Forgotten Realms Campaign - Traveling to the Tunnels

[GM commentary is in square brackets. Refer to the Forgotten Realms Page for more detailed information about the characters and setting.]

[A new player was going to join the game but couldn't make it due to illness. That's too bad because his character would have been darn useful this game but none of us wanted a stomach bug.]

The party finds a small settlement on the branch of the road going south. [I didn't give it a name and described it as sort of a 'truck stop' setting. They promptly named it "Truck Stop Town". Sigh. Players.] The Jolly Smuggler is the local inn and that's where they stay since they're not going to camp when there's a perfectly good inn here.

L'oric orders his usual - elven wine. This time he gets a glass of it and doesn't see the bottle. The wine is a dark enough purple to be almost black. It's both sweet and savory at the same time.  He asks for the bottle and is refused.

The menu is decent and the meal comes with a dish of chopped red, white, and black mushrooms in sweet vinegar. Nihilus figures out that the mushrooms aren't from the surface and they all start wondering if they're going to be poisoned. Looking around the inn they see a decent amount of people given that they're on a trail leading to the Trader's Road but no one seems to be having an issue with the wine or the mushrooms.

Nihilus was looking in the right direction to catch a glimpse of the elven wine bottle and sees that the writing on it looks elvish but more .. spiky. He directs the others to look but no one knows what to make of it. He also overhears someone saying they wish they had some sporebread but it doesn't mean anything to him.

After dinner L'oric and Izzy decide to go for a stroll around the area, to see what they can see. Around the back of the inn they find an empty, seemingly abandoned cart. They poke around it and L'oric sees holes that probably were meant for manacles and/or shackles and sees some dark stains as well. There's scratches where possibly crates were dragged too.

Finy has found a group of halflings and they play dice with him. After he wins most of their money (a total of 13 gold and 25 silver) they won't play with him any more.

Finy and Nihilus then decide to go check out the warehouse they saw when they entered the town. The double doors have four very large bolts (locked) and one large, solid latch with a dwarven lock that Finy knows is dwarven but has never seen one similar. When Finy starts to walk around the building he sees that the only windows so far are thin, long, iron faced and barred under the eaves. As he goes around the first corner there's a very loud barking/growling/howling from inside the building. They both decide now is a good time to go back to the inn.

As they walk away a light starts to shine from behind them and Finy loudly talks about orcs being around. He's being sneaky and trying to deflect the attention of whoever is behind them with the lantern. No one bothers them as they go back towards the inn.

Izzy and L'oric are still looking at the wagon. The ornamentation has that same spiky look to it and also spiders and webs. Thinking back to when she was in her Comparative Religion class Izzy realizes that those are symbols of Lloth and quite probably the wagon is of drow make. Nihilus and Finy show up and they get filled in on the wagon.

The 'D' word sets everyone off.

Nihilus, in his normal oh-so-not-diplomatic way, asks the innkeeper about drow and after a bit of misunderstanding and posturing finds out that the trading is done by grey dwarves. The innkeeper describes them as small, bald, and grey.

Continuing in his way Nihilus asks who owns the warehouse (Jonas) and demands to know where he lives. The innkeeper is not impressed and gets surly now. He said he'll let Jonas know that Nihilus wants to talk to him in the morning. The innkeeper is lying through his teeth.

After a brief debate they decide to stay at the inn. Nihilus crawls into the hayloft where a couple of other people are also staying, the rest have actual rooms.

The next day dawns. Finy is up first and pays for everyone's room and food. There's a charge for Nihilus staying in the hayloft so he's not nearly as sneaky as he likes to think. Finy gets a bit deflated when no one notices that he's paid. Breakfast is had by all.

Nihilus goes and waits by the warehouse so he can talk to Jonas. Jonas is a large human and pays no attention to the wood elf lurking in front as he opens up and starts to barter with the caravans lining up outside. During a break in the action Nihilus slips him a gold piece and asks him about the cart behind the inn. He calls it 'the dwarf cart' and describes the dwarves as short, surly, grey, bald, thin, they come up from the south, and they live underground. Hence the underground goods they trade.

Finy figured out that Jonas doesn't deal in small goods and decides to try to sell some of his 'acquired' goods at one of the two stores. Obviously this store has a varied clientele as there's a convenient step so short folk can get to the counter. The first thing he pulls out is the praying mantis in glass and the shopkeeper goes pale, refusing to buy it. The crowd at the counter pulls away a little.

Finy then pulls out the bracelet and tries to sell that. The shopkeeper looks it over and offers 300 gold for it. When Finy points out the hidden compartment the shopkeep missed the offer doubles to 600 gold if he'll leave the store. Finy leaves without selling anything, mulling it over. The crowd gives him space and is whispering as he goes.

They all meet up at the inn for lunch and to go over anything they've learned. Finy puts together the pieces - the note, the preying mantis, and the bracelet - to figure out that he's being associated with the Night Wing thief and assassin guild in Westgate. Of which he is most certainly not a member. And that by showing the shopkeep that the bracelet has a hidden compartment he kind of threatened to poison him. He's very shaken up by this and not at all in a hurry to go back to Westgate now.

From his conversation with Jonas Nihilus knows the carts arrive from the south (he got a bit of snark from Jonas about that one) and decides that there's got to be at least one tunnel in the Giant's Run Mountains. Which is where they were going anyway since he'd heard about tunnels there. And ruins.

Some conversation with the woman running the inn for the morning gets them more information. She's sorry that the dwarves haven't been around since it means they're not getting the trade goods anymore, but that it's not as bad as it could be because they just double the prices. They're all suspicious about the abandoned wagon even though there's two other empty wagons in the courtyard. Nihilus and Finy leave the inn to have a look at the warehouse, L'oric and Izzy stay behind to keep talking.

Before they split up Izzy, with reluctance, offers Finy use of the brooch she got when she left the temple. It has the ability to make a person more graceful for a short period of time [Brooch of Cat's Grace] and she thinks it will help Finy in his work. She makes SURE he'll give it back when he's done. She also tells him that the ability only lasts ten minutes.

They find out that it's not uncommon for traders to leave a wagon behind for a while when they don't have enough to fill it. She says the same things about the dwarves and also that they come from the south. So it's established in everyone's mind that the answer is SOUTH. They have decided they must know more about these dwarves.

One running theme is that none of them want to go into the Underdark. It's stated many times that you only go there if you want to die. Or unless you're trading but even then you're probably going to die. They have a justly healthy respect/fear of the Underdark. [I didn't correct them on any of this since stories of the Underdark would be known.]

Finy is going to have a look around that warehouse. As the trading slows down the four helpers turn into two helpers. Finy literally steps on the foot of one of them and that helper promptly turns and punches the one next to him for stepping on him. Finy gets in without a problem. He's in a forty by forty foot building that's full of shelving and stacks of goods. There's a small walled off office-type area to the right of the doors and whatever was making all the noises are now chained up in the back.

Given how long the spell lasts he can search two areas of the warehouse [two five foot squares]. He starts to climb the closest set of shelves, falls, then does some searching to find nothing much except two crates and a barrel with that same spiky writing. The other area he searches is the office and there he finds a lot of paperwork. The lock on the desk drawer doesn't even require his lockpicks and holds a moneybox that also doesn't require them. There's an assortment of types of coin and some trade bars. Some of the coins have that same darn spiky writing. He takes a few coins 'to show the others' and a trade bar.

Even though evening is getting close they decide to head south. No waiting, no spending another night at the inn. Of course not. Traveling in the dark is the BEST way to find side trails. The drow cart isn't built the same as the others - longer and narrower. The wheel tracks will be different but the ground is pretty hard packed and rutted.

They travel down the road until almost full dark, keeping to the road and going slowly. They're both looking for side trails and not wanting to have their horses break their legs. [I had to remind them that riding by the side of the road as it gets dark is an excellent way to have horses break legs. Not that I would ever do that sort of thing...]

This road doesn't have conveniently placed cutouts for overnight stays but they find a decent place. There's trees to either side of the road, they're east of the mountains, and there's a narrow, shallow stream to the west. It will do for the night so they set up camp.

During the last watch Izzy hears something at the stream. She goes to look and it's a goblin filling a bucket. She casts Detect Evil and of course it glows - it's a goblin. She speaks goblin so she starts talking to it, trying to keep it from running away. Because she's just that way. She's doing fine until she brings up drow then it screams and runs.

This wakes up everyone (Nihilus said he woke up when Izzy started speaking but didn't leave his tent) and they all go running after Izzy who's running after the goblin. She tries casting Command on it so it will stop but it shakes off her spell. That break made her realize that goblins travel in packs and their camp is unguarded.

Back they run to find six goblins ransacking their camp. L'oric casts Sleep and four of them fall to the ground, next to the packs where they had been taking the rations and waterskins. The other two run off. Finy catches one and the other slips out of Nihilus's grip down an animal burrow.

Nihilus is pacing off to the side, caught in a bit of a moral dilemma. Goblinkind are his favored enemies. Here's five of them, four of which are easy targets. But Izzy and the others are intent on talking to them! He's being threatening at the outskirt of camp.

Izzy talks to the one goblin who is awake. After giving it some rations (she has no idea how to tell gender on a goblin and no desire to learn how to tell gender on a goblin) she asks questions. The story she gets is that their clan has been taken by the dark ones and they escaped. They're still here so that they can rescue their clan. There was a tunnel collapse that let them get free so they think that the dark ones and their kin are still here. This goblin isn't stupid and gets her to promise by her deity that they would rescue the clan, let them go free, and not let Nihilus hurt any of them. In return the goblin will lead them to the cave.

Izzy immediately agrees to all this, telling the rest what she did afterward since she's the only one who speaks goblin. Nihilus is extremely upset at the plan she made and said she should discuss plans with them before agreeing to them. She's excellently sarcastic when she asks if she should do it like he does. He thinks that's fair.

They're all pretty happy with the deal. They get a guide to the tunnels they were looking for anyway and to the dwarves. So it all worked out. Of course they have to free a goblin clan but that's a little detail.

It's morning so they prepare breakfast in preparation for going into the mountains.

GM Notes

I did get pictures of the cards and no one minded handing them over for that. They understood what I was doing. The player writing the book asked for a copy of the inn menu since those add so much extra detail to the story and I have no problem sending him a copy of that.

I'll be updating the Page with more information about the characters as it develops. It helps to get a feel for them if you're reading the story. I can also document the main magic items they have that they aren't going to be selling in the next town. It adds to knowing the characters.

We will have a new player joining us. It won't be quite as easy as it would have been this session since they're further along a less traveled road but I'll make it happen. I had his travels documented to the town they spent the night in so I'll work it further. The group couldn't travel far in that amount of time anyway. They're experienced enough that they'll make it work to bring him in. But I'm not telling anything about him until he shows up.

I did a bit of retconning in this game. The bracelet was actually loot from the plants they fought but the player had the card and it made sense he could have gotten it from the beltpouch as well. Honestly the whole thing about him and the Westgate guild fell together. I didn't plan it but when I looked at the pieces it came together as what it did. I did have to be more explicit with the player in private so he got the same answer as I did and he loved it. Well. The player loved it. The character is NOT happy at all. He's a thief, not an assassin!

I purposely put the goblin encounter at a time when Izzy could direct it. She likes to try to talk things out and this worked well. It would have worked better if they could stop asking questions about drow but they got there in the end. It seems a bit convenient to get a goblin guide to where they wanted to go but there's a lot of tunnels in the mountains. Once they're in the region then there's more options for giant ruins and such.

I love how they're adamant about not going to the Underdark. I was worried that I would have to find ways to dissuade them. Nope. They're doing just fine on their own. Even if I put up big lighted arrows pointing to the Underdark they wouldn't go. And this pleases me because they would die if they went there. I couldn't do much about it. So they'll stay at the tunnel entrance (that has been collapsed as extra insurance) and explore there.

The Rocketbook is turning into something interesting. By uploading to Google Drive it does OCR for me and it doesn't do a bad job at all. I can see most of the issues are my handwriting. Go figure. I have my first batch of letters to adjust and we'll see how it goes for the next upload. I also have to space things out more. I tend to crowd my writing. But it is difficult to take good notes while also running the game so I'll do my best. My handwriting needed work anyway.

So for now I'm going with Rocketbook being a plus. I need to transcribe my first notes into a Google Doc since they were written the old fashioned way and I'm trying to keep things more organized. But that's for another day.

I need to make more inn and tavern menus. This is fine since I had plans for those anyway. The generator I'm using is good but not great. My friend Aba is working on his first sets of list and a menu generator (with my help) so that one might be more what I need. I'll still adjust it as I see fit. I like having actual food items since it makes things more immersive. Like the trinkets I hand out. As the praying mantis showed sometimes that can lead to interesting things!

Game Prep Stuff

As any GM knows there's a lot that goes into game prep. Running in a sandbox world means a LOT of prep since there's never any certainty the players are going to go with what you hope. Unless you make it REALLY COOL but that's another post.

I had less time than normal to prep this time around. Because of life we had to switch the weekend schedule. One player's custody weekend got swapped to the game weekend. I put it to the group (without him in the email chain) with the three options. The player knew all the options going forward.

1. Switch weekends
2. Keep the weekends, play while he has his four kids at home
3. Keep the weekends, player would leave the game.

I sent the email without stating a preference. I know I get one vote like everyone else but the GM's vote has the unfortunate tendency to carry more weight with some groups. I figured I would be a tie breaker if needed.

Unanimous vote to switch weekends. This was a pleasant thing to relay.

Next hurdle - more life. We couldn't play on Saturday but everyone could make Sunday. Ok. Fine. My weekend gets a bit screwed up but I can handle that.

I also met with a potential new player who was recommended by a current player. He seems to understand and accept the house rules and started coming up with a nice character.

And then to prepping. Lots of prepping. Things I would have had a week to do I had to complete in two days. Along with the extra burden of introducing a new PC to the game. No pressure, right?

I'm trying a Rocketbook after hearing good things about it from the Twitter GM community and it makes sense. You can click the link for more info but it's plastic pages you write on with special markers. When you're done you use the app to take pictures of the pages and they get uploaded to any one of half a dozen or so storage sites. The best thing is that several of them do OCR as you upload. That's what got me. The post office messed up my delivery so I had less time to play with it than I would have liked but so far it's been good. I took this game's notes in it so crossing my fingers I don't have to rewrite them all in my spiral bound notebook.

I made magic items for two of the original players based on their backstories. Turns out I did really well in picking the right one for them going forward. At least that's what they told me. I always offer to make or pick something else if it doesn't feel right and have yet to have someone take me up on it. I wonder if they really do like it or if they don't want to make me feel bad. GM insecurities.

Finally I needed to make taverns and inns. I have a wonderful deck of cards that has taverns with menus so I could use those. Except when the PCs are only going to be in the area for a day or three I don't want to 'use up' one of the good taverns. 

Enter Infinite Menus from Inkwell Ideas. I love their stuff. I have all the Infinite series products and adapt them as I see fit. In this case I decided on limiting the fare available in these taverns since they're all out in the wilds. Those taverns aren't going to have a selection of dishes. You eat what they serve. The instructions help you with determining random numbers of dishes and I did try that. Once. Now I'm doing one choice meals. I may get fancier later.

Add onto this reading material that I would probably/hopefully use in the game, making notes for what I need to ask each player, and all the other things that go into prepping for a game and it made for a long two days.

But I think it went well. I'll write up the game itself after I've had a chance to let my brain recover.

Note - DriveThruRPG links are affiliate links.

Forgotten Realms Campaign - The Group Forms

[GM commentary is in square brackets. Refer to the Forgotten Realms Page for more detailed information about the characters and setting.]

[At the beginning of the game I asked that the players please form themselves into a group, as they're all experienced role players and know how it should go. I did my part by getting them all in the same place at the same time with nothing to do.]

Nihilus and L'oric are staying at The Full Basket Inn. Well. L'oric is actually staying there and Nihilus doesn't really like the idea of "other people" so he's camping out in the inn's attic without bothering to tell the innkeeper.

Izzy and Finy are staying at The Smiling Pig. [I didn't have Finy's backstory but he's got a 10 strength so I gave him a lesser Backpack of Holding as his freebie. I offered the choice of taking that or having me make something from his backstory but he was more than pleased to take the backpack so he could carry a reasonable amount of stuff.]

[I used the 'high or low' method of determining who was staying at what inn. I asked the player to choose high or low, then rolled percentage. If they chose the matching dice roll, it was a Yes. If not it was a No. Luck had them evenly split.]

Finy is 'working' at The Full Basket Inn that evening, pickup up change left at the bar and snagging one belt pouch in the process. He gets a bit of coin, a praying mantis in a cube of black glass, and a bracelet (7 steel hearts connected on a platinum curb chain, with a tiny hidden closable cavity) (Appraisal check at 520gp].

Nihilus sees a full blooded elf in the tavern and decides to have a chat with him, even though wood elves and sun elves aren't best buds. He's on a quest to find his homeland so he's looking for information. L'oric is more than a bit of a dilettante (his own description) and has ordered elven wine like it was something special, forgetting that he's in a merchant city that sees pretty much everything pass through. So it isn't a big deal to anyone but him.

The two of them are talking when Izzy walks in and sees L'oric. She immediately yells out "Dad!" and rushes over over to hug him. Nihilus reacts as a paranoid wood elf would react and pulls out one of his pair of falchions. He goes for her throat. Izzy stops cold when she sees that L'oric is not actually her father and that she is about to die.

Finy sees the action and wanders over to watch from a nearby table. He also picks up L'oric's wine and starts drinking it. Shamelessly.

Nihilus realizes this wasn't an attack and sits back down. Izzy goes into a stammering explanation that has double entendre written all over, completely by accident. All three of the men misinterpret her and she has to talk very fast to make them understand that she wasn't propositioning them. A patron behind her didn't pick up on that and tries to pick her up. Literally. She pulls out her mace as a warning and that little confrontation is over.

After she removes her foot from her mouth she joins them and their conversation about what to do next. [I had given each of them cards with at least two bits of information from nearby areas. By sheer luck the setting I'd put Izzy in is the same one she chose. I did not know this prior to the game.] L'oric and Finy are having a disagreement over the filched wine and finally give it up. Finy keeps the wine.

As Finy is ostentatiously displaying the mug and explaining that it belongs to the inn, not the elf, he finds a note stuck to the bottom (Midnight. Doorway in Malak's alley. Bring Relen and Donog). He has no idea about any of this but keeps the note. [It's a throwaway bit of mystery on my part.]

L'oric does a little prestidigitation to make the wine less savory - more of a vinegar taste. To him it would be undrinkable, as an elf and a connoisseur of fine things. Finy doesn't notice. Izzy does notice L'oric doing something with his hands but keeps it to herself at the moment.

Izzy proposes they go to the Farsea Marshes in Cormyr and collect orc ears since there's a bounty on them. The group agrees that it would be an interesting way to get some money and possibly explore the ruins she said were nearby. Except that Nihilus had left without them noticing so they feel he's not going to accompany them.

Nihilus went out the window to the inn roof to the rafters [This sort of thing is going to grow old if he doesn't settle down but he's trying to establish his character so I'm letting it play out for now.] He decides to send them a note that he is going with them. His method of choice is to write it on a piece of paper, tie it to an arrow, and shoot it into the table. He misses terribly. The arrow goes out the window and hits someone passing by. He tries again and it just goes out the window. He gives up on that method of telling them and goes back to his attic. [Ranged weapons are not his forte.]

The group decides to leave since someone is shooting arrows over their heads. The rest of the crowd doesn't even seem to notice. Except for the person who got hit but they don't come in looking for who did it.

Izzy leaves to go back to her inn. Nihilius decides to follow her to make sure she's safe. She picks up on someone following her and decides to duck into an alley to lose whoever it is or at least draw them out. She instead walks directly into a bricked up entryway. Nihilius decides to hide behind a barrel while she sorts herself out and falls into it instead.

Finy had been following both of them and saw the whole thing. Izzy once again picked up on someone following her but didn't see anyone. Nihilus never even checked to see if he was followed. Finy now has some wonderful material to tease them both.

The next morning they start talking about how far it is to the marshes and it turns out it's at least 2 tendays each way. L'oric is far less enthusiastic. Most of them are NOT enthusiastic about having to make part of the trip by ship. Nihilus instead proposes going to the Giant's Run Mountains off the Trader's Road where he's heard about ruins and tunnels. That trip is less than a tenday each way and completely overland. He'd just traveled that road with the caravan too.

The group does mundane shopping to get supplies. Izzy repeats several times that she can create water. She's very proud of this. [I need to remind the players to take the purchase costs off their money if they haven't already.]

They buy horses. Finy is not happy with the concept of riding even a pony. Izzy buys a nice dapple grey, Nihilus asks for and gets a bay quarterhorse, L'oric doesn't seem to care. Finy asks if he can buy an eighth horse (playing off the quarterhorse and his own discomfort with horses) to which the seller replies he could at the butcher. Finy buys a small dark brown pony. Everyone except Nihilius gets full tack - he doesn't buy a saddle or saddlebags.

Their first day out L'oric remembers that they had hired on to caravans in the past to guard them and they agree that it would be a good way to pick up some coin while going to the mountains. His manner is off-putting enough that the caravan leader thinks he's a spy or going to rob them and passes that along to every caravan going in that direction. [Diplomacy doesn't seem to be their strong suit.]

Nihilus has skill in cooking along with a spice jar that makes any spice he wants. [That's the item I gave him based on his back story and the player loves that I picked that for him. It's the Spice Jar from the Magic of Faerun book and I reduced the attributes since it was a bit more major than I wanted to have in the game. The spice gives some extra hit points and resistance to disease and poison for a short time.]

That night they're attacked by thorn bushes. Moving thorn bushes that can shoot their thorns. The people who get hit by them feel itching but nothing else [That spice jar from dinner. I didn't have them roll Fortitude checks since I didn't want them to be even weaker than they are now.]. L'oric cast a Light spell into the middle of the area Nihilus pointed out while they were trying to figure out what the heck they were fighting. He also casts a Sleep spell to seemingly no effect. Izzy cast both Detect Evil and Protection from Chaos. Nihilus finally figured out that it was bushes and not animals or people. Eventually they pound and burn the bushes down to kindling with Nihilus taking the most damage. Izzy heals everyone who needs it. L'oric is very proud that his Sleep spell took down one of the bushes. They find 2 gold and 16 silver coins, a pair of brass octahedron earrings covered in infinity symbols, [and one other item that may have been the bracelet but I've moved that to the pouch Finy lifted since the player had the card anyway].

Nihilus picks up six thorns to use in his alchemy.

The next day they see that they weren't the only one attacked. There's wounded people in the caravans and some thorns stuck in the wagons.

Four days of traveling got them to the trail to the mountains. Nihilus does hunt a small deer so they have fresh meat for a couple of days and he's tanning the hide. [One encounter on the road was plenty imo.] We left it there since we had reached the end of the session.

GM Notes

I have a lot of trinket and jewelry cards pre-made. Typically I hand them out and unless it's got some kind of magic effect or I want to use it as a plot device I don't write them down. The players tend to sell them anyway. But since I'm going to try to write this up I'll need to be more attentive. They're nifty things.

There were several critical failures during the game. They're not noted in the story as written but they're kind of obvious. Finy stealing the belt pouch (critical fail on the mark). The arrow that hit a passerby. The attempt to move silently into an alley. The attempt to hide behind the barrel. The attempt to hire onto the caravan. I don't want to put mechanics into the story itself and those are the actual events that transpired in the game when they rolled critical fails. If you want it noted put in the comments so I can add something like [Critical fail] after the event.

I also asked the players to make backup characters and only one has completed theirs so far. I'm going to use those to make a nemesis party (I got that idea from one of the people I follow on Twitter) so there hasn't been mention of them yet. As I get those I'll update the page with the cast of characters and start working them into the story.

I'm meeting with another person this week who's friends with L'oric's player and wants to join the game. Five is the most I'll have at the table and I can have more interesting encounters with more players. It's a challenge to keep them all involved and make sure everyone gets a chance in the spotlight but I've done it before. It also makes for more complicated interactions within the party which is always good.

We meet again in two weeks, just before Christmas. It doesn't matter in game since I started us in late spring (the equivalent of May) so that I didn't have to add weather problems in while they're still very low level. I may make my grandmother's recipe for the real version of Chex Mix and bring it along as a treat. It's a very good treat. Any recipe that starts with "1 pound butter" is going to be good.