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Episode 46: “Imbraxi-wha?” (Guardians of Indir, D&D 5e)

The party finishes their plans and begins preparations for the assault.

This is the fourth episode taken from our tenth recording session, which we played and recorded back in June 2018. The story so far: the city-state of Indir, a multi-racial stronghold of few mammals with a reptilian majority dominated by dragonborn, is in a war against the aggressor elven nation of Valtaryn and its dwarven allies. The heroes intercepted a group of elven commandos, narrowly preventing the elves from taking control of a complex hidden beneath Indir. The complex is the remains of a buried tower created by a race of ancients called “humans,” who were legendary for their cruelty and brutally advanced technology. The party retrieved a number of human artifacts from the tower, which mysteriously erupted from below Indir, rising up to a majestic height of fifty feet. Elves and dwarves have since taken control of the tower, using magical portals that enabled access. The Indiran military has evacuated and blockaded the neighborhood nearest the tower. As the two forces are in temporary equilibrium, the Indiran leaders have thrown a festival to reassure the populace that the world isn’t coming to an end, while one of the leaders, Karen Balthorek, has secretly met with the party during the festival to discuss next steps for saving Indir’s population from extermination. Running with the suggestion of one of Karen’s magic advisors, the gnome sage Alfor, the party has just devised a plan to scale the tower and try to destroy or deactivate the portals.

That’s where this episode begins. But the party has some time – about an hour – to prepare for the attack on the tower. What are they going to do in that time? Considering this question (and how the players answered it) prompts me to talk a bit about Ape Adventures.

In case “Ape Adventures” is an expression unfamiliar to you, let me explain. There’s a well-known sequence in the 2008 movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in which Shia LeBeouf’s character, Mutt, gets separated from the rest of the characters during a chase sequence in the jungle. He’s stranded on his own, and the film cuts back and forth between the main plot with all the other characters and scenes of Mutt up in the tree canopy by himself. He is at a loss for what to do, but then some curious monkeys descend to investigate. Mutt befriends those monkeys, and they in turn teach him how to swing from creepers to vines. Soon Mutt and his primate pals are joyously speeding through the jungle on vines like Spider-Man swinging on webs. Eventually Mutt is reunited with the main plot, and neither he nor anybody else ever discusses what happened to him as he leaves his monkey mates behind forever. It’s pretty universally lambasted as a ridiculous sequence of events, but from it has arisen the expression “Ape Adventure” (even though Mutt’s buddies are monkeys, not apes. People like their alliteration!), which is used by writers to refer to a sequence in a book, film, or TV show where one character leaves the rest of the group and has a significant experience that is never discussed with anyone else once they return to the group.

Back in episode 30, Squeak went off on an Ape Adventure of his own. But this episode of “The Guardians of Indir” campaign involves each character splitting off from the group for their own Ape Adventures. It’s something that happens pretty frequently in role-playing games: either the party splits up so that each character can pursue their own interests (as in this episode), or one character gets separated or chooses to leave the group to have a little private time (as in episode 30). In D&D, it’s a very common trope that the thieves will absent themselves while the rest of the party is asleep…in order to pursue some side hustle in secret. Players of sneaky characters particularly love to do this, but players of any and all types of PCs will be in this situation from time to time. How do you handle these kinds of situations at your table?

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Episode 45: “MORE time travel!” (Guardians of Indir, D&D 5e)

The party discusses how to address the elven threat with Karen, Kabuto, and Alfor.

This is the third episode taken from our tenth recording session, recorded back in June 2018. In it, the players and PCs continue their journey to get serious about the next steps in the defense of Indir against the elven aggressors in their council with Karen Balthorek and many other NPCs during the street festival in Indir. Because the players were having a hard time getting focused, Alfor the gnome wizard keeps rewinding time for them so they can continue conversations that they forgot about…hence the title, “MORE Time Travel!”

This is also an episode that screams for some fan artwork, at least of the elevator shoes and the joy & disappointment of eating ice cream. Because we spent some time at the beginning of the session building more character backstories, many of the major NPCs make an appearance in this episode in those conversations (sometimes even without time travel to rewind them); we hear from Karen, Keats, Alfor, and Timbertina, while Scrapheap, Shonda, and Kabuto (who we determined was going to be Karen’s majordomo) are mentioned.

The silliness that I talked about in the last post is fun, but it does tend to make the game really aimless…which of course can be a real problem in any RPG session, but it’s particularly bad when the entire game – world-building, plot, characters, encounters, everything – is being improvised on the spot. So Harold lets them go on for a while, trying to make a decision. This is tough for the players to do; while there are really only two broad options to choose, there isn’t a clear favorite, because the player desires (“I wanna go to the battlefield and lead armies!”) conflicts with many of the characters’ personalities (“I’m no good on a battlefield!”) and either impasse or disgruntlement is a natural outcome. The DM lets them go for a long time before having an NPC step in and provide some information that would help the PCs make a decision.

There is a line of thought in RPG circles that this sort of delay, letting the players twist in the wind without explicit direction, is boring and/or frustrating. Without clear directions, this line of thinking goes, the players’ indecision delays them from getting to “the good stuff.” At the same time, there are others that think that a game should be all about player agency, and that line of thinking asserts that “leading the players” is something that any good GM should strenuously avoid doing. Some might argue that merely providing more information in the way Harold eventually does in this episode is being too heavy-handed. What do you think? How long is appropriate for the players to debate, discuss, and dicker amongst themselves without a resolution? When should a GM step in to cut off circular conversations, if at all? How have you handled situations like this in your games, either as a player or GM?

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Episode 44: “The Map Room” (Guardians of Indir, D&D 5e)

After a short recap, the party steps away from the Indir Festival to discuss next steps with Karen.

This is the second episode taken from our tenth recording session, originally recorded in June 2018. As you may remember – we wrote about it as recently as the previous post – Harold the DM was improvising this campaign, specifically by only creating material for the game DURING the game. We’d had a recording problem – a broken laptop – that meant that the previous session (Session 9, not posted to the podcast yet) was recorded with different software on different equipment with different characters in a different role-playing game. So as we resumed the Guardians of Indir D&D 5e game with this session (Session 10), there had been two months since the last session, during which time Harold had done his best to not think about or prepare anything for the campaign at all. Over the same period, the players were very busy with their schooling, what with final exams and the other hallmarks of finishing their semesters, not to mention those players who were graduating from high school. The end result was that we needed some time to get back into the D&D game. It also goes a long way to explain why the players were all so punchy and unfocused.

Context is everything. Some days the games are just going to be silly, because that’s all the players can handle. That’s one of the beautiful things about role-playing.

The last episode, Episode 43 “Gigner Tokens,” was the beginning of the session, with Harold asking leading questions to help the players remember who their PCs are by prompting them to create more details about their characters. This episode – 43 – is the natural extension of that process, with Harold giving a quick recap of the “story so far” to the group, both to remind them and to remind himself of what was happening in the game. That helped center Harold, and gave him a bit of time to create what was going to happen next…Karen Balthorek summoning the heroes to come up with plans for what to do about the impending mammalian invasion.

There’s some fun bits in here, too, not least of which is the mention of Kabuto – a mysterious name that Harold wrote in his notes during session 8 along with a bunch of other NPC names. He hadn’t looked at those notes in two months, and nobody could recall why he’d written it. Can you?

During the conversation with Karen, Squeak shares some information about the Tower with the rest of the group; this is a reference back to the events covered in episode 30, “Oh, it’s alright,” which none of the other players knew anything about, as that episode hadn’t been posted yet.

Lucia mentions Kai Winn at one point (which should give you an idea what she was watching in summer 2018), and Balasar calls Vhisuna a “Crimmen Al,” which will be an absolute travesty if it doesn’t get used as an NPC name in some future game. “Hey, Crimmen! Long time no see! Everybody, this is my old buddy, Crimmen Al!” “Only my friends call me Crimmen. You can call me Al.”

What’s a little detail that has come up in one of your games, that has later blossomed into something really significant for the campaign?

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Episode 43: “Gigner Tokens” (Guardians of Indir, D&D 5e)

Episode 43 gradually resumes the Guardians of Indir D&D 5e campaign.

Having completed our posting of the All Souls Night adventure, with this episode we go back in time to the D&D 5e Guardians of Indir campaign…

…but when we started recording this session (session 10) in June of 2018, it had been several weeks since we’d played D&D together. In the interim we’d played a session in an entirely different RPG – P.L.U.S. – that also used concepts from the classic 90s superheroes setting/RPG, The Taint. We still hope to publish material from that game in future episodes. But when we came back, we had to get our heads back into this campaign.

That was particularly a challenge for the DM, Harold, who (as we’ve described previously) was trying to run the Indir game completely improvised. So rather than jumping right back into the party confronting the elves in the tower, the first part of the session – this episode, really – consists of a lot of side conversations and digressions as the DM asks pointed questions about little character details to get both himself and the players back into the game, particularly since the PCs have each completed their training and advanced to 3rd level.

It may seem aimless and rambling at first, but each of the characters is developed a bit more during this episode. Well, maybe it never stops seeming aimless and rambling.

Klyde owes a debt to his tribe, so a quarter of his earnings he sends back to the clan. He once tried to pass on some counterfeit goods to his trainer, but failed to fool him. He’s trained a fuzzy little shuvuuia named “Scrap Heap” as his animal companion.

One of the many times Vhisuna got them into trouble and her brother Keats got them out of it, the repercussions forced their shared family to move yet again.

Earlier in his life, Squeak spent a lot of time in the Underdark. A small Indiran scouting party came down and, during their patrol, broke up a fight between different factions underground. Squeak decided that this was his chance to escape the strife in the Underdark, and he imitated one of the soldiers and marched back out with them.

Kantu is a red-shouldered aarakocra. He spent most of his life in Sometown-in-the-mountains before coming down to Indir for the trees. Kantu now has an animal companion, Muffin the boar.

“What does Muffin look like?“

In Balasar’s village, they played a sport like basketball using rabbit skulls instead of a ball. He found Maval Bersk, the ancient sentient construct. Balasar was drawn to Yugondai when his village was being destroyed by a monster and a pigeon descended from the sky bearing him a warhammer to defend his home. The dragonborn forces of Indir came to the village afterward, and Balasar signed up to the military, bringing Maval Bersk along with him.

“When Balasar sees a door, he becomes a bit…unhinged…”

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Episode 42: “A Pact for Cheese” (All Souls Night, D&D 5e)

The Dungeon-in-a-Box adventure “All Souls Night” D&D 5e adventure featuring Sid Onoso continues.

I hope you and your family, like mine and my players’, really, REALLY like making goat noises. Why? Because if you like goat noises, we sure do have a treat for you!

Our intrepid party, consisting of Min Dalrin (the wizard farmer), Dyrah Tanner (the story-collector bard), Gulan Navluv (the dwarf cleric skeptical of everything supernatural), and their leader, Sid Onoso (the Greenwold’s Greatest Detective), have been on the case of the Missing Cheeseman, Piotr Fremanchen, finding clues and pursuing leads throughout the Muttonwood. At the close of last episode, they had just found the cheeseman shackled in a clearing, surrounded by a bunch of hobgoblins riding giant rams. When the hobgoblins started talking to the investigators, the “mildly” pyromaniacal Min immediately responded with FIRE. As we begin this episode, the party is continuing to beat up the kidnappers while trying to free Piotr.

What is your favorite breed of goat, and what sounds does that type make? One of the wonderful things about this one-shot (which started in Episode 34) is that every single player has a completely different goat impression…and they’re all correct, because goats make such a huge variety of weird and fun sounds!

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Episode 41: “What’s-his-bucket” (All Souls Night, D&D 5e)

We continue the D&D 5e one-shot adventure from Dungeon in a Box, “All Souls Night.”

It’s taking a long time, but we are posting more of the “All Souls Night” one-shot D&D 5e adventure from Dungeon in a Box, which we recorded in November 2019.

The characters are:

Sid Onoso, the Greenwold’s Greatest Detective (the party leader, an elven rogue)

and her companions: Gulan Navluv (the dwarven cleric of Valor Bane), Min Dalrin (the wizard farmer with a chicken familiar), and Dyrah Tanner (the tall human bard). All the characters are 5th level.

Our story so far: the Greenwold’s Greatest Detective, Sid Onoso, arrived at a country inn with her entourage in tow. There, she was hired to solve a case: find the missing cheesemaker, Piotr Fromanchen, who has not been seen for weeks and is presumed lost in the Muttonwoods. Some goblinoids mistook the party as members of the Black Ram Gang, then after dealing with that interruption, the party continued on to investigate Piotr’s dairy farm. There they found Piotr gone, valuables untouched (including a magic holly-handled sword), footprints everywhere, signs that the cheeseman’s livestock had been massacred and eaten by a mob armed with swords and axes, and bloody clawed handprints around the well. They were attacked by swarming rats, which the party slaughtered. Then they followed the trail of the attackers, and stumbled across some drunken goats. After fighting them, they were confronted by hobgoblins riding giant rams painted black. The hobgoblins demanded a toll of 500 Advantages as recompense for the party’s trespass of the “Bray Glade.” Rather than discuss their options, Min cut off their threats with fire, and the battle began.

Jumping around in time is always interesting, whether you are watching actors perform in films at different periods of their lives, listening to music by a prolific musician out of chronological order, or hearing RPG sessions that refer to games in the speakers’ past which haven’t been released to the public yet. So far in this “All Souls Night” game, the players have referenced the Dungeon-in-a-Box D&D 5e campaign (run by Blake), the Taint game (everyone playing deep sea mining robots), and other science fiction games (which could be either Dread or The Expanse). All of these games were played and recorded before we played this Halloween game in 2019; we’re just very slow at editing and posting more episodes. It’s why we always make sure to mention when each episode was recorded, so that, if you care to, you can piece together the chronological order of our game sessions.

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Episode 24: “I hate everything down here!” (D&D 5e Session 6)

Listen to episode 24, as we return to the Guardians of Indir story.

After a long hiatus and a couple of side adventures over the last few episodes, we return in this episode to our sixth recording session (from March 2018) and the continuation of the Guardians of Indir D&D 5e campaign. When we last left our heroes, Balasar had just been reduced to zero hit points by a monstrous, tentacled myriapod that had followed the sound of his enthusiastically pounding rocks in a dungeon with his holy hammer. At the end of last episode, the players had only just realized that this dungeon strongly resembled the layout of the Tower of the Sun that they’d defended in the human flashback episodes (episodes 10, 11, and 12). Though Balasar knew nothing of this, his player (Korben) had realized that the collapsed passage roughly corresponded to the place where stairs had led up to the roof of the tower in the flashback, so he tried to clear a path. But instead a monster skittered in to investigate.

Just a reminder to our listeners, too, that the party came down underground in the first place to pursue a trio of despised elves that had attacked the city and somehow opened the gate to these underground passages. So far, there’s been no sign of the elves other than one dead one they found just inside the dungeon. Two others remain, somewhere…will the party find the elves, or some sign of why these tunnels exist under their city? Listen to find out!

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Episode 22: Mirror of Mystery, part 3

This is the final part of our Halloween 2018 one-off adventure that Lucia created and ran for us, the Mirror of Mystery.

 

As long as we have a regular group that can all meet periodically to play, many roleplayers will gravitate toward campaigns: extended stories composed of related in-game events played out over many game sessions. But there is also the “one-off” game: a game that you play from beginning to end in one session. One-off games are a wonderful way to try something new, whether it is a change in the game’s tone, trying a new DM, playing a new character,  playing with an entirely new group of players, or sampling a different or new game system. Playing the occasional one-off game session can also help in blowing off some steam for the players and DM if they’ve been playing a long campaign, which might otherwise lead to burnout or stagnation.

 

As I (Harold) write this, we’ve been playing and recording our games for more than a year. We started on 11 November 2017, and it’s 1 December 2018 as I write this. I don’t in the slightest feel that I am even close to burning out, but we’ve also played several one-off games over the past year. It is only because this one was themed for Halloween that we present these episodes out of the order in which we played the game. Our other one-shots will appear in the podcast in the coming next few months.

 

What do you like to play for a one-off? What have you tried?

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Episode 21: Mirror of Mystery, part 2

We continue our Halloween 2018 one-off D&D 5e adventure, “Mirror of Mystery,” written and run by Lucia. Having defeated the shadow wolf, the party is preparing to leave the tower to return to the Quester’s Rest to determine what their next steps are.

 

The party is:

– Karol Vane Melboy, the avaricious noble with a luxurious mullet

– Jaboc Gardon, the human sorcerous forger

– Pumpko Boi, the homicidal artificer who wears only pumpkin shells as armor

– Tyranthraxus, the solar-powered robot who is resigned to live in the worst of all possible worlds

– Stumpy, the dwarf who just wants to never visit his family again

 

Lucia is curious about whether people would be interested to read and/or play “Mirror of Mystery” as a published module. Let us know if you’d be interested!

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Episode 20: Mirror of Mystery, part 1

Our last episode was from the middle of recording session 6, back in March. We have at least one more episode from that session, and at least as many more sessions of Guardians of Indir already recorded after that! But Halloween 2018 was a couple of weeks ago, and to celebrate that, at our last recording session, we offered the players the choice: they could resume Guardians of Indir (where we left off, on quite a cliffhanger), or they could play a Halloween one-shot. In the end they were intrigued and chose the one-shot…which Lucia designed and DMed! So, what we’re inserting here, in the midst of all the Guardians of Indir episodes (indeed, in the midst of session 6) is the start of this Halloween one-shot, so that it comes out at least somewhat close to the date of Halloween (if we waited and posted it chronologically with all the other episodes, it’d probably come out around Easter 2019).

 

As always, please let us know what you think. While our group has played several other games in previous breaks from the Guardians of Indir campaign, you haven’t heard any of them yet. So this is the first set of new PCs and new storyline you’ll hear as part of this podcast. How is that for you?