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Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

The alarm bells rang out, and for a tense moment I wondered if we were doing the right thing. I ran to the door, practically barreling into it, shouting as if some foe were right behind me. 

“Captain Xelan,” I screamed in the acolyte’s voice. “We’re under attack!”

The Zhentarim leader whom we had thwarted at Nightstone, and who had tried to have us killed, stared back at me irritably. The well-dressed man to his left sighed. “Do you see, Captain Xelan? Your organization is becoming nothing more than a liability.” The large robed orc in the corner said nothing.

Xelan stood up from his desk, unsheathing a brilliant golden scimitar. “If you don’t want to die it’s your problem too.” He turned toward me. “Lead the way, Alicia!”

I hurried down the hall, pointing toward the west where the rest of my friends lie in waiting. Xelan nodded and charged forward, but the well-dressed man stopped to stare at me. I felt my heart beat rapidly as an uneasy force flowed around him. My mind felt the tiniest prick and I used all my concentration to retain my composure. This was no man.

My disguise held and the fake-man continued on. I heard Xelan cry in surprise as Halfred whirled around the far corner at the opposite end, dropping two arrows directly into his chest. A gout of acid sprayed across the other two, and T.I.M. summoned his terrifying spectral leech.

I stepped behind everyone as Xelan called out to me, “Heal us, woman!” My hatred of Xelan and unease over the odd nobleman coalesced around me as I shedded my disguise.

“Captain Xelan, I think you remember us.”

Xelan’s eyes went wide. “Gods damn it! You’re all supposed to be dead!”

I smiled wryly and held out an arm, channeling all my psychic energy forward. “Now you will know fear.”

Boss fight! As a DM I know all too well the awkward pain of having your spiffy, powerful boss monsters laid low and stomped all over. In one of our first major boss battles we came, we saw, and we kicked their asses.

After our battle in the north dining room area of the underground temple that served as a Zhentarim Outpost we questioned the surviving acolyte. She was forthcoming with information, most of which we already knew: Captain Xelan was in a room in the southeast, meeting with two unknown individuals, an orc spellcaster and a well-dressed man.

Naturally we went with what worked. I used my at-will Disguise Self to assume the acolyte’s form after letting her go (I’m an equal opportunity disguiser). We planned on setting off the alarm bells on purpose, then having me run inside and funneling everyone out for a good old fashioned ambush in the hallway.

The plan worked beautifully, with Xelan grabbing his sword while his two comrades followed. One of them, a well-dressed nobleman, looked me over and somehow nearly saw through my disguise.

I loved the way the DM described this uneasy figure – there was definitely something not quite human about him. Did it have psychic powers like Kazin? Thankfully I rolled 20+ on my Deception check to keep up the disguise.

After everyone made it into the hallway toward the central room, the rest of the team sprang the trap. Chromatic Orbs, Acid Splashes, Spectral Leeches and Halfred’s deadly arrows rained down on them. Xelan was a bit ahead of the group, but T.I.M. and I surrounded the other two figures.

On the surprise round I opted to unleash my 3rd level spell that I’d yet to ever use: Fear. This was risky as T.I.M. was also in the direct path, in addition to all three foes. Both the orc and the nobeleman failed their saves, while Xelan and T.I.M. saved. I’ll take it!

That Fear spell would end up being hugely useful, as the orc was completely shut down for the entire battle. They both tried to barrel pas T.I.M. to get away from me. The nobleman shedded his human form into some sort of freaky eldritch horror thing, and shook off the fear after he rounded a corner into the storage room.

Xelan had taken some heavy damage but had some sort of magic bag on him. He pulled out a furry thing and threw it on the ground. That thing turned into a damn polar bear, saddling up right behind Korinn.

Things got a bit dicey when we stated missing attacks. We also did a poor job focusing on one foe, instead spreading out and splitting up our attacks between all three of them.

Xelan tried to throw daggers at me to knock off my Fear concentration, but with disadvantage he missed my paltry 13 AC. The DM had some more nasty luck with a summoned polar bear – out of four total attacks he rolled a 1 or a 2 on three of them. For the fourth, Korinn used a Shield spell.

The odds turned back in our favor. T.I.M.’s spectral leech (his hilariously awesome themed Spectral Weapon) killed Xelan, and then he finished off the orc. Halfred downed the bear with several arrows, while Kazin decapitated the strange psychic creature.

We finished the boss fight without taking a single point of damage.

This was a best case scenario for our team. We had a plan, executed it, and it worked perfectly. Fearing opponents in a tight space worked wonderfully. There were many things that could have gone wrong – most notably that creature beating my deception roll and negating our entire surprise.

All three boss figures had some nice loot and magical items, including that magic bag of furry summons, a magic cloak, and the orc’s creepy staff. In the room Bryseis discovered a letter with some useful information. T.I.M. found a loose stone and activated it, opening a tunnel back into the caves.

It looked like Xelan’s personal escape route, which should make for an easy egress from the dungeon.

Not so much! T.I.M. and Bryseis stumbled into the lair of a Death Widow, apparently a strong ass version of a Giant Spider.

T.I.M. exploded with a critical hit on Inflict Wounds, dealing nearly 50 damage in a single blow. We were cackling over our cocky abilities at this point, but the spider was still alive, and the rest of us were still hurrying down the tight tunnel to try and join them.

By the time we made it there, T.I.M. was suffering from the nasty poison of the spider, actually succumbing to the damage right when we killed it. We stabilized and healed him, but the poison rotted his leg into uselessness.

We use a modified version of the Lingering Injuries rules from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (p272) as a penalty for dropping to 0 HP. It’s not in effect in the early levels (thankfully). Since then we’ve only fallen once more in this campaign – and that was me in the Yeti fight. The downed PC gets a single DC 15 CON save. If they fail they have to roll on the chart.

When I did it and failed, I rolled a 20, resulting in a minor scar, which does nothing. T.I.M. however rolled a crippled limb, and chose a leg since he wields a shield.

Thankfully we’re at the end of this dungeon so we can get back to town and get it healed – for a price. I imagine that takes the sting off the DM for our otherwise flawless run on on the trio of bosses.

Notably we also received a shit-ton of XP for destroying all these big bads and clearing the Zhentarim outpost. Level 6 here we come! We took down a major villain who had been hounding us and hopefully dismantled Zhentarim operations in the area, though the Weevil is still out there.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Game of Thrones is about war, death, betrayal, love, loss, dragons, and undead. But mostly it’s about family.

No where was family more pronounced than in season seven’s finale, “The Dragon and the Wolf.” Some families split apart, some hashed out old wounds, some came together (JOKES!).

Most of these family squabbles feel petty in comparison to the army of death that officially crosses over beyond the wall during the finale’s thrilling, yet predictable final moments. In the wise words of Bronn of the Blackwater, “We’re fucked.”

The marquis event of the series took up about half of the lengthy extended run time: the truce meeting in King’s Landing. There was a staggering amount of big names in a single scene together.

By my count the following characters were present during the meeting:

• Daenerys
• Tyrion
• Missandei
• Varys
• Theon
• Jon
• Davos
• Jorah
• Sandor
• Brienne
• Podrick
• Cersei
• Jaime
• Bronn
• Gregor
• Qyburn
• Euron

That’s crazy! It was fun to see so many characters in a single scene together, yet it was almost entirely drama-free. Daenerys arrived on Drogon, because of course she did. Sandor had some choice words with Gregor. Euron exchanged pithy remarks with Tyrion. Cersei and Daenerys, well you get the idea.

The undead soldier plan actually went off perfectly. All credit to Lena Headey during these scenes as she looked visibly shaken, then resolved. She played everyone in this meeting, including Jaime and me.

Alas Jon’s sense of honor gets him into a bit of hot water. Cersei appears to agree to an armistice as long as Jon agrees to take no sides in the Cersei-Dany conflict.

Jon refuses, revealing that he’s officially bent the knee to the Mother of Dragons. That’s definitely news to everyone on his side who practically all facepalm in unison.

Cersei is livid, throws up the proverbial middle finger and leaves in a huff. At least Jaime appears moved – I loved that blanched look he gave Jon when asked about how many are out there. But Cersei’s the boss and he dutifully follows her, for now.

Tyrion is Jaime’s weakness and soft spot, so when Tyrion decides to pay a private visit to Cersei, he agrees to make it happen.

The scene between Cersei and Tyrion was fantastic. This season has moved so quickly and thrown so much action at us that we’ve barely had time to just sit in a room and watch two great actors together.

Cersei hates Tyrion for killing their father and ruining their family. I was upset how despondent and near-suicidal Tyrion appeared over it. Dude, you didn’t also kill her kids, stop blaming yourself for that! Cersei was the one that reactivated the militant clergy that ultimately brought about her downfall.

Tyrion realizes she’s pregnant and tires to inspire her to have something to fight for. It seems to work; Cersei marches her retinue back out to the meet and declares that she will help, despite no assurances from her opponents.

Jaime is pleased, than horrified when Cersei casually mentions that there’s no way in hell she’s going to help them. I had predicated that Jaime and Cersei would have a wedge thrown between them – I’m still calling Jaime as the one who has to kill her. But I thought he’d remain by her side in a conflicted state until the big moment, Darth Vader style.

Instead he finally finds a backbone. Maybe it was speaking to Brienne again, one of the few people he respects, who brazenly told him, “fuck loyalty.”

Cersei teeters toward madness mode and is ready to have Zombie Mountain cut him down. Jaime calls her bluff and leaves. He just leaves!

Presumably he’s on his way to defect and join up with Jon and Daenerys. I wonder if Bran will get a chance to tell everyone that Jaime was the one who tried to kill him all those years ago?

In a poignant moment of symbolism, the first flakes of snow began to fall on King’s Landing, signaling the Long Winter and the army of death that will come with it.

Our heroes return to Dragonstone and Dany and Jon continue to make goo goo eyes at each other as the show fast-tracks their romance. I don’t think the actors have any particular chemistry together and haven’t had much time to blossom. Their romantic pairing feels forced as a consequence.

Theon finally works up the courage to talk to Jon. Theon is a complicated character. He’s done very bad things, had very bad things done to him, tries to do the right thing lately, but is still mostly a sniveling coward. He lays much of himself bare before Jon, pleading to be absolved.

Jon does absolve him, because he’s Jon. He declares that Theon is both a Stark and a Greyjoy. That’s important for Theon but also important for Jon, who will soon find out that he’s both a Stark and a Targaryen.

Theon uses his newfound resolve to march down to Yara’s Greyjoy defectors and declare they’re off to save Yara. Theon fails his Persuasion check and gets into a tussle, only to win the battle specifically because he lacks testicles. It’s a bizarre callback to Bronn making fun of the Unsullied as they waited outside King’s Landing earlier.

Theon wins and the Ironborn set off to rescue Yara. A finale is a weird time to start a completely separate Greyjoy subplot.

Cersei revealed that Euron’s abrupt departure was a feint – he was off to gather the Golden Company mercenary group from Essos. So does this mean Theon’s group will run into them? Where exactly is Yara anyway? This could potentially be really interesting if Theon/Yara’s group could disrupt Euron, and thus Cersei’s plans to bring in an entire army.

One subplot begins and another ends. At Winterfell we finally saw the resolution to the awful Sansa-Arya-Baelish drama. If anything has been a microcosm of the show’s weak writing since going beyond the books, look no further than Petyr Baelish trying to divide the Stark girls in a go-nowhere subplot.

Baelish does Baelish things by further manipulating Sansa, who appears frustratingly taken in by his seeds of mistrust and betrayal. But when she calls Arya to a dramatic meeting in front of everyone, she turns the tables on Littlefinger, accusing him of murder and treason. Littlefinger’s iconic reaction should absolutely replace Drew Scanlon’s blinking white guy meme.

I’d like to nominate Littlefinger getting exposed as the new “Blinking White Guy” GIF #GameOfThrones #GameOfThronesFinale pic.twitter.com/bmoGv27qdg

— Tristan Cooper (@TristanACooper) August 28, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I’m not sure Littlefinger deserved such a dramatic death. Yes he’s been a part of the show since the very first episode. But he’s had nothing to do since he took over the Eyrie back in season four.

It was satisfying that the Stark kids correctly blame him for starting the whole Stark-Lannister war. Sansa in particular deserves more than her share of justice.

Arya slits his throat like the cold-hearted badass she is, and it’s done. Hurray! Nothing brings together two sisters like murdering a conspirator. Now let’s leave this dumb drama behind and get ready for the war.

But first we need one more bit of family drama. As Jon and Dany make their way north to White Harbor and Winterfell, Sam has finally made it all the way from Oldtown to Winterfell (which nearly spans the entire continent). Clearly he didn’t acquire the fast-travel powers that everyone else possessed this season.

We don’t have much time left in the episode so Sam goes right to Bran, for some reason. It’s casually revealed by Bran that Jon is the bastard son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Sam jumps in and takes all the credit for Gilly’s reveal earlier in the season: he wasn’t a bastard Sand but a true-born Targaryen, making him heir to the throne.

At the exact same time Jon pays Dany a visit in her cabin and they get their sexy time on, much to the cacophony of groans and eye rolls heard throughout the world. He’s your nephew! This is like if Luke and Leia got it on in the first Star Wars movie, ugh. Granted incest is far from a new concept in the show but still. AWKWARD, and doubly awkward to juxtapose his official reveal with their naked time.

We’re also treated to some past scenes of Rhaegar and Lyanna’s secret wedding, courtesy of Bran’s abilities. It’s another Dragon-Wolf combo!

I was imminently disappointed that Rhaegar looked exactly like Viserys. The writers then dropped a very confusing bomb for book-readers: Jon’s real name is Aegon Targaryen. Insert BewilderedLittlefinger.gif here.

In the latest book, Dance with Dragons (2011, lol), it’s revealed that baby Aegon (the son of Rhaegar and Ellaria Martell) survived the assassination attempt by Gregor, was protected and cultivated by Varys, and was quietly building an army and arriving in Westeros as a young boy.

That’s bullshit for many reasons and is one of the most frustrating elements of GRRM’s books – too many damn characters and subplots. So on the one hand I’m glad that character was eliminated in the show, on the other hand it’s a frustrating and confusing connection for the show to make.

With Jon and Dany headed to Winterfell there’s no question that Jon’s true heritage will be explained soon (AWKWAAARD). Hopefully it won’t act as needless drama the way the Starks-Littlefinger plot played out. I don’t see Jon acting any different or coveting the throne one he finds out. If anything it’ll solidify in Dany’s mind that he’s The One, and worthy to ride the other dragon, Rhaegal.

They’re going to need to fast-track that dragon-training. The episode ends with The Wall, which has stood for centuries, coming down in a few heavy blasts from the undead dragon Viserion. Tormund can only look on in horror as they don’t stand a chance to defend.

For everyone who answered the question, “how will the Night King’s army make it past The Wall,” with “by turning one of Dany’s dragons into a dracolich,” congrats! It was rather obvious after last week’s episode.

This season the show has devolved somewhat into a fan-service version of itself. That gives us a lot of satisfying moments and crazy cool action scenes, but also makes the show far more predictable and less shocking than it once was. We’re a far cry removed from the Red Wedding.

But hey, it’s hard to complain when I got to watch a god damn dracolich on big budget, mainstream TV.

The Wall is down, and the undead approach. Winterfell is practically within spitting distance. The show has overused the “omg the dead are coming” ending so many times it’s become trite. Yet, for real, they’re actually fucking here now. Hold on to your butts, and hope it doesn’t take another year plus for the final season to air.

Winners

Cersei – Lena Headey was on fire this episode. Cersei Lannister will go down in history as one of the all-time greatest villains. From “no one walks away from me” to her plans within plans. Nothing terribly dramatic or shocking, but she’s a delightful person to root against.

Jaime – Jaime is another richly complex character, though I feel the showrunners have done a poorer job of working through his redemptive arc than the books were doing. I’m glad he finally stood up to Cersei and I’m still calling it that he’ll be the one to end her reign. (I wish Bronn were with him though. Now I hope he and Poderick just sit in a tavern drinking for the rest of the series).

Incest – One incestuous relationship ends and another begins. Has there ever been a more awkward “will they won’t they oh god please no” than Dany and Jon?

Losers

Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish – Player got played.

The Wall – YOU HAD ONE JOB.

Read the full article on PC Gamer

There are dozens of ‘me too’ free-to-play MOBAs vying for your attention, and Master X Master looks like any other at first. It launched in June as MMO publisher NCSoft’s answer to the genre, and features a standard 5v5 lane-pushing match on a single map called Titan Ruins.

The best part of Master X Master is the surprisingly enjoyable cooperative PvE mode, which elevates an otherwise mediocre lane-pusher into a rewarding, bite-sized action RPG.

Read the full article on PC Gamer

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Blizzard’s online service Battle.net wasn’t quite my first foray into online gaming, but it did solidify my love of computer gaming throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. Many a Friday evening in the early days of high school were spent constructing marines and mowing down Zerg with friends. To say I have deeply ingrained nostalgia for StarCraft is an understatement.

StarCraft: Remastered is a very faithful HD update to one of the best strategy games ever created. It suffers a bit from forgoing any gameplay or UI updates that strategy games from the last two decades have evolved (such as StarCraft 2). But make no mistake, StarCraft: Remastered makes a great game better.

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Welcome to another Roll20 Review, my written and video series in which I review the paid modules available for sale at Roll20. A review copy of the module was provided.

Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition does a lot of things really well. The easiest to highlight is the Starter Kit intro adventure, “Lost Mine of Phandelver,” first published in 2014.

LMoP does an excellent job introducing newcomers to D&D while still providing a memorable and fun adventure full of exotic creatures, locations, and twists. It’s correctly hailed as one of Wizard of the Coasts’ best ever starter adventures.

When Roll20 acquired the license to create official D&D 5E modules, adapting the “Lost Mine of Phandelver” was a no-brainer. The adventure includes some annoying challenges to overcome, particularly as it was originally released before basic 5E content we now take for granted, such as the Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual.

The Roll20 module fixes most of these issues while providing as streamlined a process as possible to jumping into your first D&D adventure with a virtual tabletop.

The following content is included in the $19.99 module:

• Five battle maps, properly gridded (5-ft) with dynamic lighting for subscribers
• An overland map of the Sword Coast
• Journal separated into four acts, with player handouts and DM material notes
• 26 NPC character sheets with matching tokens
• Five ready-to-play Player Character sheets with rollable tokens
• Extensive notes on named NPCs
• A fully searchable database courtesy of the Standard Rules Document for 5th Edition

Those of you who have been following me and my D&D group for the last few years know that we ran “Lost Mine of Phandelver” as our first foray into Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition.

It wasn’t quite my first rodeo as a DM nor with Roll20, but it was certainly the biggest adventure I’d tackled up to that point. It’s too bad this package didn’t exist back then, because I would have been all over it.

From the very beginning the Roll20 module makes special effort to help newcomers, both to Roll20 and to D&D. For many people LMoP is their first adventure. There are blatant instructions right on the landing page to select ‘Adventure Overview’ from the Journal to get started.

The Adventure Overview is a single page that explains the dynamic lighting feature, how to use tokens, and provides an excellent summary of the entire adventure broken down by Acts and maps.

The Journal is divided into the four acts outlined in the adventure, which take the players through several different dungeons and areas around the town of Phandalin. Each act has a very lengthy overview that outlines everything that happens (or should happen anyway). Individual areas and dungeons are given separate sections, most with annotated maps.

Act 2 is particularly well-organized, providing a nice section on all the important named NPCs in Phandalin, and giving a link to each character sheet.

An entire section of Notable NPCs includes full character sheets for every named NPC in the adventure, from important ones like Sildar and Glasstaff to various merchants.

There’s actually a bit too much information here. Not every NPC needs their own character sheet, and all of the townsfolks’ are blank anyway, which could lead to some confusion. They really should have been kept as simple text-only handouts.

I would’ve loved to seen some more pictures attached to them as well. We do get pics (and tokens) of Glasstaff, Gundren, and Sildar, (the published adventure didn’t have any), but none for Reidoth, or any of the townsfolk.

Player Handouts includes images of all the various monsters that you can show your players. This provides a nice close-up look compared to just staring at tokens on the battlefield. There are also some helpful documents on Conditions and a link to the Basic Rules that are free to view from WotC’s website.

The DM’s Folder includes all the character sheets for the various monsters used in the adventure, as well as draggable tokens for each one (meaning you can drag them straight onto the battlefield). You’ll find some helpful notes on DMing, how to read monster sheets, a list of magical items, and a note on how to use Rollable Tokens, an intuitive feature that lets you change tokens for shapeshifters.

I wish we had picture handouts to go along with the magical items. I know Roll20 has since added full magic item handouts to later, bigger modules like Curse of Strahd. There are pictures of magic items provided in both the original adventure and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but none here.

The five battle maps are directly lifted from the published adventure, with one major advantage: they’ve all been converted to use 5-ft grids (or subsections of a grid). This was primarily an issue with the Thundertree and Wave Echo Cave maps, which was originally drawn with 10-ft grids.

Using anything other than 5-ft grids in 5E is a recipe for disaster yet Wizards of the Coast continued to do it for some time with official published material, much to the frustration of those of us running virtual tabletops.

There’s two main ways to fix this in Roll20 while still using the original map. You can either subdivide the 10-ft grids, making all the tokens about 1/4 of the usual size, or double the map dimensions, making the map enormous. The LMoP module does the former. It’s not a perfect solution (I prefer the latter) but it makes for an acceptable workaround. Thankfully the maps are high enough resolution that zooming in doesn’t look too bad.

Since LMoP is designed as an intro starter adventure, it includes several pre-made player character sheets. The five from the original adventure are recreated here: 2 human fighters, an elf wizard, halfling rogue, and dwarf cleric.

Each PC has their unique background that ties them to this specific adventure, which is a neat concept, and one I recommend looking at even if your players want to build from scratch. A handy DM’s PC Guide note keeps track of the role-playing traits and the Passive Perception of each hero. I would add AC of each hero to that list of helpful notes as well.

The tokens for these pre-made PCs are right there at the landing page letting you grab and go relatively quickly.

The Roll20 module of “Lost Mine of Phandelver” is my instant recommendation for anyone who wants to start playing D&D 5E online. It’s a solid, lengthy adventure and the module faithfully recreates all the maps and tokens you’ll need. You’ll probably want to spend some time tweaking it, particularly with the side quests that lack any maps, but this module is a huge time-saver and a great introduction to Dungeons & Dragons.

The Pros:

• All battle maps have been properly converted to use 5-ft grids (or subdivided grids).
• Nicely organized information for DM’s, including a simple guide to the pre-made PCs and how to roleplay friendly NPCs.
• Easily draggable tokens for each monster.
• Tokens and pictures for some important NPCs like Gundren, Sildar, and Glasstaff.
• Pre-made PCs have tokens with multiple picture options

The Cons:

• No additional battle maps for unmapped sections of the adventure, such as Wyvern Tor and Old Owl Well.
• Phandalin town map should have been GM layered and annotated, instead of placing everything on the token layer for players to see.
• Sword Coast Map doesn’t need any Fog of War, but it does need the GM layer for places the players have yet to discover.
• No pics or handouts for magic items.

The Errors:

• All the zombies on the Thundertree map are supposed to be ‘Ash Zombies’ which grants them an extra ability called Ash Puff.
• Vyerith the doppleganger is described in a female drow form, whereas her token clearly depicts a male drow.

The Verdict: If you’re new to D&D 5e and WANT to play on Roll20, Lost Mine of Phandelver is the single best purchase you can make. 

A review copy of the module was provided.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

We were tired, hungry, and in T.I.M.’s case, severely wounded when we emerged from the caves of the Zhentarim outpost.

We had cleared the entire outpost. The final attack from a venomous giant spider had humbled our elated mood. T.I.M. showed no pain, despite his nasty limp from the spider’s venom.

We were in no mood when we found the gates of Xantharl’s Keep closed. Bryseis knocked on the door and a voice rang out, “Go away interlopers, we know what you did!”

“Damn it,” I muttered. 

“I told you we shouldn’t have let some go,” Bryseis glared at us, her demonic eyes burning with annoyance. “We should’ve killed them all.”

She turned her attention to the gruff voice beyond the gate. “What is it you think we did?” she snarled.

“Alicia told us – you killed all the Zhentarim. They were our lifeblood, you’ve doomed us! Go away!”

“We freed you from the Zhentarim,” I replied, wearily.

“You think you’re heroes, but a lot of those folks lived here. They had families! You’re not welcome here.”

“To hell with this town,” I sighed. But I thought of Millie, the undercover Harper agent who had helped give us some information.

Bryseis brazenly called out to the guard that we needed to speak to the barmaid. It felt horribly suspicious to me, but money greased the palms of the guard and he went to fetch her.

Millie emerged several moments later and we told her everything, about Xelan’s death, the ledger that revealed all their payments and book keeping, and the letter that revealed the Weevil’s next stop – Neverwinter. She was grateful for the assistance, agreeing to ride north to try and uncover more of the Neverwinter hideout.

We had other plans. The Giant attacks weren’t about to stop so we could follow the damn Weevil all over the country. We saddled the horses and turned south, riding a few miserable miles before collapsing into our tents for some much needed rest. A long road lay ahead of us.

I’m not 100% certain, but if I recall correctly in our two years of playing D&D we’ve never had a session with zero combat – until this week!

After clearing out the Zhentarim Outpost near Xantharl’s Keep we had only three things on our mind – a Long Rest, Level 6, and identifying the spiffy new magic items we found.

Unfortunately the town closed its gates to us. In a unique twist most of the town was under the sway (and payroll) of the Zhentarim. Since we had let a few of the Zhents go, they had fled to town and told everyone what we were doing. That’s what we get for letting people live.

We really wanted to at least get word to Millie, the undercover Harper agent who was our contact here. Bryseis bribed a guard and we told her about the outpost. She was shocked, then thrilled when we showed her the ledger that recorded all their book keeping. She promised to leave town and meet up with Thwip to give him the information.

I tasked her with finding out as much as she could about the Zhentarim hideout in Neverwinter. We know the Weevil will be there in a few weeks thanks to a note Bryseis found in Xelan’s office. Hopefully when we reach Everlund we can formally ally with the Harpers, and teleport to Neverwinter to root him out once and for all.

With nothing else left for us here we packed up the horses and continued our lengthy journey.

We had gained enough experience for level 6, which notably brought multi-class opportunities to both me (now Warlock/Paladin) and T.I.M. (Cleric/Fighter). Both our sorcerers got massive 3rd level AOE damage spells, Bryseis with Fireball and Korinn with Lighting Bolt. Halfred added Giants to his Favored Enemies, which should come in very handy for both tracking and warning.

Our new magic items included a cool Pokémon-like Bag of Tricks for Bryseis, a Staff of Pain which T.I.M. handed over to Korinn, a Cloak of Protection for Kazin, and some poison arrows that Halfred crafted from the Death Widow’s venom.

The one-road village of Longsaddle offered us no aid when it came to poor T.I.M.’s crippled leg. They’d heard some rumors of Cloud Giant castles flying overhead and Fire Giants marching around the hills to the east.

As we neared the crossroads town of Triboar we began to feel uneasy. There were no travelers for miles. A man trying to rebuild his destroyed home outside of town warned us of the destruction we would soon find: an invading army lead by a group of fire giants had descended upon Triboar, destroying most of the town.

We learned from a survivor in Triboar that the devastating attack happened two days prior. A large 30-ft deep hole bore witness to their motivations.

The witness described the large armored gauntlet artifact they had excavated from the ground. We remembered the motivations for both the Frost and Cloud Giants were similar; the Frost Giants attacked Bryn Shandar looking for a Ring of Winter, while the Cloud Giants destroyed Nightstone to get the town’s magical namesake.

If I had to hazard a guess, there’s probably two more towns that have been attacked or destroyed from the Storm and Hill Giants. We know the Ordning has fallen apart, so maybe this gathering of ancient artifacts is someway for the giants to establish dominance over each other?

At this point all we could do is help the people affected by the attack. Giants are so damn powerful that an attack is akin to a massive natural disaster. Much of the people of Triboar, 20 in total, were now refugees. They begged to come with us when we turned east on the Evermoor Way towards Yartar.

Of course we agreed. It was nice to do something heroic again.

Feeding 20 people on the road isn’t easy. We played a mini version of The Banner Saga as we journeyed with a large group that required food, which resulted in several Survival checks per day.

Bryseis and Kazin rode on ahead to Yartar to get help. The city was completely oblivious to the attack. Granted Triboar is two days away but still, you’d think a huge Fire Giant army that destroyed half a nearby town would make the rounds!

They didn’t need much convincing and agreed to ride out with supplies. Thankfully T.I.M., Korinn, and Halfred kept everyone alive with some stellar Survival rolls.

They also found a rather odd man-sized cocoon floating in the Dessarin River. Korinn used Invisibility to snatch it away from the circling Giant Seagulls. Inside the broken cocoon a man emerged. He had slimy, translucent skin and required constant moisture on his skin, like a beached marine mammal.

He remembered who he was, a noble from Yartar, but not how he ended up in this strange predicament. When Bryseis and Kazin arrived with help and food from Yartar, I had Kazin talk to him and use Detect Thoughts to probe his mind, with his consent.

I saw some strange sights: a golden goose, and a beautiful dark-haired woman dressed in purple. The DM teased that I recognized this figure – then the session ended!

We had traveled a solid 250 miles this session, and have another 200 to go before reaching Everlund. I’m continually overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of this campaign, or least this very sandboxy middle section.

Hopefully we made a good choice by going East. We still think perusing the Harpers is the best call, though I fear we’re heading deeper into Fire Giant territory.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Welcome to another Roll20 Review, my written and video series in which I review the paid modules available for sale at Roll20. A review copy of the module was provided.

The Tomb of Horrors is one of the most infamous and difficult dungeons Gary Gygax ever designed. It was famous enough for a major plot point in Ready Player One, easily the best part of a novel I otherwise loathed. It recently appeared with a D&D Fifth Edition conversion in Tales from the Yawning Portal earlier this year (Roll20 Review coming soon!).

I was a bit surprised, though certainly not disappointed, that Acererak’s infamous dungeon would be the inspiration for Dungeon & Dragon‘s next major story campaign, Tomb of Annihilation.

The Roll20 Tomb of Annihilation module is the best work Roll20 has ever done. Tomb of Annihilation is already a very virtual tabletop-friendly campaign, and Roll20 went even further with interactive maps for puzzles and rooms, a token-filled page of random encounters, and all the written and visual content you’ll need to send your players into the dangerous jungles of Chult.

The following content is included in the $49.95 Tomb of Annihilation module:

• 21 5-ft battle maps (with dynamic lighting for Roll20 subscribers)
• 3 10-ft battle maps with 5-ft subdivisions (dynamic lighting)
• 2 non-gridded city maps
• 2 overland maps of Chult – one for DMs, one for Players
• 3 interactive puzzle maps
• 2 token pages, one organized by random encounters
• The Tomb of Annihilation adventure, divided into 5 Chapters
• Over 50 player handouts and pictures, not including NPC pictures.
• 55 unique, named NPCs with draggable tokens and player handouts
• Over 100 monsters with draggable tokens and player handouts
• Over 50 magic item handouts, 32 with pictures
• Over 20 supplemental rules from the Dungeon Master’s Guide
• A fully searchable database courtesy of the Standard Rules Document for 5th Edition

We’ll start with the Journal, which offers an overwhelming amount of handouts for players and information for game masters. The adventure is divided up into five chapters that cover the entire story.

Tomb of Annihilation is a swashbuckling Indiana Jones meets Tomb Raider adventure as you hack your way through a hostile jungle full of cannibals, zombies, yuan-ti (evil snake people), and dinosaurs. The entire campaign is very open-ended, even from the beginning. The main plot basically boils down to “find lost city, explore big dungeon underneath, defeat Big Bad.”

The players arrive in Port Nyanzaru in chapter one. The entire chapter takes place in the major port city of Chult, the only safe haven on the entire peninsula.

There’s a nice Things to Do subsection that offers detailed information on dinosaur racing, finding a guide, and learning rumors from locals. Each chapter also has its own list of applicable handouts, such as all the guide posts for chapter one.

Chapter two is the meat of the adventure and the open world exploration of Chult. The goal is to find Omu but along the way they could trick a Grung chief at Dungrunglung, heed the advice of a friendly naga at Orolunga, or ride a minecart down to a red dragon lair in Wyrmheart Mine. Not to mention dozens upon dozens of random encounters.

Each of the 14 major locations are given their own detailed entry with a DM map. All the artwork from the published adventure are provided as separate player handouts. A Journal entry called The Expedition Begins has extensive rules for traveling and random encounters throughout Chult.

Chapter three begins once the players reach the lost city of Omu, which shouldn’t be until the players are at least fifth level (and probably higher). The action takes place on a non-gridded city map. The measurement tool does provide some accuracy but movement and distance in battle will have to be fudged a bit unless you come up with smaller maps for individual sections.

Smaller maps do exist in the form of the nine shrines that are the focus of chapter three. The players’ goal is to collect the gods’ puzzle cubes to open the way to the Tomb of the Nine Gods.

The shrines are placed together on a 5-ft battle map as a series of one-room challenge dungeons with nifty puzzles and traps. Adventure game fans will get a real kick out of this section as there are lots of clever puzzles and riddles to solve. Dynamic Lighting separates each shrine from one another.

Chapter four occurs once the players have located most of the puzzle cubes. Raz Nsi, the yuan-ti warlord with quite a villainous past, swoops in to grab the last one, forcing the players to delve into the underground yuan-ti lair, Fane of the Night Serpent.

With chapter five we finally get to the titular tomb. The Tomb of the Nine Gods rivals Castle Ravenloft in sheer end-dungeon size and breadth, taking up six full 5-grid map pages. The dungeon is filled with enough devious puzzles and traps to make veterans grin and newcomers blanch.

I love the way journal entries are divided and organized here to make locating information much easier. They provide notes on treasures, occupants, the nine trickster gods, the tomb’s history, and the hag coven and wights who run it.

Yeah, turns out Acererak is more of an absentee landlord who’s using this place to nurse an infantile dark god. This isn’t even his lair! Yet he shows up at the end to provide a climactic final boss fight anyway.

Over two dozen player handouts are provided in chapter five alone. Found journal notes, pictures of various scenes and objects, and Acererak’s warnings (puzzle clues) give players a wealth of fun information and visual aids.

Dozens of monster sheets, monster handouts, magic items, and additional rules notes take up more than half of the Journal section. Every single monster has a draggable token you can use to instantly add it to any battlefield. There’s also an entire map page dedicated to listing every token, with AC and HP already implemented. Unfortunately not every monster token has a picture; a few (less than 10%) simply stamp the creature’s name on the token if no official artwork exists.

Tomb of Annihilation can rely heavily on random encounters – Chult could almost be considered one big mega-dungeon. The rules state that players move only a single hex per day, rolling for encounters three times. An encounter occurs on a 16 or higher. That’s a 25% chance! To help with the staggering amount of potential encounters, the module provides a second token page keyed to random encounters.

Here tokens are organized and grouped by their printed encounters. Included notes provide information on how many of which foes should be present. The encounter page organizes tokens alphabetically and by type (Dinosaurs, Undead, etc). It shouldn’t be too hard to find what you’re looking for. As always I recommend DM’s roll for encounters ahead of time so you don’t have to spend much time moving tokens around.

A random battle map is also provided. It’s slightly better than the usual blank white grid, offering a more textured page that looks coffee-stained. It’s a shame we couldn’t get a single generic jungle page for the huge amount of random encounters, but it also shouldn’t be too hard find or slap one together. If I ran Tomb of Annihilation I would endeavor to put together half a dozen mini-maps by region for random encounters.

The journal and tokens are top-notch, but what about the maps?

One of Tomb of Annihilation’s best features is an emphasis on 5-ft square grid maps. Having anything else can cause issues and visual problems in Roll20 that have to be corrected. Roll20’s licensed modules usually solve this by grids for 10-ft maps, which results in tiny tokens.

Thankfully not many adjustments are needed here. Of the 24 battle maps, only three are adjusted from 10-ft grids, and one of those is a mostly friendly fortress that you probably won’t battle within. Instead you can bask in the the Dynamic Lighting, annotated GM Layer, and numerous linked tokens that have been provided on each map.

I especially like that extra tokens and reinforcements are provided on each applicable map as written in the adventure. The single pirate ship map, for example, has all the tokens for three separate pirate crews the players can encounter.

There’s a lot of fun variety in the adventure. Chultan locations include a hidden pirate cove, ancient ruined cities crawling with crocodiles and sentient plants, an abandoned dwarven mine and forge ruled by a dragon, and a maze with worshiping frog-people at the center. That doesn’t even include the large yuan-ti dungeon and the gigantic six-level Tomb of the Nine Gods.

Most locations provide some fun artwork or piece of the area you can show your players without showing them the entire map, like the ancient statues at Camp Righteous and Dungrunglung, or the unique 300-ft spire of Firefinger.

The two most impressive map features in the module are the player map of Chult and the interactive puzzle maps.

The overland map of Chult comes in two flavors: a full DM map with all the information, and a special player’s map with many locations on the hidden GM layer. More importantly it has entire swaths of the map hidden below an interactive fog of war, displayed as beige hexes that cover unexplored sections of the map.

It’s an incredibly clever solution that’s much easier to navigate and operate than using fog of war. As your players explore the map you simply delete the hexes, opening the map as they discover new regions.

The interactive player maps mainly come from two sources – the puzzle cube and the Gears of Hate from the fifth level of the Tomb. The puzzle cubes give your players a chance to grab each cube and configure them on a 3×3 grid in order to gain entrance to the Tomb.

The Gears of Hate is an awesome map, made even better with Roll20’s unique implementation. By switching to the map layer you can rotate the three gear rooms the same way you would a multi-sided token. There are five different configurations and a Myst-like control system that your players have to learn with trial and error. I was stunned by how well it worked, and it looks great.

There are also two puzzle floor maps you can put your player’s tokens on to let them physically move around to reenact tense moments from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

In many ways Tomb of Annihilation represents the culmination of over a year of adapting large-scale campaign modules. It’s not just the size that’s impressive, but the helpful features it provides, both for players and game masters. Multi-sided tokens, hidden and annotated maps, token pages, puzzle rooms, and dozens of player handouts make Tomb of Annihilation a clear winner on Roll20, and the best way to enjoy the new D&D campaign online.

The Pros:

• Player-friendly map of Chult that lets you reveal areas as your players explore
• A token page with every token with HP and AC
• A full page of random encounter tokens, organized alphabetically and by type
• Battle Maps feature all the possible extra tokens you may need on the GM layer
• Interactive puzzles let your players physically solve puzzles
• Actual moving gears on the Gears of Hate map!

The Cons:

• The Wreck of the Star Goddess map could use some GM layer annotations for height differences of each ship section.
• Some NPCs and monsters don’t have pictures; their token just has their name stamped on it
• No tokens on Port Nyanzaru map

The Errors: (UPDATE 09/08 11:30 am: The Roll20 Note about Rollable Tokens was already fixed in the published version and as for the second, Roll20 has been fixing any missing bracketed hyperlinks as well)

• The Roll20 Note About Rollable Tokens is taken directly from the Curse of Strahd module (with names from Strahd)
• A few words scattered among the journal notes are bracketed and supposed to be hyper-linked to other entries or pictures

The Verdict: Tomb of Annihilation is the most Roll20-friendly D&D 5e adventure to date, and the module provides most of the content, and some nifty extra features, to take your players on a memorable rumble in the jungle.

A review copy of the module was provided.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: Next week’s session has been moved to Wednesday, September 13. Same start time.

Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

“STOP!” My thoughts rang out in alarm, focusing squarely on the woman in front of me. The woman I’d loved, once.

She turned around. Even by the sickly dim light of the sewers she was still beautiful.

“Who…?” she began, startled. “Your mind is familiar…”

I pulled my hood back and ended the magical disguise that made me appear more human. I focused Ellaria with my most intense stare, hoping me emotions wouldn’t betray me.

“Kazin, it’s so good to see you!” she rushed forward as if to embrace an old friend. For an instant I wanted to take her in my arms. But the slumped man in the corner made me take a step backwards.

“What are you doing?” 

“I’m doing what I must. I’ve been forced to do terrible things. But you can help me escape them!” Her eyes were big, her face pleading.

Words poured out of her mouth. A man named Useth had come to the Mind-Zei monastery, promising more psychic power. Those he couldn’t recruit he enslaved. She was a victim.

I’d been burned by her flames of passion before. I felt an iron sheath close over my heart. I reached out with my mind and focused on hers, willing her thoughts to speak to me. Her mind met mine with outrage that soon turned to fear.

Her thoughts were laid bare. She was concentrating too much on keeping up the deception. She’d gone with Useth willingly. She hungered for more power.

“This isn’t safe, you shouldn’t be in here. He won’t allow you to be in here!” I realized her mind was speaking to mine even as I probed it. I saw her handing over the victims of Yartar to monstrous fish-folk. 

“Don’t do this!” She was speaking directly to me now, her face a mask of terror. “You don’t understand the power they promised us, Kazin. Our minds can be opened!”

That’s when I felt it. The same unnerving energy from the frightening creature in the Zhentarim outpost. A powerful psychic link. A chill dread shot up my spine.

My mind followed the trail, across mountains, forests. Into the ocean. Plunging under the depths. Deeper, deeper. “Stop it!” her voice screamed. But I was close, I could almost see-

A blast of psychic energy rocked me backwards as the link was severed. I blinked and looked up. A trickle of blood dripped out of Ellaria’s nose, and she crumbled to the ground.

I was shocked last week when we made it through an entire session without any combat. Make that two sessions now! This week we had some fun in Yartar infiltrating a riverboat gambling establishment to investigate a rash of disappearances around the town.

We arrived in Yartar and the refugees were quickly taken care of. We went to the local Allfaiths temple to inquire about T.I.M.’s crippled leg, but balked at the cost – 400gp! No amount of haggling persuaded the priest, though it made for some fun role-playing.

After we left Bryseis secretly ferreted over the coin from her sizable purse. T.I.M. would get his leg fixed upon our return.

We went to the Rossolio Manor to deliver the odd young nobleman, Arten, whom we had found in a cocoon. Arten was still afflicted with a strange slimy disease, requiring constant moisture on his skin.

Apparently Arten was the young fuck-up of the family; the matriarch was none too happy to see him returned. She did pay us, but more importantly she offered us a side quest: investigate what happened to him and recover a family pendant he had lost.

Between Korinn’s Invisibility, Halfred’s tracking, and Bryseis and Kazin’s Disguise Self abilities and social checks, we’re damn good at gaining information.

Kazin had previously used Detect Thoughts to see into Arten’s mind, gaining two important pieces of intel: a golden goose statue, and a woman he recognized from his days at the Mind-Zei monastery. Hurray character-relevant quests!

The Lady Rossolio and her manservant Khemed easily identified the golden goose statue as belonging to The Grand Dame, an all-night gambling riverboat for rich folks with money to spend. Time for a fun deception and disguise scenario!

Halfred was able to spot a Merrow underneath the city sewers using his Primeval Awareness. We briefly considered finding a grate and dropping down but we’d already changed into fine clothes for the riverboat, so we continued on our plan.

Korinn went invisible while Halfred, Bryseis, and Kazin strode up to the boat with all the haughty noble swagger we could muster; T.I.M. and Khemed behind us as manservants.

We tried our best but the dice failed us horribly. Both Bryseis and I even used Inspiration and we couldn’t roll better than a damn 11, despite having +7 and +6 to Deception respectively. Sigh, bribes it is.

I was expecting a bit more story-wise from The Grand Dame. Some sort of intrigue or danger. Instead it offered some fun gambling opportunities involving skill checks and dice rolls. Korinn helped us cheat using her invisibility, and even swiped some coins herself.

Hey, heroes need money too; fixing a broken leg is damned expansive!

The real goal was the Mind-Zei woman, Ellaria. She walked in with a young nobleman, and we watched her carefully. She got the young man good and drunk, and they left when the boat docked the next morning. We quickly followed.

Sure enough she turned a corner in an alley and disappeared down a sewer grate. We had no plan but Kazin was acting on pure emotion. The DM and I had formed a backstory: she was the reason Kazin had left his psionic school. She was an ex-lover who had used him to get ahead.

Kazin rushed after and confronted her. She put on a good act, feigning that she was under control and forced against her will. Kazin knew her, however, and knew he couldn’t trust her despite his feelings. He had grown in power and used Detect Thoughts to see into her mind.

Her deception was at the forefront of her mind. When he probed deeper he saw some startling images. A terrible psionic creature in the ocean had established a powerful psychic link with her, channeling its power into hers. She had done all this willingly. This thing she called Useth recruited her and others right out of the monastery.

The entity was unlike anything Kazin had felt, save for when they fought its unnerving disciple at the Zhentarim outpost. He was intrigued, then very afraid.

The psionic creature channeled a psychic overload, severing its link with Ellaria and hemorrhaging her brain. She dropped unconscious, dying.

T.I.M. rushed into action to stabilize her and Kazin cradled her in his arms. He wanted to rush to the temple but they were in the sewers and close to possible answers. It was time to disguise once again.

He and Bryseis assumed the form of Ellaria and the drugged noble to attempt to see what her plan was.

We still weren’t sure why they were kidnapping people, and we had to recover the Rossolio pendant.

We ended the session when several Kuo-Toa rose out of a nearby pool of sewer water and began speaking in Undercommon…oops! Looks like we’ll finally have to fight our way through a problem once again.

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Just a quick reminder that our weekly D&D session has been moved up to tonight to accommodate some out of town players. Start times, as always, should remain the same: around 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern. VOD will go up the following day.

Unfortunately our session next week will also have to be rescheduled. More on that later!

Our goal is to always have a session every week, but sometimes we have to shuffle our session day around to fit our many differing schedules! Occasionally we even do a one-off adventure if we need it.

Thank you for sticking with us.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Next week’s session has been moved to Sunday, September 24. Same start time.

Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

We carefully descended down the ladder deeper into the sewers, my head still ringing from the thunderous blast that erupted from the grate. 

A deep pool of foreboding water lie before us. Across the large room a monstrous merfolk stood rigid, its eye glazed over. Before we could utter a remark, an inhuman voice invaded our minds.

“Welcome, guests. Welcome to my home. I’m glad you were able to join us this evening.”

Everyone looked startled, and I saw a few eyes glance my way. “That… wasn’t me,” I replied telepathically, fear plain in my thoughts.

“Your party has come a long way to find me,” the voice continued. “Atalia* called me ‘Oosith,’ but that was simply a construct.” Even with its mind-speak its voice felt harsh and clipped, causing us to creep backwards from the pool.

My anger overrode my fear. “It was you who went to the monastery after I left. You enslaved them!”

The creature’s mind never wavered. It mentioned that it was doing the bidding of its own master – as Atalia did. I used that against it. “So, you’re another slave?”

“I am no slave!” For a moment we felt the creature’s calm demeanor slip, then it was right back. It beckoned us forward into the murky waters. 

I had no intention of jumping in. We kept it talking and learned about its plans: to turn the nobles of Yartar into its master’s servants.

Bryseis conjured a dancing light, and sent it down into the water. A writhing mass of tentacles curled around it. “You spit in the face of my generosity? Perhaps I should just enslave you as well.”

An ancient creature of the deep rose up out of the water, unfurling three large tentacles. Its white slimy body locked onto us with rows of eyes and a gaping maw. 

*I verified the correct spelling of names with the DM this time!

Two weeks of zero battles suddenly begat a mini-dungeon full of big encounters! This week we fully explored the monster-infested sewers beneath Yartar, coming face-to-tentacle with an evil creature hellbent on enslaving the town.

The ruse Kazin and Bryseis had tried to concoct at the end of last session quickly dissipated when we realized none of us could speak or understand the language of the Kuo-Toa who had just crawled out of a deep pool in the first sewer room.

As the disguised drugged noble I wasn’t keen on being dragged away to share whatever icky diseased fate Arten had, so I signaled to the party to attack.

We unleashed several attacks and spells. The Kuo-Toa responded by adding a few more foes to the mix, rising out of the murky, fetid water.

Korinn charged forward and unleashed a 3rd-level Lightning Bolt spell, frying several weaker fish-folk and deeply wounding two others. The rest of the creatures were no match for us in a fully rested state (despite actually staying up all night gambling, heh).

The DM let us loot the Kuo-Toa’s unique weaponry, including their Sticky Shields and Pincer Staffs. They’re fairly low-level creatures and items but any loot is always welcome.

Turning a corner revealed the controls for the water level in the sewers, represented by turn-wheels and levers. We determined that pulling the levers would drain the water, and I suggested we do just that to try and ferret out any more Kuo-Toa that may be lying in wait.

The plan worked, though not as I anticipated. The drained water disturbed the lair of a nearby Otyugh! The creature screamed and charged at us around the corner.

We still had some distance between us and the creature, and I made sure to keep it that way by assaulting its mind via Dissonant Whispers, sending it fleeing backwards – but not before Bryseis launched a Fireball directly into its face.

On its turn it again ran up, but this time could only reach T.I.M. and me. As is customary, T.I.M. received the bulk of the damage, ending up grappled in one of the disgusting creature’s tentacle appendages.

Seemingly to compensate for his constant battering, T.I.M. is fucking brutal with his Inflict Wounds spell, constantly hitting and always near max damage. Death cleric!

Korinn followed up with yet another Lightning Bolt, downing the creature. Third-level destruction magic is crazy powerful! We also learned that as a Warforged, T.I.M. is immune to disease, which came in handy here and in the following encounter.

We strode past the drained lair of the Otyugh, noting that it would’ve sprang up and surprised us had we not drained the water, causing it to charge at us recklessly.

Halfred was periodically using Primeval Awareness to track the one creature that pinged on his Monstrosity-scanner: a lone merrow. It was nearby but still below us. A multi-level dungeon! We headed northeast and found another sewer great leading down.

I reached down to pull it open, triggering a trap that unleashed the Thunderwave spell on Kazin, Korinn, and Halfred. The damage was a paltry 2d8 but like a cop pulling you over, it did make me much more cautious going forward. Which means shoving T.I.M. and his crazy Perception scores in front.

Descending into the second level we found a large pool. We spotted the merrow far to the northeast. It was standing completely still with a glazed look in its eyes. A voice in our minds reached out as the water before us stirred.

The creature spoke in an oddly formal manner, welcoming us to its home and beckoning us toward its ‘office.’ It knew me by name, and Kazin is always weary of those who share the Awakened powers and know how to wield them.

We learned that this creature serves the same master as Kazin’s former lover, as did the Deep Scion we had fought in the Zhentarim Outpost.

It was not THE master, however. It claimed it was no slave but it definitely answered to someone, or something, even more powerful. That was probably the visions of the ocean Kazin had seen.

This creature had used the humanoid form of ‘Oosith’ to recruit and enslave those from Kazin’s monastery. It revealed itself as an aboleth.

Now, it’s hard not to metagame when you’ve been a DM. I had a hunch the second I saw the mucous skin of Arten that he had been inflicted by an Aboleth’s disease-causing body. An aboleth was the focus of a major late game boss battle during our previous campaign.

I had incorrectly assumed that the aboleth was the big bad master we’d have to deal with later on. I certainly did not expect us to battle such a creature right here and now!

The creature admitted to kidnapping nobles in the hopes of enslaving them, supposedly to control the entire town for its master. When it realized we weren’t about to waltz into its watery pool and sign up for enslavement, it attacked.

An aboleth is by far the most powerful creature we’ve faced yet. It’s a CR 10 aberration with legendary actions (though no lair actions). My first thought was that we had to immediately flee!

Yet this was a fairly short dungeon. Our sorcerers had spent most of their 3rd level spells but we still had everything else, and full hit points. Hell, why not!

It helped that we kicked its ass on initiative. Bryseis used her first round to throw another Fireball, making sure to hit the merrow in the back. The aboleth made its saving throw despite its -1 DEX, but the merrow took the full brunt of the damage. Coupled with Massive Damage, it was down in a single round.

That proved a critical move. We quickly learned the merrow was enslaved by the aboleth, and was going to raise the water level in the entire chamber. That would’ve complicated the fight, giving the aboleth further reach and making us scramble to attack while in water.

Instead, Halfred unleashed his special Widow’s Poison arrows he had crafted Monster Hunter-style from the Death Widow spider. The aboleth failed its save (despite a +6 CON!), incapacitating it. The DM was not pleased.

With the aboleth knocked out we unleashed a flurry of attacks and spells. T.I.M. jumped into the water right next to it, fearlessly attacking it and shrugging of its mucous skin disease.

The aboleth woke up the next round, using its legendary action tail attacks to successfully hit T.I.M. and Kazin for some scary-looking damage.

Once again I had Kazin use Dissonant Whispers to put some distant between us, and our backline continued to assault it with arrows and spells. A hasted Halfred is a damn menace.

The creature died before getting a single round of actions. Oh my.

Even without an actual turn the aboleth could produce some solid damage using its legendary actions. But it was alone and somewhat limited in the water, and we punished it for residing in such a tiny dungeon.

We tried healing and interrogating the merrow but the creature was hostile and feral, and slithered away. Dealing with non-humanoids is not our forte, I guess.

We did get access to the loot room, which had some nice baubles, nobles’ clothes, and a crap ton of money (~1000 gold!). We also secured the family pendant that Lady Rossolio had tasked us with recovering.

We saved the town of Yartar from an insidious threat lurking below, and next week we can officially complete the quest. Then we can continue our journey to… what were we doing again? Something about giants?

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Read the full preview at Pixelkin

Fortnite exists in that odd space between a public beta test and a full release. Epic Games’ online tower-defense, third-person action hybrid can be purchased right now; but it’s actually launching as a free-to-play title next year. The closest equivalent is a Steam Early Access game. An Early Access purchase grants access to the live game right now, as well as some extra loot.

Fortnite’s laborious focus on grinding and digging through random loot mars an otherwise fun experience of scavenging, leveling, shooting, building, and defending with friends.

Read the full preview at Pixelkin

A press copy of Prepared 2 was provided for the purposes of this review.

Designed by: Jon Sawatsky
Published by: Kobold Press

Kobold Press’ Prepared 2: A Dozen One-Shot Adventures for 5th Edition is the follow up to last year’s Prepared: A Dozen Adventures for 5th Edition. Its premise is simple: to provide several encounters of varying levels and styles that a Game Master can slot into his or her campaign.

Not only are the encounters more interesting this time around, but the book contains some welcome organization features, role-playing notes, and virtual tabletop friendly maps to help a GM successfully run these events and mini-dungeons.

I’ll go over each of the 12 encounters before giving my overall final thoughts at the end. Obvious spoilers below!

“Dib’s Wagon of Doom” (1st-2nd level) should be immediately familiar to anyone who has read the first Prepared book. Dib the goblin returns with another machine of war, a fortified wagon that’s already rolled up in the middle of a town.

Instead of acting as a miniature dungeon, the War Wagon acts like a quirky boss fight. The players will have to damage the wagon enough or breach the door to cause the goblins to spill out and attack.

It’s a very simple, easy-to-run encounter that can take place in any town, and I like the added humor of goblins sporting wrestling moves. The entire thing is just absurd enough to be enjoyable, and a fun random encounter to occur in any town for lower level heroes.

“A Starry Breach” (2nd-3rd) would be a bit trickier to include, as it takes place around an abandoned outpost in a frozen land. A void dragon wrymling has opened a breach between worlds, providing a low-level boss fight next to some very dangerous terrain.

There are extensive notes on the primary NPC researcher who accompanies the players, and could make for an excellent role-playing opportunity. If the PCs don’t subdue him during the final fight, he’s turned into a specter and becomes an ally of the dragon.

“Ooze Tomb of the Oathbreaker” (3rd-4th) may be my favorite encounter of the bunch. It centers on a contamination spreading from a lake.

A centaur camp asks for aid and the PCs must cross the hostile area full of saber-tooth tigers, panicked bugbears, and storms of acid rain and falling ooze to reach an emerged tomb in the middle of the lake.

The one room dungeon contains a mummy with a neat backstory, who could offer the players a quest instead of a battle. The encounter includes everything I like: NPC allies, role-playing good and evil creatures, lots of optional encounters, and a neat theme: the creeping death and decay from an arisen evil.

“Assault of the Steel Horde” (4th-5th)  is almost too cool for a one-shot encounter. A giant drill-like war machine emerges from the ground containing an army of automated soldiers, represented as Animated Armor and a Fellforged commander.

It’s a plot ripped out of a Twilight Zone episode (like all good one-shot plots) as the soldiers perform maneuvers for some ancient forgotten war.

The encounter is as simple as it gets: kill all the soldiers. There are no answers to be found but plenty of story beats could be created.

I know if I ran this encounter my players would be very interested in learning more about the this ancient war, the technology of the cool drill machine, and the hole from which it emerged. On the flipside, that could potentially mean a lot more work for a DM who was just hoping for a one-off encounter!

“The Void Walker” (5th-6th) has a really fun premise but I’m not enthused about the execution. A Godzilla-like (Tarrasque-like?) behemoth is on its way toward a city. The creature itself is little more than an environmental hazard; the PC’s main job is to stop the pilot.

I love the concept of a Shadow of the Colossus/God of War battlefield on and around a giant creature. But in this case the PCs are provided a map to a portal, and the portal simply transports them directly to the creature’s shoulder.

Battling on the platforms of a moving creature is awesome, but teleporting there is lame. I think this could’ve worked better as a higher-level encounter, and forced the PCs to use their resources to actually scale/fly/climb their way up in a very dangerous, epic environment.

I love a good mystery in a tabletop game, and that’s just what we get in “Hell Comes A’ Glittering” (5th-6th). People are dying in a town and the PCs are tasked with investigating the rash of murders.

The trail leads them to a gemcutter who basically sold her soul to a devil. Well the souls of others anyway, which is kind of a sweet deal. The PCs gather clues by examining bodies and murder sites and interrogating suspects, eventually leading them to a showdown between the gemcutter and a Gilded Devil.

This encounter, like many in Prepared 2, utilizes specific enemies from Kobold Press’ Tomb of Beasts to drive the theme, such as crystalline devils, and the gilded devil who literally eats gemstones. I love the investigation angle and the many opportunities for fun role-playing.

If your PCs are traveling by boat you can run “Neither By Sail, Nor By Oar” (5th-6th) to introduce a horror-themed series of encounters. Aboard the ship is an evil statue that begins driving all the NPCs on board mad (the text mentions that the hardened adventure PCs are immune, but I would still totally fuck with them).

There’s some delightfully unnerving encounters that play out like a horror film, including birds dive-bombing the boat and sailors found staring blankly at the statue. It culminates in a nighttime raid by some cultists. This is a really neat idea that could be applied during any travel scenario with a bit of tweaking.

“Dark Night at the ODEUM” (7th-8th) is similar to the first Prepared‘s “A Bad Night for Betting,” in that the PCs are attending a thing in town, and then bad thing happens. I like these scenarios because it lets the PCs act as actual people-saving heroes, rather than the usual dungeon-delving murder-hobos.

That said the stage-play doesn’t feel quite as interesting as a mutated dog-mole fight run amok. It’s mostly a scene to show off the Herald of Darkness creature, also exclusive to the Tomb of Beasts. The audience turns into a series of creepy environmental hazards, so the entire encounter boils down to a single, but potentially cool, boss fight.

“The Tangled Temple” (8th-9th) is a fun mini-dungeon, and I’m already thinking of ways to include it in our upcoming Tomb of Annihilation campaign.

The titular jungle temple had been sealed off to contain a nasty disease called mineral rot, aka Grayscale from A Song of Ice and Fire. An outpost was built to excavate the temple but the explorers recently succumbed to the disease. The disease grants some interesting properties to foes, though I’d be wary of passing it on to players who didn’t have a way to cure it.

The Vine Troll Skeleton boss fight at the end looks scary as hell, and another reason why Prepared 2 works well with Tomb of Beasts – and not so well without it.

“The Sparking Spire” (8th-9th) provides one of the better-looking maps of the bunch. It looks like an underwater cave but is actually a giant spire on a beach. It’s home to a young blue dragon, and the coral along the cave walls come equipped with some painful electrical hazards.

The map, like many of the higher-level encounters, is a bit too large and empty, however, containing only a single other encounter with some drowned maidens.

The “Valley of Black Tears” (10th-11th) provides some interesting challenges for traveling through the deadly winds of a valley, including air elementals, damaging gusts of wind, and an encroaching madness that assaults each PC in a unique way.

The actual destination is a large cave containing a single encounter with a spirit naga and some gibbering mouthers. It’s not bad but in this case the journey feels more interesting than the destination.

The final encounter, “A Shroud for Agantha” (11th+) provides another mini-dungeon that’s a bit too large with only a pair of encounters (as well as a third encounter outside). The dwarf leader Agantha made a pact with a celestial being, and now she needs a special artifact to extend that pact.

It’s a simple fetch quest inside an old armory. It’s a nice map but there’s little going on until a battle with some wraiths at the end. A unique creature called a skein witch appears to offer the players an interesting choice at the end, and once again you’ll need the Tomb of Beasts to use her.

Included at the end of the book are details for several unique new magic items, as well as player maps to use as tactical battlefields. Four magic items are listed as major rewards from some of the encounters, and they all offer neat quirks and abilities.

All the maps are constructed with 5-ft square grids, making them easy to use in Roll20, although there are no grid-less versions. Some of the maps are a bit larger than need be, letting you insert your own encounters or traps as you like.

My favorite part of the book are the little “In Your Campaign” side boxes in each section that explain that adventures’ regions, enemies, and plot in a few sentences.

It’s an effective at-a-glance way to tell which encounters you can easily slot into your campaign, as well as how to use them within Kobold Press’ own world of Midgard. It also offers suggestions for replacement monsters in case you don’t have the Tomb of Beasts, which brings me to a very important point.

If you own the Tomb of Beasts, Prepared 2 is a great tool for showing off many of the cool, unusual creatures that can be found there. Void dragons, skeletal plant trolls, undead warlocks, wraith-powered automatons, and crystalline devils are among the many creatures that can be effectively used here, often centering on specific interesting abilities or lairs.

Conversely, if you don’t have Kobold Press’ version of the D&D Monster Manual, many of these encounters lose their luster. Replacement monsters are often more generic, and a poor facsimile. It’s unfortunate that Prepared 2 doesn’t include the relevant statblocks.

You don’t have to own Tomb of Beasts to use these encounters, but I’m not sure I could fully recommend Prepared 2 without it.

Pros:

• 12 encounters offering a range of varied experiences, from heavy role-playing to heavy combat.
• Most encounters feature fairly generic locations, making them easy to slot into a campaign.
• The “In Your Campaign” section of each encounter helps give an overall impression of how the encounter works, and what you’ll need.
• Purchasing the digital booklet gives you separate player maps, and all are fitted with 5-ft square grids for virtual tabletops like Roll20.
• Almost every encounter effectively showcases several cool creatures from the Tomb of Beasts.

Cons:

• Practically requires the Tomb of Beasts to get the most out of nearly all the encounters.
• The higher level mini-dungeons feel relatively empty.

The Verdict: Prepared 2 is superior to the first Prepared in every way, providing a plethora of even more enjoyable, varied encounters to slot into your campaign.

A press copy of Prepared 2 was provided for the purposes of this review.

Read the full review at Pixelkin

The Monster Hunter series has been around for over a decade, though far more popular in Japan than in the US. The world of gigantic monsters, challenging combat, and hours of grinding and crafting weapons and armor often remains impenetrable for many would-be fans.

Monster Hunter Stories refreshingly succeeds at being a more intuitive, kid-friendly spin-off game. It incorporates basic elements of Pokémon’s monster-collecting while still using the core tenets of Monster Hunter’s questing and hunting tasks to create a welcoming, yet deeply rich experience.

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Read the full article at Pixelkin

All eyes are on the Nintendo Switch this year, as well they should be. Nintendo has been in a weird place with home consoles over the last decade. The Wii exploded onto the scene as a gimmicky toy, then quickly collected dust in everyone’s closest. The Wii U failed to capture an audience at all, reaching only 10% of the sales of its predecessor. Launching earlier this year, the Switch is faring much better, including a killer app like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and featuring full portability.

It’s the portability that had me worried about my favorite Nintendo product of this century: the Nintendo 3DS. With the announcement and launch of the Switch, I had concerns over how Nintendo’s handheld-only console would fare when stacked up with a device that could do both.

Turns out my concerns were completely unfounded. The six-year old Nintendo 3DS is having its best year ever in 2017.

Read the full article at Pixelkin

Storm King’s Thunder Session 22 on Sunday, September 24

For the second week in a row we need to shuffle our schedule around a bit to fit various vacations and business trips. Even then one of us will be calling in from a hotel when we go live on Sunday evening!

Start time as always remains the same (somewhere between 7/10pm Pacific/Eastern and 7:30/10:30p) on my YouTube channel.

Hopefully next week we’ll be back to Fridays!

Read the full review at Pixelkin

The Metroid series is held in high esteem. It helped jump start an entirely new genre born out of platforming and exploration. Super Metroid (1994) is considered one of the best games ever made, yet Nintendo has been painfully quiet on any Metroid news or games over the last decade – until now.

Metroid: Samus Returns isn’t quite the new 2D Metroid game we were hoping for; it’s a remake of the second game in the series, 1991’s Metroid II: Return of Samus for the Game Boy. A lot of impressive went work into updating the old monochrome visuals into stunning 3D models and animated backgrounds, while the core gameplay of exploring a labyrinthine world full of secrets and power-ups remains just as compelling all these years later.

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

“They’re here,” Halfred said, after snapping out of his trance-like state. I’d seen him do this countless times, but it still creeped me out to watch his eyes glaze over as his senses projected outward several miles. “Just over this ridge.”

We’d come to a large rock wall nestled among the Nether Mountains. We had been tracking the Giants for the better part of the day, and knew they weren’t moving.

Korinn cast Invisibility on Halfred, who immediately took to the air on his new Winged Boots.

We calmly waited as best we could, not daring to speak with enemies so close. We began hearing hammers and picks on the other side of the rocks. 

A sudden whispering voice nearly made me fall off my horse, until I realized Halfred had returned.

“A pair of them, armored giants,” Halfred reported. “They’re looking over a gang of goblins who are digging. A Hobgoblin is keeping them in line with a whip. There was also a fiery dog looking on.”

My heart sank; that was more than just the giants. But we still had the element of surprise, and time to prepare. We began drinking potions and quietly casting spells while Halfred kept watch. We formed a plan, and let Halfred take point.

T.I.M. and I crept toward the crude path that ran to the pit, and I got my first glimpse of the giant creatures. Skin the color of ash and metal, hair the color of fire, they towered 15 feet tall, carrying swords nearly as big. T.I.M. stood rigid while I calmed my racing mind and waited for the signal.

I expected the signal to be an arrow, but the damn halfling has no fear when it comes to hunting Giants. Halfred appeared in a sudden flash of whirling steel, striking the nearest Fire Giant directly in the eyes while hovering in front of its face.

The giant roared in agony, and gods help us we roared back, and charged.

We travel over 300 miles and finally take the fight to the Giants in this week’s session.

The journey from Bryn Shander to Everlund has been long and not-quite perilous. We began our crazy road trip back in Session 14 – over two months ago.

We had a few pit stops in places like Luskan and Mirabar. Most notably we stopped in Xantharl’s Keep to root out the Zhentarim outpost. We’d killed Captain Xelan and dealt a major blow to the Zhentarim – or possibly painted a bigger target on our backs. Either way.

We witnessed more Giant destruction in Triboar – a warning to what could have happened to Bryn Shander had we not been there to help defend it.

We brought refugees to Yartar, then helped a noble family investigate a rash of disappearances, leading to a mini-dungeon crawl and a big fight against an aboleth in the sewers.

I think at this point all of us were ready for us to get back to our main quest – getting to Everlund, talking to the Harpers, and jumping back into dealing with the Giants directly.

This we made it all the way from Yartar to Everlund (over 200 miles) with nary an encounter.

In Everlund we did a bit more shopping before visiting the wizard tower and speaking to Harper leader Krowen Valharrow.

Krowen had heard of our various exploits. We confirmed our identities by handing over the Clockwork Dragonling that Thwip had given us back in Hundelstone. He wasn’t pleased that Thwip had spilled the beans about their Harper Teleportation Network, but was willing to let us on as official allies of the group, provided we complete a quest first.

Unfortunately that quest required even more travel. Thankfully our DM wasn’t interested in bogging us down with random encounters right now, so we quickly made the journey North to Hawk’s Nest, and met with a Lord Pylan Cavilos. Our mission: to retrieve some stolen money.

Lord Cavilos was a nice old retired adventurer who bred Hippogriffs. The stolen money was to pay the townsfolk their wages. We get to feel like heroes while also getting a chance to hunt monsters? Hell yeah!

Halfred’s Ranger-ness came in very handy here. With Giants as a Favored Enemy he was able to track them almost immediately once we reached the site of the stolen money on the road.

We found them in a small excavation site among some rocks in the Nether Mountains. Korinn cast Invisibility on Halfred, who used his new Winged Boots to survey the area. He came back and reported a pair of Fire Giants watching a dozen goblins, shackled and digging through the ground with pickaxes. A hobgoblin captain and hell hound helped keep them in line.

That was a lot of Bad Things, but once again we had the element of surprise on our side. We took the time to buff ourselves up for the fight. T.I.M. cast Aid on the party, Korinn drank her Potion of Heroism, and I had Kazin drink his Potion of Invulnerability and cast Mirror Image.

T.I.M. and Kazin approached the main entrance while the Sorcerers climbed up the rock wall to overlook the pit. Halfred remained flying and invisible, and got to deliver the first blow.

He went right for the eyes.

The DM let Halfred approximate a targeted shot to one of the Fire Giants’ eyes. His roll resulted in half-blinding the brute, granting him disadvantage. Korinn Twinned a Haste spell on Halfred and Kazin. Bryseis began raining down Chaos Bolts (Fireballs wouldn’t do much against Fire Giants), and T.I.M. and Kazin strode up to the Giants for some brave tanking duties.

I used my first action to cast Fear on both Giants. They only had a +2 to WIS saves but both made the save, negating my most powerful ability. We ganged up on the nearest giant, with Korinn throwing in a Lightning Bolt spell for good measure.

The Hobgoblin Captain ran at T.I.M. and me, but T.I.M.’s 21 AC came in handy, and it never landed a blow (in fact, T.I.M. would use his Sticky Shield to disarm him).

The hell hound was never a factor thanks to the goblins. In a surprisingly awesome twist, the goblins recognized us! It was Snigbat, the goblin who had betrayed his boss back in the Dripping Caves in order to save the pups.

Now those goblin babies were all grown up. Somehow they had traveled hundreds of miles and been captured by Fire Giants.

As soon as they saw us Snigbat urged his people to help us. Still stackled at the feet and armed with nothing but pickaxes they surged out of the pit and surrounded the hell hound.

Not only did that keep one of the foes busy, but the damn goblins landed blow after blow! Halfred only had to send a few arrows its way and together they finished the beast off. Of course it did murder the shit out of two goblins but hey, still a solid ratio.

The half-blinded fire giant fell to our onslaught of blows, but the other was able to get in some really nasty strikes with its massive greatsword.

I was incredibly frustrated with my Mirror Image spell. With three duplicates I only need to roll a 6 or higher on a d20 to deflect a blow to a dupe. The first time the giant attacked I rolled a 4; the second time a 1. God damn it!

Thankfully my Potion of Invulnerabily gave me resistance to all damage, which probably ended up saving my life (each hit did 25+ damage). Still, it meant that both my spells were completely useless in this fight. That’s really painful since as a Warlock I only have up to two spells to cast in any one fight.

But hey, I’m building more towards a martial build anyway. In a later round I dealt almost 40 damage thanks to Korinn’s haste. Our combined efforts downed the Hobgoblin and second Fire Giant.

Once again I’m surprised at how well we handled a much tougher foe. But we had a lot going for us: a surprise round, knowledge of the terrain and enemies, time to buff before the fight, fully rested, and surprise goblin allies. All those elements let us kill our first Giants in a straight-up fight.

We reached a new record for XP earned in a single session, over 4000 per person. We’re close to level 7, and presumably we’ve secured the gold for Cavilos. Hopefully our goblin buddies may have some information about what the hell the Fire Giants are doing around here.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Read the full review at Pixelkin

At my daughter’s preschool graduation she confidently announced that she wanted to be an artist when she grew up. She draws and colors every day. Her desk is a warzone of papers, crayons, paints, Play-Doh, and magic markers.

Like most kids she’s also in love with her iPad, an old hand-me-down. She watches videos and plays games. Nothing had prepared me for how well two of her favorite activities could intersect with the newest Dr. Panda product. Dr. Panda Plus: Home Designer combines the creative joys of drawing with the magic of augmented reality to transcribe your creations into a kid-friendly digital playhouse.

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Many of my favorite games stick with me over the years not because of finely-honed combat systems or impressive visual effects. Often it’s the story and characters that remain the most memorable aspects of the those cherished gaming experiences.

Masquerada: Songs and Shadows has one of the best stories I’ve experienced in years. It’s an epic tale about heroic sacrifice, forbidden love, political betrayal, and self discovery set within a richly realized world of urban renaissance and ancient mystery. Masquerada’s tactical combat is serviceable, but it’s the story and characters that demand you experience this unique RPG.

Read the full review at Pixelkin

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!

Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”

Lord Roaringhorn met us in the meeting room. The estate was swarming with richly dressed people arriving for the party.

I was impressed with the diversity. Every race in Faerun was here for the gala. They laughed, giggled, and smiled while people around the world suffered from the Giants. I reminded myself we were here for a good cause.

“This way my friends, this way!” Lord Roaringhorn waved his arms as if to sweep us up. We looked at each other awkwardly. Korinn and Bryseis wore beautiful, expensive dresses. The Dragonborn’s dress looked ready to burst from her muscular physique. 

The rest of us remained in our armor, robes, and leathers. These days we always expected the worst.

We heard the sounds of voices and music as we approached the large doors to the feasting hall. Lord Roaringhorn threw them open with a flourish, and all eyes of the Neverwinter nobility turned toward us.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Lord Roaringhorn began, “I present to you, the Saviors of Nightstone, the Defenders of Ten Towns…the Graham Cracker Crew!”

This week was another session of logistics and role-playing as we completed our initiation quest for the Harpers, gained access to their Teleportation Circles, and immediately used them to travel halfway across the world to Neverwinter.

We discovered what the Fire Giants had been using the goblins to dig out last session: a large metallic object buried in water and earth inside a giant crater. It clearly had some sort of religious significance.

Unfortunately it was huge and heavy, and we were unable to excavate it. We did the next best thing and reburied it, hopefully at least slowing them down.

Snigbat, our old goblin ally, informed us that the Giants had access to a divining rod that had discovered it. Which means the Giants would be back.

We suggested that Snigbat and the goblins make their way South to the High Forest. Giants were terrorizing all of Faerun but they seemed to steer clear of heavily forested regions. We gave them some rations and bid them good luck.

We used Korinn’s Bag of Holding to help transport the gold pieces the Giants had stolen back to Hawk’s Nest.

Lord Pylan was ecstatic at our return with the town’s wages. He was so happy he offered to host us all for dinner, which provided a fun little role-playing scenario for us and his adventurer-hopeful young daughters.

Afterwards he gave us each a free hippogriff. Nice! With all the travel we’ve been doing in this campaign we can definitely appreciate the immediate upgrade.

We took to the skies and landed on top of Moongleam tower back in Everlund, striding into Krowen’s office to report our success. Krowen was annoyed (jealous?) at our receiving the hippogriffs, but pleased we completed our task.

The teleportation circles were now open to us. We could travel to any of the cities on the network. Sorry hippogriffs, now we have an even better travel plan! It was bad timing that we had just gotten such cool mounts only to have to leave them in Everlund while we teleported hundreds of miles to Neverwinter.

We’re running low on quests, with the only two places of note being Goldenfields and Neverwinter. We opted for the latter based on the note Bryseis found in Xelan’s office. The Weevil was due to arrive in Neverwinter around this time, and we wanted to be there.

The Harpers in Neverwinter had no leads on any Zhentarim safehouses however, so we had to pursue our other quest: meeting with Lord Zelraun Roaringhorn.

Lord Roaringhorn had been throwing a number of grand parties and galas for the Neverwinter nobility in order to raise money for rebuilding efforts in cities devastated by Giant attacks. Since we had witnessed first-hand the destruction in Bryn Shander, Luskan, and Triboar, we agreed to be his guests of honor. He agreed to sponsor us if we “performed well.”

What followed was an awkward, but funny scenario at the Roaringhorn Gala. The DM had us roll Initiative and presented various role-playing scenes one at a time.

The scenes involved rich people mostly trying to get us to dance like proverbial monkeys on a leash. Bryseis ended up with the least offensive one, as an older man talked military tactics. Halfred tried to hit on Zelraun’s girlfriend, providing the highlight of the evening with a very horny scene involving his weird grabber arm. T.I.M. awkwardly danced with a woman, Korinn disarmed a creepy pick-up artist, and Kazin refused to show off (then slightly teased) his telepathy to a bunch of giggling women.

I’m not entirely sure where we’re going with this scenario (we joked that it’s leading to an orgy). It can be a fun change of pace to let loose with some silly role-playing within a structured environment, but we kind of just had that with the dinner at Hawk’s Nest. Hopefully this gala will lead us to tackling some more Zhentarim, or give us our next lead into the Giants.

Streamed, recorded and uploaded every week. Subscribe for our weekly adventures. Join us live on Fridays at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!