Theo Dudek, Ultimate Game Master

It’s been ages since I posted; I have been incredibly busy with school and I was out of town last weekend. Please forgive me! On the other hand, I got to run some good adventures which I will be posting about soon.

The first was something I’ve been wanting to do for a few weeks… a 4e adaptation of the 1e adventure “Beyond the Crystal Cave”! Like my version of “Keep on the Shadowfell”, I set it in the world of Neo-Pegana. The players were a bunch of college and older friends, including Zoxesyr, to whom I owe the awesome 3D rendering of the session’s big fight scene! (Thank you, Zoxesyr! ^^) As the game began, the party — Shantak the dragonborn warlord, Sariel the eladrin rogue, and Klondor the barbarian — had just slain the evil necromancer Telvar and the undead wizard Turjan and were pondering their next step. Returning to town, they met Steel Jester, a cleric of Lagaan, the trickster god. (Another adventurer also showed up briefly but unfortunately he had to leave early to do something with his girlfriend ;_; ) Everyone wanted the favor of the heroes: the local baron wanted them to lead an expedition against the gnolls, a merchant wanted them to make a delivery to a faraway underground cavern, and some Poltarneean mercenaries wanted them to join them in the battle against the Mondathian lizard men. Since dragonborn are a subspecies of lizard men in the Neo-Pegana universe, Shantak was not favorably inclined towards this mission. -_-

However, the party instead chose to go on a fourth mission: to go to a small island inhabited by two feuding clans, and find a long-lost pair of lovers who had defied their clans and eloped together. As the island elders explained, the two lovers had fled to the isle of Porphyria, a mist-shrouded island where an ancient sorceress, Porphyria, built an enchanted garden and a towering palace of spires. Some said the island was a paradise, but those who entered it never returned, or returned years later with no memory of their stay. And there were rumors of even darker fates: one village man had returned with his arm transforming into something like the roots of a tree. (He was killed by his horrified fellow villagers.) Did the adventurers have the courage to travel there, overcome Porphyria’s strange magic, and bring back the star-crossed lovers? By so doing, the villagers hoped to end a plague which was affecting their village, clearly a sign of the disapproval of the gods for their ill treatment of the couple.

And so the party set out on the ultra-rare (luckily none of them read my blog) pacifistic D&D 4e adventure! ^^ (Well, mostly pacifistic…) So far, the module is actually proving very easy to adapt to 4e, since all the enchantment and flight magic which was forbidden in the original adventure isn’t available to a 3rd level party in 4e anyway. It’s all up to the players’ wits and the characters’ skill rolls. However, there *is* fighting in the adventure. Disembarking on the island, the characters found nothing but a rocky beach covered with kelp, and towering cliffs which rose into the mist. To reach the unearthly garden, they had to follow a river over the sand and into a great sea cave, where the inhabitants of the nearby island sometimes came in search of oracles. Inside the cave which leads to the Feywild, they found dangerous creatures brought to life by the enchantments leaking out of the magic river… green slime and a vengeful poltergeist of a dead adventurer! Unfortunately, we had to stop in the middle of the fight, but the monsters turned out to be a good challenge for a 3rd level party, not to mention atmospherically appropriate for a dank, dripping sea cave carved by an underground river. ^^

I hope to be able to finish “Crystal Cave” soon!! The only problem is that some of the players seem to have figured out what adventure it is, so they are a little cocky about their chances. But of course, I would never run an adventure unchanged… ^^

IN OTHER NEWS: Since I go to school in San Diego, I tried to go to the House of Blues concert on Tuesday to ask Moby if he is a gamer… BUT…. -_-;; I wasn’t admitted because it was a 21 and over event!!! I was so frustrated I can’t believe it. If anyone else has the chance to go to a Moby concert, please consider asking him if he plays RPGs, so I can confirm or deny the rumors…