Ripper DMing Temple of Elemental Evil part VI

This game wasn't all that hot. It was half D&D, & half Shannon's Bday party, which essentially means that all of my players, with the exception of myself and the thief got wasted on rum.

Travis started play, pushing the PC party to 8, and everybody showed up. His character is a Neutral Evil cleric, an alignment that I allowed because everybody was playing Chaotic Neutral and I have learned to hate CN more than any other alignment. Seriously! NE is much easier for me to stomach these days.

What the party did get done was a whole lot of fighting. We are talking some serious hack-n-slash. Unfortunately they weren't all that thorough, and a lot got by them. We did have one interesting encounter that was made worse by a random encounter. The party had pinned down a couple of bugbears who had flipped the table over and was chucking spears at them, when along came a carrion crawler, YEAY!!!! I simply love those things! It almost ate Summer's cleric, too. Until my wife's fighter knocked it for a loop.

The MVP of the game, was without a doubt, Kim, who played the teams only thief. She had looted and picked her way to twice as many experience points than any one else! The next runners up were all of the fighters, they killed about 87 HD worth of monsters. I think that everybody had fun, but it wasn't as fulfilling to me. No problems on my side of the screen, it was just that everybody was so easily distracted. We ended up pulling the plug at midnight and just sat around jawing until 2 a.m..

I did run into one problem, I don't have any stats for a monster called a Drelb Guardian. I updated the necessary bits to 2e, so that I can run it in the dungeon, however I would love to see the entire listing for this thing. The module said that it was in the appendix, but somebody screwed up and never added it.

There is also a monster in the dungeon that uses psionics, and while I have retained most of my gaming knowledge from the good ol days, psyionics are completely lost on me, so I've been re-reading the Psionics Handbook (or however that word is spelled, cut me some slack I'm stoned on Cough Syrup). I've never been a big fan of Psionic PC's. I played one in the past, and it was always like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. While I don't enjoy Player Psionics, I do like Monsters that use them, and may even through in a classed Psionic badguy or NPC, which could be fun . . . if I can remember how these things work.

On another technical note, I tried to update my DM's Secretary 2.0 up to 5, but my rusty old laptop simply can't handle it, which is a bummer, because I have it on my main PC and I think that it would be awesome to play with. I'll just have to wait until TAX time when I get my shiny new laptop, YAY!!!!

Maybe then things will be more active around here, huh? Who knows. Until next time!

4 comments:

Timeshadows said...

Hang in there. :)

Here's an article that popped into my Inbox this morning (about Psychic/Psionic characters):

http://www.examiner.com/x-6911-RPG-Examiner~y2010m2d1-Handling-psychic-characters-in-horror-roleplaying-games?cid=examiner-email

Best,

Cyric said...

Thx again for your campaign posting. Love it! :)

The DM's Secretary is useable for a 2nd Ed. campaign, too? Never heard of it before but when I checked the publisher site it seems it's all about 3.5.

RipperX said...

Re Timeshadows: Nice article! I personally don't think that PSIs belong in fantasy, they are more Sci-Fi and horror. Dark Sun did them justice, but for most worlds, it just seems like a third kind of magic. Besides, a full-time PSI is very hard to play, not technically, but Role-playing wise. They don't think like normal people, so you've got to play them a little off of their rocker.

RE Cyric: DM Secretary keeps track of lots of things, and makes them accessible during play. For the most part it is completely mutable, it is just that the handbooks and stuff that comes with it are based on 3rd edition. The one that I want to start using soon is based on 4th edition, which I don't play. They put a bunch of info in there, kind of like a DM's Screen? If that makes any sense? I simply don't use it, but I use everything else.

Anonymous said...

Just stumbled across your blog, just wanted to say that it's probably the best D&D/RP themed blog I've seen on the net. I too have just started DMing Temple of Elemental Evil, although I'm doing it in 4th edition, just replacing monsters with level appropriate/feel appropriate 4e equivalents. These posts have really helped me to get some new inspiration for how to run ToEE with some extra flair and liveliness.

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