The Tale of the Empty Fire Safe

In the absence created by the lack of Internet last night, Dante & I continued our quest for junk that can be sold at our upcoming garage sale. As we are cleaning the hall closet (a meca for junk!), we came across the fire safe we received as a wedding present.

Dante looked at me and asked if there was anything in there. I told him that since it was locked, the more important question was, where is the key.

Fortunately, I rolled really high on my Remember Where Random Item Is Located roll and found the key in a basket on top of the kitchen shelves. Upon opening the safe, it was, in fact, empty.

Dante got a gleam in his eye and headed over to the hutch in which we keep Important Documents. I briefly wondered what he decided was important enough to go in the safe that has been empty for four years, but my contemplations were short-lived as he quickly returned in plopped something right in the safe.

I asked what he put in there, and he lifted from the safe one of the D&D books signed by Gary Gygax. Because, of course, what document could be more important to save during a fire?

We are experiencing technical difficulties...

A giant, spectacular lightning storm has knocked out the internet connection here at SR Central until Friday evening. If time permits, we may post from work but don't hold thine breath.

In the meantime, please entertain yourselves with Cuddle Monsters, courtesy of Yax over at Dungeon Mastering. He's so crazy!

The "In-Between"

It may come as a big surprise to all our regular readers that we ended our big campaign this weekend. Nah, just kidding. By now you've probably read Dante's posts regarding the spectacular end of the campaign.

We had a great finish, defeated the horrible goddess of pain and suffering to anointed one of our own to that position. We all went our own ways and lived happily ever after.

Now, I'm stuck in limbo, the "In-Between" from one campaign to the next.

It's that bitter-sweet time when you celebrate the successful end of the campaign, you go on to live happily ever after, and you retire your beloved character sheet to the Great Beyond. You wipe a tear from your eye and tell yourself it's time to roll up a new character.

The problem of being "In Between" is that you're briefly stuck "In Between."

It's that difficult time when you are trying to make decisions about your next character. Do you replicate your recently retired character because you're sure you could do better this time? Do you try something completely different because you want to avoid the "character contamination" that would result from having too similar a character? Or do you just see what everyone else is planning, and fill in whatever gap would result?

It's a tough time, this time spent in the "In Between," but the good news is that soon you will be creating your back story and embarking on the joyful journey that is roleplaying.

The Aftermath, and a look to the future...

Just in case you've not been reading carefully the last few posts, we finished our campaign this past weekend. After the session had wrapped, we immediately started considering options for the following campaign.

What's Next For Us

The other couple in our group has the torch to run the next campaign, and we're all eagerly anticipating that, however we all elected to take a several week break to deal with The Real World (booooo) before getting underway with a new campaign.

As a whole, the group is eagerly anticipating the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons, however Kanati and I were quick to point out that we'd both be more comfortable delaying until we can fully absorb the new system rules. Our next campaign will likely be 3.5 edition Ravenloft, which will be my first time in that campaign setting.

A lament for things left behind

Thanks to this lull in our gaming activities, we're getting ready for a garage sale here at SR Central to cull some of our extra stuff and regain some shelf space for our new acquisitions. I was going through some old boxes when I happened across my third edition D&D books, complete with my (nearly) full-body character sketch of my ropehandling wizard, Medric the Great.

I drew it while our GM was in a heated rules "discussion" with another of our college D&D crew, and I liked it so much that I held on to it. Unfortunately, we didn't get that far through the campaign before school got in the way so I never quite got to flesh that character the way I wanted.

I often grapple with the urge to revisit past characters or campaign settings, and I always get talked out of it by the rest of our gaming group. This pull usually gets stronger without the immediate presentation of roleplaying opportunities, in fact I keep several Google Docs with "Return to..." campaign threads that sit, waiting for their time to come.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to slake this thirst for reliving "the good times" I would appreciate hearing it!

Behind the Screen: The Endgame - Epilogue...

I am pleased to report that we successfully chased this campaign into the barn on Saturday. Vanir had accurately predicted based on my Friday post that they had some interesting times ahead, and to my mind the three aforementioned endgame elements played their roles superbly.

Caution: The following contains some description of my campaign and/or characters involved and how our Friday post applied directly. If you hate that kind of thing, head on over to one of our many blog affiliates/buddies on the right hand side today. Also, lighten up a little.

The Big Event

Going up against the goddess of pain and suffering - it doesn't get a lot bigger than that! An interesting sidenote: Kanati and I elected to play our god/goddess rules a little more... uniformly than the actual rules dictate. I prefer goddesses to have a certain uniqueness to their magic, attacks, and damage descriptions than your standard rules imply. Suffice it to say the goddess of pain and suffering tends to be a little... extreme.

Kanati also did an excellent job of reigning our cast into an area where they couldn't explicitly use the environment to their benefit... the group was escaping through underground caverns with a small group of rebels and got trapped by oncoming hordes in an area known as "The Hub"... essentially the middle of a bike-spoke set of caves. The baddies poured in from all sides and cornered them while our goddess made her big entrance.

This ticked off our party and got them to initiate battle... and what a battle it was!

Suspense

Those of you reading along have likely followed our troubles with managing epic characters. I decided to bring about our element of suspense in a different way in this session: hit them hard, fast, and not give them much time to rest. In fact, our end confrontation occurred with most of the party on partial rest, so they were looking a wee bit nervous when she showed up.

The second way we added suspense was with the end of the encounter. The deal was this: whoever took the final blow against our goddess was brought before our pantheon of gods, and told that the only way to stop the goddesses reign of terror was to strike her down and take her power (it really wasn't quite as Highlander-esque as it sounds, but go with me here).

The rest of the party way left scratching their heads as our paladin and the goddess faded from their sight. We led Sir Geekelot, our paladin's player, downstairs and told him this information and he put a lot of thought into his decision but ultimately made the sacrifice to save the world. It was somewhat poetic that he be the one to take the final shot, as the ethical dilemma was heightened because of his strong allegiance to a good aligned god.

The Epilogue

Without going into much further detail, our epilogue was FANTASTIC as a result. Vanir (and Bat Loaf, his character) were so involved in roleplaying the interaction with our paladin/new god that I actually had to ask him to take a few seconds of a break to find out how everyone else in the party was reacting or if they wanted to do anything.

Then it was right back to the roleplaying. I was very proud of our group, how in character they stayed during this portion and how much care was taken to actually react as their character would. We had some of our more "goody goody" characters acted as expected and wanted out of this situation post-haste. Our neutral characters (both of which were very close to our paladin during the course of the campaign) elected to remain around him as he took on his new role as god.

The Conclusion

Happily, my formula appears to work pretty well. I hope all of our players had as much fun during the closing sessions of our campaign as we did creating/running them, and I hope that you have gained a few new ideas for how to execute the final sessions of a campaign!

One final note: never, ever, ever introduce a dead gold dragon on a whim to your epic level players. They will only find ways to befriend/reanimate/abuse this relationship.

That is all!