Southern California has been experiencing several days of almost constant rain. I cannot remember the last time it rained so much and so hard. Well, as I said in a post from a year ago, I love rainy day gaming. The rain makes me want to game or at least to work on my game material. So inspiring.
Saturday afternoon we got to do one of our rare weekend sessions. Dan, freshly back from one of his international business adventures, was hosting us in his nice big house in the hills above Bel Air (near Mulholland Drive). It was just pouring non-stop for hours on end. I got soaked to the bone several times that day, but loved it. Dan’s living room has all glass walls looking out on his back patio (very “Los Angeles”). He has a view of a hill across the way, one of the Santa Monica Mountains, and it looked so wintery and wet. It had a real “misty mountains” look that had my “G Zone” (that hidden organ in us that demands that we roll dice and kill things) in high gear.
I went into this game really run down. I had been running ragged for weeks. Not just at work, but all the holiday parties and junk food, and all the high end booze had my innards working overtime. And at work I have been surrounded by sick, coughing and sneezing humanoids. Everybody who walked by my cube last week seemed to have this bad cold going around. Friday night I actually emailed Big Ben and told him to be prepared to run his D&D in case I was not up to it. You see, we are in the last couple of games (I hope) of the Night Below campaign, and running for high level characters is work enough. Adjudicating their assault on a Kou Toa city is another thing entirely. Walking into Dan’s house wet with shoes in hand had me doubting my abilities on this day, but the rain outside and the cheerfully snarky banter inside got my G Zone juicing and we were soon getting into the game after a relaxing half hour or so of goofing around, drinking Heinekens, and munching snacks and pizza.
Everybody seems to be enjoying their characters, especially Dan and Andy. I have to say, with my attitude towards their PC’s around a year ago or so at this time, I have to admit that I am fairly fond of these characters as well. Dan’s drow Krysantha is a killing and ass-kicking machine, and I think the others characters would be foolish to get on her bad side (and she only seems to have a bad side). Her murderous actions of the last game are forgotten now that the party is in situations that could translate into Total Party Kill. And Andy’s Vaidno, well, it is a great character. Not just heroic in good ways, but at the same time the bard is a hopeless showboater and showstopper who cheats death at every turn. Choices from the Deck of Many Things a few games ago gave him a tower (back home in the city area) and an 18 charisma, and it is kind of fun to see him beam with pride at this character that has survived one near-death situation after another and continued to thrive. “Vaidno SurvivnoThriveno!” Goddamn Andy.
Well, some time was spent preparing to sneak into the city (through cracked water pipes learned about from the thief Prentyss that Krysantha murdered last game). In they went and the action was truly on!
After dealing with crossing and fighting the affects of the Kuo Toa “Relaxation Pool,” Krysantha cast a mass insect swarm to molest a nearby section of the city, while the party ran through the town and towards the Illithid quarters in the hopes of taking possession of the Crown of Derro Domination. As groups of Derro and Kou Toa patrolled the streets, the party let loose with all 100 of the hydra teeth they had. *poit*poit*poit*poit* sounds filled the air as 100 skeletons appeared with sword and shield to do their bidding, and the skelly’s ran to attack the patrols to keep them off of the party.
At the Mind Flayer building, the party fought a hard battle against several of the monsters, but a combination of good tactics and good die rolls helped win the day there. Unfortunately, the main Illithid, Zantacore, was not present so the crown was not achieved. We had to end it around then, but we managed to leave off with the players having a great sense of the possibility of success in this assault on the city.
Really, my players are not known to me as great tacticians. With characters like Vaidno and Kryantha usually taking the lead, it was more about gung ho “let’s just take ‘em head on!” type stuff. But they actually thought this one out a bit, which made me kind of proud. It was a great game and a great wintery day to have it on.
Unfortuantly, we did not get to finish the campaign by the end of the year. But the good news is, by February I’ll get a break from AD&D and be able to refresh with some new genres. But boy, this is pretty exciting. I’m running a game for high level characters, which can be a decent amount of work. But now I am at a point where I can look back upon it all more and I have to say, this has been a fun campaign with a great group of people and characters.
