Yesterday was such an awesome day. I played my first game of in-person D&D in over a year! It was also this groups first ever in-person D&D game. We started playing sometime last year and with the pandemic raging, and one player living on the other side of the country, we've been sticking to online sessions on Discord and Roll20.
With all of us being in town this week we decided we had to get a game going, and we did!
Dungeon shopping
Since we've been playing mostly online we naturally have a lot of online resources but very few physical ones. We decided to meet up at the game store to buy some supplies. The players wanted some minis to represent their characters in combat and I wanted a few props myself.
I bought a two-sided wilderness/dungeon battlemap that was foldable and that could easily be drawn upon with a wet marker. I also got some Monster Cards for pretty much all monsters with CR (challenge rating) 0-16. Makes it easier to have control over monster stat blocks over going back and forth in the monster manual. I was a little disappointed to open them up and find that all the beasts were missing. I guess they put them out in another pack instead.
With all of the props in place it was time to hit the road and gather around the table!
We set up everything we needed around the table and just socialized for a little while. I hadn't seen my out of town friend in physical form since last summer so we didn't want the day to be all about D&D. Gotta do some catching up as well.
The host was being such a damn good host. He had cooked up some chili the night before and let it sit over night to become just perfect. It was so damn good. He had even made some homemade ice-cream for desert. I think we might have to make him our designated host if we ever start doing in-person sessions on the regular.
I also drank a Hobgoblin IPA which I felt was fitting for the occasion.
The rest of the post contains spoilers from the Storm King's Thunder module!
The Session
We played for about 8 hours this session. Not 8 hours of pure gameplay but interrupted here and there by someone getting some more food, eating some ice-cream, messing around a bit and stuff like that. We run a pretty chill game with room for jokes and a good time.
As would be expected from an 8 hour session the group made some good progress. We're running the Storm King's Thunder module and I would say we're pretty much halfway through. When we left of last time the group had excavated a giant relic buried at a barbarian burial mound called Morgur's Mound. It was the final artifact Harshnag, a good willed Frost Giant, needed to complete his axe, Gurt's Greataxe.
He then took them to The Eye of the All-Father which is a long lost temple of the giants where an oracle resides. They want to talk to the oracle about how to stop the giant menace that's threatening to destroy the land.
When they first got there they saw footsteps leading into the temple and inside they quickly stumbled upon a group of barbarians trying to force themselves inside the temple. Battle ensued and I got to utilize the newly acquired battle map and some less than perfect drawing skills.
With a lack of minis we used different kinds of dice for different kinds of enemies. Harshnag, being a huge giant, got the honor of being represented by a fancy glass goblet. Due to some unlucky initiative rolls from the players side the groups cleric, Igor, was close to being downed but they quickly managed to tip the scales. It helps having a frost giant on the team that deals 5d12+7 damage to humans.
Entering the Temple
The players spent some time figuring out how to get inside the temple and even managed to seal the whole temple off in the process. Due to a great use of the gaseous form spell the sorcerer, Bobil, managed to get the main doors open at last.
Inside they were met with giant statues close to 80 feet tall representing Annam himself and his sons, one for each race of giants. All of the statues, except the frost giant ones, were holding weapons. There was also a sort of puzzle involving giant runes on a gateway opposite of the entrance which would let the players enter the Eye of Annam and commune with the oracle.
After some quarreling, brainstorming and a dead Remorhaz later they managed to finally open the gateway and speak to the oracle. The oracle answers any questions asked truthfully albeit sometimes vaguely. They now know a little more about the giant threat, what has caused it and what must be done to stop it.
The session then ended with a long rest and a talk with Harshnag. The group will now travel to Svardborg, the frost giants fortress, to acquire some giant artifacts and prove their worth to the oracle.
After this it's back to the online sessions. It seems we might be slowly switching over to Talespire instead of Roll20 soon. It's a much cooler system but requires a bit more preparation time in terms of building the maps, unless someone in the community has already done so.
The sessions going forward will start getting more intense as well with the campaign reaching its more epic sections. The group spent a long time, close to 20 sessions, trudging around the North in chapter 3 before finally finding and joining up with Harshnag. Luckily they were never bored.
I hope y'all out there are playing some epic games of D&D! Would love to hear about them either in the comments or in their own posts.