Fool's Errands

One of my players couldn't make the last session of our game, meaning a further delay of the dungeon and the dragon waiting at the end of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

So, while everyone else went on all these fun little sidequests, Niv-Mizzet went after his idea of the third vault key, which he decided to needlessly over-complicate. The party needs a beardless dwarf to open the vault; Niv has decided that rather than getting a dwarf to shave or hiring a female dwarf to come with them, what he really needs is the skeleton of a dwarf.

If he had actually been there for the session, getting a dwarven skeleton would have been quite simple, but instead Niv now has a "skeleton guy" whom he contacted many times over the course of the five days that happened during the session.

Luckily for me, the first bit of filler was a female dwarf asking to stay with the party. For most of the time that Niv has been looking for a beardless dwarf, there has been one staying in his house.

Thank goodness for the Zhentarim.

What is the Opposite of a Murder-Hobo?

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is very well written to prevent that unfortunate playstyle known as the Murder-hobo. It is generally safe to assume that any party may devolve into running around killing anyone they meet. The best solutions are for the cities to contain effective police forces, and to be willing to stop the party.

In any town based circumstances, it's safe to assume that the party is going to break into someplace late at night to try and solve their problems. Maybe murder someone, maybe just take all their valuables, but problem solving through crime is a grand Dungeons and Dragons tradition.

My party, on the other hand, has decided to do their best to break no laws, kill no one, not even upset any law abiding people, and they're doing a remarkably good job. Wonderful though this is, the entire module assumes that the party is breaking in everywhere in the middle of the night. Instead, they walk up around noon and politely ask a few simple questions.

I appreciate the fact that they haven't killed anyone important yet, and practically haven't killed anyone. However, it is a little frustrating that they won't be able to meet the people who would only show up if they broke into people's homes and businesses.

The Life and Crimes of Pulvi Lutum

(From the Notes of Barnibus Blastwind, Criminal Investigator for the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors)

The morning after the Feast of the Moon (Nightal 1), Clerebold Biznorel found the body of his master, Lammakh Heirlarpost, in a cupboard in their shared residence after searching for the man for over an hour to serve him his breakfast.

Experienced healers estimate that Mr. Heirlarpost had been dead for three days at the time of his discovery. Unfortunately, he had also been seen by not only his staff, but by many other acquaintances during this period. Most notable is the speech he presented at the Cassalanter Estate during their gala celebrating the Feast of the Moon the night before. It is currently uncertain whether or not he was alive during any of these events, or if some sort of inter-planar effect may have altered the flow of time in this circumstance.

Unfortunately, by the time this discrepancy was noticed the body had already had Gentle Repose cast upon it, outshining any other spells that may have been cast upon it. Our attempts to interrogate Mr. Heirlarpost were not particularly productive, demonstrating only three things: he had indeed been dead during those three days, he had been thoroughly interrogated, and that the man responsible for his death was an Earth Genasi by the name of Pulvi Lutum.

We attempted several methods of divination to locate this Pulvi Lutum, none of them successful, eventually leading to the conclusion that he had acquired an Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection. The case has been passed to the talents of bounty hunters.

Inspiration

I've been collating a Pinterest board with exciting magic items, monsters, maps, and the occasional architectural diagram. You can view it here.

 I am definitely not using everything in this campaign, and other people definitely created all of the magic items. I have already given the party the Boots Made for Walking, which were promptly given to Elephant Joe, who is now very speedy.

Welcome to the Party: Zelifarn

So, the party had a really nice chat with Zelifarn the bronze dragon, and suggested to the dragon that she should try adventuring.

She has taken their advice, and is getting ready to start adventuring, either with them or by herself. Zelifarn is going to show up, even if the party doesn't want her to join them, because she is too cool to leave behind.

I like working on paper, even though our entire campaign is going on online. I gave Zelifarn one trait for Adult Dragons so that she can be a more effective adventurer.

A Large sized creature would have some serious trouble getting into most dungeons with enough treasure that she would like to explore them.

The Next Challenger 1

This is the official nemesis of Tavin. When the party gets out of the module, one of their first stops is going to be his ancestral homeland, and eventually they will fight this person.

There are some story details that I still need to figure out about him, but he has a still-secret name.

After the Dragon Heist

Once I finish running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I plan to keep running this game. However, I don't really like running dungeons, so the official follow-up, Waterdeep: Dungeons of the Mad Mage, is not really an option.

Dungeons are fun to play through, but a huge hassle to run in my very limited experience, and this campaign is still sort of an experiment for me so I don't want to trap the party underground from level 5 through level 20. I want to take them through a world, so I am planning some custom adventures for my players.

After the party leaves Waterdeep, we will go overland to Tavin's ancestral barony, where he will attempt to reclaim it and take vengeance on those who framed him for tax fraud. This will be a ridiculously melodramatic, Arthurian situation. I don't have a lot of details for this section of adventuring yet, although I have a large pile of strange and exotic bears to throw at them to cover for any lack of preparation.

Once they finish there, Pearl has a massive bounty in Calimshan that is only going to become more valuable as time goes by. The City of Waterdeep is extremely serious about getting Pulvi Lutum brought back to them, either to interrogate, or to at least confirm that he isn't causing them any more trouble. This sounds like it should be pretty easy, but Pulvi is a spellcaster and he has an Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection, stolen from a Closed Lord of Waterdeep, so he cannot be found through magical means.

By the time they finish there, I should have everyone up to level 10, and so I will bring in the Big Bad.

Since the end of the Spellplague about ten years ago, the Blackstaff has been working on a method to distance the world from the Feywild and close the portals that can currently been found throughout the world. She has a lot going on, and it's really hard, but she has just made a major breakthrough and started recruiting more capable spellcasters to help with her research. Unfortunately, certain occupants of the Feywild have heard of her new efforts, and so are forming a powerful rebellion, led by a talented and crudely drawn druid.

So they will be facing as many unhappy fey creatures as possible.

Dropping a Drow

The party was stealthily making its way through the Dock Ward of Waterdeep, following Tavin who was disguised as a drunken elf.
[This was not necessary based on the module, they just decided to play dress-up.]
It was their third night of hunting for a serial killer. In the past few weeks, four drunken elves or half-elves had been beheaded in the Dock Ward. Pearl had been asked to look into the matter by the Zhentarim, and invited the party to help her with it. Everyone else just agreed that stopping serial killers is a good thing for adventurers to do.

Eventually, Tavin walked down a street, passing a half-elf named Heldar, and the rest of the party walked behind him, passing a small alley where Joe and Pearl noticed something.

There was totally a drow standing back there with his sword drawn, waiting for the party to pass and Heldar to reach the alley.

Elephant Joe quickly ran up behind the drow, tapped him on the head, and "Hey, I don't think you should do that."
[I gave him advantage on an Intimidation check for that.]
The 400lb. 8 foot tall elephant mysteriously appeared behind him, and put a heavy elephant hand on his head. The drow did the obvious thing, and dropped his sword, completely surrendering to the party. They had someone call up the City Watch, and Heldar the Half-Elf gave them each 50 gold.
[This is far too much money for anyone but player characters to be carrying around. Who are you Heldar? Why do you have over 200 gold? Why are you alone at night in a bad part of town? You should rethink some of your life choices Heldar.]

DM for MVP

Dragon Heist is designed so that the early sessions have a bunch of powerful NPCs to help keep the party alive. It felt so good to run those encounters.

As a player, I have never been in a fight where everyone else was trying not to set themselves on fire while I got in every blow against the big bad boss, and it feels great. I am a bit worried that a fight where I do everything on both sides isn't very fun for the players, but soon they'll be stronger than at least one of the NPCs I was running, and currently can only ask people to help them, and probably won't give me another chance like the ones I was given by the module.

I have really enjoyed the opportunity to be on the same side as the players in a conflict, and it reinforced for them how lame first level characters are after all their hits kept missing the goblins. It seemed like an important reminder for both of us, I needed a reminder that being the Dungeon Master is a big deal. That I can change the course of any fight however I want. My players took the lesson that they are very lame to heart, they have been avoiding fights really well for a while.

Level one is a time when the characters need the help, but now my dear little characters are up to level three, and I have plans to get them past level 10 once we finish the module. They can easily handle the things I plan on throwing at them from this point on...

Except maybe for the Ginormous Squirrel.

Experience Points

As I've mentioned, I have not played all that much Dungeons and Dragons. Nor have most of my players, except for the two behind Elephant Joe and Niv, they both used to play a lot of 3.5. Niv's player knows mountains of lore and tried to run a couple of campaigns in 2018, both of which ended pretty quickly after his players started killing each other. My characters are more than just a little bit responsible for those, but we're fine now. Elephant Joe enjoys reading modules and needs to be reminded frequently that he does not get to see this module until we finish playing through it.

Both of them have looked things up, and know things they should not know. Elephant Joe and I live together, and so we talk about my plans for after the party leaves Waterdeep, and the weird and exciting monsters I have found to hide in the wilds. Niv however, has looked up fountains of lore on the city and all the notable magic items and personages it contains. I get a lot of interesting lessons on the history of the Blackstaff during our sessions.

Part of how we are dealing with this is through their characters and roleplay. Elephant Joe is not very bright, and so he can't really tell the party any secrets and be believed. I also use him as a point to introduce new optional sidequests that I want to send the party on. Oskar was replaced by Niv partly because Oskar being so knowledgeable about this city he had never been to before made no sense, partly because the player loves making new characters, partly because he thinks that there will be a new version of the Artificer class coming out that he can upgrade to, and finally because Oskar didn't have a whole lot of story stuff to work with.