Drink Talk Roll Extended #23: From Here to E-Terna-ty

Session Recap

In the aftermath of their battle with the masked men who raided the Crane Monastery and used its statue for a summoning ritual, the party explained the events to the leader of the Monastery Suzanne Kudelia. They then helped with cleaning up the bodies and the scorch marks Amra had left on the ground before heading to bed. Having already completed his daily meditation, Amra decided to stay up and train in the style of the monks. Thanks to a failed acrobatics check, he was unable to do a crane kick but he did catch a glance at trainee doing a proper crane kick. 

The next morning, the party was treated to an extra special breakfast and departed the monastery soon afterwards for their next destination in Terna. After travelling a few hours down the road, the entire party began to smell someone preparing food and it wasn’t long before they found the source: a stall setup at a crossroads. Inside the stall, the party found two familiar faces: Mugetsu, the little fox they had bought noodles from during their first trip to the Feywild and Kagami, the Spring Court attendant they had tricked into thinking Jedah was Abe Froman.  

Kagami was pretty pissed at them because their little stunt cost him his job. Amra and Sirocco tried to smooth things over with alcohol but Kagami stormed out after Jedah made comments about him being a charity case.

Mugetsu was glad to see them again especially when they brought more friends along to eat at his stand. He did get a little worried when some party members let slip that Jedah and Amra might be wanted men on the Feywild but Jedah and Khorr were able to convince him that they had meant Khorr was a “wanted” man because he worked as a cover model for steamy romance novels. Their lies were made all the more convincing by the presence of four beautiful women in their company. With that sorted out, the party paid their tabs and proceeded on their way.

A few hours into travelling the next day, the party crested a hill and finally set their sights upon Terna. The party is then reminded that their deceased friend Ulrich had attended and dropped out of the city’s big university: The Recherche Institute of Thaumaturgy. The Robins also announced that they had detected the presence of the original Robin from which they were cloned somewhere in the city.

As the party entered the city, they decided to look for the original Robin first but luckily for them, they found Robin and Khorr’s old teacher T.K. just outside the Institute. The party then learns more about Robin’s history as an unwilling test subject for the School of Continued Progress that T.K. broke out with help from a friend of his. There were a lot of other questions but T.K. said he was in a hurry to meet a friend of his who might have some more of the answers they wanted.

The party then joined him as he entered the Institute campus and found the office of Dr. Nathaniel Skye in the Enchantment Engineering department. Amra remembered the man’s name from the notes on the experiments the School of Continued Progress had been running in Ikana and has to be talked out of attacking him on sight.  The now 10 people with the party cram into his office and Amra immediately begins questioning him. The doctor explains that yes, he did lead those experiments to unlock and study psionic powers but one day, he woke up and realized the horror of the things he’d done. He’d quit the SCP and moved to the Institute. Soon after, he met T.K. and they had worked together to break Robin out.

Amra informed him of the two survivors of the Ikana experiments: Neil and Clover and Dr. Skye promised to do his best to support them. He also said that he would find employment for the clone Robins somewhere on campus so the party could leave them with him. T.K. and Robin also stayed behind as Robin came in for a kind of psionic checkup.  

After that, Khorr and Amra decided to go around campus and learn what they could of Ulrich’s past here. Amra went off and did Amra things like trying to find his old dorm and sleeping in his bed.  (I swear I will never understand what goes on in Manuel’s mind even when he’s sober.)  Khorr had the more sensible plan of visiting the administrative building and after explaining the situation, he learned a little more of Ulrich’s family, the Feenritters. Dad’s a high-ranking cleric. Mom’s an archwizard and his sister Judtih is just kind of doing her own thing.  Since no one else had come to claim them, the secretary offered Khorr the few possessions Ulrich had left behind. Khorr gives them a once over before meeting up with the rest of the party to maybe go and find the Feenritter Estate in the Noble District of the Terna.  

However, as they are crossing a bridge over one of the city’s many canals, Sirocco is the only one to notice the subtle ticking of an explosive device just as it is about to go off….

And that’s where the session ended.

Give It a Rest, Man(uel)

Wow, I didn’t realize it until I was watching the episode back as part of the editing process but Manuel was hogging the spotlight for most of the episode. I would like to apologize to the viewers and the rest of the party for not giving them more time to talk. The only excuse I can offer is that I was too preoccupied trying to make sure the new stream setup was working properly. (It mostly did but we all had internet connection issues and I had some bad audio issues near the end which I tried to fix in post by rerecording the lines.)

Manuel was just so energized that night. Usually, I would have blamed it on his inebriation but I don’t think the players had that many drinks that stream but not having his camera on means it’s more difficult to keep a precise count of how many drinks Manuel has actually had at any point. He likes to find any reason to take a shot and he also has a penchant for pregaming but swears he hadn’t done that before last session.  

Anyway, now that I’m done throwing Manuel under the bus, I should also go over where it went wrong and how I plan to fix it. Looking back, there were definitely scenes where Manuel / Amra didn’t need to be the lead character. This wasn’t really supposed to be an Amra-centric episode like how “Meet Joe Blacktooth” was a more Jedah-centric episode or the Feywild episodes dealt with everyone but Khorr. I definitely should have let Khorr take the lead in the encounter with T.K. since being his old apprentice, Khorr has the strongest relationship with him and I’m still trying to figure out how exactly he sees their time spent together. Jedah and Sirocco didn’t really have any scenes that were as directly related to them as that but they still deserved more time talking and in the spotlight than they got.  

Now, on to solutions, the easy and obvious one is to just tell Manuel to shut up when it’s not his scene. I’m not really worried about seeming rude to him. This is a five-player game and if it’s only two of us talking most of the game, I’m more worried that they’re not having a good time listening to him yapp especially when he’s going off the wall like saying he was going to find Ulrich’s old dorm (which someone else has already moved into) and sleeping in his bed. They might be having a good time laughing at them but I also want them in on the action.  

That’s the hard part especially if your other players are on the shy side or not that into roleplaying. They might just be there for the combat and that’s fine. A good game master should know how to keep all their players entertained. I know Pleiades and Khorr will go for any chance to learn something new if given proper prompting and Ulrich’s death and realizing how little he knew about Ulrich made him much more willing to go out of his way for that. I think I can throw in some more worldbuilding around food and that will get Jedah going more assuming Warren still remembers he said Jedah wanted to be open his own restaurant. Sirocco is the only one I really need a read on but Hao has always been the most forthcoming with characters and I think if I give him a chance to chill out and get people to join him, he’ll go along with it.

So, as it almost always is, the real lesson of any D&D advice is “Talk to Your Players like Adults.” Thanks for taking that long walk for this small glass of water.  That’s it for this week’s article. Until next time, keep on rolling.

-J.D.