Lume Campaign Session 3 - “Proof of Conflict” (PoC)
Before the Game
I had promised to have a VTT for this session, so the night before, I got Foundry installed and ready. I also read the previous session notes and retrospective, to refresh my memory on things.
The morning of the game, I was made aware of a local Internet outage. Initially I was hopeful that this would resolve quickly, as it usually does, but this outage ended up lasting the whole day. I had to tether my laptop to my phone to be able to DM today.
Game Session
The session began with an equally rough start, as we first had network issues trying to host Foundry through a cell phone tether. We eventually resolved this with reverse tunneling and a VPS (magic), and proceeded to learn that Foundry would not actually work for our intentions (a shared whiteboard with tokens, for zero prep play). So we pivoted. I tried Owlbear Rodeo next, but found it to be much worse (“updated”) then when I last used it. Finally tried roll20, which was exactly what we needed, but now it has some awful ads at the start. Fine. Whatever. Two hours had passed at this point, and we just wanted to play.
Leveling Up
During that two hour process, we got players fully leveled up to level 2. Here there was some discussion about gaining HP on level up. Since HP is one of the few things already being ruled differently for this campaign, and because the players agreed to it, we changed the rule on HP to this:
at every level, roll all of your hit dice (and add con bonus as usual) to determine your new max HP (at minimum increasing your Max HP by 1, from a previous level)
This rule comes from Worlds Without Number, and I think it feels appropriate for 5e, giving players marginally above average HP in the long run, but still plenty of chaos at the lowest levels, and still below 5e’s default HP growth.
This raised the barbarian from having 3 HP at level 1, to 21 HP at level 2. Players noted that clearly he had spent his downtime training.
Rumors
While the players were figuring out roll20, I took the opportunity to roll up some world news, in the form of a catastrophe and discovery, each from a random direction:
Within their own Kingdom of Lume, wizards claimed to have discovered the “location of another world.”
Players questioned whether time travel was involved, harking back to rumors of a time wizard in session 1. The answer was no, the rumor didn't include such language. (But that doesn't mean it's factually unrelated)
The second bit of news was of a fiery meteor in the south east, in the barbarian lands.
The barbarian’s player then inquired how the barbarian might interpret this, from a religious perspective. Answer was that it indicated trouble or the end of a bad leader’s reign. One player commented that it's too bad they weren't there to help dethrone the ruler. …next session? Maybe!
Downtime Resolution
The druid Serinde investigated locally, regarding the identity of the fingernail potion. The grove’s apothecary did not know, but recommended the apothecary to the North in Sule, a town near the center of Lume. Players confirmed the location of this on the map. (1712)
Ottmar the barbarian had his salvaged longbow repaired and purchased arrows for it, and trained very hard, clearly.
Ranger Aridhel fails to secure any more support from the military, but maintains the support of the local captain, who is adamant about getting more proof so he can throw more military resources at wiping out the filthy goblins and hobgoblins. Ten guards are once again assigned to Aridhel.
The grove's elder pulls the scout, which had previously been assigned to the party.
Session Goals and Party Prep
The players wanted to return to the ruins, checking on how the inhabitants may have responded to finding the trapped door burnt down. They really want to find proof of the hobgoblin presence, so they can get more backup and equipment for exploring the dungeon.
Mol and Serinde both purchase healing potions, and the party does some general shopping. They buy thieves' tools now, so they can pick locks and disarm traps, which they discovered are a real threat in the previous session.
Their marching order will now have the barbarian, one guard, and the cleric in front, three ranks of guards in the middle, and the druid and ranger in the back.
The Party Heads Out
There's only a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter on the way to the ruins, but I give a 50% chance that the encounter would be with hobgoblins. I also began rolling up an Appendix A dungeon entrance during the 2 hour VTT mess earlier, since it seemed likely they'd be exploring there this session.
So of course that 1 in 12 chance of encountering hobgoblins is exactly what happens first. Now I also use a d6/4 to determine the relative size of the encounter (in hit dice), old school style. At a 3:4 ratio, the hobgoblins would be willing to try that fight, if it were a successful ambush, so I quickly built the encounter from the Hit Dice budget: 6 goblins and 5 hobgoblins.
Now I rolled for surprise, negative on both sides, so they'll discover each other at the same time. How? An arrow loosed eagerly by a goblin up ahead, giving away the ambush before the rest of the enemies were ready.
The battlefield:
In the middle of the forest, difficult terrain!
Somewhat difficult visibility due to all the trees, so I rule that targets more than 30ft away receive partial cover from ranged attacks.
Since the party has a ranger, I rule the path immediately behind and ahead is not difficult terrain for the party.
None of this area is difficult terrain for these goblins and hobgoblins, as they've been preparing in this area.
Positions:
Party in formation
Three goblins, and three hobgoblins behind them, on the left flank, 40ft away.
Two goblins, and two hobgoblins behind them, on the right flank, 20ft away.
One goblin in a tree 40ft up ahead, its body roped to the tree to hold it up as a lookout.
14 + 9 = 23 total combatants, in this first combat of the campaign!
Round one, declaring actions:
Serinde the druid will cast fairy fire on the 6 hob/goblins on the left flank
Mol the cleric will move forward and fire at the rope with their crossbow, attempting to break the rope so the goblin falls
Ottmar and Aridhel fire their longbows at the goblins on the left flank
Aridhel orders the guards to cover their flanks, and for the three guards with shortbows to also fire at the goblins on the left.
Players win this initiative, so everything goes as planned.
Fairy fire hits all six opponents in the left flank… outlining them in violet, and giving all attacks against them advantage!
With disadvantage, the cleric rolls an astounding 22 on their attack, severing the rope and dropping the lookout goblin to the ground (falling damage!), where they fall prone.
Aridhel, Ottmar, and the three archer guards rain arrows with advantage. While most of these missed, one shot crit, so that the three goblins at least were killed.
Four guards formed a spear defense on the left flank. Three guards formed up on the right flank and advanced with their spears, killing one of the goblins there.
The goblin and hobgoblins all fire on the party… dropping one of the guards which advanced on the right flank, and wounding Ottmar. Most actually miss (their rolls were pretty awful).
Round two, declaring actions:
Aridhel orders the archers to support the right flank, and Serinde wants to change shape into a panther and flank the two hobgoblins on the right.
Mol runs ahead, to apply their mace to the prone lookoutgoblin’s face.
Aridhel and Ottmar are going to fire at the three hobgoblins on the left flank.
The one remaining goblin in the right flank is now more scared of the party than of their hobgoblin superiors, and plans to disengage and dash away. Similarly, the prone lookout goblin plans to crawl around its tree and hide in the chaos.
The hobgoblins are no longer confident in their ambush, having lost almost all of their underlings, and almost half of their side’s hit dice in a single round, while doing almost nothing to the party in return. The hobgoblins plan to dash away, leaving the goblins sacrificially to their fates.
Round two initiative goes to the hobgoblins. The one goblin manages to disengage and run, dodging even the blades of the angry hobgoblin behind him (the players now became aware of the sort of relationship by which goblins and hobgoblins operate)
The lookout hobgoblin rolled a natural one on their attempt to hide, and so stumbled and fell prone again.
The hobgoblins all dashed and ran.
The Cleric clobbered the miserable lookout goblin, finishing it off.
Aridhel and Ottmar fire at their targets despite the distance, utilizing the advantage they received from fairy fire. However, the 18 AC and -2 due to the partial cover was rough, and so they scored no hits. The three archer guards were also left without targets this round.
Round three:
The guards are told to stand down. Ottmar, Mol, and Aridhel all go to tend to the fallen guard, with cure wounds.
Here the barbarian wonders about using their herbalism kit as a makeshift healer's kit, given their class. I rule that they can, but it would expend the entire kit, because it wasn't really built for that kind of thing. Now they ask if they can use their survival skills when they're traveling/during downtime to gather herbs for the kit, and I rule again that yes they can, so they can give it additional uses, making it equivalent to a healer's kit for that class.
Serinde, in panther form, loses the initiative this round, and spends her time catching up to the two hobgoblins, and one goblin, that she is pursuing. She's undetected at this point, and ends her turn where she can at least make an opportunity attack against the hobgoblins when they run next turn.
Round four:
Serinde wins initiative, and I give her a 3 in 6 chance of being able to line up the straight 20ft line she needs to pull off a “pounce” attack. She succeeds and pounces on the hobgoblin, knocking them prone. The hobgoblin holds off the claw swipes with his shield, but the panther gets a good lunge in and bites the hobgoblin’s shoulder, leaving them quite wounded (7/10 HP).
The hobgoblin is abandoned by his allies, who continue dashing in their escape.
Round five:
The hobgoblin stands up from prone and pulls their longsword, but this round yields no progress on either side. The hobgoblin knows they can't outrun this panther, and that they'll need to kill it in order to survive.
Round six:
Serinde again bites the hobgoblin, leaving them at 3/10 HP, while their longsword connects with the panther’s body, leaving them at 8/13 HP.
Round seven:
Simultaneous initiative! The panther again lunges at the hobgoblin’s neck, and connects, dodging the hobgoblin's piercing strike, and securing victory in this duel.
Combat End
The hobgoblin’s head is taken as proof, and which the druid intends to preserve as a trophy of their first kill. Guards cut off the ears of the goblins, too.
5 goblins and 1 hobgoblin killed
Players roll individual treasure:
20 silver coins are looted from the hobgoblin, and 27 gold coins are looted from the goblins.
Session Wrap
We're nearing the end of our play time, so guards ask if this is enough proof, and if they can head back to town now. The players are in agreement on this point, that this is a good place to wrap things up.
One more roll confirms no encounters on the way back to the grove, so we end things there, and I ask players about their downtime plans.
Aridhel - requesting troops and supplies (with hobgoblin head and proof)
Mol - requesting info on this tribe of hobgoblins, looking for motive
Serinde - making trophy from hobgoblin; 2 weeks of lock picking lessons at 25gp per week (will require 11 weeks of training total)
Ottmar - foraging nearby to charge herbalism kit
Session Retrospective
A bit disappointed that the session ended so soon, but with the two hours burned at the start, that's just how things panned out.
The actual game session was two and a half hours long. The combat started about half an hour in, and lasted most of the two remaining hours.
For a 23-character combat, our first combat of the campaign, and us all being rusty at 5e combat in general, I suppose this isn't awful. But I want to do better. Because the enemies were split up across multiple locations, there wasn't much opportunity for me to roll more than two or three attacks at a time to bulk process NPC attacks.
Side initiative didn't seem to save much time, but I only have one data point currently, so I'm not going to start making changes on this speculation alone. The players are interested in trying side initiative some more as well.
Learning the characters and simple practice may speed up play over time.
After round 3, only one player was still active in the combat. At this time, I could have given him the hobgoblins to play. He affirmed that that would be fun in the future, but also that he had fun this time just watching as well. (“Just”. He was actively commenting, helping reference rules, etc throughout the combat, even though he didn't have any characters in it himself, so it’s not like he was doing nothing the whole time)
Going forward I intend to continue using roll20 for this campaign. One of the players will experiment some more with Foundry, to see if it can meet our needs. I personally am not hopeful on that front, its “whiteboard” functionality was entirely lacking as far as I could tell.
There is interest in D&D Beyond integration. I'm not excited about this, but I'm not stopping it either. The players have physical character sheets already, which they know are authoritative. I may revisit this if problems come of it, but with this particular play group I suspect it will be fine.
Players commented that it was cool establishing more about the world in this session. “Things just happen”, it was “nice to hear rumors”, “That was cool! I did like that!” Figuring out what their characters think about events, and tying them together is cool.
After the session, the topics of Zero Prep and 1:1 time came up, so I'll wrap this up with these quotes from the players. This is all from chat logs, so emphasis is theirs.
That's honestly part of the fun
Instead of the DM crafting stuff just for us (which can turn out super cool, don't get me wrong) stuff happens and we figure out together how it impacts our characters
It's even more collaborative storytelling, which is super cool
Oh! One thing I'm appreciating about forcing some in-game time between sessions - it encourages downtime activities!
I feel like in most D&D games, in-game time pauses between sessions, so downtime doesn't really make much sense
But since we're effectively forced to have downtime, it matters a lot more
I tend to be relatively underprepared for D&D things. I'm very much not one to write 20 pages of backstory for a character before I even play them
I very much like to discover who a character is and how they tie into the world
Which makes zero-prep D&D perfect for that kind of thing