Latest session:

The fighter of the party was tossed in jail the session before last and the last word said to him by the lord of the town (and later by a party member who'd negotiated his release and was relaying the terms) was "rot". He was an evil character and his point of view was he should be able to do ANYTHING he wants because he's helping the town with the Keep. No one felt they could trust him, so he was left in the jail (what was originally going to be a one-night stay got extended since he was so hostile to anyone trying to negotiate his release). Some mysterious entity got in touch with him and offered him a chance at revenge, nifty magic items, and command in an army for unquestioning servitude. He agreed.

So during this last session's combat, two battles happened at once: the first of them was the regularly scheduled "next room of the Keep" battle. The second battle, happening simultaneously so both battles used the same initiative order, was the fighter cutting his way through the guard. Once he was free of the town the character became mine and the PC became the newest NPC (and a nemesis of the party). The player got to play his old fighter breaking out of the jail in one battle and his new character helping the party in the other. Interestingly, the players were rooting for the fighter to escape because they liked the idea of a nemesis so much. I didn't have time to finish the layout so I had to go part 3D, part 2.5D.

Also, during the main battle a PC was killed. The player didn't care to have him brought back, so we didn't bother and he's rolling a new one (he only likes playing rogues but chose the wizard to balance out the party, so now the party is without a controller). The battle started poorly... The room was pitch black and the party separated, leaving one person alone listening in the dark while the rest of the party went to explore with their light source. None of them could see the rats skulking amidst the stalactites above them. Turned out badly... The giant rats lurking above the loner waited until the steps of the rest of the party receded, and then fell from the ceiling and attacked him (I explained to the rest of the party that he lost his cool and started screaming when the fourth German Shepherd-sized rat fell on him and bit him). ...and then the Ochre Jelly sensed the disturbance and started making its way over. They managed to regroup and put up a fight, but it was a bad start and they had to work hard playing catch up.

Here are some shots of the board:
http://wormholegamer.com/photos/thumbna ... ?album=143

Thanks for the write up!

By the way your terrain looks awesome...(much better than mine).
Keep us informed about the rest of the campaign

So, I gotta ask, how did you like the velcro Masterboard during play? I made one a few years back and after a few games it got retired; very obtrusive. I've gone back to old school battle mats for dungeons and the like.

@Gallagen: You're welcome. Thanks for the compliment, and I'll keep you guys posted.

@Count_zero: It hasn't been a problem. There was a little initial griping about the board being wide enough that the important pieces were too far away from some people but they got over it after they saw how cool the terrain could get. We get by with some standing and the occasional "please move my guy here".

Just for the record, here are the session's pictures before the last one I posted...

http://wormholegamer.com/photos/thumbna ... ?album=140

Last week's adventure involved a relatively easy encounter with a blue slime (the group has three strikers, so they're kind of tuned to eat single-monster encounters...).

The board can be seen here: http://wormholegamer.com/photos/thumbna ... ?album=144

The water is from Something Below.

The third image might not look like much, but it took me a long time to make that tile. I took a texture from the 1" minichunk set that had a pile of coins covering a stone dungeon floor and I zoomed in down to the pixel level and erased the dungeon floor. Then I took the coins I had and put them down on top of a cavern floor as a second layer, and then erased the white space around the coins. It took several hours, so I wanted to show off the work.

That's very nice. I wish our terrain had been as nice for when we did KOTS. They rapidly outpaced my building speed. That coin pile tile looks great. I know I couldn't approximate anything nearly that nice. Maybe you could submit it as a bash? It would be kind of cool to see a kitbash compilation of the work people have come up with for KOTS. There has been some very nice work done on this dungeon.

Luckyjoe

Latest shots here: http://wormholegamer.com/photos/thumbna ... ?album=145

The party came into contact with a hive of Kruthik who did a fair amount of damage to the party but didn't succeed in bringing anyone down. Model-wise I only had to make a few pieces for this board since most of it was already done. Sadly I missed one 2-space wall segment near the inner chamber, but it was either get that done or get to work on time... I used the treasure-on-the-floor bash I did to make a corner piece, and I used pits from Something Below to make the entrance hallway that has the pit as part of it and then the little square pits that I used painter's tape to attach to the board as each pit was "discovered". The 6th shot shows the painter's tape on the back of one of the pits and the undamaged bit of terrain it was attached to.

When the players approached they first came in with no light until the rogue fell into the pit near the entrance and they slowed their exploration of the area. Then they started using glue globes to fill in the kruthik-made holes they found. When they finally confronted the larger kruthik the smaller ones had already dug through the glue and flanked the players anyway, keeping the avenger and ranger busy while the fighter, cleric and rogue forged ahead. It got pretty close for the cleric and the rogue, but they managed to not get incapacitated. My favorite moment was when the fighter used an attack to grant the rogue the ability to shift two squares. The rogue, moving carefully so as to avoid counter-attack, managed to shift right into one of the pit traps. I love physical comedy and enjoy the image of this determined warrior disappearing suddenly in the midst of circling his foes, looking for an opening while denying them the same...

When the PCs returned to the town they were told that the dead were rising in the local graveyard and had already taken a few villagers' lives. The players must attack the graveyard during the day since the undead will attack the town at night and be far more trouble than they would be during the day. This is a bit of a departure for the players because they usually do only one encounter and then go back to town to rest. Since they don't have time for an extended rest they must go into this second battle without their full compliment of healing surges available, without their daily powers, and without any action points. Should be interesting...

Next week: the graveyard!

Have fun....
Your players will remember this, just for the fact that they have less options then usual....

Keep up the updates!

Latest session: The Graveyard!

Pictures available here: http://wormholegamer.com/photos/thumbna ... 148&page=1

But to show off the highlights...

The glowing portal!


The windows!


...and a bird's eye view (which doesn't look as neat but gives a good overview):


So this session was a doozy, and the players came very close to getting "wiped". First though, major props to the Avenger player for bringing thematically appropriate music! Soooo much better.

The battle went down as follows: If you look at the picture with my horrible drawings on top of the bird's eye view (pretty sure it's the last of the bunch), you'll see the major areas of action. The Ranger may have saved the party by noticing that someone or something was inside the upper-most small crypt. This meant that before anything else happened, the Avenger and Thief snuck up next to it, and were able to shut down the archer inside the building quickly (she only hacked at the thief a few times with her relatively weak sword instead of punching horrible holes into vital areas with her bow). Shutting her down was huge, and was likely pivotal, so kudos to the ranger and thief for that tag team...

Anyway, the Avenger and thief snuck to the left red circle, hoping to see what was going on in the building next to them. After they were in position there, the fighter, cleric and ranger moved up to the left purple circle, hoping to boost the ranger up onto the roof into the smaller purple circle. The moment they got to the larger purple circle, skeletons burst from their graves into the brown circle and the upper green circle, grave hounds ran from the entrance of the large crypt to engage the people in the large purple circle, and the archer in the upper-most crypt got ready. The hounds, who I expected to do the heavy lifting in the fight, only hit one person once, so I won't discuss them much... Anyway, the ranger jumped onto the roof into the pink circle, and the thief and avenger got onto the red circle on their roof. When the archer in the red circled building fired on the ranger, the thief swung down to kick her. He missed the kick, but managed to tie her up in melee, which was important.

Meanwhile, the people in the large purple circle fought the skeletons in the brown circle who ran to engage them, with some help from the avenger. The green skeletons were the surprise of the encounter. They rolled exceptionally well, and methodically brought down player after player with their hail of well-placed arrows. First they took the ranger off the roof, then brought down the cleric, and finally everyone was down except for the avenger, facing off against the six skeletons. The avenger revived the fighter with a potion before getting taken out. The fighter then revived the ranger and she used her magic shield to keep the two of them safe (the hail of arrows that hit her shield would have killed her at that point). After that first tense bit, the fighter waded into the skeletons while the ranger shot at them from behind her, and they finished up the encounter quite handily. One character was brought around with first aid, but two of them had died and needed to be raised back in town.

It was an exciting fight, and my unfinished terrain was well-received (the wrought iron fence should've gone all the way around, the two trees were missing, and there were a handful of graves I didn't get around to making... I was happy with it anyway, but another day or two would've smoothed those bits over...).

Thanks for reading!

Very nice.

I was working on kitbashing shellendrak into that map before Wildwood Grove released, but I never even finished working on the fence alterations.

Did you have to bash, or alter the original map to build it using grove?

Thanks!

I used the grass tiles from Wildwood Grove, then put a layer of dirt path on top of them from Hinterlands (there was no simple way to do that... It involved using a bit from this path and a bit from that path...), then removed the cobblestone from the Wildwood grove path edging to give me grass that I could lay on top of the seam between dirt and grass to make the transition between the grove grass and the hinterland trail a bit easier on the eye. The fence is all Wildwood.

One thing I wanted to point out... For the windows I cut out only the glass, so the intricate frames in the windows are cardstock and the windows are transparencies, rather than just cutting a large hole in the cardstock and using transparency for both frame and window. I also had to do a little bashing for the large crypt since the inside of mine is stone instead of plaster, and I took the door off the front of it (replacing that with windows from the side wall), and also had to bash a little to get that foyer on the side (and cut a bit off the main roof for the two roofs to fit).

...and if I had to do it again, I could make the portal a little bit better, with no seam between the dirt covering the circle and the ground around it. The circle is hellworks squished down to the right scale, with a bucket of blue paint splashed into the center line to make it "pop".

Beautiful job on the windows. Those came out great.

Luckyjoe

Welcome to the forums jhuread!!!
Also, thank you for reminding me of days past, by that meaning your avatar!! Haven't seen trading cards in forever. Made me think of the cards as well.