Author: Lenny Pacelli

That’s is what remains after a session

(Empty beer bottles, chock-full ashtray, junk food and any illegal stuff already removed).

You start the session with just 6hp, you keep going into danger and it doesn’t matter if you have just 2hp. You keep fighting new battles and take major risks.

Beholder, Illithid and masked assasins leave a bloody mark on your sword and arrows. You fought a demon sorcerer, stole him his eye (that is also an artifact).

Then, you find yourself in front of the death’s gates. It’s all frozen, in a dark valley below restless spirits wonder around trapped in their decomposed body. Those who have found piece are just spirits exploring beautiful snowy mountain.

Your are just a mountain brigand (ranger) turned hero, but you have things to do, unfinished business and promises to keep.

And you have cheated death!

world of dungeons epic one-shot

I was with two friends last friday, it was late night and suddenly we decided to play (despite till that moment it wasn’t absolutely on our mind), so I Gm’d. We started to play as a joke, I was sure that we would have quit playing after ten minutes, but things went different…

We have Balishar the wiz and Larus the thief, they are walking a path through the woods. It’s early night and a stormy weather has just caught them.

They see a small village and head to the inn looking for a place to sleep.

As soon as they enter inside the inn people stop talking and everybody stare at them.

Till this moment we were going for a gonzo style adventure, but then I sayed something that changed the mood and set everyone on the same page…

are you demons or dead people? Because no one except them walk this land at night says a villager.

They learn that the village is cursed, two demons hunt the townfolk at night. Magic runes prevent them from getting inside the building.

they found a dead girl slain by the demons, but later they discover that th girl is an hunter from a realm on anoter plane and that she is immortal, if killed at night she’ll revive in the morning.

She is here to kill the demons: they are like a lion/boar/wolf the size of a horse, but they are just a projection of huge and deadly monsters that threat their people on her plane, so she hunt them on this other plane were they are weaker.

The wiz learn also that killing thise demons will cause something terrible to happen there.

There were a lot of cool scene, there was mistery, adventure, and most important: choices.

At the end they helped the girl-hunter to kill the demons, but both the Pc were mortally wounded by the creatures, maybe they will live another week, who knows?

But something is happening, a vortex of cloud in the darkness of the night sky, what will happen know? What have they done?

It was a pretty intense game, we played for less than two hours, but many things happened and everything was really cool.

Note: the only move

We used was last breath.

the wizard could cast every spell he wanted to, creating it at the moment,

But if there was a price to pay, it was always proportioned to the intended effect (right now I’m thinking a way to codify that “create your own spells” wizard).

For the first time I’ve played Dw as a player and not as a Gm!

Here’s my character and what happened to him, and some background story that was developed totally during the game as a consequence of question/answear and moves (Dw still surprise me after a long time about how you can start with zero and end with…a lot of stuff):

Name: The Will (Wizard)

Background:

since he was a kid he had this gift, he may foreseen the future. Unfortunately, people started to think that the boy was bad luck. Years later he left his village and joined a dubious sect. After a few months with the cultist, working hard as a laborer for them, they gave him the chance to test himself by taking on the trial to become a member of the sect and not just one of their followers.

By that time He was starting to think they were only a bunch of manipulator, exploiting other’s people life…

He was locked inside an underground tomb where he had to spend alone ten days in the dark with no food, facing what lies beneath.

After a dozen days in company of spirits and ghosts he emerged, surprisingly, with his sanity intact (almost, but determinated).

That’s when he started to call himself The Will.

Aware of the secrets and the knowledge learned from the dead […] he rised against the cultist, and stole some old tomes from them…

I picked spells of clairvoyance and both wizard and cleric’s spells related to the dead.

Not great at hurting people directly (that’s why I also fought quite often in melee. I’ve also used defend moves to protect the barbarian against some fellow goblins.

A few things I remember (it’s been a couple of months since we played, I’d guess):

…something threatening lies in the deep of the caverns, The Will scry his future on the blade of a sword…

…a man has some crucial informations, but is mortally wounded and can’t talk, so The Will touch his forehead and contacts him telepathically…

…he burns a sheet of paper and rub his face with the ash, then he contacts a spirit of darkness to know where is located the troll..

…draw on the ground the outline of a man and  “unseen servant” appears, the Will put his cloak on the servant and use it to lure the goblins ready to ambush…

…fight like a warrior with his walking stick against the goblins…

…grabbed by a troll that is going to crash him, he use telepathy to talk to the troll “I’m the god of the trolls, let go this human fool or you will face my hanger”…

…brings back to life a couple of goblins…but as a zombie. Not really alive….

Also, it’s the first time ever I play a wiz! (forget I’m going to read dozens of pages of spells like happens in an other well known game…I’m lazy when it comes of this kind of stuff, you know, cleaning the house, spells….)

Yesterday we had our first game after a couple of months, it went pretty well.

I Gm’d following some ideas I had on how to play one-shot games (that I’d like to share sooner or later, maybe Kasper Brohus could be interested!).

I planned a three hours session, including characters creation. I sat at the table with absolutely no clue about what we were going to play. And it all went smooth.

Wierd note: it was me as a gm and three other players, and one of them played via hangout!