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Post by vwilliams32407 on Jun 22, 2016 7:47:29 GMT -9
Hello again everyone, I’m back with an update. The party journeyed back to the raider camp only to find it abandoned, except for a few huntsmen. The huntsmen said there were still some cultists in the caves so they went to check it out. I didn’t have a lot of free time to work on these maps so I only built certain rooms. I even recycled the sally port from the keep in Greenest map to use as the dragon shrine. I have started to build pieces for the road trip to Waterdeep and the roadhouse that they stop at along the way. They entered the cave only to be met by two guards and a Dragonclaw. With the help of the druid’s spider staff and its web spell they were able to keep one of the guards from running away to warn the others. They quickly defeated the guards and got some Intel from them about what was ahead. They were afraid of the fungi cavern so they took the alcove to the vault, barracks, and Frulan’s chamber. They checked out the vault first and left the drunken sleeping cultist alone. They cast a web spell in front of the barracks door and then cast an illusion spell making it look like the hall was clear. They then used mage hand to knock on the door. A guard opened the door and walked right into the web and was restrained. The bard then cast spinning blades (?) and proceeded to slice up the restrained guard. The druid cast flame sphere into the barracks and started pin balling it around the room catching everyone on fire. They moved onto Frulan's chamber and found it empty, or so they thought. They immediately started to search the room thanks to all of the props I put in there and ignored the bed chamber to the north. When I described the two chests in the bed chamber the greedy bard rushed in only to be ambushed by two guards and Frulan. While playing Frulan I discovered how much I like the Spirit Guardians spell. It did massive damage and really made the players scared to attack her. After the battle they discovered the secret shaft hidden under a rug that led to the dragon shrine. Langdedrosa recognized the champion from Greenest and challenged him to yet another duel. The PC’s jumped in so the berserkers also joined in. The fighter went down as collateral damage when the bard cast sleep on Langdedrosa and the rest of the group took a beating before killing all of the bad guys. I gave inspiration to the bard because he told everyone to play dead and then he would kick the fighter to wake him up. The fighter woke up and thought that all of his companions had died in the fight. After a few deception and insight checks and much laughter the PC’s started giggling and the fighter was on to them. He was very upset with them for tricking him. So that’s it for this update. I’m looking forward to the open road and the roadhouse.
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Dec 14, 2016 10:18:34 GMT -9
Wow time flies. What was supposed to be a two week interlude turned into several months between sessions. Let’s jump right in. The party continued to explore and clear the dragon hatchery caverns. In the meat locker they discovered an unconscious gladiator (a new player) that was on the brink of death. They rescued him and continued on. They inadvertently avoided the traped curtain leading into the meat locker however they triggered all of the other traps throughout the caverns. Apparently they knew nothing of Kobold lore and their penchant for trap making. They circled back to the hatchery and discovered the roper and guard drakes. They were able to talk their way around it (boy are ropers dumb) but not before they had a little skirmish with the hiding kobolds in the smaller chamber. I didn’t take pictures of this encounter however I did get a snapshot of the map during the build phase. When they got to the guard drake pens they found them empty. The kobolds had retreated to their barracks with the guard drakes and made a final stand there. Again I forgot to take pictures of the encounter. Sorry. We then had lots of fun role playing the time in Elturel with the jovial paladin Ontharr Frume. When they got to Baldur’s gate they found the wagon master and the gathering merchants forming a caravan to head north. They met all of the merchants and that evening the merchants held a job fair. The characters had to apply with a merchant of their liking. They had to explain why they would be the best choice for them to hire them. As the caravan made its journey north I started to throw some encounters at them. The first was the animal abuse encounter. None of the players reacted to it other than the druid who said every night she would secretly heal the horse of its wounds. They were too afraid to confront the noble with his knight and mage. I’m not sure how I’m going to play this out. Maybe the druid will get caught healing the horse and be mistaken for a thief or something. A few days later the peryton attack took place. The gnome bard almost died. He ended up taking refuge under a wagon. A few of the folks in the caraven died and had their hearts ripped out by the perytons. Here is a picture of that encounter. We also role played through the fungus encounter. Then they came upon the encounter with the wagon being attacked by hobgoblins. We called it quits before they could react to this encounter. Here are a few more pictures of the caravan map. Here’s a little sneak peak of my work in progress of the road house that awaits them at the end of the trip north.
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Post by nolabert on Dec 14, 2016 12:24:48 GMT -9
Man! I love your builds. You and oldschooldm are so inspiring! What do you mount your ground tiles to? Doesn't look like foam-core in these pics.
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Post by oldschooldm on Dec 14, 2016 13:17:44 GMT -9
Wonderful!
Btw, if you are curious why I always have lots of great play photos to choose from- it's because I never take them myself. I ask all my players to. I bribe them with little +1-on-any-roll tokens at the next session if they upload them.
I typically have dozens to choose from every week.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using proboards
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Post by cowboycentaur on Dec 14, 2016 16:21:09 GMT -9
Just read through this whole thing for the first time and I'm blown away! Truly the kind of work I aspire to do.
What are the wagons? I think I recognize one of them from the forum hordes, but a few are unfamiliar.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Dec 15, 2016 9:13:19 GMT -9
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Dec 15, 2016 10:29:50 GMT -9
Man! I love your builds. You and oldschooldm are so inspiring! What do you mount your ground tiles to? Doesn't look like foam-core in these pics. The grass tiles are indeed mounted to foam core boards. The road tiles however are mounted to thin cardboard. At my job our marketing materials come shrink wrapped and sandwiched between thin cardboard. This gives them some weight and keeps them from warping in the Florida humidity that I live in.
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Dec 15, 2016 10:31:30 GMT -9
Just read through this whole thing for the first time and I'm blown away! Truly the kind of work I aspire to do. What are the wagons? I think I recognize one of them from the forum hordes, but a few are unfamiliar. mproteau got it right. They are Dave Graffam's abandoned wagon set. Highly customizable as you can see.
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Post by cowboycentaur on Dec 15, 2016 11:04:31 GMT -9
Just read through this whole thing for the first time and I'm blown away! Truly the kind of work I aspire to do. What are the wagons? I think I recognize one of them from the forum hordes, but a few are unfamiliar. mproteau got it right. They are Dave Graffam's abandoned wagon set. Highly customizable as you can see. Oh awesome. I bought so many of his things during his last dollar sale I sometimes forget all of what I have of his. Lol.
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Feb 13, 2017 8:30:06 GMT -9
Hello again everyone. It’s been a while since my group has been able to get together but we finally did yesterday. There are not many pictures to add as we only used mini’s for one encounter as the rest of the adventure was theater of the mind. I recently had two of my six players (a couple) leave the group to move away for family reasons so I had to break the news to my group. What better way to do it than to kill them off in the first five minutes of the game. We are in the part of the adventure where they have been hired to escort a craven from Baldur’s Gate to Waterdeep. There are many encounters to play through along the way. I opened with them wakening to the sound of screaming from the other side of the camp. When they went to investigate they found their two party members dead with their heads cut off and placed on their chest. A cult of the dragon symbol had been painted onto their foreheads in their own blood. The look on their faces were priceless. I then informed them of the players having to leave the group. It was a somber day for the caravan and the PC’s decided to take point and ride ahead of the caravan so as to be alone and reminisce about their fallen comrades. This is when they came upon a wagon surrounded by hobgoblins, hobgoblin chief, and a worg. I had two NPC guards join them to help balance out the encounter since I had beefed it up for 6 players. A few days later they encountered the golden stag and were able to use detect magic and survival checks to follow it’s trail. I used the second option in the adventure where the stag gives them a cryptic message about things to come and gave the party a +1 longbow. They then reached Dragonspear or as my players like to call it Dragons Pear. The party split in half (DM “hee hee”) and half sought out a temple and the other half looked for an Inn. I failed to mention before that the party buried the bodies of their companions but saved their heads so that they could seek out someone that could cast the speak with dead spell on them. The first half of the party found a temple and arranged for the priestess to cast the spell later that night. They then went shopping to replenish supplies. Meanwhile the other two, the fighter and the wizard, went to the Inn and that’s when I employed the “No room at the Inn” encounter. When preparing this encounter I noted how tough the assassins were and how much damage they could do with their poisoned short swords. This would be a tough encounter for the entire party much less just the two of them. The fighter, being thick headed as he is, wanted to start a bar fight but in two rounds was almost near death. The wizard held two of the assassins then turned the fighter invisible and they made a hasty retreat. Later that night after having speak with the dead cast on one of the heads they were allowed to ask it five questions. The first question was “Can you tell us anything important about your death?” The answer was “Yes”, one question down! Needless to say they put more thought into their next four questions. The next encounter on the road was the Contraband encounter. The Halfling teamster they met at the beginning of the journey was very interested in the spilled goods, so much so that he was found dead the next day. We then ended the session with them spotting the head in the middle of the road for the Payback encounter. The wizard sent his bird familiar ahead to scout out the head and I left it as a cliff hanger for them. There is a good chance we will get to play again next Sunday. They should make it to the road house. I finished that build and it looks really great. There isn’t much in the adventure for them to do there but knowing my players they will over think everything and do some crazy things to spice it up.
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Post by Vermin King on Feb 13, 2017 9:24:02 GMT -9
Your horse mods look like what we came up with ages ago. I still think there ought to be a 'good' way to have the horses designed to have the body look whole, but the sides flip down to be a base for your minis to stand on. I'd almost forgotten about that.
I hope you get to play again soon, and that you can recruit a couple more for your band
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Mar 27, 2017 10:26:31 GMT -9
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Post by nolabert on Mar 27, 2017 11:21:36 GMT -9
Man, such an epic build! Love the small detail about the concubine and failed constitution check! So I have a question about how you set up your builds during game play. Do you pre-build all the sets or do you build during game play?
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Post by cowboyleland on Mar 27, 2017 12:27:30 GMT -9
I am sure it will take me eight hours to appreciate all of this post. Nice work! I hope you and your players enjoyed it.
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Mar 27, 2017 12:47:10 GMT -9
Man, such an epic build! Love the small detail about the concubine and failed constitution check! So I have a question about how you set up your builds during game play. Do you pre-build all the sets or do you build during game play? Thanks for the compliment. I prebuilt the road house a while back. When it was time to use it I just plopped it down on the table and we began to play. As they discovered the interiors I would pull the roofs off and leave them off for the rest of the game.
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Mar 27, 2017 12:50:07 GMT -9
I am sure it will take me eight hours to appreciate all of this post. Nice work! I hope you and your players enjoyed it. Yeah, we had a lot of fun, hence our session running two hours longer than normal. When the ranger opened the strong room door and I told them there were lizardfolk in there and that's where we were going to end it for the day, there was a group sigh of disappointment. Always leave them wanting more!
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Apr 10, 2017 19:10:08 GMT -9
Hello again, I’ve got another update to our adventure. We started where we left off, with the fight having been resolved in the courtyard and the ranger having just broken through the door to the vault. The ranger was surprised to see the room full of lizardfolk and tried to run but they grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into the room. She tried to fight them off but there were too many and they grabbed her and dragged her down into the tunnel toward the mere. It didn’t take long until the rest of the party deciphered what had happened and quickly ran into the warehouse and ran after her. The roadhouse guards quickly gave chase and the fighter barred the door from the inside to delay them and everyone jumped down into the tunnel to give chase. By the time they all assembled in the fog shrouded mere they had lost the trail of their comrade and were forced to blindly follow any suggestion of a trail. One of my players “vapes” and he provided the fog for these pictures. After several failed survival checks they picked up on the trail of the lizardfolk. They saw off to their left through the fog several lanterns and decided to send the stealthy folks ahead to try and glimpse what they expected to be their captured ranger and kidnappers. To their surprise it was four will-o-wisp that had led them into a couple of patches of quicksand. The warlock detected the quicksand however, the rogue did not. He fell in and as they were attempting to rescue him, the will-o-wisp attacked. I did not get in game pictures of this encounter however I recreated them to take these pictures. Afterwards I realized that I had misplaced our bard mini for the rogue mini in the quicksand. They were able to pull the rogue out and fight off the will-o-wisp but now they realized that they had been on a wild goose chase following the wrong lead. It was at this time that I took the ranger player into another room and RP’d her interactions with the lizardfolk. She said at anytime if the lizardfolk were not paying attention to her she would try to hide from them. Since they had one lizardfolk on each arm and one behind her with a dagger to her back that did not happen. She was able to roll well on a stealth check and dropped some coins as they went along so as to leave a trail for her friends. They took her to a camp deep in the mere of dead men and held her in a hut for a few hours. While there she spoke with one of the lizardfolk and by rolling well on a persuasion check semi convinced him that she was working for the cult and was keeping tabs on the party. Just to be safe the lizardfolk tied up her hands for the rest of the journey. Before they departed the camp the ranger was able to leave a few words scratched in the dirt of the hut. I told her she could write six words in the dirt. She wrote them on a piece of paper and presented them to the party when they came upon the camp and searched the huts. They read “Gold trail. Reznir. Pretending with Langdadrosa. The party cautiously approached the camp and quickly discovered it was vacant. They searched around and found the rangers message. By now everyone had been up for 24 hours and been through two encounters and decided to rest before pursuing the lizardfolk. The bard cast some kind of hut (I forgot the name) and they took refuge in it to rest up. During the barbarian’s watch, lizardfolk approached the hut and ran into it accidentally. The barbarian ran out and attacked immediately and was quickly surrounded by nine lizardfolk. She was able to rouse the rest of the party and they fought “bravely” from inside of the hut. They were able to put one of the lizardfolk asleep and when the fight was over they interrogated him. He turned out to be Snapjaw, a lizardfolk that wanted to overthrow the bullywugs in Castle Naerytar. They weren’t totally convinced so they decided to bind his hands and put him into some of the abandoned boats and have him lead them to the castle. Rather than make an entire board of just water tiles I told the players that from here on out the entire board was under water. Along the way to the castle they were attacked by a group of crocodiles. They had to make dexterity checks to avoid being thrown out of the boats. Most of them were initially thrown from the boats. I allowed them in subsequent rounds to either brace themselves in the boat to have advantage against being thrown from the boat but have disadvantage towards attack rolls against the crocodiles or, take their chances against being thrown from the boats and, having the higher ground, they could have advantage in their attack rolls against the crocodiles. Everyone opted for bracing themselves and having disadvantage on attack rolls after they saw the barbarian that had been throw out of the boat in the surprise round pulled under the water and dragged away from the party. One cool moment was when one of the players ran from one boat to another via the back of one of the crocodiles. We had a lot of fun and I am looking forward to our next session.
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Post by kgstanley81 on Apr 11, 2017 8:58:37 GMT -9
Which set are the trees from? I love the terrain and story
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Post by vwilliams32407 on Apr 11, 2017 9:59:49 GMT -9
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Apr 11, 2017 10:09:58 GMT -9
I'm thinking of reaching out and asking if I can share them here (with proper attribution) so I can make a PDF with reg marks and make some cutfiles. You can never have too many trees.
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Post by Vermin King on Apr 11, 2017 10:58:30 GMT -9
Am I missing his email somewhere on his pages? I was going to ask him about posting variations on some of his other work. His Pantins (jointed paper dolls) could be used to create figures pretty easily. I did some messing with his wolf that looks pretty good. He also has those uncolored minis.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Apr 11, 2017 17:47:14 GMT -9
Am I missing his email somewhere on his pages? I was going to ask him about posting variations on some of his other work. His Pantins (jointed paper dolls) could be used to create figures pretty easily. I did some messing with his wolf that looks pretty good. He also has those uncolored minis. I signed up on deviant art and sent him a probably too-wordy note. In the mean time, I'll make cutfiles for the trees (maybe reformatting them so they sandwich fold together easier).
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Post by Vermin King on Apr 11, 2017 18:44:53 GMT -9
Thanks for that.
I think it was on EKDuncan's site, where I first saw Pantins turned into Paper Dolls, which got me thinking Minis.
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Post by cowboycentaur on Apr 12, 2017 8:12:19 GMT -9
He's also got a cool OST enterprise bring and some decent crewman minis. Someone pointed me out to his dinosaur minis which worked great, however they're mirrored. Some neat gladiators and Neolithic hunters but again, sadly they're mirrored.
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Post by cowboycentaur on Apr 12, 2017 8:13:12 GMT -9
Also, I REALLY like the idea of the chairs being standees so as not to get in the way of the miniatures. I may try and expand on something like this.
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Post by oldschooldm on Apr 12, 2017 9:16:50 GMT -9
THREAD DRIFT! :-P
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Post by cowboycentaur on Apr 12, 2017 11:52:45 GMT -9
Oops! Sorry! Haha!
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Post by Vermin King on Apr 12, 2017 11:55:33 GMT -9
Yes, terribly sorry
When is the next session? Does this involve the folks that had a little foreknowledge?
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