Hail, shields! Wanted to write up a nice, tidy post about our Roll20 ICRPGme campaign that wrapped last night.
Campaign title: THE DELVING
Players: Myself, Kelsey Dionne, Joe Stirling
GM: Alex Alvarez
Sessions: 20
Maps explored: 60-65
System: ICRPG Master Edition
Fun Facts:
-no character reached MASTERY in this campaign
-KD weighed in with 4 natural 20’s in a single session
-My character OSRIC was killed in the final session
-Durathrax was directly encountered and we survived TWICE
Synopsis:
Years ago, Jason Scranton hosted a game in which me, KD, Alex and JD wanted to play a small family of dwarves. A series of unfortunate events got Kelsey’s character killed in the FIRST SESSION and the campaign eroded away from there. Fast forward to 2022 and we decided to try this family theme again. Me, JD and KD would play the little dwarf family and Alex would GM. We knew that the premise had a ton of great potential, but its first iteration just didn’t work out. So we assembled THE NORTH WATCH… three dwarves at the edge of the world, up by Dur Olo in Alfheim.
The story began with these dwarves: Army commander OSRIC (me), his sister STICKS (Kelsey) and crazy chef uncle BULGAR (Joe) living quiet lives at a remote garrison in the snow. One day a lizardman arrives, in distress, telling of an invasion, and doom coming. The watch takes him in and things really accelerated from there.
In moments we’re swept into a military engagement with corrupt elves. Our home is destroyed, and we are set on a path of adventure to warn our king, ROM. The middle of this campaign was a zigzag of madness as we uncovered Durathrax’s presence, fought back ‘The Thrall’ a dark energy possessing elves to kill, and learned about an unstable time continuum caused by a one-eyed chicken named BIMBLES.
There were so many epic moments, so much teamwork, and so many close calls as we fought deep spiders, crystal skitters, elven armies, possessed dwarves, mind-controlling invisible flayer-things and more. We crashed an airship into an army, fought invisible mages, wandered the halls of Ramthas, hid under rubble in the horrible shadow of Durathrax, and hatched a dragon egg. We took on draconic warriors, an eyebeast, gracidhoppers and acid pits.
In the final session we made our way to the sanctum of THE THRALL itself… a dark energy coming from none other than the cicada mage ANAXAMON, who had been forced into a kind of doomed servitude by Durathrax in an effort to conceal a relic of terrible power: the creation dagger… a blade perfectly opposite to the iinfintely powerful tessaract dagger.
STICKS found herself with both blades in hand, able to make a single wish at the cost of one life. OSRIC was already down, with no hope of rescue, so she had to decide to end his life to make her wish reality: that the daggers had never been. This wish undid so many events, and on a wind swept hill our little family found itself restored… even OLFAN, OSRIC’s true love, came to his side. He rolled down the grassy hill with her, bequeathing FROSTHORN, the blade of their military oath, to STICKS. Not a dry eye at the table in those final moments.
The events, battles, and clever map designs in this campaign were beyond fantastic. Alex slayed it. He also stepped up his ‘wink wink’ game. Alex’s GM style often revolves around huge ‘call backs’ when things from other games surprisingly persist into new worlds. To have my own former character (ANAXAMON) be the super villain at the end, and so on. There were tons of these. Honestly, I seldom see someone so faithfully play within a world as Alex does in Alfheim… his knowledge of the continent, in all its stages over the last 5 years, is impeccable.
Sometimes it may seem that I am a creator first and a hobbyist second. That I spend my days chin scratching more than rolling dice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Games likes these, and friends like these, remind me why I do all this in the first place. It isn’t about publishing, it’s about playing, and play we did by all the gods! Play we did.
Now, I reckon we’ll get a few weeks off and trick some poor soul into committing to GM’ing the next game. After all, this is just the beginning.
-HF
