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Sunday, December 10, 2017

Tomb of Annihilation 11 - Whirling Fury

You can watch this session on Youtube here.


Annalisse couldn't make it to this session, so I reached out and was able to get Lysa Chen to jump in as a guest star. Lysa is one of the Guild Adepts. She's the one who made the bath house encounter (from Tomb Episode 5) that I like so much, and she also is the co-author of Ruins of Hisari.

Lysa also played in a special dinosaur race show that will be on youtube soon. That one was epic!

I declared that Val and Hoppy the froghemoth vanished in a cloud of shadow. She and I had worked out a fun idea that I hope to link to her character's storyline.

The Party

(Ryan) Mistletoe - Human Druid
(Garrett) Ramrod - Goliath Barbarian
(Lysa) Humility - Yuan-ti Bard
(Joe) Zavagor - Half-orc Warlock

Humility

The jungle section of Tomb is hard to pace. It's so easy to let it drag. If it feels like progress isn't being made, or if the group gets bogged down doing something less than thrilling, your campaign can die.

I've been tip-toeing around the jungle with this group, trying to give them the coolest stuff I can find. I also want to use the jungle journey to set up my idea that each hero has a major entity that wants to help them, giving them boons similar to what the trickster gods give.

I started this one off with the group coming upon some pterafolk attacking an aarakocra. In the adventure, this aarakocra is a prisoner of the pterafolk. His name is Nephyr. I want to use him to direct the group to Kir Sabal.

I love the NPCs in Kir Sabal, and that flight ritual will make it easy for the group to make great progress toward Omu.

Right now, my Mezro group is in Omu and they have 3 of the puzzle boxes! It's fun having all of these groups in the jungle at the same time. I am wondering if one group will get partway through the tomb and die, and then the next group will go in and make more progress.

The sound of battle attracted the heroes as well as Lysa's character, Humility. She's a yuan-ti!


The fight started off a bit too much of a bland roll-fest, but I was able to turn it around a bit when a pterafolk got its beak stuck in a tree.

The group met Humility. They were unnerved by her, but decided to let her come along for a bit.

The heroes rested in a cave I made up. This cave is linked to Gwynharwyf, a fey entity from the 3e Savage Tide adventure path.

I mean for Gwynharwyf to be Mistletoe's patron. She offered him a boon, which he immediately accepted. He now has a floating magic sword.

I'm hoping to link each member of the group to a different entity. Zavagor will be interesting. He hates his patron! He will reject her. I'm still mulling over things  can do with that.

This was a decent session. I keep forgetting to make sure that each battle should be something of a set piece. I want it to feel like an action scene rather than final fantasy tactics. Sometimes it's hard, though. If you'/re fighting in an open field, what exactly are you going to do?

I probably should have had the pterafolk flee and then conduct hit and run attacks throughout the day. I get so antsy about getting stuff done that I neglect to think from the point of view of the bad guys.

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