Awesome D&D campaign stories

The Game Room
1

Not entirely sure what forum to put this in- Dungeon & Dragons, is Game Room, stories are Cafe Society, a game so good it was serialized as a story belongs…?

I often lurk at the Order of the Stick forum in GitP. I like to have or watch people have long discussions about what’s happening and what’s going to happen, I only know two other OOTS fans irl, and the thread here only says so much before it goes dormant.

So I was reading the discussion on the latest strip (don’t worry, no spoilers) and someone said it reminded them of… something I had no idea what they were talking about. With a link. And a couple of other people said that’s what they were thinking too. So I went to check it out, see what they were talking about.

The link lead to this page of pure awesomeness. Make sure you have a few hours free before you start to read it.

2

Those are a couple of pretty damn epic campaigns, with a very creative (and very nasty) DM. I like the fact that he errs on the side of cinematic moments and the Rule of Cool to balance the general brutality of the campaigns. I’ve got a (non-D&D) campaign in the planning stages that’s on a similar scale, and I hope my players and I can pull it off well enough to generate similar accounts.

3

Man, I wish I had been in on those campaigns!

4

I’m glad I wasn’t. They’re great stories, but the play itself really doesn’t seem like my style. Fortunately, I can still enjoy the stories afterwards without having actually played them.

5

Neat thread. I’m going to waste a lot of time reading through that.

Chronos, if you don’t mind my asking, how does your play style differ from that described in those posts?

6

I think the DM let them get away with too much. It would have made things feel too easy for me.

7

Too easy?! Man, you must play in some rough games!

8

Indeed–I’d say the campaigns described come up just short of the roughest campaign I’ve ever played in. That was the one in which there was effectively no rapid healing. There was no divine or nature magic at all, in fact. Healing potions worked, but they took a full hour to take effect. My character was the rare exception–his psion levels gave him access to Cellular Adjustment, which the DM either forgot to rule out or couldn’t think of an excuse to exclude. Between that and a few other tricks in his build, he was one of the most survivable characters around, despite only have d4s for hit dice.

9

I haven’t played a campaign since I was a teen (and then it was 2nd edition A DnD).
I wish I didn’t live in Fuckin Nowhere, Texas.

10

Well, not to advertise my own thread, but I’m recruiting for a D&D game over skype, if you want to get some D&D time in Texas.

11

I didn’t say that the challenges themselves were easy, I said that the DM let them get away with too much. Wasn’t that the campaign where the divine caster cast Bless Water on the rain, to defeat an undead army, for instance?

12

Not exactly. He expended all of his power for the day to mingle holy water with the rain, and it distracted the undead horde slightly–basically, a few of the smarter undead ducked for cover while the bulk of the shamblers continued to attack and take very minor damage. It also damaged one of the PCs. Overall, the stunt gave them a slight advantage in fleeing for their lives, which hardly constitutes “defeating an undead army”.

13

I really haven’t played in about 20 years.
I’ll see if I can’t find something on a torren… bookstore.

14

Sorry, that was to Babale.

Can you recommend any sourcebooks that I need/want please?

15

I wouldn’t call that “letting them get away with stuff”. I’d call that “letting them find creative solutions to difficult problems”.

16

Except that Bless Water can’t do that. There’s still plenty of room to find creative solutions within the rules.

17

The character climbed up on the roof in a lightning storm to pray for divine intervention and got it. While not mechanically covered by the rules, it’s very much in keeping with the theme of a devout character in a dire situation, and is exactly the sort of thing Rule Zero is for. The rules are there to facilitate roleplay, not stomp on it.

Certainly, there are other things he could have done that were within the normal run of game mechanics. Archivists have access to an awful lot of spells, so without knowing his exact list, it’s hard to say what he else he might have done. It could have been within the character’s power to cast Fly and/or Air Walk spells on the party, or conjure an Obscuring Mist and Dimension Door them far enough away to get a head start. He might have also summoned bunches of diversions–er, “allies”–with various spells, or just layered buffs on everyone long enough to punch through and make a break for it.

That doesn’t support your initial contention, though–that the DM made things “too easy” by letting the archivist do what he wanted to do. In fact, any of those other things would have cost him less to do–they wouldn’t have used up all of his spell slots, gotten him struck by lightning, or damaged one of his teammates. Instead, with the DM’s approval, he paid a higher price for an entertaining bit of roleplaying and a tactical advantage.

Why? Because it was more fun that way.

18

Well said, Balance. If the only reason a GM can come up with for not allowing the player to do something is, “There’s no rule to cover that,” then that’s a failure on the GM’s part.

19

This last week in our War of the Burning Sky campaign, we invaded Hell to get back the Torch of the Burning Sky that we had lost to Kashyk, a Bearded Devil recurring villain.

25th level 4e party. We usually have 4 regulars and then 3 that show 1-2 times per year (for a once-a-month game). Amazingly, we had all 7. My Bard, then Cleric, Warlord, Fighter, Ranger, Sorcerer…I don’t remember the last guy, Paladin or Fighter of some sort.

Racing toward Kashyk’s throne against a party of Shahalesti (Elf) Paladins and a Cleric. Arrived at the same time. Battling Platoons (mobs) of Bearded Devil minions. My Words of Protective Fate protect us from a good half-dozen crits.

The Elves cross the River of Blood before we do. But once we get across, our Cleric pulls out a nuclear blast of Turn Undead that pretty much clears a path except for one minion threatening our back ranks and giving them pause to move away and take opportunity attacks. Encircling Dance from my Bard takes out the minion, blasts Kashyk and allows everyone to move up.

The Elves want us to let them take the Torch back to their King. We want it back for ourselves. They circle Kashyk and blast him hard, only to be blasted by him in return before we reach him. Our Ranger hits with a Cascade of Blades doing his usual massive damage. The Cleric hits him with another hard blast of radiant energy. Kashyk is reeling.

Orcus enters the scene, demanding the Torch for himself.

Oh. Shit.

My Bard pulls out Frenzied Rhythm, causing Kashyk and one of the Elves to dance maniacally off to one side and then become stunned. The Sorcerer hits him with a Chaos Bolt, finishing him off, then runs up and grabs the Torch. Action point to teleport out of range of both Orcus and the Elves.

Orcus strides up and slams my Bard, throwing him across the battlefield, but fortunately doing less than optimal damage. Amazingly, our once-a-year guy manages to hit Orcus with a power that knocks him prone and prevents him from getting up until the end of his next turn. The Elves, dazed to a man by my Frenzied Rhythm, take a couple of hard swings at our Fighter and Ranger, but are otherwise prevented from doing much else.

Sorcerer carries the Torch back in range of the party and we teleport from the battlefield, leaving an enraged Orcus and armies of Bearded Devil reinforcements with nothing to chew on but a handful of powerful Elves.

20

Eh, obviously tastes differ. While I agree that direct divine intervention is an option available to the DM, I think it cheapens it to use it too often, or when the party had other options available to them. Though, as I said, I agree that they make for good stories.