This was sort of a last minute addition when Mark got Jason to come up and play, which meant we’d have five people for the full day, which meant we could have another game, but I didn’t want to ask anyone to run at the last minute, so I said I’d run. And Mark asked for Head Above Water. Which is awesome, because Head Above Water rocks. I told everyone we were switching from the Hong Kong action movie genre over to gothic horror. I was so right. Head Over Water takes place in the Vast Swamp of Cormyr, and a lot of the plot occurs in this almost deserted mansion. I went full out and described the place as a Southern plantation, decrepit and decaying, and played the Lady Mersha as a steel-backboned elderly Southern woman. Fun for me and the players seemed to like it. ...

Hey, halfway to 50! This is a pretty good pace, yep. Night of Fallen Petals concludes the White Petal Demise quest. It continues to rock. Sadly Peter had to leave before this one, and Kirby GMed, leaving me, Susan, Mark B., and Jason B. to stop various pernicious influences and save the day. More great fights, plus a really interesting skill challenge for moving through the city, plus more generally enjoyable roleplay. In the final fight, Reed met an oni mage in mid-air combat, hovering high above the panicked crowd. We defeated the evil Mad Fox and earned the gratitude of a bunch of Shou. Reed spent the rest of the month engaging in bacchanalia while everyone else headed up towards Cormyr.

For the first game of MiniMoreCon 2 – MiniMoreCon being our house conventions, three games in a day – we played White Flower Falling (original). This is part 2 of the White Petal Demise quest, an absolutely awesome Dragon Coast quest themed after Hong Kong movies. Susan and I had played Falling Snow, White Petal at GASPCon and we wanted to finish the quest line before we hit paragon; fortunately we managed to con a bunch of friends into coming up and playing with us. ...

Flames of Initiation (original) is another oldie but goodie. I will admit, I played this so Collin could pick up +2 Dwarven Armor. I have no shame. (Why are there so few +2 armor rewards in the 1-4 range, but so many +2 weapons? Faerun is full of wonders.) But I do authentically enjoy it and getting Flaming Fist membership is a nice hook into Baldur’s Gate. DM: Dareus. Players: Maelwys, Zeitgeist, Goldfishmind, Marquis, Jesterrr21, and me. Marquis plays a very nice barbarian.

Well! As noted previously, Susan rolled 4 crits in the space of 5 rolls against my poor Collin. She dropped him three times as a result. When he climbed up to fight a hopefully less dangerous foe, she crit our other defender, and then dropped Collin again. Nothing quite so sweet as rolling a 20 on a death save when you’re two strikes towards the eternal choir. The other highlight of the fight, for me: “Well, unless she crits me again, I’m OK for one more hit, and how likely would a fourth crit be?” Now I know. ...

Four crits against Collin in five attacks.

… third crit on me in a row. Collin drops again.

What I am now is pooped. I ran Pyrophobia (original) for the usual crowd – Peter, Jon, Susan, Mark, and Noah. It takes, let me tell you, a lot of prep. I had about 20 effect cards on hand to give out to the players to reflect various temporary effects on the PCs, and a good number of those temporary effects had specific effects on individual combats. Here, have Vulnerable 3 for the rest of this section. Also, here’s an extra power you can use once in the next combat. Whoo. ...

I ran my second Sambral MYRE for Jonathan, Mark, Tom, Hudson, and Susan. I really need to tune down my MYREs – it is not the case that any random combination of experience point appropriate monsters will be as easy as one might expect from the average LFR module. The opening fight was a mere 938 experience points – even level for a high tier group – and I dropped three PCs. The second fight was also pretty iffy, although not as bloody. ...

More MapTool games! Collin is now only three sessions away from level 4. This experiment in leveling quickly has proven to be a success. Draden Tristen GMed; he did a great job of moving things along and running the combats well. My fellow players were Crow of Pyke, Logopolis, Neldar, Maelwys, and Dareus. Crow played his warlord again and I found it deeply satisfying to play a fighter with a warlord. We spent a good part of one fight keeping two monsters locked down as he granted me basic attacks. ...