I haven’t written a journal of my Dungeon & Dragons games for a while, the previous session I wrote about was in June of last year. What happened was basically that I overdid the preparation of my D&D games, which made them feel more like work than like fun.  First I stopped writing about the sessions, then I started to play more often and DM less often, until finally I passes both my campaigns temporarily into the hands of players willing to DM for a while. My 3D printer breaking down seemed like a sign that I was spending too much time preparing, and not enough playing.

The good news is that playing D&D as a player not only gave me a better perspective of the game, but also gave me a bunch of ideas on DMing. One thing I realized was that if a part of the published adventure wasn’t much fun preparing, it often also wasn’t much fun playing. Fortunately that doesn’t apply much to the Out of the Abyss campaign, but more to the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, in which I will much reduce the number of boring encounters that seem to be fillers for the large dungeons. Sometimes less is more! In the Out of the Abyss campaign I will take back the helm in about a month or so (at a good moment for the player who is now DM for Tomb of Annihilation with the same players and who could use a break from DMing himself). So it’s time to give an update of the sessions we played before the break, when I wasn’t keeping up this journal.

The final battle for Blingdenstone was long, with several waves of slimes before the players could face and beat the pudding king. That earned them the gratitude of the deep gnomes, who then agreed to show them the way out, back to the surface. They then traveled to Gauntlgrym at the request of a fallen NPC companion from the early sessions. There they met the various factions of the Sword Coast and King Bruenor. The news of the various demon princes they had already encountered caused a lot of concern, as the rulers of the Sword Coast figured that the demons would come out of the Underdark to the surface at some point. Best to fight them while they were still underground!

Thus began the second half of the adventure, with the group sent back into the Underdark. But while in the first half the theme was them escaping from drow slavery and fighting for survival, they are now coming with an expeditionary force. And of course they are much higher level now. Their first stop was Mantol-Derith, which was supposed to be neutral ground, a place where the Zhentarim from the surface traded with three Underdark factions peacefully. However on arrival they found the peace had shattered, leading them through a series of encounters that slowly revealed what was going on: A gemstone that made everybody who touched it mad had changed hands in Mantol-Derith. Ultimately they found the gem and destroyed it, and with it Fraz-Urb’luu, a demon lord who had been trapped inside. They also got a magical ring leading them to their next destination, a magical library called Gravenhollow. That is where we will continue the next time we play, with the players at level 9.