Dungeon Master Life: Work Hard, Play Harder

This Wednesday's session featured the debut of Makenna's new character Marilla Murvoma, a merfolk waterbender who came to the island Chult on a  quest from her recently deceased mentor Shifu. Ashley couldn't participate due to personal emergency, but introductions between Agile Winter and Marilla went smoothly as she read out the cryptic prophecy that Shifu had left for her (and that I had spent a few weeks designing and painstakingly writing.) The first two lines of the prophecy were an amusing, if clumsy, way to integrate Marilla as a member of the party: by referencing the alchemy urn that the players received at the Shrine in the last session, they were easily identified. The second couplet warned of terrible consequences should Marilla fail in her quest and the party ultimately fail to end the death curse, and encouraged the party to "gather strength and advantage." My players being who they are, the lines were taken much differently from how I had origin...

A lesson I learned in Dungeon Master-ing in this session goes as follows: buy your own re-usable battle maps, because drawing a grid of one inch squares using a ruler and a Sharpie hurts after an hour. If buying the maps are impossible, then at least don't start drawing the map only three hours before your players arrive, because that is bad time management. I finished the map an hour before anyone arrived, so the session did not start completely in disaster. Makenna, however, had lost her character sheet, which ended up being an omen for what came to pass in the session. To avoid the settlement of violent and overpowered goblins, the guides Flask and River suggested crossing the River Soshenstar at the abandoned camp of the Order of the Gauntlet, Camp Righteous. After a brief disagreement (because my players are contrarians to the bones) Casamir used his wings to fly Agile and Nugget the Velociraptor over the river, while the guides crossed in a canoe and Princess Quiana tried t...