The Sharn D&D Campaign in Roll20

The campaign is set in the Eberron city of Sharn.

Chadwick Longjaw the Bard inherits a book store from his uncle Ziggy.  The book store employs a bugbear Druid named Raleen.

The big story plot follows the Princes of the Apocalypse, but with the entire story taking place in The City of Towers.

The first bunch of sessions were run through The Sunless Citadel, but with a few changes:

• Orsik the dwarf Wizard and Siegfried the aasimar Paladin (two new players) were introduced as companions of Sir Braford and Sherwynn.  There was a fifth player named Michael but he had to drop out of the game.
• The white dragon is sentient and intelligent and it is trying to break into the organized crime scene.  He asks the group to evict Belak from the grove because he's drawing attention to the Dragon's operations.
• The white dragon is manufacturing healing potions which are addictive instead of wine.  This is a hanging thread.
• The gnome prisoner is actually a secret agent on the trail of Vanifer.  I describe him as a gnome-sized young Sean Connery.  This is another hanging thread.
• Meepo the kobold had a romantic relationship with Chadwick.  The kobold becomes the group's companion and is later delegated to minding the book store.

The heroes make it all the way down to the grove and chase off Belak.  Braford and Sherwynn both die and Siegfried vows justice (of course).

The party also recovers Treasure of the Fire Lords.  This book leads to the next clue, the dagger Tinderstrike is in the possession of the dragon Nightscale in the Forge of Fury.  This is a breadcrumb clue.

The party recovers the elemental globe and bring it back to Sharn.  It explodes leveling a tower but the group manages to avoid taking the blame.  Siegfried being an aasimar has some sort of connection to the elemental evil.  I don't know what that is to be honest, I just noted that the cover of the Princes book depicts a bunch of aasimar's so I thought it would be cool to leverage that.  So after he handles the elemental globe of air he manifests the symbol for the cult of air on his wrist.

BELAK STRIKES BACK

Belak strikes back at the heroes.  He attacks them at the bookstore.  I decided that he is a member of the fire cult so it only makes sense to have him accompanied by monsters with some sort of fire capabilities.  Also, the subsequent fires in book store caused a bit of tension for the players.

Thurl Merosska makes a mistake

After the fight at the bookstore with Belak, Siegfried heads out to stock up on supplies and runs into Thurl Merosska.  Thurl recognizes the symbol on Sieg's wrist and thinks the Paladin is some sort of reinforcement for his cult.  So he invites Siegfried to meet him at Feathergale Spire.

Siegfried rounds up the group and they head to the spire.  Note that Raleen is absent from this session.

Thurl takes them on the manticore hunt.  At this point I've decided the air and fire cults are working together to counter the water and earth cults who are working together and Thurl proceeds to get them caught up on the cult's activities.

Halfway through the manticore hunt Raleen joins the group again.  I decide that a druid bugbear is pretty rare occurrence so her presence alerts Thurl to who the group really is.  He tries to stab them in the back when they're engaged with the manticores.  Thurl is killed.

The Forge of Fury

I run into an issue with the group.  They're horrible at picking up clues.  I really have to ramp up the communications.  In their defense, it's likely the fact we're playing in Roll20 that is contributing to this.  The lack of discussion in our online games is a huge contrast to the table banter.

So the group heads down into the Forge of Fury.  They enter the caves via the northern secret passage listed in the module and proceed up to the Mountain's Door area.  Unfortunately, they get in over their heads and I have to come up with a way to avoid a group wipe.

As background, after their encounter at the grove, Belak and Vanifer make a visit to the Forge to recover Tinderstrike from Nightscale the dragon.  During their visit they "convert" the occupants of the Forge level to the fire cult.  The occupants of the Mountain Door level are not converted and there's a fracture in loyalties.

When the group encounters Yarrak the Old and the rest of the gang in the Mountain Door it turns out Yarrack's brother was a friend of Chadwick -- because Chadwick is a mix between Indiana Jones and Buckaroo Banzai.  Yarrak's brother was caught snooping around the Forge level by the newly converted cultists and was executed, so Yarrak asks the group to clear out the cultists from the Forge level.

I'm thinking all these guys belong to the Daask gang in Sharn, so the players might be getting themselves caught up in an organized crime power play.

The party clears out the Forge level and have an audience with Nightscale.  Chadwick lands a crit in a performance check to befriends the dragon.  So the dragon tells them Vanifer and Belak have Tinderstrike and he overheard them mention a place called Sacred Moon Hall.  And in true form, the group completely ignores the clue.  /facepalm/

Back in Sharn

The party returns to the bookstore to find it in ruins.  An explosion has destroyed most of the shop tower and the party finds Meepo's severed ear with a note, he's been taken to Feathergale Spire.

The group wasn't really surprised by the reprisal, they discussed assaulting the Spire prior to the Forge adventure.  In the Princes book there's a note about the cultists making a move against the players so this works out.

So the players assault Feathergale Spire.  They roll up on the entrance and fight their way to the top.  The battle is staged mostly in the central staircase with the players spread out over three levels.  I decide the cultists at the bottom of the tower set the building on fire and then retreat into the city streets.

At the top of the tower I have Aerisi make an appearance.  She lashes out at the group a couple of times and then uses the telescope to transport herself to the entrance of the Temple of Howling Hatred.  Siegfried accidentally activates the telescope and is transported there as well.  In this case I describe the cave location as a ziggurat floating miles above Sharn, invisible to the naked eye.  When Siegfried enters the structure it does a Tardis sort of thing, we decide he is captured and we bookmark his fate for later because the rest of the party decide to remain in Sharn.

The Temple of Howling Hatred

I decided the intermediate temples are all in limbo.  They are still interconnected but their geographical locations are indiscernible.  I'm imagining them as intermediary points which act as hops between the elemental planes -- Howling Caves, Plunging Torrents, etc. --  and the starter dungeons on the material plane.

Thus, the Temple of Howling Hatred is located inside a floating ziggurat above Sharn but still connects to the other temples, because magic.

I had to replace Siegfried so his player isn't bored.  I decide Windharrow has a connection with Chadwick and shows up to offer help.

The players hire a skycoach to take them up to the ziggurat.  I don't make any fuss about the logistics of this because I want to keep the story focus on the goal, not the journey.

Oooh!!!  I definitely need to have their actions bring the ziggurat crashing down on Sharn!!!

The party hits the temple.

First post!

Short background.  I've been playing RPG's since I was eight years old.  I started out with the D&D box sets, then AD&D, shadowrun, GURPS, Top Secret, Dragonquest, etc.  Growing up as a kid we when there was no such thing as the internet, this is the stuff that kept us busy.

Fast forward to 2006.  I decided to rekindle my relationship with RPG's.  I went out and got myself D&D3.5 and all the Eberon books and with a bit of trial and error finally settled into a gaming group with a bunch of folks who I've been playing since with.

Over time, we outgrew D&D, and desiring a new venue, decided to give Vampires: The Masqurade a go.  That got old pretty quick so we moved to Prometheans.  As the stories progressed an element of pulp action kept making it's way into the stories.  This caused a conflict in that White Wolf's games are supposed to be more about the character's conflicts and struggles rather than pulp action.

That brought us to Savage Worlds.  What an amazing game system.

We've been playing Savage Worlds since October 2011 and the campaign setting we settled on was the one titled "The Day After Ragnarok".  Words fail me when I try to describe how much fun we've had each week. My biggest regret is not having kept a more detailed journal of the stories.

So we've just launched a new campaign set in the Savage Worlds setting called "Totems of the Dead" and I figured this time around I'd take the time to journal the stories.

So this blog is an experiment of sorts in recording our crazy adventures.