<![CDATA[A-to-J Connections - Drink Talk Roll]]>

<![CDATA[A-to-J Connections - Drink Talk Roll]]>Sat, 22 Feb 2025 02:43:40 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Are We There Yeti? | Drink Talk Roll #73 (Arretin Campaign #27)]]>Fri, 28 Feb 2025 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/are-we-there-yeti-drink-talk-roll-73-arretin-campaign-27

This is the twenty-seventh session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! The party has good news and bad news. The good news is they finally made it out of that calm belt and to the halfway point of their journey to revive Ulrich. The bad news is that the tropical Rotti Islands are somehow covered in snow in early summer. To solve this mystery, they must venture onto the islands and fight some terrible creatures creeping in the cold. No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Harbinger)
Hao (Sirocco The Cleric)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Gunslinger)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 2/14 6:45 PM PDT]

00:00:00 - Start
00:00:05 - Let's Get Rolling
00:03:37 - Recap of Last Session
00:07:08 - Session Starts
00:15:59 - Landing on the Frozen Isles
00:28:38 - Snow-bolds!
01:01:04 - Going Up The Mountain
01:16:36 - Yeti Attack!
01:36:41 - Aftermath of the Yeti Battle
01:50:13 - Back on the Boat
01:55:55 - Heading to the Palace
01:58:15 - Quick Break
02:05:12 - Game Resumes
02:22:46 - Entering the Castle
02:28:03 - Wrapping Up

]]><![CDATA[What Killed Captain Alex? | Drink Talk Roll #72 (Arretin Campaign #26)]]>Fri, 07 Feb 2025 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/what-killed-captain-alex-drink-talk-roll-72-arretin-campaign-26

(Note: This episode was very cursed, so keep that in mind when watching. Thanks for the continued support!)

This is the twenty-sixth session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! Captain Alex is dead and anyone on the ship could be a suspect. The party quickly sets out to find the killer before stumbling onto more mysteries of the deep and political intrigue. No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Harbinger)
Hao (Sirocco The Cleric)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Gunslinger)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 1/31 6:45 PM PDT]

00:00:00 - Start
00:00:33 - We Are Live
00:05:37 - Recap of the Last Session
00:07:44 - Session Begins
00:30:46 - Checking the Cargo Hold
00:40:21 - J.D.'s Audio Works Again
01:03:58 - What's Kraken?
01:13:04 - After the Kraken
01:27:19 - Bathroom Break
01:40:25 - Back from Break
01:55:42 - Uncovering Operation Stormbreaker
02:22:45 - Wrapping Up
02:25:36 - Keep on Rolling

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #26: What Killed Captain Alex?]]>Fri, 07 Feb 2025 04:38:14 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-26-what-killed-captain-alex

Session Recap

This session picks up directly where the last one left off with the party finding members of the crew gathered around the corpse of Captain Alex. A quick look over tells them that he was stabbed in the back by someone. First Mate Ren proclaims himself the new captain and attempts to restore order and figure out who killed the old captain. The party determines that it would be helpful to see who on the ship is missing a knife. They find a few crewmates are missing their knives. For some reason, they also decide to implicate Amra in this as well.

To save his own skin, Amra channels divine power to cast zone of truth which prevents all of the crew members from lying to them. Amra’s initial attempts at narrowing down the suspects is a bit too complicated to work but with Sirocco’s help, he realizes that he just needs to ask a simple question: Did you kill Captain Alex? This narrows it down one person: Ron Freeflaw.

Interrogating Ron further, the party finds that he’s definitely been affected by whatever has been making everyone on the ship tense. He says he had been hearing voices in the back of his head which compelled him to sabotage the ship and the crew. It started small like asking him to sabotage some of the foods like spilling bags of grain which he claimed to resist but it escalated quickly to the point where he felt like he was barely able to control himself when he killed the captain.

This reminds Jedah of the tales of angered sea gods from the last session and that maybe this being could be placated by making an offering of treasure. With Captain Ren’s approval, the party moves the cargo deck to see what exactly the Din’eiddan nobles have brought in hopes that that might be a good offering. The nobles protest but when told that it might be that or their lives, they relent as long as other options are tried first.

Cracking open the large crate, the party finds a giant bowl nearly as tall as Khorr and as wide as Amra. The bowl is made of solid gold and its outside is carved with the depictions of all five varieties of Goliath but all of them seem to be much larger than the ones the party has met. The nobles claim it was to be a gift to the Empress of Hozumi for the 10th Anniversary of her ascension to the position.

Khorr decides to make this the tribute to whatever sea creature is causing the ship’s problems and while this is going on, Sirocco is above deck looking for anything in the water when he spots multiple giant tentacles that all emerge from the water and begin attacking the ship. Genji appears from below deck to offer his service in defeating this creature. Sirocco tells him to go ahead while he just kind of chills on the deck and watches.

Khorr first tries to appease the creature by throwing Alex’s corpse into the water but he hears the voice Ron described in the back of his head, “Dead men make terrible tribute.” Meanwhile, everyone else is in the cargo deck trying to carry the giant bowl out. They rush out onto the deck and drop the bowl over. In the back of his head, Khorr hears the voice reneging on its promise to spare the ship. It surfaces at the bow of the ship and looks ready to break the ship in two.

Luckily for everyone, Genji was still on deck and had spent the time charging up his non-trademark-infringing-energy-beam-ha! When it hit the sea beast, the beam damaged it enough to send it retreating back into the sea. And with that, the day was saved and good weather returned to the seas.

In the days that followed, the ship got back on track towards the Rotti Islands, Jedah spent some time learning new recipes from the ship’s cook and Khorr discovered that a possible smuggler’s chest in the cargo hold. He tries to uncover any secret compartments it may hold but with the help of Jedah and Sirocco, they’re able to find one containing a vial of poison known as The Long Kiss Goodnight and a collection of documents pledging support for the Kishu Clan’s claim to the throne of Hozumi should the current empress “die under mysterious circumstances with no apparent heirs.” It clicks in Khorr’s head that “Stormbreaker” which he overheard in the last session refers to this plan. The party spent a lot of time discussing their stance on this assassination conspiracy and how they would deal with it.

But there was another problem on the horizon and I mean that literally. As the Rotti Islands came into sight, what they expected to be a tropical paradise in the early summer turned out to be more of a snow-covered winter wonderland. And that’s where the session ended.

Dealing with Disaster

I think it’s safe to say that this stream was at least lightly cursed. Manuel dropped out multiple times apparently due to his GPU overheating. I was apparently inaudible for 40 minutes and had to rerecord my audio in the edit process. I’m honestly surprise that no one else had any serious issues during the session.

In the past, as soon as a serious issues like either of those popped up, I would have probably just frozen up and then, spent a decent amount of time spiraling while I looked for ways to fix it. I still do that sometimes if I feel a bit too much pressure on me or that something has gone horribly wrong. I think this time, there was enough of a cushion of the players’ ability to hear me and the fact that I could use their reactions and my memory to piece together enough of what I said to be able to rerecord afterwards. I did something similar not that long ago when my mic kept cutting off because of connection issues.

Those things along with the fact that it might be our final main campaign stream for a month were the reasons why I didn’t just call the stream at the 40-minute mark. In the week since then, I’ve double checked all my sources especially after updating software that is directly accessed in OBS. I suggested a new budget GPU for Manuel that’s actually from this decade as well. It all seems to be working. Hopefully, we won’t have major issues *salutes Major Issues* next time.

I think the first of these articles or maybe it was the article for the first official session of this campaign, I talked about having to deal when things start falling apart or going off the rails. It’s nice to see that after roughly a years’ worth of sessions, I’m applying that even outside of the D&D game.

Well, that’s it for this week. I’ll either see you in two weeks or some time next month. Whichever that is, until next time, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[Bungled Cruise | Drink Talk Roll #71 (Arretin Campaign #25)]]>Fri, 24 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/bungled-cruise-drink-talk-roll-71-arretin-campaign-25

This is the twenty-fifth session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! Our team takes to the sea with a mysterious old man in tow. They spend a few random days on the ocean when they are suddenly faced with not only several water elementals, but also a murder mystery! No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Harbinger)
Hao (Sirocco The Cleric)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Gunslinger)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 1/17 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #25: Bungled Cruise]]>Thu, 23 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-25-bungled-cruise

Session Recap

icking up right where we left off last session, the party was about to get on Captain Iskandar “Alex” Sunwolf’s Leaping Lemure when they encountered an old man begging to get on the boat. They would later learn that his name is Genji and that he is attempting to return home to the Rotti Islands. They had encountered him before when he asked them for directions to the Crane Monastery and Amra sent him to Meridan instead. To make up for that, the party named him their fifth member filling the vacancy that had opened up when Talliyah left.

Aboard the Leaping Lemure, the party was introduced to Captain Alex’s first mate Renard, a tall Half-Orc man whose tough exterior hides a gentle soul and navigator Wax, a Half-Elf woman with a penchant for burning the candle at both ends whose nickname got more meaningful after she accidentally set her hair on fire.

Amra and Jedah felt at home as they were put to work to keep costs down. Meanwhile, Sirocco was doing his best to make new friends and new types of alcohol and Khorr went snooping around for any interesting information. After the ship let on some noble looking types in the port of Din’eidda, he found a few retainers on the top deck and heard a few interesting words from them involving some kind of intrigue involving “Stormbreaker.”

With a successful history check, Khorr was able to gleam that the phrase may refer to the first empress of Hozumi who was giving the nickname Stormbreaker for leading her people across the Sea of Storms to settle on the islands, the weapon that she supposedly used to defeat the Storm King or any of the many things built in her honor including the lighthouse that leads ships to safety in the capital’s harbor. With all of that, he decided that this information was probably for later and decided to leave it on the backburner.

After a few more days, the ship started coming across strange weather phenomena. The wind died suddenly stranding them in the middle of nowhere and that was followed by a sudden storm a few days later. Finally, the ship was attacked by a trio of water elementals including one powered by a scalding magic core.

It was a tough fight because the elementals came from both sides and the cramped deck made the party vulnerable to area of effect attacks. Khorr nearly fell but thanks to Sirocco’s Peace cleric abilities, Amra was able to take the attack for him and finish off the scalding elemental in a battle of flame vs water.

But even with the monsters defeated, the ship was still abuzz with rumors that they had drawn the ire of some god or monster of the sea. Tensions kept rising over the days as it even seemed to spread to members of the party. The second day after the attack, Jedah was the only member of the party who hadn’t succumbed to this unhealthy mindset. He asked the captain about the situation and even suggested a solution of making a sacrifice using knowledge he had picked up from other sailors. Captain Alex listened and asked the Din’eiddan nobles about possibly throwing out some valuables they had thrown over to appease whatever force was causing this streak of bad fortunes. These talks didn’t go well. Listening in, Jedah heard some cursing including a few new words he had yet to hear in his career as a sailor and what may have been a thrown chair.

The next day, all of the party was able to shake off whatever had been affecting the crew and passengers to have a clear head. Sadly, it was too late to be of much use as when they came out onto the main deck, they found a crowd gathered around and in the center, laid Captain Alex with a knife in his back. And that’s where our session ended.

Faking It Up

I think I’ve talked before either in this column or maybe on stream about how even with all the preparation I did for this campaign, including writing roughly 40 pages of world info for players to use for themselves and even more for my knowledge, I still find myself making up new parts of the game as I go on.

This goes beyond things like names for characters and shops into bigger pieces of lore that I had never thought before. For example, from this week’s episode, “Stormbreaker” had been just a throwaway phrase I had come up with on the fly when I first ran this campaign. Even going into this one, I hadn’t really incorporated it into the lore and history of the world the way I did this time around. Now, it’s become more directly intertwined with the history of Hozumi and plot developments that won’t become apparent until much later on.

The whole idea of the School of Continued Progress running experiments to find psychic children and making clones of Robin was also a complete ad lib on my part that just kept snowballing until it became its own subplot of the campaign. This ad lib then ended up tying itself into a new player character’s backstory and that’s how Dr. Nathaniel Skye was born.

In my other game, which actually should be wrapping up the day this article comes out, beyond the basic outline of the plot, I was just continuously making up new elements of the world and worldbuilding as I went along and then figuring out how they fit into what I had done earlier afterwards.

I introduced an old lady with a sister that the sorcerer kindly decided to deliver a letter to which led to creating another sister which eventually revealed that they were a coven of Hags in service to a vampire family I had already established and looking to find the coffin of the lord of the family that had been buried in the ocean. They did this by killing an NPC from a completely different side plot when he was mounting a salvage mission for a failed test flight. He had brought them is to work as guards which they completely failed at but it did lead to one of the best scenes of the sorcerer using the Ring of Gravity Lashing to steal the MacGuffin and then water ski away without any skis. Those Hags then came back again as the kindly grandmothers of another NPC involved in a completely different subplot surrounding shards of Mechanus that had wound up on the Material Plane.

Side Note: Their “grandson” was originally named Viktor after the League of Legends champion as a humanoid who believed “metal was perfection” and wanted to use the Mechanus metal to become part machine himself. That was all before the sorcerer pointed out that he was clearly a Doctor Doom (Victor von Doom) expy with all the metal armor and the cloak he was wearing. I might have mentioned that in to them in passing but that was just a one-off comment that completely changed how I perceived a relatively minor character.

Well, that’s it for this week. I don’t know if there was much of a point to this. Maybe as much a point as there is in anything I do in D&D but I at least hope this gave you a little more of an idea into how to make things work even if you’re just faking it the entire time.

Until next time, keep on rolling.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[The Winter Court Soldier | Drink Talk Roll #70 (Arretin Campaign #24)]]>Fri, 13 Dec 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/the-winter-court-soldier-drink-talk-roll-70-arretin-campaign-24

This is the twenty-fourth session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! An old foe returns as the party begins continues their trek to resurrect their fallen friend Ulrich. Will this be the end for another of our unlikely heroes? No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Harbinger)
Hao (Sirocco The Cleric)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Gunslinger)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 12/6 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #24: The Winter Court Soldier]]>Thu, 12 Dec 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/drink-talk-roll-extended-24-the-winter-court-soldier

Session Recap

After Sirocco detected the presence of an explosive device at the end of last session, the party this one by making Dexterity saves to avoid the explosion. Even with advantage, Sirocco was the only one who failed on his taking cold damage as the bomb exploded with an icy blast. The rest of the party fell into the canal and quickly made their way back to the street.

Khorr managed to spot a mysterious robed figure on a roof and started pursuing him along with the rest of the party. The all gave chase in different ways. Amra climbed up onto the rooftops and tried to catch up with the assailant. Khorr kept to the ground using his small stature to dart among the crowds of people. Jedah took his time as he tried to get his guns dried up and working again and Sirocco moved at a less urgent pace and just helped Jedah how he could.

On the rooftops, Amra made the most of his Shaddar-kai teleportation abilities to close in on the hooded figure only to be greeted by two bolts of eldritch blast every round which nearly sent him off the roof. Thankfully, he was able to recover with successful Strength saving throws. He eventually caught up with the hooded figure on the roof of a temple in the religious ward of the city. As they crossed swords, the hood finally came off revealing their assailant to be Darius, the Knight of the Winter Court sent to retrieve Amra and Jedah.

The two continue dueling on the roof as the rest of the party catches up. Sirocco uses his divine power to bind everyone together in a blessing that also lets him throw Khorr up to the rooftop to intercept a slash meant for Amra. Working together the part is able to subdue him fairly quickly.

When it seemed like he was nearly finished, Darius pulled two more bombs off his belt and threw them. The party ducked out of the way expecting another set of ice bombs but they turned out to be smoke bombs. By the time it had cleared, Darius was nowhere to be seen and the few witnesses to this battle couldn’t give a clear answer on where he might have gone.

After this, the party had to deal with the local guard to explain what had gone on. It took some negotiation to get Amra and Khorr to cooperate but after they underwent an offscreen questioning and paying the cost of repairs for the building damage, they were let off with a warning.

The party was once again at a decision point. Amra wanted to continue to the Feenritter estate and let Ulrich’s parents know about his passing but was voted down by the rest of the party who figured they should wait until after they had resurrected him. To do that, they would need to charter a ship to the Rotti Islands. Following advice they’d received last session, they headed down to the dock ward and found the Bearded Billy. There they found Captain Iskandar “Alex” Sunwolf, captain of the Leaping Lemure. He initially tried to overcharge them but after the party lied to him about getting a better offer from another captain and Amra and Jedah promised to pitch in, he lowered his offer to a more reasonable price and set the date of their departures for two days afterwards.

During that time, Jedah and Khorr go drinking with Talliyah who had just announced her intention to party ways with the party and return home to To’anata. Khorr and Talliyah have a coded conversation about Khorr’s connection to the group known as the Midnight Society and that his mentor T.K. was the one to induct him. She also relayed new info from T.K. about the translation of a tower in the Dola Sanctuary the party visited all the way back in episode 2. The important snippets were the mention of a “Wingless Traitor” who sided with the ancient writers in dealing with some ancient evil.

With their goodbyes said and an extra spot already booked, the party headed out in the early morning for the Leaping Lemure where they found an old man asking to be let on the ship. And that’s where the session ended.

Following Up

So, this is less a new topic and more a follow up on the issue I talked about last time: Having a player hogging the spotlight at the table. Manuel seemed to be hogging it in last session so I did my best to keep it balanced this session.

That’s one of the reasons I ran the pursuit of Darius after the attack like it was in initiative. It lets me have a definite “No, [Other Player]. You can’t do that right now. This is [Current Player]’s turn.” (Obviously, this also works with combat initiative as well) and it also lets off of them have a chance to shine and show off how their character reacts. Everyone moved in pursuit but went about it differently. Amra made the daring, heroic chase on the rooftops, while Khorr dashed through the road keeping an eye out. Jedah had to deal with his guns to make sure he could take care of Darius when the time came and Sirocco was more chill. (Pun intended)

After combat ended and we moved into the time between booking a ship and setting out, I also made each character had their turn to take the spotlight even if they didn’t want it. There are many different types of players. Some of them might want the chance to shine but need someone to hand them the chance. Some of them might not need it and all those are valid but it’s good to make sure everyone at least has the opportunity. It is the season for giving and sharing after all.

As always, this is an ongoing process and I might revisit it again in a future DTRE but for now, it’s the end of the line... for this year. We’re going to be off from now until a few weeks into 2025. Thank you for reading and keep on rolling into the new year.

-J.D.

]]><![CDATA[From Here to E-Terna-ty | Drink Talk Roll #69 (Arretin Campaign #23)]]>Fri, 29 Nov 2024 08:00:00 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/from-here-to-e-terna-ty-drink-talk-roll-69-arretin-campaign-23

Nice! This is the twenty-third session of our brand new "Arretin" campaign, and the madness continues! Amra's back and the main campaign comes with him. In this session, the players depart the Crane Monastery for the city of Terna and deal with the fallout of the past actions... No more details, watch for the rest! Consider catching us live to get the full, unedited DTR experience! The DM may change, the players may change, but we'll always be rolling!

DM:
J.D.

Players:
Manuel (Amra The Harbinger)
Hao (Sirocco The Cleric)
Pleiades (Khorr The Rogue)
Warren (Jedah The Gunslinger)

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 11/22 7:00 PM PDT]

]]><![CDATA[Drink Talk Roll Extended #23: From Here to E-Terna-ty]]>Thu, 28 Nov 2024 22:35:43 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/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.

]]><![CDATA[Even Stranger Things | Drink Talk Roll StrageBound Ep. 2 (Halloween 2024 Special Pt .2)]]>Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:16:07 GMThttp://a-to-jconnections.com/drink-talk-roll/even-stranger-things-drink-talk-roll-stragebound-ep-2-halloween-2024-special-pt-2

Part two of our incorrectly named one-shot StrangeBound is here. The players find out the secrets of the Ape-iary and proceed to explore the town in search of the golden keys to get their Super Genesis.

00:00:00 - Start
00:00:04 - We Are Live!
00:02:12 - Intro / Recap
00:05:39 - Play Starts
00:11:13 - Entering The Ape-iary
00:30:39 - Combat with the Apes (Flashing Light Warning)
00:43:33 - End Flashing Lights
00:58:47 - Beneath the Ape-iary
01:26:42 - Back in Town
01:34:41 - Meeting Wally
01:47:02 - Break Time
01:52:07 - Walking with Wally
02:01:46 - Heading to School
02:10:48 - Another Quick Break
02:13:40 - Back to School
02:24:10 - To Be Continued?

You can catch us live every other Friday at 6:30 PM via our twitch channel below! Thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe for more, and feel free to chat with us in the comments below!

Catch Us Live On Twitch!:
https://www.twitch.tv/atojplays

[Original Stream: 11/8 7:00 PM PDT]

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