#Mistbound D&D

[jakey-beefed-it]

Beholder mini I grabbed off of etsy. I've been painting this thing off and on for a couple weeks, and it's time to call it done and move on.

[motheatenscarf]

in honor of it being thursday the 20th, have a dumb meme i made exclusively for my D&D group.

Our DM, @jakey-beefed-it invented a calendar system revolving around 13 months with 28 days each, consisting of 4 weeks with 7 days. He then named the days of the week to be associated with that setting's gods, similar to earth. One day wound up being called "Stormday" and it just so happened to line up on the 20th. On earth, Thursday is Thor's-Day, and Thor is a storm god.

And since it is a cleanly repeating system that rolls over with each month, every 20th day will be a Stormday, which means, oh, hey, would you look at that, we now have an excuse to make the dumbest fucking joke

[motheatenscarf]

In Mistbound D&D last night, our DM decided to throw a fucking BEHOLDER at us despite us only being level 6.

I was thinking, surely it can't be a REAL Beholder, he's just adjusted the stats somehow

and then it blasted a fucking disintegration beam at us.

Now, they dodged it, they were fine, but Talia didn't like that and is an oath of vengeance Paladin. So she ran up, swore a vow of enmity on him on top of her already holding Hunter's Mark, and smacked the shit out of it. I acknowledged that I knew it wouldn't do anything mechanically, but for flavor's sake, said I would grab the eyestalk that just shot at my friend and pull the Beholder closer to me as I smacked it to make myself a problem it couldn't ignore.

Then got a crit, for which Talia still had a level 2 spell slot to burn on a smite.

The results were disgusting.

We're level SIX.

I cannot stress enough, it COULD have been higher, had I not used my stupid Fallen Aasimar shroud in the trash fight leading up to this. It could have been 79 if I'd saved my resources better.

My character before this was a Warlock with hex and invocations boosted Eldritch Blast, at level TWENTY he got 2 crits on the same blast in our last fight and dealt 81 points of damage in a single turn and I'd never been more proud of him.

Talia is level SIX, and I was bad about my resource management, and she did seventy three points of radiant and slashing damage to a Beholder in its own lair, in front of its cult followers, doin em dirty in front of they dad.

Anyway, our DM honored the pants shitting amount of damage she did by saying, yeah, no, you... you cut off that eyestalk. The disintegration beam is gone from the table now. That... what fuck, Talia?

And then getting even more insane, our Barbarian, after failing to make his save to avoid the 41 points of Necrotic damage he wasn't resistant to, had a realization. Talia was tanking the biting damage, and he was tanking the eye beams, but Talia resists necrotic and radiant, and he resists piercing, so we should switch!

So as a halfling, he jumped into its mouth to keep it from biting Talia and to ensure the eyebeams couldn't hit him!

It was.... completely insane and tactically brilliant???? Anyway, he carved it up from the inside out and emerged from that fight bathed in its blood with 3 levels of exhaustion.

It was a good encounter.

We're level 7 now.

[jakey-beefed-it]

Cancelled my d&d game this week because I'm having such a hard time working on it- mix of seasonal depression, coming off of a big manic phase, and general burnout. And I feel a bit bad about it, but mostly I feel bad that I don't feel worse about it. I guess I really need the break.

[jakey-beefed-it]

Writing up some very silly enemies and suitable combat rules for them in my d&d campaign, but cannot post them yet because 2 of my players read my blog :V

[jakey-beefed-it]

D&D went okay tonight, but I'm kinda losing control of the pacing. Players took the opportunity for downtime and instead ran down character-specific goals, which because I am trying to tie everyone's backstory into the main plot, advanced the main plot.

Going to have to kinda wrap up a couple of my smaller mysteries sooner than I'd have liked in order to remove the dangling plot threads- there are starting to be so many of them that the players are getting a bit lost and frustrated. So it's time to streamline things a bit.

The problem with any form of art of course is that the result is never, ever going to match the vision in your head, but I'm running into that a lot more frequently lately and it's frustrating.

[jakey-beefed-it]

Two days ago I was reasonably happy with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the planned villain(s), as things finally felt like they were coming together.

Today I am struggling with "but WHY would that villain be an underling for this other villain" and "I need my big bad to make SOME kind of personal appearance or else they'll have no connection to the party" and "but how much is too much interaction?" and "isn't this all more than a trifle cliche and stupid as hell?"

[jakey-beefed-it]

So in my d&d game, there's an archfey who has... taken an interest in the party, their activities, etc., and I play archfey generally and this guy in particular as basically hyper-aware of the power of Narrative to a nigh-on metatextual level; like they're almost aware that they're characters in a story, they just think they can influence the plot more than is actually possible given the presence of a Dungeon Master, four Players, and random dice rolls.

Anyhow that's all just background for what I think was a pretty kick-ass quote that I gave this archfey guy when talking to the party's Warlock who grew up as a sort of animistic shaman sort and reached out to the spirits for guidance and advice.

(Imagine the below delivered in my best impression of Jareth from Labyrinth with a hint of Emet-Selch from FFXIV)

“Do not misunderstand my role in your tale- I am not the wise elder who sets you on your way, nor yet the sage who blesses you with enlightenment. I am the chill night air, the wolves circling your fire, the shadow that passes beneath the moon and curdles your blood.”

[jakey-beefed-it]

D&D went well tonight, probably 2 more sessions and 3 or 4 more fights before the players finish this adventure and hit level 7. People seem to be engaged and invested. It's not the show-stopping tour de force I'd like it to be, but for a disabled and depressed dungeon master with adhd and who even knows what else, it's going okay.

[jakey-beefed-it]

tonight in D&D my players got distracted by a red herring and the rogue nearly died as a result of grain entrapment

[motheatenscarf]

So, I have a fun family game of D&D with my brother and my sibling-in-law and a couple pals that my brother DMs. I've talked about it before, Almenor D&D. Well, we just started a new campaign this last Wednesday! This one's gonna be tagged #Mistbound D&D, since it takes place not on the mainland of Almenor, but in the Mistbound Isles of the same world, set 100 years after our last campaign.

We've been promised a spooky fun time and I'm already really digging it, but I don't think I'll be keeping as many updates here about it, mainly because as the party notetaker, I'm in charge of the recap, and I've gotten permission this time around to share the recap document!

I go pretty thoroughly into detail trying to chronicle the session beats for posterity's sake, but we've also got a new player who wasn't in our last campaign, so everything's already being written for a fresh set of eyes where no context from the last huge 3 year campaign will be necessary. My SIL is an artist and also did character portraits for us!

Behold!

Kaash'ka: human (??) warlock, blood patron, just a sweet lil bean trying to get rid of his horrible curse (the ferret is named Pancake)

Talia: human (??????) paladin, oath of vengeance, horse girl first, endless font of wrath with hands second

Nudi Ecrudi, yes that is his name: halfling barbarian, berserker, the tiniest, drunkest, OLDEST, angriest little pirate there ever was

Eddy Shortcake: dwarf rogue, thief, the goodest boy with great manners but poor impulse control and a sweet tooth

So if you want to follow the adventures of these idiots and read my terrible writing to approximate what happens and see all the cool art Ash draws and the sick maps Jake makes for his spooky campaign, HERE YA GO!

[jakey-beefed-it]

Finished my wife's d&d character!

Kaash'ka is a blood-themed warlock, hence the mess :)

[jakey-beefed-it]

Ahh, there it is. It's 6 hours later than usual, but here comes the self-doubt about my d&d campaign.

It's actually going well. We're only five sessions in and people are enjoying it. The players are as engaged as life circumstances permit. This is always a difficult time of year for consistent games with everyone's full attention. One of them is dealing with a difficult living situation and another one is like 5 months pregnant. These things are going to take priority and/or distract them somewhat.

Goblin-brain however is like 'are they actually engaged? do they care? do they really? how come nobody's prying for anyone else's mysterious backstory? will they after they finish the first big adventure and decide to work together on a permanent basis? am I doing a bad job setting up opportunities for character traits and backstory elements to shine?'

Shut up, goblin-brain. It's going fine.

[jakey-beefed-it]

I just spent several hours finally, finally, hashing out the calendar for my d&d setting

This is after I ran a 3 year long campaign in it, and am over a month into a second campaign in it

I didn't go full Tolkien on it, thankfully, but I did come up with a few different holidays and regional differences in names of months depending on societies

The good news is that I've now got this very handy reference which I can use to plan events and keep track of time in a consistent way. I can even note the PCs birthdays.

The bad news is that I feel fully wrung out, like a husk of a man with grainy eyeballs and a dull ache at the base of my skull.

[motheatenscarf]

Tonight's D&D game went well, Talia got her first Divine Smite crit and did 46 points of damage to a single Redcap, slicing it down the middle like a tree log.

Our Barbarian then also got another recap and cleaved its torso clean from its legs.

So we had hotdog and hamburger style flavors of bisecting our enemies from our two resident murder happy freaks.

[motheatenscarf]

Mistbound D&D continues to go well and sometimes the dice recognize your character's themes and decide to explore them in the stupidest ways.

I tend to make my characters analogous to or use imagery of certain animals because I'm me and love animals and metaphors and have to give all of my characters a pet, so I may as well work it in.

This time around, Talia has a big stupid horse she loves so so much and his name is Chernabog. He's dead for the moment, but he'll be making a return once she hits level 5 because Find Steed is the best spell and my DM is letting me get spooky with it.

Anyway, I'm sitting here thinking I'm all clever and shit for how Talia is like a warhorse in that she is trained as an obedient but expendable beast of burden for the atrocities she sees and commits for the people who raised her. Strong, powerful, but surprisingly fragile and definitely not meant for this despite it being all she knows.

Very fun for combat sessions, but like, you gotta have downtime too, right?

No to worry, the dice have me covered! We had a fun festival session full of carnival games and contests and we entered like, all of them. Talia did GREAT at the physical challenges and then we got to the eating and drinking contests and rolled like a 4 and a 1 on her con saves and was eliminated in round 1 both times and barfed everywhere.

Dice said, oh, you want to make your girl horse-coded? Cool, she's gonna die of tummy hurty when you're not looking