Out like a lion

Whoops. Been a week since my last blog. Last short week forever, as next week my schedule changes. I'll get every weekend off, but that means I'm Monday through Friday evenings. *shrug* Could be a good thing. Could suck. Can't change it now. Regardless, no major highlights from last week, as there was breif illness midweek.

Friday night, however....whoo. Started off with Minnesota Swarm and their last home game. That's professional lacrosse. Pretty good stuff and definitely worth the NO money I had to pay. Thanks John. Honestly, considering tickets are $12 a pop plus the $5 "we call it convenience" charge, if ya like lacrosse, buy the season tickets. I think John said there were right around 100 for the year. The Swarm won 14-12 and there was some sweet scoring in there, along with a couple of great almost fights.

We came back to Lukas midway through making a new character and pronouncing Gregorious was gonna die and be replaced with his brother. Now, up to this point no one's really all that pleased with Gregorious, but that's mostly a roleplaying issue. As Nick explained earlier in the week, Luke's previous RPG groups have sucked, so it's taking him some time to find himself in ours. We're prolly not helping enough.

Regardless, my games are USUALLY about story. Most times it's story in my head and the players don't see the big picture, but still. I'm not about to let someone just make a new guy cause they didn't spread their attribute points around correctly. He dies in game, fine. He leaves in game, fine. However, just like Nick's call to boot Zeke, we take care of it in game. We can talk about the problem late into non-gaming nights all we want, but the real results show when the role playing happens.

Still, I told Lukas if he wanted, a new guy could be introduced when we hit the city, BUT no half elf, no ranger, and he's one level lower than everyone else. Later, I emailed him about the stipulations of a new character (mainly he's gotta take the initiative, contact me in a timely fashion and WE work it out before the next game session. Three days later and he's still not responded to my email, so he'll prolly be playing Gregorious simply because of lack of effort on his part.)

So, when we left our characters, they were in a tomb/cave sheltering from a storm. Dead wererat corspe by the door and halfling rogue named Jack barely avoiding a whooping from Zeke. When we started play, EVERYONE went to sleep. No guard, nothing. I coulda been a dick, but instead, I just let the published adventure play out, with lightning hitting the tor and scaring up some rats. Doors fell off their hinges and rats swarmed in.

Zeke and Crenius were sleeping across the room, so it took them a bit to get into place. Gregorious grabbed a flaming log and attempted to scare the rats around everyone. He did and no one got bit, but Levvy, Greg, Zeke and maybe Crenius did kill a few rats in the process.

Then. Everyone went back to sleep. Crenius only had his scrolls left, so he was intent on regaining his spell casting powers. Player note here - Between sessions, if your DM asks "Do you, as a player, want to explore the tomb?" and you say "yes," you should explore the tomb. No spells or not. At the very least, set up a guard (and you can't tell me that any adventurer is not going to set up a guard when sleeping in a musty tomb that was made in ages past.).

Regardless, a gutteral yell woke everyone up to see Jack being stabbed by two hobgoblins. Rock, the cleric, pulled Jack outta the frey and healed him as everyone jumped these two fools. How'd two hobgoblins get into a sealed tomb? No one asked. I'll tell ya anyway. There used to be a lookout tower on the tor. Blasted by lighting, it crumbled and the there's a hole in the basement.

Regardless, I don't remember how these battles went, but Gregorious killed a hobgoblin and the other one was teamed.

Then, everyone went to sleep but Levvy. She was a little frazzled by now, and the fire was dieing down. Too bad, cause out of the darkness leapt a monstrous spider, which promptley webbed her up. She got out of the web just as everyone else woke up and jumped the spider. Again, no one took damage, so everyone was gonna go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, all of this noise had woken up the resident lesser vargoille, which busted into the room and paralyzed everyone but Crenius and Levvy. Surprisingly, Crenius made short work of the evil outsider. Then he went into a frenzy of mutilating the beast he though of us nothing more than devilish vermin.

The vargoille's paralyzing scream had raised one final denizen of the tomb, and before Crenius' frenzy had abated, the bugbear zombie that was originally buried here with full honors from his barbaric civilization shambled into the room. Had I been thinking, I would have changed many things about this adventure, including making it a human zombie. Oh well.

Regardless, the damn thing almost killed Gregorious twice and Zeke once. Rock, the cleric saved everyone's butt, but he's most likely not being their henchman anymore. SO YOU SHOULD MAKE A CLERIC LUKE. *cough*

This time, the party set up a watch schedule. Unfortunatley, Levvy was first, and after trying to stay up all night, she fell asleep on her watch. Poor girl. While she was out, the storm abated a bit, so Jack got up and looted the tomb. A dastardly thing to do, but since the party had saved his life innumerable times that night, he left them most of the loot. Then he slipped away into the darkness.

Tune in next time for That's Him, That's the WereRat That Ate My Baby! or A Gnome Warmage Zealot Walks Into A Bar....