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The Doubley-Doos ex parte, at the request of the Grand Chancellor in Biel, were traveling to the half-orc settlement of Gjohammer to speak with a Hearing House representative and attempt to gather intel about one of Klaas Shrillbeast’s lieutenants who was rumored to be amassing forces in the region. They arrived to find the army already stationed outside of the walls of the city. The air was ripe with the approaching conflict.

Dormin snuck through the enemy camp and inside the city walls, where he worked with Gjohammer troops to smuggle someone past the ranks of the goblin army so they could send word back to Biel. In the meantime, Shelby used their contact crystal for Yzzod, the gold dragon they freed in Blackwater. He hurried to their aid, promising to help their Gjohammer contact arrive in Biel as quickly as possible so he could return to assist in the coming fight.

With Yzzod off, the Doubley-Doos watched and waited. Before long, the gates opened, the horns of war sounded, and the two armies clashed. Shelby spotted who she believed to be Klaas’s lieutenant, Nuggdig, and rushed across the battlefield to attack him. She got in several good blows, but found that Nuggdig was much more formidable than she’d estimated.

In the meantime, Shump stormed the field to assist Shelby, but upon raging, he was suddenly overcome with a dark aura and necrotic energy exploded from him in a thirty foot radius, killing a large swath of the army around him and clearing his path to Nuggdig.

Dormin stayed back, striking at enemies from the shadows. He attempted to use his goblin amulet of controlling to dominate someone from the invading army, but it was to no avail.

During the battle, Shelby was battered and barely conscious when she noticed across the field, a group of goblins were setting fire to the trees surrounding the city. In their charge, she saw several more goblins bound and chained, these appearing to wear the colors of the Rockmore tribe. She hurried over, killing their captors and helping them flee the inferno to relative safety.

Although Nuggdig fell in the battle, his own officers hurried to the gates of the city and set up a large wooden construction resembling a canon covered with arcane runes. What they were planning remained unclear, however, as just as Shrillbeast reinforcements arrived, a roar was heard throughout the forest and Yzzod landed among the armies, spewing fire and eradicating many of the invading goblin forces. Once he made his presence known, the goblin officers called a retreat, pulling back from the walls of the city and fleeing as fast as they could.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Doubley-Doos tended to their new goblin companions and learned that Fric’s klan had been ambushed somewhere around Opal Town. They weren’t sure whether Fric himself was alive or not — these three goblins had been knocked unconscious and came to already in Shrillbeast custody. The Doubley-Doos decided to keep the goblins with them, for the time being at least, to help escort them back to their klan if they could, and if not at least out of danger. As the dust settles on the battlefield and the city guards bring the strange arcane goblin device into the city for further examination, the Doubley-Doos prepare to meet with Gneboch Mawt, the Hearing House representative.

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Tee hee hee hee hee hee YAY YAY YAY.

I was very happy with the way this went.

As I’ve mentioned before, I like 5e’s combat. I think it has just the right amount of minor crunch to make it feel like a game, and I like the ebb and flow of combat. I don’t need nor want the hardcore crunch and realism of GURPS, but I like that a few bad dice rolls can still potentially reverse your otherwise favorable position in a fight.

I’ve never run a large scale battle before. I didn’t want to treat it like normal combat — if everyone had a normal initiative, I thought it would drag the game down for the actual players. But I still wanted it to feel big and epic in scope. So I employed one of the rules from 4e that I quite like, although sparingly: the minion.

Tons and tons of 1 HP goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears flooded the field, plus tons of half orcs. For the goblin army, I bought a great, cheap set of 40 “simple geometric” miniatures. I ended up using all of the goblins, the “orcs” (which I used for bugbears), and the lizard folk (which I used for hobgoblins). For the Gjohammer army, I used old school blue army men.

I tried to keep initiative simple. I divided it into goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, cavalry, officers, Gjohammer army, Gjohammer cavalry, and Gjohammer officers. That way, even though there were a ton of minis on the board, they weren’t moving individually or all at once. Unless the attacks were against PCs, I just rolled for attack and defense for the two sides, and then rolled a d4 to see how many soldiers died for each initiative.

I was happy with how things were moving along…but it was still A LOT of things in the initiative list, even simplified, and I could tell everyone was…maybe not getting bored but definitely disengaging until it was their turn. So I realized, about halfway through the session, that my players should be playing the Gjohammer troops as well. I gave my players basic instructions on how they moved, how they attacked, how damage was dealt, and then I was free to concentrate on only the goblin army.

Once that minor correction was made, I think things picked up and everyone seemed way more engaged. I’m just kicking myself that I didn’t think of it earlier. I’ll definitely remember it for in the future.

Other things of note: everyone did great, but poor Steph got hammered by Nuggdig. She got down to 1 HP, and only just avoided going down. I mean, that wouldn’t have been the end of the world — death saves exist for a reason — but still. She was pretty distressed.

As you might have noticed, Shump has gone through some changes. A few weeks ago, Wizards put out some new test subclasses for Barbarian and Monk, and the former was PERFECT for our game. Path of the Wild Soul has its roots in the feywild (which is where Shump was raised), and is akin to the wild mage sorcerer subclass — when you rage, you roll on a wild surge table and get a random result. Since Shump just got rid of a cursed artifact that was tied directly to an evil goblin deity, it made sense that he might have some residual magical effects. While the sudden magic wasn’t a surprise to my players, I can’t wait to see how the characters deal with this change.

Possibly the most adorable thing I saw all night: as the goblin army’s reinforcements arrived, and I mentioned hearing flapping wings and a roar in the distance, I noticed that Stephanie had her eyes closed, her fingers crossed, and she was whispering, “Please, please, please, please.” When I said that it was Yzzod coming to help, she looked so relieved. It made my heart feel all warm and fuzzy to see her so engaged.

I love these people so much, y’all. They are all great players.

This next session will begin a little mini-arc that I’ve had planned for a couple months now, and I’ve been waiting for them to get to it. It’s an experiment, something a bit different than I’ve done before, so I don’t know whether it’ll actually work, but I can’t wait to try it out.

How will the party deal with Shump’s newly manifested magical abilities? What was the goblin’s magical device they were setting up at the gate intended for? Is this the last they’ve seen of these goblin forces? Is Fric okay? We’ll see what answers we get next time!

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