Expanded HQ Universe

[Weltenlaeufer]

I started basing and painting some of the otherworld miniatures. This guy is my favorite!

[Weltenlaeufer]

As I am getting ready for our DnD/Heroquest campaign kickoff, I was walking into a petstore today and found some epic terrain in the aquarium section for cheap! Highly recommended if you are looking for cool terrain for a good price, it was a treasure trove!

[Weltenlaeufer]

Finally finished all of Boris Dark Art studios modells I bought. Here is the whole crew

[Weltenlaeufer]

After almost 6 months of painting and planning our dnd/Heroquest hybrid adventure begins! I just set up our first mission for wednesday!

Intro to "The Lair of the Orc Warlord" - The Caves of Ulag
(DnD Session)

Location: below the secret passage of Black Fire Pass within the Black Mountains!

The Heroes meet at a tavern in Nuln for character creation. They overhear that Prince Magnus has ordered that the Orc Warlord Ulag should be sought out and killed. The stronghold is in "The Caves of Ulag" located below a secret passage on Black Fire Pass within the Black Mountains. Mission starts at Nuln, travel north down the old Dwarf Road and to Black Fire Pass.

As they reach the Black mountains the Heroes gonna meet an NPC who shows up as a cloaked shadow at first sight when the heroes enter the first encounter area Black Fire Pass. He informs them about missing children in the area and tells them that he is scouting the area at night, looking for his kidnapped daughter. He holds the information to the secret passage that will let them avoid traversing the dark thorny forest and avoid the Orc mountain patrols. After finding the secret passage through the mountains and avoid the patrolling guards their mission is to make it through the caves alive, be stealthy, avoid or use the Fimircage traps, find the entrance to the Lair of Ulags Dungeon and use the secret door triggermechanism for the last door to enter Ulags lair.

Timer: D4 rounds for orc Patrols
Threat: orc guards, orc patrols,
Treat: gold, potions, reward, honor and information for accepting and rescuing the daughter (moral decision)
Traps: 2 floorplate triggered fimircages that release when triggered
Environmental Threat: Falling rocks on random player (D4 assigned) at 2 spots - Saving Dex roll
Overall Board DC: 12

2 more days countdown!

[Pancho]

The “treat” is simply getting to play on special gaming table. Gorgeous environment you’ve set up there. Let us know how the game goes.

[Weltenlaeufer]

The “treat” is simply getting to play on special gaming table. Gorgeous environment you’ve set up there. Let us know how the game goes.

Thanks a lot Pancho! I gonna report!

[Weltenlaeufer]

I passed by a cigarshop the other day and asked for old wooden cigarboxes, got two for free and crafted this dicetray with a piece of fabric.

[Weltenlaeufer]

The Caves of Ulag

Daaaaaaaaaamn! That was an epic gamenight!

Absolute blast. It was the first time I played dnd with terrain! I never played dnd before, only a similar game back in my teens. I couldnt have done this without the help of the runehammer channel, because regular dnd rules from the Players manual really got my head spinning and the runehammer (drunkens and dragons) stuff made it so much easier and less complicated and especially taught me how to design an encounter, the thinking involved in gamedesign and story tellling. Badass stuff, Highly recommended.

So the group went straight to the Black Mountains after character creation. We used the 3 D6 brutal fate rule for rolling the character stats so the Barbarian turned out to be funnily underpowered with penalties on almost, every stat. The dwarven fighter became a charming as hell tank. The elven druid turned out also extremely fragile and was just told he was basically a weak wood elf interested in magic, and during the game discovered a hands on healing ability connected to a wisdom check and a d4 timer for renewal . He failed on loads of checks but got lucky to get his healing to work a few times.

When the group entered the black mountains and the caves they ran into the first orc guards and retreated into another tunnel.

Black mountains:



Caves of Ulag



Little did they know, they ran straight into the area where the orcs kept a fimir in a cage, that was released on a pressure plate. The fimir was hurting from imprisonment and I thought he is gonna straight attack the heroes, but our elven druid, had the genius idea to lay his healing hands on him, succeeded and gave him a healing energy blast, so the fimir went straight on after the orcs instead. I definitely didnt see that one coming!

So after an epic battle between the fimir and some orcs, the heroes managed to escape into the other tunnels, where they discovered a locked portculis that was only gonna be released with a switch. They moved on on a search for the switch and stumbled upon a sacrifical pit with loads of bones in another tunnel that didnt look too good for them. The elf stepped on a hidden pressure plate because of his failed perception check and by accident released a second fimircage which was in the chamber next to the pit. This time the battle was ON.

Meanwhile the impending doom D4 timer determined when the next Orc patrol had to show up! This underlied with some scary music and letting the player see the timer click down created an awesome sense of pressure.

Back to the fimir battle, two players went to zero hitpoints and fell unconcsious with the Elf with only two hitpoints left standing. We used the deathsave rule (the fallen heroes, roll one d2o while unconscious in every round, if they roll a 1 they die, if they roll 20 they gain 1 hitpoint and come back to consciousness. If they roll three times above 10 they also gain 1 HP and come back, 3 times below 10 and they die). So these guys managed to came back to life with one hitpoint left while the elf worked on slashing the fimir from high ground with advantage and finding the portcullis switch in his chamber.

After a stroke of luck and with the elven druid finding some healing herbs by investigating the moss in the cavern, they BARELY made it to the exit, facing the last orc patrols which took out our weakling barbarian, who failed his deathsave by rollin a friggin one!!

The players where faced with looting his stuff or carrying the guy over to the next level and luckily (for them, because I would have punished their asses if they would have left him) shouldered him and carried him across. I gotta think of a way to resurrect the guy somehow at the beginning of the next mission.

It was friggin close, with some funny and some epic scenes. The dwarf trying to jump on a piece of wooden log to pass from the forest to the mountaincliff, failing his dexcheck repeatedely and slipping and sliding and swearing, falling on his ass.
In another scene the elf jumping onto the dwarfs shoulders with a d20 roll and attacking one fimir from his shoulders pirouetting around in cinematic style and slashing him from above! Later the dwarf announcing to run full force against the elf who was facing an orc and ramming both to the ground together like a tank knocking them stunnded for 2 rounds... and more fun stuff like this! Like the Barbarian inspired by seeing the Elf finding healing herbs, at one point with one hitpoint left desperately started to eat the moss from the cavernwalls without any effect (failing his wisdomchecks).

After they made it to the exit, which is gonna be the entrance to the second layer, the players had to award the bonus experience points reward for the session, which went straight to our underpowered, weak little woodelf who nearly failed on every attack roll but played an amazing game!

Epic night! Cant wait for the next. The group is hooked and I gotta say me too, this was worth months of painting and days and nights of prepwork!

DMing is FUN!!

[Weltenlaeufer]

Ready for next session, Lair of the Orc Warlord! I started to send out texts to warm up the group. This is fun!

"After the group of adventurers has traversed the hazardous caves of Ulag their spirit is soured, knowing that the Orc warlord still has to be killed and brought to justice....severly wounded and sensing a dark cloud of doom the two survivors carry their dead friend down the winding staircase into what seems to be a dungeon in the hope they will survive this godforsaken task....time will tell..."

And for our killed friend, this one:

"Meanwhile Zorks spirit is fighting demons in the afterlife....having lost all sense of hope, suddenly he feels that on another plane the bond of friendship is still strong....as he decapitates another little devil a glimmer of hope lights up his consciousness....maybe all is not lost yet..."

And a new player will enter the field the next session, the heroes will find him captured:

"You were captured by the orcs as you were wandering the Black Mountains in search for treasure...they dragged you into their foul dungeon and you witnessed with fear in your eyes how they were performing dark, sinister experiments on their captured prisoners....Dark magic you think.....Not one you saw being dragged away ever came back. As you look upon the high spiked bars of your prisoncage you start to abandon all hope.....how could you be so foolish to walk the dark mountains at night alone, is your last thought as you fall into an exhausted sleep on the cold stones of your prisoncell...."

[Weltenlaeufer]

Lair of the Orc Warlord