Falkus
Explorer
Well, this Sunday, I had to completely improvise my Fourth Edition DnD session, because of some remarkably good thinking on the part of my players, and I've never been happier.
A bit of background: The party, through heroic and paragon tiers, have been fighting the Society of the Hand, a Vecnan cult with a plot to rewrite the rules of the planar boundaries (through use of ancient artifacts and a powerful blood ritual using lifeforce gathered from the casualties of a major war) so that only Vecna can give out power to clerics or receive prayers. In the session before last, they successfully managed to convince Count Strahd to stop supporting the Society, and then ambushed and killed one of the Society's top leaders at Strahd's castle in the Shadowfell; the Iron Lord, who was an Adult Iron Dragon and the head of the Society's military branch.
So after getting out of the Shadowfell, the party receives a sending from an old contact of theirs in the Barony of Avinberg, where their adventures started, about mysterious groups of mercenaries attacking from the south. This is suppose to be a lead up to the appearance of another army that the Society's been using to wage war; and my players figure this out easily enough, as I expected them to. What I then expected them to do was teleport or take their airship to Avinberg and investigate it.
What I didn't expect was for them to get in touch with some of their other contacts (a powerful Avenger of Ioun (and the Ranger's girlfriend), a expert warrior of Kord (who had been freed from the Society of the Hand some time ago) and a red dragon who owes them alleigance), and send them south to fight the mercenaries. Meanwhile, the party itself used divination rituals and speak with dead and headed north to find and investigate the lair of the Iron Lord; in hopes of finding information that could lead them directly to the society's headquarters.
While I'm no stranger to improvisation (my group and the dictates of the Paragon tier require it), I've never had to improvise a session so completely before; coming up with a dragon's lair, enemies for it, a skill challenge to find and access it and the information contained within the Iron Lord's personal notes.
It was great fun and I'm so proud of them for thinking of such a good plan
A bit of background: The party, through heroic and paragon tiers, have been fighting the Society of the Hand, a Vecnan cult with a plot to rewrite the rules of the planar boundaries (through use of ancient artifacts and a powerful blood ritual using lifeforce gathered from the casualties of a major war) so that only Vecna can give out power to clerics or receive prayers. In the session before last, they successfully managed to convince Count Strahd to stop supporting the Society, and then ambushed and killed one of the Society's top leaders at Strahd's castle in the Shadowfell; the Iron Lord, who was an Adult Iron Dragon and the head of the Society's military branch.
So after getting out of the Shadowfell, the party receives a sending from an old contact of theirs in the Barony of Avinberg, where their adventures started, about mysterious groups of mercenaries attacking from the south. This is suppose to be a lead up to the appearance of another army that the Society's been using to wage war; and my players figure this out easily enough, as I expected them to. What I then expected them to do was teleport or take their airship to Avinberg and investigate it.
What I didn't expect was for them to get in touch with some of their other contacts (a powerful Avenger of Ioun (and the Ranger's girlfriend), a expert warrior of Kord (who had been freed from the Society of the Hand some time ago) and a red dragon who owes them alleigance), and send them south to fight the mercenaries. Meanwhile, the party itself used divination rituals and speak with dead and headed north to find and investigate the lair of the Iron Lord; in hopes of finding information that could lead them directly to the society's headquarters.
While I'm no stranger to improvisation (my group and the dictates of the Paragon tier require it), I've never had to improvise a session so completely before; coming up with a dragon's lair, enemies for it, a skill challenge to find and access it and the information contained within the Iron Lord's personal notes.
It was great fun and I'm so proud of them for thinking of such a good plan
