Gonzo adventures at sea level

The last three sessions have been going well. To introduce a new player and his character, I gave the party a short mission to accompany a merchant captain on a trip to pick up some promised cargo. The whole mission went badly: the folks they talked to on the docks laughed at the captain’s name; the first mate made some money from the rest of the small crew because she was the only one who thought the party would show up; the cargo they were supposed to pick up wasn’t stashed on the island the captain had been directed to; on a supposedly easy job, there were unexpectedly ogres, Cannith-forged defenses, and a kraken to deal with.

What I hope made it more interesting was that, from the moment the players met the captain hiring them, he was very aware of his shortcomings. In fact, this was his last trip as a merchant, and he was very clear that he wasn’t great at being a merchant; he was too honest for his own good, and was hanging up his hat after one too many disappointments. He just wanted to finish this one job, collect what was owed him, and be done with it. Instead, the people he had cut a deal with had shorted him entirely, with the intention of distracting him while they got out of town.

At this point, my game took a turn for the weird. I originally planned for the first encounter on the island to be ogres who had wandered onto it when the island had wandered closer to the shore (and I’ll get to that). But around that time, I had run into seapunk, became highly amused by it, and suddenly I wanted to make these three ogre pals seapunk ogres with light green hair, their minis done up with cotton balls dyed with food coloring and stretched out to look like seaweed-esque wigs. I didn’t get around to it, but one of the ogres was dubbed Plur.

Then it was discovered that the island was really a giant mecha-crab thing that was an experiment House Cannith was in the process of decommissioning, except the seapunk ogres showed up and ate the few remaining workers they found. Whoops. When the party was able to investigate a cargo hold through a hatchway the ogres couldn’t descend, they triggered some defense systems, and the island/mecha-crab went haywire, getting up and walking itself into the ocean, tossing the party back into the ocean in the process.

At that point, the retiring merchant captain had had enough and was already losing his cool. But once they made it back to the ship, a young kraken showed up and attacked, having been attracted to the large motions of the mechanical behemoth falling into the ocean.

Halfway through the kraken fight, I spotted that for some reason, D&D krakens are telepathic, and so our teenaged kraken started spouting off “PAAAAARRRRRRRTYYYYYYYY” to its would-be victims. Apparently, he had been looking forward to partying with the seapunk ogres.

Yeah, I don’t know either. The party’s monk managed to make a flying leap off of the rowboat, kicked the kraken in the head, knocking it prone, and succeeded in an Athletics roll to run along the side of the kraken as it fell over, so as to not fall into the sea. I figure if they’re going to pull that sort of thing, I can have raver sea creatures.

When the party and crew made it back to Sharn, they found that the entire harbor had been blocked off, with dozens of ships waiting to dock. The poor captain bemoaned his luck, how all he wanted to do was go home and retire and he wasn’t even able to do that. The party snuck into port, discovered the area had been quarantined, and took care of the madman summoning plague demons, like you do. I realized later that that’s something similar to the current season of D&D Encounters, but so be it. I needed level-appropriate demons and that’s what I found.

Anger Point

Anger Point, n. 1. An Action Point used in anger after a disappointing turn. (In my group, actions taken w/ anger points usually fail.) #dnd

— Five copper pieces?! (@5cp) March 20, 2012

Last night’s game

went smashingly well. I need to do a full write-up, but it involved accidentally triggering the internal systems of a mecha-crab, and defeating an upset kraken whose attempts to party with the ogres had been thwarted.

Apparently the D&D games I run are more gonzo.

TO ALL FANS/PLAYERS OF EBERRON

thefangirlingwarmage:

Reblog this so I can follow you!

AAAAAAAAAH INTERNET AWKWARDNESS. But I run an Eberron game. Hopefully will talk about it more here, now that I’m not just running a module to get over my haven’t-DMed-in-over-a-decade jitters.