Godless Lands Chronicles: Of Goblins and Charlatans

Dramatis Persona

• Ari, Daughter of Merith, elf fighter, played by Math
• Nornan, half-elf rogue, played by Véro
• Rilene Grandershall, human monk, played by Chantal
• Samhain Todgeboren, gnome wizard (necromancy), played by Nico
• Tarya, “Daugther” of Drake, half-orc ranger, played by Franky
• 록온 , Tiefling Bard, played by Yan

My new D&D 5e campaign was born out of several things. A few months ago we put our two-year long 13th Age campaign on ice. I went through a bunch of my other Indie games, looking for inspiration to start a new campaign. I had an ongoing Sentinels RPG Starter Set game going that I wanted to go back to soon, but I hungered for something else.

I came back from a convention last fall with 5 new Indie RPGs including John Harper’s Blades in the Dark, Tales of the Loop, and the Bulldogs sci-fi game. I perused each one and Blades in the Dark just jumped at me as something I wanted to play… but I quickly realized it was designed to handle a group of 2 to 4 players.

I was dealing with a group of 5 to 6. So it became a no-go.

As weeks passed, I started reading about D&D Beyond and how it could fix some issues I had with D&D 5e. My fiancée gave me a subscription for Xmas and bought the D&D Starter Set’s The Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure to see how the interface worked.

And then I realized the adventure was rather solid, a literal showcase of D&D’s iconic monsters. The unavoidable pull of my 1st tabletop RPG was rising again. Then the first ideas for the Godless Lands popped in my mind. I had a campaign.

We gathered for the character creation session, fitting 7 people around the table, as described here, we were done by the time we were done eating dinner. We decided to start the adventure.

Hooked!

We had two adventure hooks going in: The adventure talks about the party working as an escort for a wagon bound for the frontier city of Phandalin. Said wagon was owned by Gundren Rockseeker, a dwarven merchant who had left the party to “attend to an errand” with his bodyguard a few hours ago. The second plot hook, provided by the party itself was that Phandalin was their next destination for their traveling tour!

While the first hook lies at the heart of the adventure, the second one DROVE the action… Oh My Glob did it.

From the first encounter, a goblin ambush where 2 horses lay dead in the middle of the road, the narrative was violently grabbed by Véro’s rogue and Yan’s Bard (who used Thunderstrike to great effect.). Everything was about “the show” and Nornan kept trying to convince the ambushing goblins that they would much rather attend a show than ambush a harmless troupe. Twelve seconds and a huge thunderclap later, the lone remaining goblin was on its knees, surrendering.

Nornan pressed on, it was crucial the troupe not only track the horses owners to the goblins’s hideout to free them… It was also important to tell them the story of Erythnul, the ancient god of slaughter through a PLAY.

Yeah…

Cave In!

So the troupe found the goblin cave with the help of their goblin prisoner. I showed everyone the “player’s map” to the cave, which I explained was described by their prisoner. After some ribbing about how very precise that goblin was with maps drawn in the mud, Véronique drew a very crude rendition on her iPad. Which everyone used until the end of the session, it was hilarious!

They spotted the group guarding its entry. While Tarya hid in the nearby woods, Nornan bullshitted the sentries to fetch their leaders so he could pitch the grandest show to celebrate the greatest of Chaotic Evil gods ever!

The persuasion roll was so good that the goblins fetched the cave’s under-leader, his retinue and two growling wolves. Seeing that no one else was going to come out of the cave, Nornan and 록온 (that’s the bard’s name) herded the goblins as close as they could while the other characters took beads on any stragglers.

Taking a page out of the “we’re not playing with miniatures and a battlemap” playbook, I let Yan’s bard thunderstrike EVERY goblins that were listening to Nornan’s pitch.

Long story short, all the goblins were KOed or dead. I had yet to roll a d20 for combat yet.

Gods “Dam” It!

After the fight, Tarya tried to take back control of the party…

Nornan: (Shouting into the cave) Come one and all, you will witness the GREATEST show ever made!

Bugbear Chief (From within): Come right in, we’re THIRSTY for more!

Nornan (to party): See! We got them! Let’s go!

Franky (Out of character) We’re so going to die!

What ensued was a semi-surreal series of event where my girlfriend’s commitment to play in character (she’s the latest addition to the gang) crashed into the group’s established social dynamic. I could see that Franky was somewhat distraught at the way things had completely gone completely off script, but everyone including him where engaged in the story and on board.

(I made a mental note to discuss the new dynamic with the group at a later date.)

The adventurers entered the cave, following a stream coming out of it’s entrance. As Nornan kept talking to the unseen leader, everyone was on high alert, especially since I kept making fluid-related puns. When they spotted a lone goblin hidden on a robe bridge above them, they just had time to brace themselves as the sentry sounded the alarm, and the yet unseen leader shouted “Wash them away!”

Something broke deeper inside the cave and water came rushing into the PCs face. Fortunately, no one was hurt, Rilene the ever drunk monk being the only one to actually get a face full of water only to manage to grab unto something at the last second. Everyone else dodged the flood by sneaking into a side cave.

It’s a wrap(-up)!

Following Véro’s map, the party successfully avoided a chained wolf, and found a chimney that led directly into the chamber of the bugbear boss. As I had done all evening long, I made sure to add a few more gobbos to make up for a near-full-strength party of 6 PCs.

Once again, all players got to attack or cast spells and before I got to the monster’s initiative scores… Well, I had no monsters left.

As the party was cleaning up, Nornan slipped a strange glove-like jewel on his right hand and started sucking the souls out of a few goblins. Turns out our rogue’s has a side-business of soul-harvesting, and there’s good money for it.

As an aside, this concept came up during play when Véro commented that she too would have liked to play a character that dabbled in necromancy and Necro-Tech. I later suggested if she’d be interesting in reaping the souls of creatures her PC killed. When she agreed, we came up with the idea of a soul-reaping harvester which could hold up to five souls until they could be sold on some sort of dark market.

As the game came to an end, the remaining goblins capitulated, offering to trade their lives for the prisoner their now deceased leader kept. It turned out to be the half-elf bodyguard of their Gundren the dwarf. Gundren had been taken to Cragmaw Castle, the hidden Goblin fortress.

The bodyguard was badly hurt and asked to be escorted to the nearby town of Phandalin. The PCs also found a lot of stolen supplies the goblins had raided from a previous shipment. Finally, they found the bugbear’s stash, a bunch of coins, potions of healing, and minor piece of jewelry (a frog with gemstone eyes, IIRC).

At this point in the evening, I decided I would make sure that each significant treasure the party found would feature at least one useful item for at least one player. I would also make sure everyone got one such item before starting the cycle anew. I rolled randomly and came up with my son’s Wizard. Having played my share of Magic-Users in my time, I knew learning new spells was one of the coolest aspects of that class. I picked a useful spell I knew he’d never choose during a level up: Floating Disk. It would already be useful to bring back the stolen supplies and the banged up NPC.

And thus we ended the first session, and everyone leveled up to 2. In hindsight, I’m amazed at how much we managed to do in so little time, in spite of the high number of players.