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!

DungeonFog - RPG Mapmaker

We're going to check out DungeonFog, a D&D mapmaking program that is being kickstarted right now. They made their goal in about 4 days, so if you want to jump in, now's the time

I messed around with Roll20 a little bit a few months ago. Roll20 lets you play online, draw maps, all sorts of stuff. It was cool but extremely complicated. From what I understand, it adds a lot of prep work to a task that already has too much prep work involved.

I have made maps in Photoshop, but they're pretty craptastic. I would love to be able to make some nice maps with a simple program, especially for my online games.

DungeonFog purports to be such a program! The guy who made DungeonFog was nice enough to let me mess around with the pre-alpha version.

I decided to try to use DungeonFog to make the Yawning Portal - the bar from the new D&D adventure, Tales From the Yawning Portal. It’s a bar with a huge well in it that leads to the megadungeon known as Undermountain.

This thing is nice and simple. There are just a few elements to deal with. There are stages, floors and props. You select areas for the floors to fill in. Props are dragged and dropped right onto the map. My favorite prop is the dude in the cage.

Then in the edit section, there are different types of floors. There are also stages, which is your sort of main background that you put floors on top of. The stages are very nicely done. I slapped together a montage of my favorites:

I really like the rock one, in particular.

In the beginning, I was a little confused. You have to draw/outline the squares you want to use, and then fill it with the floor you selected. I had a bit of a hard time actually getting it to use the floor I wanted. After a few minutes of tinkering I got the basic idea of how it worked. Once I got going, it was ridiculously easy.

I love how you can rotate objects and make them larger or smaller. This isn’t some namby-pamby rotation, either. This goes right down to the degree. 

To rotate, you need to use your mouse wheel. I am using a laptop, which has no mouse wheel. I plugged in a mouse and it worked fine.

The other thing was that my laptop started to get warm after about 45 minutes. This thing is 4 years old and I had another very large program running, so maybe this won’t be a problem for anyone else.

I was really impressed with the whole thing. They have a lot of detailed little things. An oven! Three different cutting boards! A blood stain and a spill stain.

It took me about a half hour to make this Yawning Portal map:

That's not too shabby, am I right? Sometimes you see maps online that people made with some program and they look really cheesy and weird. To me, this really does look a bit like a program that creates maps in the style of Mike Schley.

When you’re done, you can turn it into an image. The image it generates has the DungeonFog watermark on the bottom, which is pretty large.

See how many squares that is? If this is 5 feet per square, that's 25 feet long! I can crop that out, but some people might not like having that on their map.

To me, this thing seems ideal for people making DMs Guild adventures. You can make your own maps! Maybe now we won’t see any more hand-drawn maps in the D&D Encounters adventures.

I wanted to make something stupid in DungeonFog for this article. I whipped up a goofy dungeon hallway loaded with stuff. I timed myself. It took me three minutes.

Three minutes! That’s the thing I like most about this program. You can make nice maps very quickly.

Apparently they are adding a lot more. You can play online with it, it somehow generates DM notes, all sorts of stuff. Honestly, the mapmaker is good enough on its own that even if they didn't deliver anything else it would be worth it.

The kickstarter has already funded (!), 4 days after it began, so I guess we'll be seeing more of DungeonFog..

If you think this might be something you want, check out their kickstarter right here.