Campaign Journal: Back to Cobalt

Tardy on this one. Holidays...

That said, it was a slim crew:

• Jax - Barbarian
• Frederick - Thief
• Slick - Another Thief

Starting from Neuforde, the gang headed southwest on a cold and windy day. They made it to the druid stronghold at Kabrel's Tower. The trees in the area continued to be intimidating, and not without a few impaled corpses. 

source

The Dire Wolves, Gagnin and Anzel, found the party and escorted them to the tower, where Thefri and his comrades waited. They reported on their resistance against local Chaos predations, as well as their coordination with the party of cleric Nikhita Mahesh and her colleagues, who had re-taken Ashryn Tower and dug in for the winter. Thefri was safekeeping a damaged lens, and the party would retrieve it on their way back north.

The next day, the gang continued south. The first day of travel along the old trade road was uneventful. Still cold, but less wind. On day two, they heard sounds of a struggle ahead. Slick invisibly scouted ahead, seeing a party circled up against a large two-headed bear-thing.

Time to be heroes, I suppose. Slick and Dukan Dildran (hench) both whiffed hard. Goober got a hit in (of course). The bear-thing struck out, mangling a couple of the pressed party, as well as taking a chunk out of Goober. The fight went back and forth, until Slick was able to regain his footing and take it down with a healthy backstab. 

You think Fulvus will want a two-headed bear trophy for the alehouse? Silly question.

Happy New Year - The 2024 Roundup

Good morning, all. Got my coffee and cozy duds this morning, so taking the time to do the requisite blogger year-end recap.

It's been a relatively productive blogging year at Leicester's Rambles HQ. A lot of it was driven by gaming summaries, but let's see how it all shook out. 

In 2024, I:

• Made 84 total blog posts;
• Hit post #600;
• Made two Secret Santicorn contributions, both with a cosmic horror flavor;
• Completed nineteen d66 tables (twenty counting the bonus one in the compilation). I'm no ktrey, but I can make lists of 36 things;
• Stocked up a total of ten villages, encounter areas, and dungeons. Several were posted after being run during game sessions, and I thought that they deserved to be shared;
• Completed two product reviews, for three card decks and funny dice;
• Revised one magic missile spell for Shadowdark;
• Came up with five new monsters (standalone and introduced in adventures);
• Compiled one collection of twelve gods from my campaign world and other writings;
• Completed 49 actual-play writeups (26 OSE campaign, 13 as a Shadowdark player, and 10 one-shots/con games)

So yeah, not too bad. I have a few drafts staring at me, all judgmental-like. Hopefully I'll get a couple out in the next day or two and start the year off well.

Gaming was pretty solid. In my campaign, the players have managed to get kicked out of the city held by a theocracy (and later sneak back in to swipe stuff), get harassed by a naked grenade-throwing guy, meet a bunch of seafaring dwarves, make a few allies, including undead knights and an anarchist naga, steal a ship, and gain notoriety arena-fighting. 

And I've run OSE, Shadowdark, and Deathbringer one-shots with some success. People seem to enjoy my games although I still count myself as a comparative novice gamerunner, so that's been a blessing.

I've been playing in two online games - the Shadowdark campaign that we've streamed, and a 2e campaign. Good to get on the other side of the screen and appreciate other gamerunners' skills. 

So Happy New Year, all - I hope that it is starting off well for you, too.

The dogs don't care about your arbitrary timekeeping...

Oh, and I started a new writing notebook: