Dungeon Master Life: Work Hard, Play Harder

On Monday the twentieth, I met with Ashley from 1 to about 3:30 to continue Casamir's storyline aboard the Merrshaulk's Hope , the transport vessel under command of a group of yuan-ti. While Casamir was napping in the brig, since there wasn't much else to do in the brig, he was awoken by the timbers creaking loudly and the ship shaking violently. Haley the jailer appeared, scrambling with her keys to unlock the cell and instructing Casamir to get on deck right away while she pushed a weapon into his hands. Casamir rushed up to the deck and looked out to see an adolescent  dragon turtle  attacking the ship. I say adolescent because I scaled down the original stats to account for Casamir's level. My dragon turtle has a maximum health of 200 health points, an Armor Class of 17, and all of its attacks have a plus 9 to attack rolls. I did stay mostly true to the damage rolls, but I did take the plus 7 off of the rolls. Casamir unfurled his wings and flew out near its hea...

This week's session was hosted at my house on Monday the thirteenth from 1 PM to about 4:30 PM. After traveling in a vaguely southerly direction for most of the day like the Red Wizard had told them about a few weeks ago, the party made a low-DC Perception check that I used to introduce the afternoon's encounter: two Flail Snails . These were represented by a small case of wood polish and a hair clip, because those conveniently took up 2 square by 2 square spaces on my "combat map" (a sheet of paper with inch by inch squares printed on it). Needless to say, I'm low on actual DM equipment like monster minis and a reusable map. With all seven NPCs engaged, (although Dragonbait wasn't much use from the back of the herd and Artus Cimber missed frequently with his longbow) the flail snails were defeated with relative ease as the group ganged up on one snail (which Agile had put to sleep with the Sleep spell, and I have just learned we have been using it incorr...

It's occurred to me that I should be logging the hours that I spend on this project in some semi-official fashion, so this session spanned from about 1pm to almost 4:30pm on Monday the sixth. At first, this began as a simple encounter. Casamir, having awoken from his coma just as the party began to set up camp, took watch over most of the night with Waffle and Nugget by his side. This setup was mostly due to the fact that both Makenna and Meagan canceled earlier that day and Ashley was hosting. As full darkness fell, four spectral forms manifested and attacked them, intent on draining their life forces. Being outnumbered wasn't quite as bad as the fact that the specters had resistance against almost all damage types except for radiant. Being an aasimar, Casamir's attacks were radiant damage, and so he and the dinos chipped away at the specters for many rounds. Eventually the dinosaurs each fell unconscious (to zero hit points) once, before the sounds of battle woke Agil...