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The Doubley-Doos ex parte, at the request of the Grand Chancellor in Biel, travelled to the half-orc settlement of Gjohammer to speak with Gneboch Mawt, the local Hearing House representative. After helping them fend off invading goblin loyalists to the Shrillbeast clan, events soured further when the captain of the guard was found killed and dismembered. In the course of investigating his death, they discovered that the mayor had, at least for a short time, been a slaad in disguise, yet another plot to replace prominent members of the government with shapeshifters.

The Doubley-Doos were able to kill the slaad, but couldn’t find the mayor, the priest or Gneboch in the aftermath. They found city guard tempers flaring as they blamed the goblin refugees whom Shelby rescued for the resulting chaos in the city, accusing them of being spies. This was exacerbated when an ambush resulted in a number of guards having their throats slashed and the banquet hall to be set ablaze. While the city guard dealt with the fire, the Doubley-Doos investigated a simultaneous explosion at the edge of town, finding a small group troop of hobgoblins that had remained undetected in the city. They were attempting to activate the device abandoned by the invading army at the city gates.

After defeating the invaders, the party attempted to figure out how to disarm the device. They found that when Shump stood near it, the device would shut down, but Dormin standing nearby activated the device again, causing the runes covering the surface of the device to glow and pulse. 

Unbeknownst to the rest of the party, Dormin felt his Amulet of Control begin pulsing in time with the device, urging him to approach the device and causing it to activate. The resulting expulsion of energy created a door in the air that seemed lead into another plane.

Shelby, ever the scholar, entered the doorway and found herself in a realm of shadows. She was only able to see a dirty cobblestone path stretching toward the horizon, leading to the base of a dark tower that Dormin and Shump both recognized from their dreams.

As Dormin, drawn by his amulet, approached the doorway, he collapsed, overcome with strange visions. In the first, he saw Klaas Shrillbeast climbing into a cave shaped like a grasping hand, the bodies of many humans and finned, blue-skinned creatures at his feet. In the second, he saw Klaas, clad in blood-red armor, approaching the city of Biel, dragging a long fiery whip. He struck the weapon against the ground, creating a massive chasm before him that swallowed the charging army of Biel. With his opposing forces decimated, he mounts a massive black dragon clad in a glowing red collar and flies toward the now defenseless city.

When Dormin came to, he had a location in his mind — A’opouli, the island district in the southernmost region of Iounin. 

The Doubley-Doos ended their day attending the funeral service for Captain Urdor and Mayor Lan Stite, who had also found dead. Head Priest Zanzor lead the ceremony in spite of his injuries. After the ceremony, Representative Mawt caught up with them, apologizing for abandoning them when the slaad attacked. He offered them gold and items to help them on their journey, and thanked them again for their help, saying it would have been far worse had they not been there to help.

As the sun rises on the new day, the Doubley-Doos find themselves on the road again, although where to has yet to be decided. Shelby suggested they escort their goblin companions back to Opal Town, where they last saw Frick’s tribe. Dormin wondered whether they should return to Biel to collect their remaining payment from Grand Chancellor Ravenswood or head to A’opouli to possibly stop Klaas before he can gain full power.

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Short description: Things get worse at an alarming pace.

After the Thing-inspired sessions from October, we didn’t play again for two months because of Halloween, the Ludo concert, Ozark BookCon, and Thanksgiving. Needless to say, I was ready to play D&D.

After the second or third explosion/screaming in the distance the heard, Jaz actually turned to everyone and said, “Oh my god, why did we come here??”

I wanted this sessions — depending on everyone’s decisions anyway — to wrap up a lot of loose ends from the battle while also opening up a few new quest lines. I’ve had a rough idea of where the adventure is headed — or at least where the events with Klaas and the Hearing House are headed — for a while now. I don’t want rail road my players, so if they’d chosen to pursue other areas, I would have accommodated. But given that they’re invested in the goblin rebellion story, I’m happy to continue building out the adventure.

This is the first session where I introduced some new house rules for Inspiration. I’ve always thought that Inspiration was kind of like extra credit that teachers would dole out when they were particularly impressed with something you did. But even though I’ve had some mechanics for it for a while, I actually used XP to fill most of that reward function…until I moved to milestone leveling. And then that was gone.

I tend to give out advantage and disadvantage based on the story and circumstances, so using Inspiration for that was kind of pointless. So I house ruled that Inspiration counts as 1 free natural 20. It can be used for an attack, a saving throw, a skill check. It’s basically just one freebie. It doesn’t stack, and it expired at the end of the session — to encourage using it so it wouldn’t expire. But still, I was terrible about remembering to give it out, and I never felt like I was consistently giving it out.

I watched a recent Matt Colville video about Inspiration where he talked about how to make Inspiration even better, and after hearing some of his ideas, I Googled around a little more and got some more ideas from Reddit and the Angry GM, and revised my house rules.

Basically, I liked the idea of turning the Inspiration over to the players so that they can give it out Inspiration and I don’t have to worry about it. It’s sort of like getting kudos from a teammate, which I think works even better than getting it from me. That way I don’t have people pestering me anymore, asking if they can get Inspiration.

So here’s how I tweaked it for my game. Inspiration can be earned in one of the following ways: 1) once per long rest, players can nominate each other — they must specify why they’re nominating; 2) they declare that they’re “claiming a setback” — either impose disadvantage on one of their rolls OR make a decision that creates a significant story setback, obstacle, or hindrance; and finally 3) when they level up, if they’ve had any major personality changes — lost faith in a deity, overcome a major flaw, etc — they can trade out old traits/ideals/bonds/flaws for new ones and gain inspiration.

I like that because it puts a lot more focus on player decisions, and creates more of a team dynamic.

I also wanted to expand how Inspiration could be used, too. So they can now cash it in to: get a natural 20 for any one roll; impose disadvantage on an enemy’s attack or saving throw; pool 3 players’ or 3/4th of the party’s inspiration (whichever is greater), and choose to change the outcome of events. It has to be agreed upon by all players and is subject to DM approval.

That last part in particular is a bit of an experiment, and we’ll see both how they use it and whether we like it, but I’m definitely willing to try things out.

We’re actually playing again this weekend since the next few weekends will be various holiday-impacted weekends. I’ve got some fun things planned. They have several options to choose from, and I can’t wait to see where they go.

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