Rialacha Teach Mhorgunna

"The devil is in the details ... but so is salvation."

If you have been reading this blog, you should know I have started running "The Lost Mines of Phandelver." We have made it through Cragmaw Hideout and must say the players did a great job. But I caught one of my players Jim, connected to my Fantasy Grounds making up characters. I had been a little slow in shutting it down. So we began talking.

I told him that if he wanted to run a second character, that it was alright by me. He brightened up and pointed out we didn't have a magic user. I was amazed that they had done as well as they had, without one. After a little pushing, I got him building a Warlock. This was totally new to him and he requested a zero session. This was fun but took almost 3 times as long as I thought it would take. We solved the problem with the fact that Jim really didn't want to sell his soul for magic powers. It was an easy fix. I have a venerable bronze dragon NPC from the Feylands, that polymorphs into a giant female and claims to be a goddess. Oddly enough even though this is the third time I have used Marium, no one has ever asked her what she is goddess of. Perhaps due to the requirement for 10% of the adventurer's take, they have figured out she is the goddess of treasure and hoarding. But then, she also could be the doughnut deity given her fondness for the Neverwinter pastry, Hobbit Holes. the warlock brought three dozen every time she had spell lessons.

It only took a couple of times practicing doing the mechanics of spells, that by the time we made it down the Warlock's spell list, he was handling it like a pro. The biggest problem was trying to get him to join up with the adventuring party. I nudged him to the left ... he went right ... a push to the right ... he ran left. It was like herding cats. It was all I could do not to laugh. He took the background of charlatan and I think he is more that than Warlock. At least right now. He had this big con planned because as much as I tried to explain the situation, he (and thus his female Warlock) viewed the gang known as the Red Brands as simple highwaymen. The adventurer at this point, had not made any exploration of the environment to get a lay of the land. Come hell or high water, He was going to have his Warlock have a meeting on their home ground and alone. He was going to try and exchange a wagon load of goods for forged bank notes. Offer her services as a big time fence. All because he wasn't listening. Finally I tried something else. An added detail.

To get a good feel to playing Forgotten Realms, I have been listening to the novels set in world. Some of them are better than others, but they give little tidbits that are of use to color your games. I download them on my Kindle and most of them have an audio dramatic reading you can add to your purchase. This works out well as they are half the price as if you bought the Audible version alone. I plug in my headphones when I go for my walk or into my audio system in the car ride to work. Right now I am listening to Erin M. Evan's Brimstone Angel's series.

One of the details that are in these books are a type of book that are guilty pleasures are called Chat Books. These are a cross between dime novels, and penny dreadfuls ... the romance novel of the realms.

https://youtu.be/uT7Hd6KAZmA

Maybe I was inspired by one of my favorite movies, "Walt Disney's Rob Roy." In it, the King of England does research on the film's hero by reading such books. And I had embarrassed the other party, when they realized that part of the curse of being notorious was becoming the subject of such fodder. They still haven't figured out who the mole that is feeding the stories to this media is. I made these books available to his Warlock. By showing him that the Red Brands went toe to toe with this elite adventuring group and that the Red Brands' influence went as far as Neverwinter. It gave him enough information to question his plan. He knew that I had gone to this much trouble and he was missing something.

That doesn't mean he won't try it tonight. And I won't know ... until it is too late.

Still that is the nature of the game. And part of the fun. Next week's blog ... may write it's self.