Jororked Forgefire

This episode of Encounters was a blast. First we were reunited with a player who previously had switched tables to aid with balancing. Second Barcan said is dramatic goodbye and was replaced with a warlock. Last we meet a brand new friend, a large goliath with a net. How we meet them is another one of those moments you can get when you put people in a room together a regular basis. During setup our DM Jeff asked for us to build upon the map and make a larger map to accommodate a larger party and a desire for more room. He happened to have the Desert of Athas dungeon tiles with him and we used that to bridge the gap between the two maps in front of us to make one large map. I too have that dungeon tile set and know that for some reason there is a water tile with a sailboat on it included. The little demon inside of me smirked a bit and threw the tile out and waited to see what happened.

It was the perfect spark. Soon others had added a couple more water tiles and we had a little sea. Jeff didn't miss a beat and ran with it. We found our new and old friends in the boat arguing the best way to get the Tyr. The boat was used in a brief negotiation with this week's bad guys. It was also the source of many running jokes, including one party member gaining the title of Commodore. It is this level of fun that I think is what drives people to play D&D. Yes levels and loots are nice, but the stories you tell because something hilarious happened one week is something you can't replicate.

Back to the storyline, with a bit of meta gaming, we knew a show down with the Wastewalker was coming, and this week we meet his vanguard. The immediately demanded the surrender of the cloth wearing evil arcanists. Yeah no love for Jarvix. So I found great joy in critical hitting the guy demanding my friends turn me over. I imagined Jarvix putting a little more flourish and emphasis on the motions of his dishearten spell ending with a rude gesture. From a mechanics stand point our large party of 7 blew the encounter wide open. As our DM said, "The Twitter buff is that you have 7 party members". I found it encouraging that even though we knew that a large party would unbalance our game we did not want to turn away a person.