Zkoth Campaign: Bald Mountain Baddies

Follow up on posts I made about running a public campaign at a local brewery...

We are at least 4 sessions in and the rotating cast of PCs has managed to explore the bald mountain base of a weird alien race and has had multiple encounters with their owl bear soldiers. Next session will see them locked in combat with a host of owl bear guards on their final push to overtake the entire location and secure its treasures in the name of the Jade Prince.

Next session is this Wed.

Thoughts so far on public games:

They are necessarily lite. Without a dedicated core of players and a lot of time to play, it's very hard to develop depth. But this is D&D... and for my money I'd prefer to keep it lite. We can and do develop characterization over time. Some players come almost every game and play the same PCs, so that naturally leads to character development.

It is really cool to get to play with different people. I love the folks that always show up, of course. They are the core. But when I get a random new person I don't even know it's just a cool thing. Doing this is going to challenge my DMing skills to the fullest, I believe. At least in terms of organizing and orchestrating games in general.

So far so good.

Lost Land of Zkoth 1

In October 2017 I started a campaign for my local group wherein they were in the service of the Jade Prince, consigned to go on a 7 galley sea voyage to explore a lost land known as Zkoth. We played a few sessions then the schedule fell apart, as it often does, and the campaign went into hiatus.

Recently I was given the chance to run public games a local brewing company called Jarfly. Last night the new campaign began, mostly with the original players, but also open to the public as a drop in/drop out game.

The venue worked out very nicely. It wasn't nearly as noisy as expected, probably owing to the frigid temperatures which kept the crowd down. The proprietor Daniel, also a part time player, and I agreed to do the game every other Wed.

It's a clip art panther!

In this session the players took on new roles, following up on an interesting quest their original PCs discovered. They set out around a large salt lake in the humid, warm country to find a doorway at the base of a low, bald mountain. The creepy lake was still as death, with no telltale signs of fish or other life... except the ubiquitous serpentine form the cleric, Clarus of the Eternal Eye, spotted 100' offshore. But it wasn't from the lake that danger arose. Instead, they were harassed by six jet black panthers. The attacks of the panthers caused "negative energy" to invade bodies and non-magical weapons to be destroyed. The battle was fierce and one of the fighters, Mongore, was badly wounded. But they triumphed in the end, thanks largely to a level 3 NPC who was slated to be played by a random patron of the bar who had to leave early.

They found their secret door and, after dispatching an owlbear sentry (the only monster so far encountered that they recognized as being native to their homeland), they entered a seemingly abandoned rough-hewn temple complex. This lead to a pool of lava, a strange goddess statue, and a black pudding (yay!).

The session ended with the PCs banged up and out of magic power, resting near the temple entrance, plotting their scheme to re-enter and explore the 13 mysterious doors they didn't dare touch while avoiding the black pudding along with whatever thing created the burnt footsteps leading out of and into the lava pool.

Fun times!

Rule set is B/X D&D using B/X Essentials and house rules. All PCs started at level 3.