I don’t get around to posting here much. I’m running 2 ongoing D&D 5E (2014) campaigns, a ShuffleQuest style campaign, and playing in another 5E game, on top of whatever games I run with the family.
My Father’s Hammer is a game I made based on the Lost & Found SRD by Jack Harrison. It’s a story-telling game about an ancestral item that over time changes, yet stays the same (you play the game from the item’s point of view).
If you like it, check out some of the awesome games by Jack Harrison. Artefact is fun and a great way to write interesting backstory for magical items usable in any RPG.
Fires in his regular form (bottom left) and ultimate form (right)
The adventuring party known as The Flying Fires travels through the Whispering Wood. The party consists of the fire buddies By Fire Be Purged, Kindra, and Fires. They here a call for help and find a group of elves (with British accents) trapped in a prison of brambles. Two Giant Bramble Badgers guard them. By Fire Be Purged manages to make friends with them and they let the party talk to the elves. The elves tell of the Bramble King, a usually friendly magical fey that is currently angry that somebody stole his bramble crown. A young elf maiden Rebecca lends the party her bramble sparrow which leads them to the Bramble King.
The Bramble King, a tall fey made from plants, agrees to free the villages if The Flying Fires recover his stolen crown. He grants them each magical bramble armor to help them hide and move through the forest with ease. The party tracks down the last known location of a missing bramble creature and climb over an overgrown stone wall into an old keep.
To their left they hear ominous chanting which By Fire Be Purged recognizes as an evil conjuration spell. They try to sneak up on the summoners, but Kindra gets tangled in vines and trips. The two shadows that were chanting over a shadow bramble crown hear them. One flees with the shadow crown while the other charges in to fight.
Reacting quickly Kindra ignites her wreath of flames and burns her way out of the vines, striking the shadows with magic missiles. By Fire Be Purged creates and illusion that cuts off the escape of the fleeing shadow, forcing it back toward the party. Fires uses his ultimate ability and transforms, burning the nearby shadow. Kindra finishes it with scorching rays. As the other shadow is corralled back towards the party, Fires grabs it and throws it literally into space. The shadow crown falls back to the ground, bounces off Fires (who has somehow transformed into a trampoline) and is caught by By Fire Be Purged.
They realize this is not the real bramble crown, but a shadow copy. They follow a thread of shadow energy to a nearby tower. By Fire Be Purged climbs the vines up, while Kindra channels magic into he shadow thread and begins to pull, almost pulling the real bramble crown free from atop the tower, but a thorn demon grabs it. By Fire Be Purged (not dressed in a giant plant costume) scares it away and it lets the crown fall to Kindra. The thorn demon is so scared it summons a portal and escapes, but not before Fires dives through too! Fires is missing!
By Fire Be Purged and Kindra return the bramble crown to the Bramble King, who rewards them with a small bramble pet each (a bramble velociraptor for By Fire Be Purged, a bramble tasmanian devil for Kindra, and a bramble stegosaurus for the missing Fires).
Characters: Bomb Bomb, Eldest Son’s goblin alchemist (he painted a mini for him today)
Giant Bull, Youngest Son’s LEGO Duplo Bull. It was HUGE.
The Judge WIP
So Bomb Bomb and his buddy goblin The Judge (one of my goblin characters) stage an impromptu raid on a monster encampment. This thing is full of ghosts, trolls, giants, and a summoner that summons The Bull.
After a botched attempt to distract The Bull to cause a diversion, Bomb Bomb goes straight in with an offer of a Disco Party, lobs a disco ball full of dynamite into the camp, and scatters most of the monsters. The others are knocked unconscious by the rampaging Bull whom the goblins feed and befriend.
The goblins loot the camp. Younger son’s other character, a prismatic spider he painted today, shows up. This thing was wild. It can shoot rainbows which it then eats for food. I’m pretty sure at some point it shot a rainbow beam at a disco ball for maximum stun all around.
Characters: By Fire Be Purged, Eldest Son’s dragonborn fire sorcerer
The Kraken, Youngest Son’s…something, I’ve lost track of what kind of character this is, today it was a dragon…
The two of them went down into the sewers because apparently the Kraken eats acid and there is acid down there. They found a temple of light full of magical sand and a forge and tools. A large magical hand made from sand animates and attacks. The pair burn it down, and the Kraken begins to reassemble it in a different way.
A strange man named Sanderson enters, and they manage to talk to him before attacking him. He explains he makes magical stained glass using special sand. He has 2 projects to finish, but needs 6 colors of sand (I used the colors of M&Ms). By Fire Be Purged, who is part of the Protectors that seek out and safeguard magical artifacts is interested in helping and learning about these projects. They proceed down into the crystal caves below where they face a different creative challenge to get each color of M&M, er, sand. Sanderson forged them into glass to make 2 stained glass pictures of fairies. (I had each boy color their own picture from a coloring sheet, which summoned a different fairy pet for each boy, with powers matching their color, red and blue, obviously).
Most of our stories lately, at least from Youngest Son, involve us going to the beach to fight monsters. This typically involves your typical 4 types of elementals, plus more unique things like sand elementals and playground elementals.
This is especially interesting given that none of us have PHYSICALLY BEEN TO A BEACH in months (except the one night to see the blue algae tides).
Characters: By Fire Be Purged, Eldest Son’s dragonborn fire sorcerer
By Water Be Purged, Youngest Son’s water elemental water sorcerer
The two split up to explore the Magic Labyrinth. By Fire Be Purged got a clue about a secret passage behind a wall. By Water Be Purged found out about a gorgon that lived in the dungeon. He found it and the two surrounded it. By Water Be Purged closed his eyes to avoid its stone gaze, but By Fire Be Purged was too slow and started to turn to stone. After a fierce battle they used fire to melt the creature.
The gorgon turned out to be made of wax with an ooze inside. The ooze had eyes. By Fire Be Purged scooped up the ooze and used it to coat his backwards sword, turning it into a Sword of Petrification. By Water Be Purged scooped up the gorgon’s eyes and used them to replace his own, giving himself stone sight that could petrify or cure petrification. He used these powers to heal a stone owl and turn it back to normal. The owl showed him to the hidden passage. He knocked 3 times and it opened, revealing a magic scroll that could curse a person’s soul, and a magical giant hourglass. By Water Be Purged gave the empty Chamber of the Hourglass to By Fire Be Purged to capture creatures, and he kept the magic sand and scroll.
Youngest Son: What type of pet should I pretend to be? Dad: Can you give me a clue? Youngest Son: A Christmas pet. Dad: How about a polar bear? Youngest Son: Does it have fir? Dad: Yes. Youngest Son: I don’t have fur. Dad:How about a penguin? Youngest Son: I don’t have wings. Dad:So no birds. How about a snow leopard? It can sneak in the snow. Youngest Son: Does it have fur? Dad: Yes. Youngest Son: Then no. Dad:Can you give me more clues? Like a dragon? A Christmas Snow Dragon? Youngest Son: Yes! But a Chinese Dragon. Dad: Because it has no wings? Youngest Son: Right. And it eats snow.
The darkness-clad cleric lady Drell and the young summoner Philip Daniel Demonsong meet face to face in from of Vizio’s Tavern on their way to a special meeting. As they talk, assassins strike, firing a crossbow at Drell from the neighboring balcony. A second assassin charges upon Drell, yelling “We’ll teach you to steal from House Drovenge!“ and attempts to incapacitate her with a blackjack, only to have his face melted off by her dark touch.
Down the street, the Ranger Tyr sees the events unfold and leaps into action, chasing off the crossbowman.
Wanting no part in the fight, Phil tries to make his way into the tavern, but finds the door locked. Forced to confront the situation in front of him, Phil commands his demon eidolon to pounce on the thug, pinning him to the ground.
The hulking barbarian Grub and the gnome bard Trazom appear on the scene as well and lend a hand interrogating the would-be assassin as he is pinned down. He reveals little, only that he was employed by House Drovenge to recover a bag of 500 gold pieces Drell had stolen from them. The human man appears slightly familiar to Drell, but she can’t remember why. Suddenly 3 squads of Dotari (city guards) appear seemingly out of nowhere to break things up. A blackjack, levitated by Trazom, is forgotten and falls to the Earth, knocking out the thug, who is dragged off by the guards.
A woman peeks out from inside the tavern and begins to unlock the door to let the party in. However, a second assassin appears on the balcony, this time firing upon Trazom. The second assassin is a gnome in a shadowy cloak. Grub springs into action launching, and failing badly, to throw Trazom up onto the balcony at the assassin. Flat on his back, Trazom dodges crossbow bolts and incapacitates the assassin with Hideous Laughter and captures him. The party drags the assassin into the inn where they finally meet Janiven, the woman who called them here to be a part of her newly formed and as-yet unnamed citizens’ watch group.
Assassination attempts: 2 Gnomes thrown so far this campaign: 1 Gnomes thrown successfully: 0
Paper and Pauldrons 