Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 57 Session Date- 8/23/23
Time Passed- 1 day (8/23/23)
Roll Call- Harry- T5
Maximillion- F3
Godhard- C4
Bart- C3
Tomas- F4
Morsov- C2
Adventure Log- 8/23- Midnight- 15 days until TPK. The party is inserted via zipline onto a treestand at the tallest tree nearest the Eastern Wall of the Caves of Chaos Penitentiary system. It takes over an hour to insert and descend down the iron rungs hammered into the massive tree. As the party descends, a cacophony of hell bounces around the massive walls. They hear distant sounds of chaos, and assemble outside the closest, easternmost copse of trees. From within, curiously, they hear music, human cultured music, singing, and the playing of primitive stringed instruments, almost like show tunes or tavern songs. They penetrate the interior of the copse, it opens into a great room and several hovels and dark alcoves around the edges. There they see 20 or so mostly humans, most dressed as shabby bandits, but a few others. Several of the men are in improvised costumes and are singing and dancing a show tune on an improvised stage. The rest of the crowd sits enjoying the music. They notice 1 figure too large to be human, and Tomas approaches and sits by him, seeing the figure is actually an ogre. Fortunately a friendly ogre, as he is mostly jovial and enjoying the music. He turns to Tomas and says “ hey aren’t you one of the Strangers from Bartertown? I heard you were dead!” Tomas confirms they are the Bartertown Strangers, and they are not in fact dead. The rest of the party joins and several folks gather some good info and build good relations with the ogre whose name is Cabbie. He agrees to give them rides with his tractor and wagon if they need to travel, and they ask if any strange characters are around, new entries into the prison etc. Cabbie confirms that in fact some kobolds from the local cave lair to the north, recently dragged a human sized figure into one of the darkened alcoves off the music room, he points to which one, but says, you don’t want to walk around down there Snake, I mean Tomas. He then looks intently at the strange mechanical snake Tomas wears as a necklace. He says he’d like to trade for it, they do a lot of trading in the prison. He pulls out a rubber King Kong mask and says it will transform the wearer into a great ape when worn, it has 3 charges. Toams agrees and takes the magic item. The party enters the darkened hovel anyway, revealing a group of kobolds accosting 2 creatures, one another smaller, slighter kobold, perhaps a female, and the other a hooded human form that 6 kobolds are gathered around kicking and stomping. The party charges into the scrum, bashing the snot out of most of the kobolds, the few accosting the small one try to run and Harry misses a shot at their backs, a few flee but the human is saved. He turns over to reveal a horrible breath of sour wine and vomit, his toothless grin reveals he didn’t feel any of the previous beatdown. He holds up a filthy wrist with a peculiar metal band around it; the band is split crudely and bent back around his wrist. He holds it up exclaiming “I’m the President, I woke up with this band on my wrist just like a miracle, and they told me I'm now the president.” He begins poorly singing “Hail to the Chief”. The party bends the bracelet off his wrist with great difficulty. They head back into the main room to see Cabbie no longer there, and look for others who stand out. They notice a slight person and approach her to discover she is an elf, a fighter/mage, and will accompany the party with her prepared sleep spell for her protection. At that the floor rumbles and the palisade wall right where the elf is standing gives way and the arms of several undead reach out and grab her, skeletons and zombies are suddenly everywhere, as the floor gives way in the little alcove and the elf girl is pulled in, several of our heroes grab the elf to try to save her, but her lower extremities are ripped from her and she dies in their arms. Fleeing the horde of undead, at least 30 in number pouring from tunnels in the ground, the party clerics get off a successful volley of turns, and push the undead back away from them, but unfortunately others in the greatroom are not fortunate. They back from the undead masses, and retreat outside, where they hear a rumbling machine as Cabbie rolls forward driving a green tractor much like the one they found at the refinery pulling a wagon, the party quickly hops in and Cabbie drives away, one clutch of undead blocking their path. Both Morsov and Bart fail their turning, but Godhard manages to turn a shadowy creature lurking in the back, likely the leader of the undead horde. Fortunately whatever foul effect it may have is kept at bay by Godhard’s holy symbol. As they leave, the dawn begins to break, and Cabbie tells them he can bring them to his lair which adjoins the goblin lair, and Cabbie can give them safe passage in the goblin area. They eagerly take him up on the offer and find a few safe rooms out of the way from the goblins main movements and take a much needed rest, they had been going on for nearly 24 hours without sleep. Before resting they meet with the Goblin Chief who offers to trade with the newcomers, he pulls out a metal bolt and says it is a relic from a famous building that once stood on this land. He says when activated it will remove fear and improve morale on the whole party for 1 week. They again eagerly trade 2 potions and some gold for the magic bolt. They awake in the late afternoon and begin to formulate various plans using their knowledge of the different gangs and ways to create distractions, and ways to nail down exactly where the president is being kept. Obviously they can’t use the cobalt bracelet anymore. Cabbie tells them about another mover and shaker in the prison, Brain and his pet Maggie. Brain makes a kind of alcohol that can power cabbie’s tractor, and the other vehicles that exist in the prison. The party saw in the goblin lair some little buggy cars, and they have been told that the Duke, the leader of the whole prison has some dirt bikes that his gang can use to get around. They meet up with Brain and Maggie, his pet mountain lion, and get some intel on how the Duke operates and how the groups in the prison coexist. They realize a frontal assault isn’t going to work, and decide stealth and distraction are the key, getting the Duke away from his area and then searching for the president seems like the best course of action. The party decides to use the next few days to formulate a plan and prepare for its commencement.
Session Notes- So it’s the midpoint of the 3 part story arc, a real break away from what usually is a completely emergent game based on player choice and random tables. It’s weird how I, and likely many other DMs have made the transition. When I first started this game, the original intent was to play through some classic AD&D modules. I would prep the modules by reading them several times, watching youtube breakdowns of the modules, then re-read and plan more specifically each week based on exactly where the party is in the module. I enjoyed it at first, but over time it became too much prep for me to feel comfortable going into each session. I didn’t enjoy going back and re-prepping stuff because it had been so long since I read that part, and I had to re-go over certain parts. I also didn’t enjoy finding the time a day or so before the session to do that specific session prep. Contrast that to when I first started doing player driver emergent play. At first I was nervous not having anything to prepare for in the days before the session, and I definitely needed more practice in knowing the rules and the books. Over time however, as I got more confident and knowledgeable in finding rules references quickly in the moment, and running sessions based on random table results/ improving my improvisation skills, I began to really enjoy just showing up to sessions and just letting the players tell me what they want to do. Usually there are 2-3 obvious choices of what the players will likely do, so you can still mentally prep things like where are the players on your map, what terrain are you on, what are the local points of interest, etc, but there is no need for any intensive prep before each session, just grab and go. I’m still working on my setup, setup is super important in DMing, you need to know where all your books, notes, charts etc are and you need access to your computer/discord. It really is important to take 5 minutes before the session and get everything out and placed where you can easily grab them, I like to use a clipboard for my main session notes- session #, date, days, passed, roll call, intro notes. Then I use the blank space on that paper to track combats- monster hp and tick them down as the combat goes on. I write treasure found there too, especially random treasure generated on the fly. That way I always know where to look if I have to go back. Also after the session report has been published I don't throw out my original notes, I stack them in a folder in reverse chronological order in case I ever have to go back and settle a dispute or mistake.
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 8 Kobolds, Turning- 9 Zombie, 9 Skeleton, 1 Wight (½ xp), Rumors- Duke, Goblins/Cabbie, Treasure- King Kong Mask, Empire State Building Rivet (xp will be given to survivors of Escape From Bree-Yark)
Graveyard- Rollo Tomassi- consumed by a Bag of Devouring in Zelligar’s dungeon #38
Ragenard- brought to Death’s Door by a stirge attack in Zelligar’s dungeon #39 (1 week bed rest)
Caolite- brought to Death’s Door by kobolds in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week bedrest)
Bart- brought to Death’s Door by Firetoad breath in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week
bedrest)
Ragenard- killed by Griffons exploring the plains west of Fort Turjmir #42
Vlana- killed by Troglodytes in the 2nd level of Zelligar’s dungeon #43
Stigr’s 4 Lt. Foot- killed by Zombies on the plains of Lancebrass #45
Godhard’s 2 Med Cav- killed by Firenewt’s mounted on Giant Striders #47
Stig- brought to Death’s Door by Orc raiders at the walls of Bartertown #48 (1 week bedrest)
Harry- Brought to Death’s Door by the Tsathoggua Temple slime monster #54 (1 week
bedrest)
Stigr/Tomas’ 3 Med Cav- killed by large spiders SE of Bartertown #55
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