Body Count · #1
Kaash
Large-adjacent lizard (dragonborn barbarian), chaotic decapitating
Heads taken 3
Prisoners taken 0
Best roll natural 20, Intimidation
Restraint —
| KILLS | HEADS | TERROR | TIMING | MERCY | FINISH |
|---|
| 18 +4 | 17 +3 | 20 +5 |
8 −1 | 3 −4 | 1 −5 |
Decapitation (recharge: every round). Removed the heads of two ambush goblins and one wolf. Did not remove the head of the bugbear — who was, at the time, stuck in a hole, unable to move, for two consecutive rounds, in full view.
Intimidating Presence. Wiped a dead wolf's blood off his axe and frightened a bugbear out of his own home on a natural 20. Genuinely one of the finest things anyone has done at this table.
Missed opportunityKlarg. Helpless. Two full rounds. The party's designated head-remover stood in a room with a stationary, terrified, physically wedged bugbear and elected to go shopping. Klarg is alive, at large, reporting to King Grol, and knows all five faces — because Kaash was holding a jade frog.
DM's margin noteThe most effective character in the party and the single largest missed opportunity of the session, in the same body, four minutes apart. He beheaded three creatures that did not matter and let the only one that did keep his spine. Somewhere out there is a bugbear telling this story, and in his version he escapes.
Threat Extreme to necks. Negligible to necks that count.
Stealth Run · Flawless*
Lucien
Medium feline (tabaxi rogue), lawful reconnoitring
Stealth checks failed 0
Rooms mapped 7 of 8
Gold surrendered to a goblin 5
Prisoners executed 1
Lowest HP 1
| STEALTH | RECON | NERVE | TRAPS | HAGGLING | MERCY |
|---|
| 20 +5 | 18 +4 | 16 +3 |
6 −2 | 4 −3 | 1 −5 |
Superior Reconnaissance. Scouted an entire goblin hideout alone without failing a single Stealth check, climbed thirty feet up a chimney, and stood in the boss's bedroom before most of the party had entered the building. Outstanding work, and not a word of this is sarcasm.
Except One Room. He missed the guard post. The first room. The one with the guards in it. He found it on the way out — the reconnaissance equivalent of noticing the smoke alarm on your way back from the fire.
Snare. Walked point into a rope trap and hung upside down until an orc bard untied him with a floating spectral hand. Expertise in Stealth. Expertise in Deception. Rope: undefeated.
Truce Violation. Executed a wounded goblin during the negotiation for a hostage's life — in front of the hostage, and in front of the Lords' Alliance officer whose entire job is remembering things like that. The character with expertise in Deception, in the one room where talking was working, reached for a blade instead.
Missed opportunityHe personally mapped seven of eight rooms and the party looted exactly one of them. Sixteen silver sat in a room he walked past twice. Twenty-one copper sat on a shaman they had personally killed, unsearched. The best-informed character at the table converted a flawless intelligence operation into no intelligence being used.
DM's margin noteThe best individual performance of the night, undercut by a filing error, a rope, and a murder. Then, at the end, the tabaxi with expertise in Deception and the largest purse at the table was talked out of five gold pieces by a goblin who had just watched his entire warband die around him. Lucien is the only character to have spent his own money on this adventure. He was not even the one being ransomed.
Threat To locked doors, and to his own bank balance.
Missed Opportunity · #1
Quinn Wildwhisper
Small hermit (stout halfling druid), true pacifying
Wolves calmed 3
Wolves retained 0
Passive Perception 15 (party best)
Ambushes noticed 0
| ANIMALS | MERCY | SPOTTING | NERVE | RETENTION | WOLVES |
|---|
| 19 +4 | 20 +5 | 15 +2 |
13 +1 | 2 −4 | 0 −5 |
Speak With Animals (Terminal). Calmed three chained wolves instead of fighting them. This is the exact moment the prep documents had been waiting months for, and she landed it flat. Full marks, no notes.
Then Let Them Go. Three wolves. Pack Tactics. Free of charge. Loyal. Released into the forest at the end of the session, having contributed to nothing, while the party's front line was walking around on single-digit hit points.
Highest Passive Perception in the Party. Held, proudly, by a character who was present at an ambush in which every single member of the party was surprised.
Missed opportunityThree wolves. She solved an encounter the book expects you to kill your way through and walked away with three free combatants — then, two rooms and one near-death experience later, opened her hands and gave them to the forest. They are out there right now. They are not helping. Kaash was at 14 hit points and Lucien was at 1.
DM's margin noteThe single most impressive skill check of the session, immediately converted into nothing. There is a version of this session in which three wolves walk into Klarg's cave alongside the party and the bugbear never gets to the chimney. She had that version in her hands and released it into a forest.
Threat Severe to encounters. Fatal to her own advantage.
Hit Points · 1
Sabriel Soulweaver
Small tragedy (fallen aasimar wizard), lawful foretold
Lowest HP 1
Arrows required 1
Written warnings issued beforehand many
Heeded 0
| PROPHECY | LUGGAGE | SURVIVAL | HP | AC | POSITIONING |
|---|
| 20 +5 | 18 +4 | 1 −5 |
7 −2 | 11 +0 | 4 −3 |
As Foretold. Every prep document in this repository states, in bold, that a single goblin arrow nearly kills her. In the first fight of the campaign, a single goblin arrow nearly killed her. This was not a twist. It was a printed table with her name at the top of it.
Potion Dependency. Survived the opening encounter entirely because a healing potion happened to be lying in a dead man's saddlebag. She drank the session's first potion before the party had reached the dungeon.
The Vault. Now carries the jade frog and the party's last remaining healing potion. Seven hit points. Armour Class 11. The party's entire treasury and pharmacy, stored in its most flammable container.
Missed opportunityStanding literally anywhere else. Also: the party's response to watching their wizard drop to one hit point in round one was to finish the session by handing her the valuables and the last potion. Nobody has done the arithmetic on what happens when she goes down holding both.
DM's margin noteNothing that happened to her surprised anybody. It was predicted, written down, printed, and read aloud. Then it happened on the first round of the first fight of the first session, and the table's considered response was to make her the bank.
Threat Extreme, in bursts of exactly two — provided nobody points anything at her.
Signature Move · Faecal
Thokk Tunebreaker
Medium orc (charlatan bard), neutral excremental
Persuasion +6, expertise
Negotiations closed 0
Goblins killed with excrement 1
Cantrip range 60 ft (unused)
| MOCKERY | UTILITY | CON | CLOSING | RESTRAINT | HYGIENE |
|---|
| 20 +5 | 16 +3 | 19 +4 |
5 −3 | 3 −4 | 1 −5 |
Vicious Mockery (Enhanced). The previous edition of this document observed that his entire offensive arsenal consists of insulting people until they feel bad about it. He has since killed a goblin by throwing excrement at it. The spell deals psychic damage. He chose, freely, to make it physical.
Mage Hand (Ropework). Untied a dangling tabaxi with a spectral hand rather than cutting him down — elegant, characterful, and the best use of a cantrip all session. Nobody has mentioned it since. Everyone has mentioned the other thing.
Persuasion +6, Expertise. The party's designated face. In the two conversations that decided the entire session, the talking was done by a rogue and a barbarian holding an axe. He owns the best social modifier at the table and the fewest social victories.
Missed opportunityEvery conversation he did not have. Yeemik was a schemer who wanted a promotion, not a fight. There is a version of this session where the party's expertise-in-Persuasion bard talks the whole hideout into working for them. Instead the negotiation survived a rogue executing a prisoner mid-sentence, and was rescued by a natural 20 from the barbarian.
DM's margin noteA sixty-foot verbal cantrip, and he closed to throwing distance. He has the range. He has the modifier. He has expertise. He used none of it and instead weaponised the floor of a goblin cave — and, honestly, the table will remember that longer than any speech he could have made. Which is either a tragedy or a triumph, and I have decided not to rule on it.
Threat Biological.
Encounter · The Whole Party
The Party
Medium swarm of first-time adventurers, chaotic thorough (in one room only)
Body count 13 goblins + 1 wolf
Rooms cleared 2 of 8
Levels gained 0
Healing potions remaining 1
Money paid to the enemy 5 gp
| VIOLENCE | PLANNING | MERCY | GREED | THOROUGH | FINISH |
|---|
| 18 +4 | 16 +3 | 15 +2 |
6 −2 | 5 −3 | 3 −4 |
Thirteen Bodies, Zero Levels. They annihilated everything in two rooms, walked past three more, and went home. Thirteen dead goblins and a dead wolf, and not one point of advancement to show for any of it. They earned that outcome precisely.
Took No Prisoners (repeatedly). The notes state plainly that goblins can be knocked out with bludgeoning damage, will then talk, and will guide you around the trail traps. The party killed all four ambush goblins, learned nothing whatsoever, hung their own rogue from a tree, and then had to rescue a man in order to find out what was going on. They did at least spot the pit unaided.
Left the Money. Sixteen silver in a room they passed twice. Twenty-one copper on a corpse they made themselves and never searched. They did, however, split 1,700 copper pieces five ways — three hundred and seventy individual coins each — and are now carrying them to town.
Paid the Loser. Killed six of the seven occupants of a room, then gave the survivor five gold pieces. He kept his agates, his potion, and his life, and left richer than he started.
The Lie (Recharge: Never). Bought a hostage by claiming to have killed a bugbear they had personally, deliberately declined to kill. The plan requires two named goblins, in the same warband, reporting to the same king, to never once speak to each other again.
The full ledger of missed opportunities
A prisoner who would have talked · the snare, though the pit they spotted themselves · sixteen silver in H2 · twenty-one copper on Errk · three tamed wolves · a helpless bugbear for two rounds · three unexplored rooms · and three of four healing potions, drunk on the same day they were found.
DM's margin noteFor a table of first-timers this is genuinely excellent play. A solo scouting run that never failed a roll, a kennel talked down instead of fought, an alpha strike that erased the biggest encounter of the chapter in one round, and a boss driven out of his own lair by two social checks. They then declined to search a corpse, released three wolves, spared the villain, paid the loser, left the silver, and went home still first level. Enormous competence, deployed almost entirely at random. Still not trading them.
Threat Extreme for one round in one room. Everywhere else, mostly to their own interests.
Legendary · Final Entry
The Dungeon Master
Gargantuan enabler (homelab sysadmin), lawful over-prepared
Position markers authored 59
Decision trackers 22
Session-screen lines 2,156
Facts that survived to the record fewer
| PREP | IMPROV | FORESIGHT | SCOPE | RESTRAINT | CAPTURE |
|---|
| 20 +5 | 17 +3 | 20 +5 |
3 −4 | 4 −3 | 6 −2 |
Prophecy (self-fulfilling). Wrote, repeatedly and in bold, across multiple documents, that a single goblin arrow would very nearly kill the wizard. Then ran the encounter. A single goblin arrow very nearly killed the wizard. He is owed an apology by nobody, because he was right, and he had to tell people about it afterwards from memory anyway.
House Rules for Nothing. Quietly rewrote the largest encounter of the chapter to be survivable by a first-level party, on the entirely reasonable assumption that the original would kill one of them. The party demolished it in approximately one round and has never known the difference.
The Print Queue. Nine goblins, three bosses, four wolves scaled to fifty percent, a bugbear, two poses of Sildar, and a wagon with two oxen. The rogue scouted past most of it alone in the dark. The wolves were released. A custom Python mesh-repair tool was written because one sculpt kept crashing the slicer — that sculpt was Yeemik, who survived the session and fled.
Lair Actions
On initiative count 20, the lair acts — badly, and then recovers. H6 was designed as the emotional centre of the chapter: a hostage, a knife, a schemer with a proposition. It lasted one round. Six of seven enemies died before the villain could open his mouth, and the DM invented a threat to the hostage's life in real time to rescue his own set-piece from his own players. It worked. Nobody at the table knows it happened. They will now.
Legendary Actions (3/round)
Boss Failure. His bugbear muffed the same escape roll two rounds running and got stuck in a hole while five first-level characters robbed him at their leisure. There is no rule anywhere requiring a DM to roll that in the open. He rolled it in the open.
Version Control. Shipped four tagged releases in a single evening — of notes about a game of pretend — one of which existed solely to correct the branch name in a handover document. The changelog entry for session one is longer than some of the session.
The Export. Built a 2,156-line session screen with 59 unique position markers, 22 decision trackers, per-instance hit-point bars, a dice roller, and a Markdown export function, so that nothing from the table would ever be lost. It captured "Sabriel: 7/7". It did not capture the decapitations, the chimney climb, the excrement, the execution, or the fact that Sabriel had been on one hit point.
Missed opportunityEvery single memorable thing that happened at that table reached the permanent record because a human being remembered to say it out loud, days later, in conversation. The tooling recorded the hit points. The tooling has always recorded the hit points.
DM's margin noteHe ran a genuinely great session, and then built a cathedral of instrumentation around a game whose best moments were a thrown handful of filth and a barbarian cleaning his axe. He predicted the near-death in writing, months in advance, and still had to be told it happened. The call, as ever, is coming from inside the statblock.
Threat To his own weekends. Now also to his git history.