New Year, New Loot

This is part a series. Click here to go to part 1.

Calendar Start Date: January 1

Calendar End Date: January10

PLAYERS

Nizan - Human Mystic

Malger Zoilus, Human Thief

NEW GUY - Human Bladedancer

Shandor Oathbringer - Elven Nightblade

"Nick" - Human Fighter

Hirelings:

Snausages the War Dog

Hilgrim the human mercenary

Ralen the Elf

Lots happened in this extra-long session. It was New Year’s Day, and we played for five hours.

The players geared up to go kill the wight they had to flee from a month ago. They bought silver arrows and coated their weapons in silver. They hired three new hirelings, a war dog named Snausages, a human mercenary named Hilgrim, and a mysterious elf named Ralen. Heading into the mountain, they made a bee-line for the wight and promptly annihilated him. They came away with 8,000gp in assorted artifacts and treasures. They were able to carry them back to Adamas without issue. They sold their goods to Professor Ivan Nautica, who gave them half the value now and promised to pay the other half when he got the money together. He also identified a wand of magic missiles that was part of the haul, plus a treasure map leading to 16,000gp somewhere in Aldleigh Forest, but I explained I didn’t have anything prepared, so they would have to go after it in the next session.

With their newfound riches, the party started making big plans. 

First, they want to create an adventurer’s guild so that all the players in the shared world can join. This would give them passive income even when they’re not playing. Even better, it would give everyone access to the most recent maps of the dungeon, treasure maps, as well as access to magic items, and so on. Step 1 involved finding a place to build a guild hideout, so the players chose Adamas. They purchased a 4-acre parcel of land and built a townhouse with a second story and a basement. They’re paying the 15,000gp mortgage at 500gp a month for two years, but I expect they’ll pay it off much sooner.

I had previously run a Barrowmaze campaign in the summer of 2019. One of my players remembered there were some good magic items the players had sold to a wizard in that part of the world, so Nizan wrote a letter to that wizard in an effort to locate a certain magic dagger. It’ll be a few weeks before he gets a reply, but it was an interesting expansion of the world.

After sorting out their plans, the players returned to the dungeon, where they spent the rest of the day.

Their goal was to fill in all of the blank areas of their map. They swept through from west to east, not encountering much opposition or treasure. They had only one random encounter for the entire session. They got into a tussle with nearly two-dozen kobolds who tried to ambush them, but they easily dispatched them. They also had a fight with some fire beetles, which were alarmingly tough enemies, but thanks to some truly lucky rolls, the party had no issues.

In the end, they came away with even more treasure and explored deeper into the dungeon than ever before.

BEHIND THE SCREEN

Lots of things keep happening that I can’t anticipate, and I absolutely love it. I’ve explained time and again to all of my players that I am acting as a passive force in the game world; everything I do is a reaction to their actions. I’ve never had players take out a mortgage in D&D, let alone purchase a guild hideout. In many ways, the game feels kind of like an MMO, albeit with a tiny pool of players. Maybe it's better to compare it to multiplayer Skyrim. 

Because they can influence the world in very real ways (they’ve been discussing buying the entire city of Adamas), the players wield a great deal of power. However, that power is limited almost completely by money. Again, this is something I’ve never seen happen in D&D, where players often can simply get what they want due to class features, spells and/or raw physical prowess.

This week I moved the first three levels of Dwimmermount into a spreadsheet, which makes it extremely easy to reference. An unforeseen benefit has been the ease at which I can edit rooms based on the movements and decisions of players. This keeps everything in one place. It might be one of the greatest innovations I’ve ever come across (it wasn’t even my idea, I heard the idea from a call-in on Che Webster's Roleplay Rescue podcast). The published product Dwimmermount is changing as players continue to influence the world, from individual dungeon rooms up to city-state politics. I’ve never run a game where players care to influence anything, and typically I’m the one pushing changes on the players to gauge their reaction. This game is different, because players are pushing changes on me, and gauging my reaction. 

 

Continued in part 8.