight to divert enemy fire and the death hurler surged forth.

Charging the Wall: The bad guys launched magic chaos hammers at the group, and then started using catapults to launch boulders with dretches tied to them. When the boulders hit, the dretch died and let out a fetid cloud of poisonous gas. The field was enshrouded in this mist, and the group was poisoned.

Vrocks swooped down out of the mist and tried to pluck the heroes off of the death hurler. Bidam drilled a vrock with his forearm, but the other two snatched Theran and Bovina (the cow lady). The vrocks flew up and away, intending to drop them from a great height.

Theran used misty step to teleport out of the grip of one vrock and onto the back of the other vrock who had Bovina.

Theran made some opposed strength checks and actually forced the vrock down towards land. He was able to get it flying just a few feet off the ground.

A hell knight riding a nightmare (flying, evil horse) let Bidam climb on, and they gave chase. Bidam slashed at the vrock, causing it to crashed into the ground. Bovina and Theran went tumbling in different directions.

Bovina was in the poison fog. At this point, demons and devils were fighting all around them. Theran got to Bovina just as a dretch slashed her. She was hurt, but not dead.

The group watched as their fried Feurina, the warder devil, ran up and killed the dretch with one stab. Feurina calls Bidam "brother" because they magically acquired each other's memories.

I got art of a warder devil the other day. As far as I am concerned, this is exactly what Feurina looks like.

Feurina, Hell Hound Whisperer

They went full speed and smashed through the wall, kicking up dust. The force of the impact sent Bidam and Bovina falling off the side.

The group was relieved to see that Bidam's devil slave, Nin, had rescued Bovina. Nin is a heresy devil who sits on a flying throne. I played him up this session because I have plans for him in two weeks. I did this thing where he likes the cow lady and is a real sleazeball about it.

Battle With Lamashtu

Lamashtu

The group and the devils burst into the main building of the complex. It was as big as a football stadium. Inside were more amniotic sacs hanging from umbilicals. In the center of this vast, open place was a red teleport circle that pulsed like a heartbeat. Seated around the circle were five demons strapped to thrones.

The group would eventually learn that these demons were the progenitors, male servants who helped Lamashtu make her monster babies.

After a bit of exploring, Lamashtu rose up from the circle in a burst of light. She roared, fired off her fiery breath weapon and tore into poor Bidam.

Her lair actions really messed with Theran, blinding him. He summoned a globe of invulnerability around him and Bovina, as they were both hurt badly.

Bidam fought Lamashtu, but had trouble because she kept to the air. She'd swoop down, claw him three times, then fly back up, provoking one attack. Bidam really has no ranged attacks.

Theran gave Bovina his wand of darkness, an item from Dead Gods that he never uses. She used it to summon a nightmare for Bidam to fly on.

Bidam actually was making death saves and he had an umbilical cord choking him. Bovina dumped goodberries into his mouth. He woke up, got on the nightmare and started slicing into Lamashtu's belly.

I keep waiting for Bidam to roll a 20, but it never happened. This would have been the perfect time. The sword of sharpness does cool things when you roll a natural 20.

Bidam carved up Lamashtu and Theran finished her off with a lightning bolt.

The devil army had won! They'd actually taken an abyssal layer, at least for the moment. They noticed that there was a rift that connected to the first layer of the Abyss. This is something many layers of the Abyss has. That is why the first layer is called The Plain of 1,000 Portals.
They worried that demons could pour through it at any time.

Drokkarn, the pit fiend general, announced that they needed to find a way to close that rift.

As I hoped, Bidam invited the progenitors to his farm. Now we're going to make some demons!

Next session, the group will visit Lilith as Malcanthet asked them to. Then in two weeks, they'll try to deal with the rift.

The devils have taken an abyssal layer and killed an avatar of Lamashtu! This should have lots of ripple effects:

• Lamashtu now knows who the the heroes are and will obviously be extremely angry.
• Iggwilv semi-controls Lamashtu, and will be none too happy that the group essentially took a layer away from her. Iggwilv currently is bound to Graz’zt’s palace. She has sent simulacrums of herself after the heroes, though.
• Graz’zt has been secretly cavorting with Lamashtu. This would make Iggwilv very mad.
• Graz’zt ultimately wants to unite the devils and demons into one massive army, so he’ll be reaching out to the group soon.
• The adventurers will be lauded as heroes among the devils. Zariel will give them medals of honor of some sort. They should probably get some sort of devil boon.
• When the group goes to meet Lilith, I think the devils there will have heard about what they did and the characters will be treated as VIPs.

Very good session! It was epic like I hoped it would be. It continuously confounds me that the heroes seem very weak for 12th level. I almost feel like I need to throw really low-level monsters at them. I don't want them getting dropped all the time, it feels lame.

The group hit 13th level!