Monster Hill Campaign 1st and 2nd Sessions

Well, I recently got to play my Monster Hill Campaign with some of my old friends. I happened to be able to hangout with each of them during the summer and then I asked them to play D&D with me. So we did.

The first session was pretty meh, with some good moments. Highlights include, a hireling falling into a pit trap, and then being left at the entrance to the dungeon, where he was subsequently killed (and they knew a creature was roaming around out there), goblins beating them up and taking them prisoner (they escaped and cut the goblins throats in the night), two of there number being hypnotized by a shadow faerie and encountering a cyclops and two ogres and having to run away. They escaped by running through the room labyrinth they were in and then finding an old mediation chamber with the images of five demon lords that were once worshiped at Monster Hill, or four demon lords and an outer god... The image of Yog-Sothoth marked where a secret door was and from there they managed to find a way out, observing the corpses of the bandits my PbP group killed.

The second time we played online on roll20.net. One of the players from last time went into the dungeon with four hirelings. They managed to kill an ogre, thanks to very good rolls on the part of the hirelings, including a critical hit. They unlocked the door to the right in the corridor where the door to the ogre's room, using a key the ogre held. They survived a burning hands trap and found two magic wands on an amethyst encrusted pedestal. If they sell the wands they might have enough xp for both PCs to level up, if they split the loot between them as I suggested they do, despite only one player being able to play, The player was only able to explore one more room before we ran out of time. This room was an enigma, containing stairs to the next room... and a trail of bloody foot prints that led from the stairs, across the room, up the wall and then over to the other side of the room, were unbeknownst to them, a secret door was located.

Forgotten Beasts

Forgotten Beasts are a class of monsters from Dwarf Fortress. They are procedurally generated, thus they can come in many different shapes and forms. One might be a humanoid made from metal, another might be a giant spider that emits poisonous gas an yet another might be a giant bird with deadly secretions. There are also Titans, which are similar except where Forgotten Beasts are subterranean, Titans dwell on the land and in the sea. I am thinking about how to integrate such creatures into a D&D setting.

While there's no need for a specific origin for random esoteric creatures (yes, that's a reference to THE RANDOM ESOTERIC CREATURE GENERATOR FOR CLASSIC FANTASY GAMES AND THEIR MODERN SIMULACRA, by James Raggi, a most useful resource...), for "Forgotten Beasts" I'm thinking that they would be creatures created/warped by the weird radiations and extraplanar energies found in the underworld (or Underdark, Darklands, Khyber, etc). Perhaps these creatures are servants or creations of an evil or merely primal, elemental deity who has been lost to the annals of history, hence their name of Forgotten Beasts.

Continue to observe this post and I may post a few sample Forgotten Beasts.

If you want D&D Next to be something that appeals to you...

You should let WotC know what you want from it. WotC is getting a lot of feedback. However, it tends to be from those who played and enjoyed 4e, because those are the people who frequent their message boards. I for one am worried that this feedback will lead WotC to make something that resembles 4e much more again, despite the fact that they have to appeal to more than just the people who play 4e to accomplish the goals they've set for themselves.

D&D Next First Impressions

I like D&D Next. There are a few things I'd like to see changed, but all in all it pretty much seems to be exactly what I thought 4th edition should have been in the first place. Personally I'm hoping that the final rules at least have the option of less hp, but in general there seems to be less than in 4e, so this is good.

I will be running a game, running the PCs myself, later today. However, I hope to find other players to playtest with as well.

Some Musings on my Monster Hill PbP

I have recently started a Play-by-Post campaign in my megadungeon, Monster Hill. As per the concept of Monster Hill, anything these players do will carryover to every time I play. So if I'm still running Monster Hill ten or twenty years in the future, I might offhandedly remark "Hey, that's the corpse of one of the first Player Characters that delved into this dungeon!"

A few interesting PCs include Zaggle'Bo, the goblin cave druid and Onnam the Guide wood elf cleric of Hades (I have decided to use real world deities for the humans in this campaign). They seem to be developing goals that might just have a strong impact on the course of the campaign. This is, to remove the corruption of Monster Hill. Ironically, this corruption comes largely from portals to Hell, Hades and the Abyss. Hades of course, lives on the plane of Hades, albeit on Pluton not Oinos to which the portal leads.

They are soon due to encounter some bandits. They have already encountered an orcish slave of the bandits in a cave which serves as a stable for the bandits. The pool in this cave is sometimes inhabited by faeries with powers of healing, a reference to the Legend of Zelda series.

Monster Hill First Delve

Well, I'm going to be running my Monster Hill campaign at Play the Game Read the Story in Syracuse, NY. I'd invite you guys, but I don't think any of you would be able to make it, though I don't know where any of you live, so I might be surprised, I suppose ;). I'm really excited. I've been preparing for a while, though since I have been writing parts, I've only gotten the first level and part of the second and third levels done. I would've liked to have them all completely detailed by now, but I don't think they will be going lower than the first, so it's not that big of a deal.

Inspired by Dwarf Fortress...

Inspired by Dwarf Fortress, and the fact that some players have actually managed to have they're dwarves colonize Hell itself, I have decided that if my players ever end up visiting Hell (or perhaps one of the other Lower Planes) there will be a dwarven fortress there, managing to survive despite the hostile natives.