Bleak Generation

Main tip from this session: If your players are travelling to the action, go ahead and adapt the time of the event so that the characters arrive without too much time to spare. If they arrive at the ambush point a day in advance, the table (DM included) can get caught having fruitless, circular conversations about schemes to fill the dead time. If the PCs have dead time, give your players an RP prompt if you like, then just fast forward. There was a risk of cancellation for this game due to a player being ill, so I didn’t pressure myself to prepare a great amount. The session went a little slowly, and I felt it took a lot of game time to just get to the fight. The players enjoyed planning the ambush, but the narrative of the journey regularly devolved into planning conversations. It might have been pacier if I had skipped through the journey and instead given the players one dedicated block of planning time ahead of the action? But my attention span was inconsistent on the day, and...

After a few final words with Veridis, the party set off towards the Salience. Navigating the shifting gravity of Yggdrasil’s mighty branches was second nature to the trio by now, and the first half of the journey was filled with leisurely discussions over how best to tackle the visages. Having camped the night inside one of Yggdrasil’s hollow branches, the party were awoken by a knocking. Outside stood a gaggle of ratatosk. Squirrel folk. Recognising them as the group that helped Glittereye, the ratatosk offered to escort “Ball Man” and “Fire Boys” to the “evil bird place”. While they were perfectly capable of finding their way themselves, it would be rude to decline help. So the groups banded together. The party arrived with a day to spare: ahead lay the Salience, an ancient crack within the bark of Yggdrasil, long, deep, and narrow. An abandoned meeting point. Surely a day was enough time for a master plan to crystallise? Aided by the ratatosk, they made their way up to an incons...

I was keen to get back to the main campaign. It’s been ages. That said, the first thing I did was ditch the Queen of Sigil/Vlrc diversion. If like me you made the original khaasta chase across the Outlands an epic one, the party is guaranteed to ask everyone around them for a shortcut back to Sigil, and there’s no plausible reason for the entirety of Crux to withhold that knowledge. The entire reason for visiting the Queen then becomes moot. Plus the whole visit thing shines a massive spotlight on an NPC that never appears again. It’s the opposite of Chekhov’s Gun. I don't know about you, but my players create enough fun-but-irrelevant narrative cul-de-sacs without me adding any to the mix. If I had time to find ways to reuse her, or if my party had gone a long time without any roleplaying, I might reconsider. For the portal key from Ranais to Sigil, “The memory of a dead loved one” seemed a better roleplaying opportunity than plain white leather, encouraging players to delve i...

M’narr had been broken out of the Gatehouse – though only just. Teaming up with Jerryx Woodswatcher, Truetemper’s Solution’s new accountant, Ragados and 12-Bar staged a daring break-in through Sigil’s catacombs. During the escape, the Athar’s Ullitharid ally on the inside had hit M’narr with a feeblemind, and Jerryx nearly fell fatally foul of a wild magic surge. The breakout ended with final showdown against Berith Mormo, who met his end face-down in sewage. Alas, the adventure was not without some loss: Mercy learned of the jailbreak, and found it irreconcilable with her Mercykiller beliefs. She left a letter of resignation, and gave a promise of her silence. Jerryx would now be working for Truetemper’s Solution permanently. Some weeks passed, and the chant in Sigil around the Gatehouse died down. When the Harmonium came knocking to question the party, Ragados chose party allegiance over Faction, and the choice had messed him up a bit. He and M’narr had both taken to the bub to dea...

The blog has been quiet for a while! But not without good reason. My first dungeon, The Temple of Tesh-Yatra (formerly the Temple of Tvashtri) is now available for free (pay-what-you-want) on the DM's Guild! Find it here. If you want to find out how it went when my party ran it, you can read the first of 3 (ish) campaign diaries here. The module includes a battlemap file, allowing you to run the dungeon on your online VTT of choice. What about the campaign? Well, we haven't actually returned to Dead Gods since M'narr got committed to the Gatehouse back in March. Chris took the DM reins for a while, and Ragados and 12-Bar went on a hunt to find magical reagents for an immovable rod. They were joined by Forannan, a rather nihilistic Prime paladin. I took back over DMing to run the Gatehouse breakout. We will finally return to the next chapter of Dead Gods this week. I for one am rather excited.

As laid out last week, Berith’s an evil Guvner, and taken a bribe from some vengeful Athar to make sure M’narr ends up in the Gatehouse. With Berith’s fees set at 200gp per session, I set trial length as 1+1d6 sessions. On rolling a 6, the player must roll another d6 and add that to the total. Rolling a 6 always means adding another die, so the trial length is potentially infinitely expensive. The Twelve Factols is a tavern mentioned in the Sigil guide In the Cage . The lower staircase into Sigil’s catacombs might be an entrance to the Gatehouse for any would-be kidnappers, we’ll see. Rough description of the Prison and the Gatehouse can both be found in the Factol’s Manifesto , as can (rather simple) maps. This session was not exactly “fun”, but compelling and enjoyable in its own grim way. Every location, even the short journey through the Hive, was fleshed out with details. The table was truly shocked when M’narr stabbed himself in the eye. Berith (and me) offered the Oedipal se...

Back in the City Courts, M’narr is researching cases and precedents in the Guvner library with his attorney, Berith Mormo. Ragados and 12-Bar, freer but considerably poorer than they were a few minutes earlier, go to the nearest tavern to deal with their problems with alcohol. They pass the Singing Fountain, a fountain known for the beautiful singer that minds and tends it, and head down into the Twelve Factols Tavern. Seeing the singer sets off Ragados thinking about Daniphe again. 12-Bar orders the tavern’s special brew and sings a new song about Daniphe. He rolls a 29 on his performance check and brings the house down. Whole tavern’s rapt. Once the applause dies down, an old boy tells 12-Bar that he saw an elf just like Daniphe recently, after his lodger (an old guy with an eyepatch) invited her home for a meeting. Ragados is confused with that. So he takes a walk to the court and collects M’narr’s possessions from Berith. M’narr is then taken to the Prison, where the Mercykillers...