The Giants

Few predate the giants, for they are older than than the sun, and know how to exist in any form free of warming fire or prisons of flesh. They are form and they are memory and they're knowledge of us is terrifying in its unerring accuracy.

-Some lunatic at the end of the bar 

The giants might be gods. But if they are then they don't exhibit the cloying and parental tendencies that many a narcissistic deity unloads on their worshippers like so much Thanksgiving family drama- it's like we get that you're older than all things, stop making it our problem. They have acquired many worshippers over the years, all whom they have ignored. In the eyes of a giant, the act of subjugation is unpleasant.

Why would you kneel when you could walk away? Why would you walk away when you could sit?

It's these kind of sayings that bring people to their knees in the first place, confounded by the size of the creatures and the seemingly profound natures of the aphorisms they are unable to help themselves and want to follow these monolithic beings to the ends of the earth.

Tianhua Xu

The truth of it is, giants are so old and have seen so many things, that all they can do is spout pithy universal truths. They can also usually tell you where things are, how long they have been there, or why they aren't there anymore.

Some believe that giants come from the mountains because they come and go from heaven as they please. Others believe that they simply have no home and wander the world in search of someone who isn't impressed by them.

Session 1: Hangovers & Hard Times

Quick you better stop reading if you don't like actual play recaps.

Prologue

No one is sure how it started. Everyone wishes it would end. The world is in shambles. The countryside is lousy with monsters, the cities are rife with corruption. The wizards pull all the strings. They control every port and every army, warping them to meet their strange and incalculable needs. The play at war like chess, each piece as valuable or disposable as the game dictates. It is tiresome and it is costly to all involved.

Never the less people attempt to live their lives in this madness, withstanding the corruption and oppression. The people have taken their protection and well being into their own hands. Companies of brave (or possibly stupid) able-bodied youth do their best to stave off the darkness. You are a part of one such company, located in a small town a few days ride from the city. The area is dangerous and it's your job to make it safe- or everyone dies, in which case they probably get brought back as some sort of terrible skeleton foot soldier by a wizard looking for cheap soldiers that don't need to eat.
So try not to fuck up.

Session 1: Hangovers & Hard Times

The story begins with a bunch of sad and hungover adventurers who had met the night before and partied far too hard at The Lonely Goat, a tavern owned by a young woman named Connie Hatchets.

Say hi Connie. Art by Guillaume Singelin

They all stare at Connie as she relates to them the bad news, the food order didn't come so there's nothing to eat for breakfast. She tells them that if they go to the farm nearby to check it out and make sure that the delivery wasn't waylaid by bandits or anything she'll let them off the hook about the astronomical bar tab they racked up the night before. So in order to keep from spending the day hungover and washing dishes-

Kenje Sandersong - Dwarf Rogue
Ovaria Blüdcunt - Dark Elf Warlock
Clubion Stieve - Tiefling Druid
and Fern - Human Alchemist

Set out on the road to see what's amiss at the farm. They decide to take the main road to save time and notice a fight happening between a Knight of the Realm and three scrappy looking characters, but decide to keep their heads down and move along, too hungover and hungry to think about anyone else's problems. They see no signs of a cart the whole way,

Oh no.

They arrive at the farm and find it strangely quiet. They make their way into the barnyard and find the cart, completely unladen. They open the barn door to find some strange creatures feasting on the remains of a dead pig. The creatures hear them and charge. When they finally get into the sunlight they are revealed to be five child sized, mutant turnips with terrible circular mouths and rows of sharp teeth.

They fling themselves onto the party, who defend themselves admirably, I'll save you most of the details of combat but we did learn that Ovaria's breasts were literal spiders*, not just tattooed to look like spiders like we had all assumed when she said "I've got spider tits" so we decided that in the Underdark, it's fashionable to use real, lets say schnauzer sized spiders as a form of breast augmentation and that just sort of chill on your chest. We figured out Victoria's Secret and it's very unsettling.

After the fight Kenje, Ovaria and Fern succumb to their hunger and eat some of the dead mutant turnips. They all agree that it's pretty fucked up but they taste delicious and their too hungover to care.

After taking a short rest and feasting on their vanquished foes, they set off towards the farmhouse to see if anyone living their is still, like, living. They find an old woman on the porch, partially transformed into a rutabaga. Clubion uses speak to plants to communicate with her and finds out that something strange fell from the sky about a week ago and now all the vegetables have come to life and are building something out in the north field and that anyone who at the vegetables in the last week has been mutated into one. This of course worries the party because they just had like a crazy smorgasbord with a bunch of dead mutant vegetables. They roll saves to see if their effected by it and both Ovaria and Fern realize that their hair and in Fern's case, his beard have become green and leafy.

The party decides to check out the north field and sees that the vegetables are all assembling some kind of crazy golem out of their own sacrificed bodies, and the party agrees that they need to burn it all down. They make their way back to the farm to get some barrels of accelerant and run into a couple of mutant onions riding goats flanking what can only be described as "Like Dolf Lundgren but it's a carrot"

This fight was a tough one, mostly because of how 5e handles weapon types and damage resistances. But thank god Kenje had an axe so they came out on top. They went back to the farmhouse, grabbed some barrels of oil out of the root cellar and managed to sneak back out to the golem, douse it in oil and set it on fire. It burned up real good and we called it quits for the night.

*Kavi, who plays Ovaria, has never played D&D before and may I say, is FUCKING NAILING IT.

6 hexes

Kiel Chenier tagged me in a DM appreciation month thing so here's my self indulgent contribution. 6 hexes you'll find in my home game.

1. The Tomb of Dust, home of the Banishing Rod. Frequented by Clerics as a right of passage. Overrun by animated skeletons of various clerics.

2. An Abbey whose basement is full of captured and tortured werewolves. The Abbot is a secret vampire.

3. Bullfrog-men obsessed with dueling. They wield Ironwood Rapiers. They duel for the right of sacrifice to their god, a giant blue heron.

4. The headhunter, a feared local legend. Collects butts.

5. Forest dwelling dwarves mine the deepest roots of ancient trees for a rare sap. The sap is processed to make a viagra-like potion.

6. A house out of sync with this dimension, you must eat the phase-lemons off the trees in the yard to interact with those inside.

Building A Setting Without Trying Too Hard

The main reason I chose to run 5th Edition for my most recent game is laziness. The depth and crunch of a 5e character is enough that by the time you've made 4 of them, you have a world emerging through the blank spaces of a character sheet and all you had to do is say yes.

I don't care what the elves should be like, I'm going to have fun no matter what because I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons and not doing my taxes. Do you know who does care what the elves are like? The person that thumbed through the book and saw a cool drawing of an elf and said "I wanna be THEM". They have a very clear idea of what the elves should be like and I guarantee you that if you let them decide they will not only be better at playing that elf but they will do work for you. They will populate cities and create nemesis' and fill your world with all sorts of great crap that you won't have to think about because THEY will know it, and they will feel like they exist in it.

Those of us that run games and spend our free time talking about and making games are smoking way harder stuff than those that just come around and throw dice a couple times a month. Don't let the fact that you spend your time reimagining the finer points of dwarves take away the joy of someone who just wants to do a Scottish accent and talk about binge drinking and beards. They had a long week and this is their day off.

When you think about what makes an enjoyable evening of gaming what comes to mind? Is it the specifics of what happened in the campaign? Or was it the fact that everyone was paying attention and cracking jokes and getting in character, and that for a few hours no one was looking at their phone or talking about how shitty everything outside their front door is. The stories people remember are not the most original but the best told. The games people remember fondly are the ones with good jokes and good snacks and no arguments about attacks of opportunity. 

Considering all of this the world building I did before I started this game was one sentence: 

"The wizards have been at war for over 500 years, and everything about it sucks."