D&D 5e

I have a RPG blog, that is even older than this blog. I can never figure out if it is better to have multiple blogs for different types of games. Some of my mates have separate blogs for the two, others just mix. I've decided to mix for the moment.... since the RPG blog (The Three Worlds) has been dormant for so long that no one looks at it. That said, if anyone wants a detailed writeup of a C15th RPG setting, (in crazy obsessive detail) it's probably worth a look.... We are terrible with RPGs. I suppose it's understandable - all having families and jobs and even organising a wargame (player N=2) is hard enough. A RPG is player N=4+ so lots of veto points there. Still, Wizards of the Coast have made the basic version of DnD 5 free so it seemed rude not to play. I actually started out with RPGs using Runequest. Then moved on to Earthdawn. When DnD 3e came out, I ran quite a long campaign of that but the game got cludgier with 3.5e and, well, 4e didn't even seem like a RPG to me. So never played that. Since there was no new version of Runequest, I actually tried an Indie game called Epic RPG. It's actually really good and I used it for that C15th Holy Roman Empire game. That took me to about the point I got married, had kids etc and then suddenly RPGs got a lot more irregular and fragmentary.

With 5e DnD, we are continuing on from our adventures last year, played using the 3.0e DnD rules. In this world, players appear from glowing blue portals. They dimly remember what they were before but have above average talents fot taking on danger. Most of the players (ie not Jason who keeps losing his) still have their characters from this starting point. They emerged into an undead-infested wood (first encounter was an Undead Owlbear....), then found a walled village called Borlean. Since they arrived with no money and only basic equipment, they negotiated a significant cash advance to clear out some Magden Raiders in a place called Durgeddin's keep.

It was a long walk there (not least because the Gryphons keep eating all the horses) and on the way they slew a Magden 'Godfather' (though Chris' mage, Kalisten, paid his resurrection fee). Once at the keep, they  freed a prisoner Jespher Sentinel (who was a relative of some adventurers they had encountered while picking about a Wight infested tomb while procrastinating). They did manage to drive the Raiders off, after slaying their leader the Great Ulfe. After going deeper, Adam's half-Magden decided he didn't like Jespher (or liked the idea of having his xp), and Jespher fled. How did he learn to turn invisible? Who knows. His tracks didn't go outside the keep, so it looks like he climbed (or fell) down a sinkhole below the Dwarven Forge. By the end, the players  got to the bottom of the Drarven Forge underneath that keep and decided the job was done. And that was the end of the DnD 3.0 game, last year.



We picked up using 5.0 on Friday. Since their 'mission' was complete, the guys were about to leave Durgeddin's keep when a glowing blue portal deposited yet another new arrival: Bartram - who seems to be a (Noble, so he says) refugee from the ECW and has two settings: slay monsters / carouse. Since there were no handy monsters, the decision was made to head for Exford: the nearest place with Taverns/Wenches. The return journey was relatively uneventful, though the Half-Magden will never accept a hunting invitation from Batram ever, ever, again. Back in Exford, Katlisten worked hard on garnering more spells/corrupting apprentices. Meanwhile Batram planned and executed a week long 'Sir Batram has arrived on the social scene' party; And the Half-Magden worked on marrying into the local community/crime-family. This plan was complicated when Kalisten decided to give a weregeld to the dead chieftain's family (thus messing with the factional dynamics). So the Half-Magden decided to secure a leading position for his future brother-in-law's faction by using all the looted weapons and armour to equip his warriors and restore a little of the internal balance of power.

In fact, he used Batram's new merchant connections, along with their good name for dealing with the raider threat, to get contracts for the Magden offering security for trade to the south of Exford. After all, doing caravan guard duty down to Onwall was probably a waste of the party's talents. There were bigger fish to fry - or undead to deal with. It seemed like last time they were in the Sentinel family tomb, they didn't close the door properly on the way out, and there are Wights marauding through the countryside. There was already a significant undead problem from reanimated corpses, raised by some Anatani demon in the forest west of Borlean. Alert caravan guards could handle those when they wandered onto the road... However, the cunning Wights were proving a little too much. So it looks like our heroes have decided to go back into the undead infested woods, what could possibly go wrong?