Tag Archives: D&D Dad

D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 7

Below is the next session of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session 7, 9/2/19:

The party is recovering from the fire giant attack at the campground in Triboar when another tragedy strikes: Torinn Thavaa is squished by the 1,000-lb. piece of adamantine that the team had started digging up! Luckily, a new adventurer by the name of Ikkibirel (an Aaracokra Life Domain Cleric) flaps into town to give Torinn his last rites (and snag his magic items).

After deciding to leave the piece of adamantine, which they’ve learned is part of a giant construct called the Vonindod, the team is interrupted by a panicked Beldora, the Harper posing as a beggar in town. She tells the team she’s gotten a message from the son of Count Stratovahn, a war-hungry Storm Giant, and the son (Olthanas) wants to protect the little people of the Sword Coast from his father and his soldiers. Will the team help investigate?

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D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 6

Below is the next session of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session 6, 8/24/19:

The team is in Triboar, searching for Naxene; she is an expert in dragons (direct from Morack AKA Gimli). Triboar is famous for horses and farming area with blacksmiths and guides.  Hear and smell horses, fenced in riding yard with a grazing field and buildings nearby. See a bundle-o-rags woman and Shashy’ra wants to speak with her. She is heavily bundled and appears to be homeless. She has thick gloves and boots that are too big for her lil feet and is holding a cup with a few copper pieces inside. Shashy’ra does spot a shimmer of metal, which could be a sword or knife. Shashy’ra approaches the bundle-o-rags and inquires about the bar. FAKE SURPRISE! With watchful eyes and a fake surprising face she greets the team as “fellow adventures, friends”. Sir Frost Breaker is not amused with her presence and is not taking to the likes of this “creature”. Mavthos attempts to be charming to the dirty lady and realizes that her eyes give her away. Mavthos realizes he knows this woman and he knows her as a harper agent, Beldora. She exclaims, “Good to see you, Mavthos.”

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D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 5.5

Below is the next session of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session 5.5, 8/18/19:

As soon as Brother Broosel (who actually stowed away in Zephyros’ tower!) and Sir Frost Breaker leave the tower in the horse pasture where it landed outside the town of Triboar, a young girl runs up to them looking for their help. A dwarf who sounds suspiciously like The Weevil is trying to steal her father’s horses from their farm! Brother B and Sir FB charge off with her, without waiting for the rest of the party.

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D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 5

Below is the next session of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session 5, 5/21/19:

The party has a slight re-shuffle, as Brother Broosel remains in the Nightstone Inn to catch up with friends, and Torinn wanders off to do some monk training on his own. And on their way out of Nightstone, the party meets up with Mehen, an old friend of Sir Frost Breaker, who joins them for the next leg of the adventure. Mehen shares his elaborate back-history for anyone in the party interested in such things.

No sooner than Mehen meets the others, a cloud giant tower drops from the sky, and the party climbs up the cloud to meet the mysterious (and slighty mad) wizard Zephyros. He offers to take the party to Triboar so long as they promise to fix the Ordning, the ancient giant class structure that has apparently been broken and causing issues all across the Realms.

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D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 4

Below is the next session of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session 4, 5/14/19:

Back up the path, the group marches to get back to Nightstone. However, before they reach the gate they realize, the drawbridge is up! Starving, sweaty, bloody, and exhausted, the group along with 24 villagers just want to shower, rest, eat, and recuperate from the brutal trip into the caves. Halberticus decides to shout out and get a response, with no luck. Sir Frost Breaker and Torinn (with Normanx) mount their brooms and begin to fly up and check out the drawbridge. They are stopped by a voice. Definitely of power and noticeably female. She lets the group know that they have taken over the town; them being the Zentirim. She warns that she threw the last guard into the moat and Elara needs to get lost! The group learns that her name is Kella Darkhope and she is in charge of the Zentirim.

Mavthos yells, “Let us through or we will make our way through!” Kella decides to talk to them through a small crack in the gate, so Halberticus quickly uses his “Charm Person” spell, which leaves Kella charmed for one hour. Kella is absolutely smitten with Hal and is quick to let down the drawbridge to look deeper into his beautiful eyes.

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D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 3

Below is the next session of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session 3, 4/30/19:

As the team recovers from the fight, Sir Frost Breaker offers to heal Brother Broosel. (He isn’t of dragon descent, but he was drag-ging after that vicious fight!) Halberticus searches around the defeated ogre with great interest of selling his gigantic green eyeballs. He attempts to steal the eyeballs, but unfortunately squashes them both; each with a loud squish, which greatly saddens him. As the team gets their bearings after the fight and prepare for the next adventure throughout these caves, they hear movement. Sir Frost Breaker is determined to find out what is going on. He goes towards the noise in a trail off of the main area, but discovers nothing.

Halberticus decides to look down another dark path, but falls into a crevice and takes some damage! He is now 20 feet down, in the dark, and worried he may not be saved! Sir Frost Breaker follows the sound of Halberticus and is able to toss him a rope. As he is trying to pull Halberticus to safety, FB almost drops him as his footing gives way. Luckily, he is able to regain a strong stance and a firmer grip to pull Halberticus to safety and back with the team.

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D&D Dad: “Storm King’s Thunder” Adventure/Campaign Report, Session 2

Here’s the third of our party’s Adventure Report for the humongous Dungeons & Dragons campaign Storm King’s Thunder.

Session2_Chars

(I’m finally getting around to posting these!)

Session 2, 3/26/19:

The party is joined by the halfling rogue Halberticus Darkleaf, an old friend, in Nightstone. Hal meets them at the temple after everyone takes a short rest after the battle with the goblins and the worgs. The two soldiers from the keep are also accompanying the team, and they’re anxious to find the missing townspeople after the giant attack.

However, before they can move out of Nightstone, they hear meowing from a ruined house. Mavthos and Hal go to investigate, but their bumbling scares off the creature, which they hear skittering inside the house. Luckily, Torinn uses some monk skills to corral the creature, which turns out to be a tressym — a winged cat with a tag on its neck that says “Normanx”! Normanx and Torinn are quickly inseparable.

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D&D Dad: What kids can learn from playing D&D

I recently read an article that reinforced everything I’ve learned about playing D&D for the past year, and I had to share it with you here.

Here’s the quote that’s at the heart of this article:

For Kade Wells, the teacher who runs the club at Davis Ninth Grade School outside Houston, the answer is simple: “Playing Dungeons & Dragons makes you smarter.”

The article is titled How ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Primes Students for Interdisciplinary Learning, Including STEM, and it was published by KQED. Let’s dive into all the amazing information in this article and its research!

abcsdnd
Not directly related to the article, but the cover fits!

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D&D Dad: One-shots and Campaigns

I’ve been trying to get back to playing Dungeons & Dragons with my family and friends for a while now. It feels like we play maybe once a month or so these days, what with school and extracurriculars for the kids, and busy days of work for my wife and me. We’ve kinda fallen out of the habit.

I’m hoping to get on a more regular schedule. Sometimes this game is more like a sport than a hobby. I have this need to practice so I can keep getting better!

And just this past week, I think I figured out what the problem was. We’d been playing a bunch of one-shots after finishing Lost Mine of Phandelver from the D&D Starter Set. And while we had lots of fun with those short, self-contained quests, there wasn’t anything pulling us all back to the table.

We had no urgent sense of What’s Gonna Happen Next? I wasn’t doing a good job of connecting all these one-shots into a compelling narrative.

So just this past week I started reading up on how to run… a campaign!

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D&D Dad: Dice. Those wonderful, terrible dice.

LotsoDiceMaybe you cracked open your Starter Set and found those strange blue dice floating around in there with the books. Or possibly you picked up a bag of dice to get ready for your first game.

So what’s up with all these dice? We’re talking six or seven dice, all with different shapes and sizes. You might even see the name “polyhedral” used for theme.

Let’s do a deep dive about dice, shall we? Soon you’ll know the difference between a d4, a d12, and a d20. Let’s get rolling!

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