A very Blizzard Watch D&D recap sees our ragtag band fighting Kobolds on a beach, and also each other

If you missed it live on our Twitch channel this weekend, you can now go and listen to part three of Blizzard Watch’s D&D campaign. I’m your Dungeon Master, Matt “Rossi” Rossi, and with me on this week’s session were Anne Stickney as Mischief the Tiefling Rogue, Deb Montague as Mediel the Dwarf Cleric, Liz Harper as Kainehe the Genasi Sorcerer, Michael Mitchell as Fizzl the Kenku Bard and Cory Taylor as Zellan the Elf Fighter. Absent was Joe Perez, whose Wilyur Rustspark spent the entire session recovering from a sudden bout of  “my player isn’t here and the DM doesn’t feel like playing my character” that kept him out of the action.

Sometimes, there’s a lot of role playing in a session. And sometimes, the last session ended with the PCs on a beach surrounded by Kobolds, so the session ends up being an extended combat sequence. That’s exactly what happened this time, and while it can be fun, one thing about combat in almost any tabletop RPG is that it takes a while to resolve. The party actually tried to talk to the Kobolds only for said Kobolds to try and snare them in a net, which then led to initiative rolls which the party did pretty well on, and soon it was on. The initial wave of Kobolds did pretty well, but in fact it was Fizzl who did the most damage to our players with a Thunderwave spell that was cast right on top of both Mischief and Zellan, both of which took damage. Thanks to a lucky sneak attack from one of the Kobolds, Mischief dropped into unconsciousness, but three of the Kobolds did die from the spell.

However, the cavalry arrived with two advanced Kobolds riding big, weird monsters that were absolutely a pair of Inostrancevia because why not, it’s my D&D game so if I want to do stat blocks for Gorgonopsids I absolutely will. This fight was a touch harder for our players, although Kainehe got a clutch Chromatic Orb cast off that froze one’s throat, killing it with an assist from Zellan, and Fizzl was nearly drowned by the second monster as it grabbed him in its jaws and tried to dunk him in the ocean. An assist by Mischief and Zellan helped save the Kenku while Mediel played defense and threw out heals.

But the real drama started once the last remaining Kobold tried to surrender. Mischief and Kainehe wanted to question him about the strange island the party was now on, discovering that it was named The Isle of Dread (yes, for you old school players, that Isle of Dread, but I’ve made a lot of changes). But Fizzl was still very angry about his near-drowning and decided that surrender or no surrender, he was going to kill that Kobold. Soon, Kainehe was using her magic to summon a Gust of Wind to keep Fizzl away from said Kobold, while Zellan tried to restrain the Bard. This infighting between the party allowed the Kobold to turn invisible and escape, despite a last-ditch Detect Magic from Mediel.

Thus the party ended up on the beach post fight, knowing only a little — the giant dragon that attacked them last week is named Verth’s Fang, according to the Kobold they briefly held prisoner, and he rules over this seeming Isle of Dread.

Why were the PCs kidnapped and brought to that volcano lair? Who is behind all this? How are they going to get home? Is Fizzl really going to try and use an ability that takes a solid minute of game time to cast just to make Zellan afraid of him? All of this and potentially more, depending on what the players choose to do, on the next Blizzard Watch D&D spectacular which will happen whenever we herd enough cats to get us all online for long enough.