I'm Not Dead Yet! (Again...)

I'm back, and will be posting relevant stuff soon, but the reason I've not been is because there's been some home issues and the PC I post on had multiple issues that I've still not worked through. Most of all, though, work got crazy and I just didn't feel like posting much before the PC went down.

So, there's all that. Hopefully, I'll be back to talk about games soon! There's been some exciting ones in the past year!

30 Day Challenge, Days 21, 22, and 23 - The Skips

I skipped a few posts during the 30 Day Challenge, but thought I would make them up here, for completeness, to satisfy the curiosity of my readers, and because I find the Challenge's questions neat.

Day 21 - Favorite Dragon Color/Type

My favorite dragon is the Fang Dragon, originally debuting in the Forgotten Realms setting, if I'm not mistaken.

The fang is appealing to me because it wants to engage you in melee. While most dragons, at least in my mind, would rather send minions into hand-to-hand and play the range game with its attackers/its victims, the fang dragon is at its most deadly in close range.

The bite of a fang dragon drains Constitution, weakening the opponents it has in front of it, and making for an even quicker death of its foes. Judicious use of its sound imitation ability can facilitate up-close fights and its trip ability ensures that once the fang dragon has you in melee, it will be hard to get away. 

Not only all this, but don't forget that the fang dragon is still a true dragon, and as such still have frightful presence, high spell resistance, multiple attacks, insane ACs and spell-like abilities, as well as casting ability like a sorceror and damage reduction.

They might not be as smart as some other dragons, but ferocity more than makes up for it.


Day 22 - Favorite Monster Overall

This one is harder to do, since the Challenge asks you to list quite a few favorite monsters by category. Obviously, I feel like I can't use previous answers, though wouldn't one of them be the favorite overall?

Well, no.

I'm going to be interpretive a little with this one, and append "that I've used in a game." This makes the choice quite a lot easier, as there are two monsters that I fall back on time and again. The first, and would be winner is the zombie, but I'm not including it, as I haven't used it in a long time, and it seems like cheating to do so when their use has declined, and so I'm going with the lowly goblin.

Goblins are just fun. Creepy little craven psychopaths that, unchecked, will eventually overrun and corrupt any place they call home. Goblins, like any other humanoid, can fit quickly into any niche you need at the time, as they can be any class you would like. Need a spellcaster? A goblin shaman or pyromancer might fit the bill. A couple of goblin shadow dancers could quickly wear the party down by forcing use of resources, eventually routing even a somewhat prepared party.

They can be as cunning or as stupid as you would like, and are usually fun for your players to bash, as well.


Day 23 - Least Favorite Monster Overall

This one comes from not only my experiences with it as a DM, but also because of my opinion of the thing as a player. My choice for least favorite monster has to be the mimic. 

Perhaps my friends and I don't follow some unwritten plan somewhere, but no party we've ever been in that has encountered mimics has ever truly been that successful against the things. Sure, we eventually defeat them, but the seemingly insane amount of hit points coupled with their annoying adhesive abilities usually sees the party struggling by the end of the fight. 

We never have solvents of any kind to break free and our characters can never seem to roll well at all in any aspect of a fight with these monsters, so I'm just not a fan. Nothing about them are fun to me.

30 Day Challenge, Day 30 - Best DM I've Had

So, we've finally made it to the end, and I actually did a lot better than I had anticipated, with just a couple of misses somewhere there in the middle. This has really made me realize that I do like writing about gaming, even if I don't have much to say, and I'll probably be posting with more regularity, at least in the near future. A possible second job may cut into that time a little, but maybe more on that later.

Anyway, on to the meat of this post...by far the easiest one of the whole month. The best DM I've ever had, without question, is my friend Paul. I've been playing in his games since I got into the rpg hobby and he has been an invaluable sounding board for my own campaigns and designs over the years.

Even though I originally went with Vampire for the first game I ever GM'd, Paul was pushing me into the GM role, saying he thought I would be good at it. I think any time someone has agreed with him that I am a good GM is simply praise on Paul, because the core of my style is practically an emulation of the style Paul had back when I started playing under him.

Paul is a gracious DM, always willing to listen to his players when they have alternate features for their characters or differing views on rules or rulings in situations, but is never afraid to lay the DM hammer down when he feels the ruling was justified and the game needs to move on.

His games are engaging and entertaining (he ran the Arcane College game I posted about for the longest), and I have never felt truly dissatisfied with any of his campaigns when they ended.

If there was an award for best DM, I would certainly nominate Paul.

30 Day Challenge, Day 29 - What Is The Number I Always Seem To Roll On A D20?

'One under what I need at any given time' seems most accurate sometimes, but - and I don't know if this points to my d20 being manufactured a certain way or what - I actually see a lot of 11s from my die.

I didn't purposefully buy a die that was weighted or cast to roll certain numbers, and believe me, it does seem to be perfectly randomized! That said, I might actually put the percentage of 11s rolled at 5.3, rather than the flat 5 that the d20 assumes, which reduces the percentage of all other numbers, in turn.

30 Day Challenge, Day 28 - A Character I Will Never Play Ever Again

Though I've stated before that roguish characters are my favorite character type, and I prefer the 'face' type scoundrel, if we want to get more specific, I will likely never again play a bard, especially one made specifically for social interaction (assuming there even is a good combat build for the bard, I dunno).

The last one I played, in Angela's Age of Worms, was the last person killed in a near-TPK when he was trying to save another party member. The one before that was ripped to shreds by dinosaurs when trusting another PC's lead in the Savage Tide adventure path, and the one before that took a critical to his head in an Eberron war-time campaign just short moments after removing his helmet (which would have saved his life).

Each of these characters thrived in their element, but couldn't stand up to even moderate combat challenges. I do suppose that the class isn't designed for that role, but I can't help but think that I just have terrible luck playing bards.

I've sworn off them, at any rate. For the foreseeable future, at least.

30 Day Challenge, Day 27 - A Character I Want To Play In The Future

This one is tough. I know that, for the most part, my game group will deviate very little from D&D 3.x/Pathfinder, so it makes more sense for me to describe a character for that type of game. However, I would really like to play something other than d20 or Dark Heresy eventually, so I have ideas for other things, as well.



In D&D or Pathfinder, I think I'd like to play a religious extremist. The deity followed and the class and race of the character are secondary concerns (though I think a lay person might be more fun than a cleric or paladin), as long as there is a level of fanaticism that makes everyone around the character a little uncomfortable. Moral transgressions like blood sacrifice and/or legal transgressions like defamation of other faith's shrines, or even excessive theft if the character followed the God of Rogues, would play into the character, as well.

I've not really played a religious zealot in a game, and I think it would be fun.

On the other hand, with a game other than D&D/Pathfinder, my style of character would be a bit different. If I could have things my way, and someone ever decided to run a Mage or Vampire game, I would like to play an ex-Irish Mob leg breaker who was either suddenly Awakened or Embraced by the Tremere clan.

In a Mage chronicle, I have the idea that he would be a Mastigos and member of the Guardians of the Veil. An honorable, no-nonsense tough who has a job to do in his capacity with the Guardians, who still goes about things the way he did in his Sleeper life - hit it first, and if that doesn't work, then bring out the tools.

In a Vampire chronicle, assuming The Masquerade, since my group has played that the most, you have similar lines. For whatever reason - perhaps needing to fill a niche that the Chantry needed at a particular time, perhaps the clan controls the Irish Mob or wants to - a Tremere Embraces this low-ranked soldier and for the most part he just goes about things like when he was alive, only now his hits are done by exsanguination and  he would rarely resort to magic, despite perhaps knowing quite a few Paths and Rituals.

Inspiration for this character came after watching Ray Stevenson's excellent portrayal of Danny Greene in Kill the Irishman.

30 Day Challenge, Day 26 - Favorite Nonmagical Item

If the sheer number of characters I have played throughout various systems and games that have owned this item is any indication, my favorite nonmagical piece of kit would have to be the grappling hook.

Though sometimes weighty and/or bulky, the grappling hook is an invaluable piece of gear for it's usually light price tag. Not only can it be utilized in the primary functions it is designed for, such as pulling ships in for boarding or hooking parapets to climb towers, but the grappling hook can also be used as an anchor if it can catch a reef or tree (for airships, for instance), as the pulley mechanism for a harness if the ropes are strung correctly, as a hunting/fishing tool, to help wrangle monsters (especially those that fly), and as an improvised weapon.

The grappling hook is the type of item that rewards cleverness and ingenuity, as it only has as many uses as one can think up.

Plus, it just seems a natural fit for my usual character type - the Rogue.

30 Day Challenge, Day 25 - Favorite Magic Item

Here I am, enjoying a day off indoors, as my part of the world is gifted with freezing rain. I'm taking the opportunity to go ahead and do my Challenge post for the day, this one dealing with magic items.

My favorite magic item, an artifact really, comes from the brain of my friend Paul, and was retrieved by my character, Nastrond, during the Arcane College/Gnomad campaign (You can start here, if interested. Just click The Arcane College tag to continue on).

The item in question appears to be a simple leather bracer with brass fittings along the outer portion that house a small hourglass, like is used as egg timers. The hourglass can be removed and refilled, as needed, though ordinary sand just sits in the glass and has no special effect.

When filled with the Sands of Time, however, the bracer has a number of abilities, not all of which I think I discovered during the campaign. First off, at the most basic, the bracer could activate Haste, as the spell with a 10th level caster. In addition, the bracer could grant +10 to initiative to anyone within close range, and could be used to make someone reroll their last attack or save roll. Each use expended some of the Sands of Time within the hourglass.

The most powerful thing the bracer could do, however, is an ability much like a Time Stop spell, except with as long a duration as I was willing to spend charges from the Sands of Time.

Now, it's no mystery as to where the inspiration for this item came from. A certain Prince of Persia game had been out a while and was pretty popular amongst my friends at the time.

Paul can be very generous with interesting and powerful items that fit into the story of his campaigns, somehow, and this campaign was no different. I loved my "time gauntlet" as I called it, and abused it quite a lot when I had the charges to do so, but right before the campaign dissolved, Nastrond had learned that he had contracted a degenerative disease that was aging him quicker than usual. With the added push of learning he could fuel the gauntlet with his own life-force, this item became a real threat of character death at a time when I was probably going to become more reliant on it.

30 Day Challenge, Day 24 - Favorite Energy Type

And so, I failed my goal. I didn't get all 30 days in, as I went out of town over the weekend, and I honestly have no idea why I didn't post Thursday, perhaps I thought I had, then didn't. Ah well, it's still a good run for this blog, and I'll post as much of the rest as I can, hoping for as many as I can get.

Today's point is favorite energy type, and that's one that's split for me. As a GM, fire is my favorite to utilize, because most players will gravitate to protection  from fire as a default, and it's nice to give your players the satisfaction of shrugging off some or all of an attack with use of spells or items from time to time.

I once also stole an idea from a Dragon magazine about an albino red dragon, so all of the PCs in that group had made preparations to face a white dragon, then were surprised by the fire coming out of the thing's mouth, leading to a TPK due to unpreparedness.

As a player, however, sonic is my preferred energy type. The game designers of D&D and derivative games nerf sonic attacks, usually by decreasing die step by one or two, or hard limiting number of dice of damage dealt, but sonic damage is very effective against not only creatures - very few of which have resistance or immunity to sonic - and objects, which take more actual damage due to sonic attacks often bypassing their structural hardness.

30 Day Challenge, Day 20 - Favorite Monster (Humanoid/Natural/Fey)

Another one with too many categories. I kinda covered my favorite humanoid back at Day 2, and I suppose "Natural" was covered a few days ago when I mentioned my like for the badger (though, admittedly, "Natural" is an oddly named category). This, of course, leaves me only with the Fey.

I'm a big fan of the fey. I don't think they get enough play in most fantasy rpgs, as historically, they made up most of our folklore of ancient cultures. Even most of our common fantasy monsters and races were once fey - the goblin, hobgoblin, gnome, elves, dark elves, kobolds, dwarves, and trolls, at one point or another were vaguely categorized as fey. This isn't to mention creatures more closely related to what rpgs have most commonly attached the label to, like sprites, naiads, and satyrs.

My favorite, however, are pixies. In my Wilderlands campaign, they are usually heralds of a larger fey presence or greater fey power, and are passive-aggressively mischevious, often trying to provoke those they torment in front of their unknowable masters in hopes that they will see the ancients use their powers in the real world.

That game aside, a pixie's natural invisibility, along with their small size, makes them ideal scouts and spies. A stereotypical pixie is also a fun, playful companion who is always curious and ready for adventure. In another campaign I ran many years ago, my friend, Kortney, went another direction with a pixie fighter who came from a very militaristic society that resembled the lifestyle of aggressive ants or wasps.

And again, a creature type that is widely represented with images on the net, but with not many that convey the traditional rpg pixie.

30 Day Challenge, Day 19 - Favorite Monster (Elemental/Plant)

This one's a bit unfair, yeah? I get the natural theme of choosing amongst elementals and plants, but the two things offer quite a range, and it becomes hard to choose. And so, I'm going to cheat on this point and choose one from each category!

Representing the elementals, I think I have to go with the classic earth elemental. This guy combines great movement ability with staying power in the form of high hit points, as well as the physical might to stand toe to toe with some fighter types when damage is concerned.

A summoned earth elemental is a great boon in holding passages or harrying spellcasters that cannot fly, or making them grapple said spellcasters to prevent them from flying. Earth elementals, however, are just as fun and useful to utilize for the GM as they are the players, especially if their earth glide special ability comes into play.


In the plant's corner, we have the assassin vine. I admittedly do not use many plants (though I tend to roll for shambling mounds often enough in my Wilderlands campaign), but one that I have used over the years to measured success is the assassin vine.

This is a nice "trap beast" to use for parties who like to retreat from the dungeon every 15 minutes, camping in the woods between forays into the deeps. If only they had been more attentive, they would have noticed the creepers trailing up the trees nearby were deadly flora.

The assassin vine is also easily scalable, meaning it can be a threat even when the PCs start ranging into mid-levels.


As a final note, there aren't really any super neat images of either of these things on the net, but there was an earth elemental on some person's blog that reminded me of an old Rock Lords Go-Bots.

30 Day Challenge, Day 18 - Favorite Monster (Immortal/Outsider)

Today's point on the 30 Day Challenge list asks me to pick a favorite Immortal or Outsider, and I think the most solid choice one could make here is the Marut. As the Monster Manual says, the Marut (see Inevitable) represents the certainty of death, which can put them in opposition with PCs a number of ways.

The Marut may come after the party after they drink potions that may extend their lives, or if they abuse the recurrence of life that spells such as raise dead or resurrection bring. Otherwise, they may run afoul of the Inevitable as it tries to bring an end to the party's enemy, like a lich who has cheated death for centuries through its undead state, or a powerful cult who sacrifice virgins and bathe in their blood to prolong their life.

Not only is their mission dire, but the Marut are completely unflagging. As constructs, they never need to rest, and would search planes for eons before they find their quarry...assuming one lived that long.

This is not to mention that they just look ready to bring eternal rest to those who seek to cheat death. From their fists, crackling with powerful energy to their elaborate bronze armor covering their jet black bodies, the question of if these enforcers of universal truths come in peace or seeking to mete punishment is moot.

30 Day Challenge, Day 17 - Favorite Animal/Vermin

This one seems an odd choice to put in a list of questions about a hobby normally steeped in fantasy or science fiction. I do understand that interesting fauna can be found in the various milieu presented by the world-builders of our hobby, even Khardtha has some, but today's topic kinda has me on the back foot.

I suppose my answer would be the badger. My friend Eric's wizard, Hazeem, was reincarnated as a badger once, and a few of the druids and rangers I recall over the years have had badger animal companions.

Past that, I really have no other reason for choosing the animal.

Oh, unless these are good reasons....

30 Day Challenge, Day 16 - Favorite Monster (Aberration)

While the undead category of this line of questioning was more difficult, with various nuances guiding my opinion over the years, my favorite aberration came to mind with no question.

The grick is usually one of the first aberrations most Dungeons & Dragons parties face in their careers, and usually represent a challenge that most PCs have not encountered up until they meet one for the first time... Damage Reduction.

Though gricks usually don't have many hit points and their attack is relatively weak, that one defensive ability of DR 10/magic means that the rogue and cleric are usually useless against the thing and the fighter types will not be doing much with their attacks, barring the fact that someone has a magical weapon (or one of the spellcasters has cast magic weapon.

This means that the grick might have to be dealt with by an offensive caster, meaning that it drains resources, making it a very useful creature for attrition in campaigns where your players tend toward the "10 minute adventuring day" style of play.

Besides, this thing looks awesome. All barbed tentacles and snapping beak on the business end of an overgrown snakeworm body. Fun stuff.

30 Day Challenge, Day 15 - Favorite Monster (Undead)

Undead are, by far, my favorite supertype of monster of all time, and for good reason. As I mentioned a few posts back, my mom used to take me to horror movie marathons when I was a kid, and the most prominent villain in those were the undead, and not just the standard fare of zombies and vampires, but also mummies (Karloff was the best!) and skeletons and ghouls.

All of these monsters captured my imagination and kept me going to the library looking for horror books as well as filling some of my first sketchbooks with vampires and such. This, of course, had continued on into my GM style with preference for enemies.

Nothing fills most people with dread more than a shock of mortality in the form of seeing a dead person, and to up that feeling by having said post-living attacking them speaks to our most basic fears of death. Though it might not come through at the game table as an existential moment, there usually is a sense of dread amongst players when the undead arrive.

My favorite amongst those who used to walk among us? Ghosts.

A zombie or a skeleton is, more often than not in rpgs, presented as a corpse merely animated with dark energies, and not possessing a true sense of motivation other than a drive to stop the living from living. Even more frightening are ghouls, vampires, and liches, who have that drive and goals, and an intelligence with which to achieve them.

A ghost has that drive, that intelligence - but also a sense of the unknowable. It becomes scarier than the bodily dead because you know that it literally is a manifestation of one's soul, their spirit, which holds them here for some reason. It's almost impossible to know what keeps a ghost anchored to the mortal coil, or even if they are present, since their natural state is an invisible and silent one.

Though technically a subclassification of ghost, the poltergeist has been a particular favorite since I saw the eponymous movie as a young child. A malevolent spirit deep-rooted to a location who manipulates its surroundings to drive those it feels does not belong away, or simply to kill them makes for an engaging enemy, and one hard to quell for any would-be hero.

Sadly, I haven't used undead as much as I used to lately, because my campaigns just haven't called for it, but this post has me considering options for the future...

30 Day Challenge, Day 14 - Favorite NPC

I was thinking about this one today at work, and I can't decide between two, so as they tie for first with me, I'll post them both and let my readers sort it out (though I think I know which my current group will choose).

First, we have my very first fleshed out NPC... Silky Smooth. This pimp/hustler character was the first thing that popped into my mind when my Vampire players were looking for someone shady they could connect with. Silky might be part of the underworld, but he's anything but shady, with his flashy colored suits and "pimp cane" in hand. Though seemingly always on the pulse of every illicit trade in the city, Silky is ever known to have dealt in information. He will point you in the right direction, sometimes taking payment, sometimes offering his services for free on a whim.

To get the portrayal of Silky, I mainly drew from a guy I had come into acquaintance with when I was a teenager named Bobo. Most people who have spent any amount of time hanging out in Batesville, Arkansas have met Bobo. He'll freely admit to having spent time in prison for drugs and stabbing a dude, and is a self-confessed crackhead and vagrant. Take that core and sprinkle in some Katt Williams voice and Huggy Bear's wardrobe, and you just about get it...again, assuming you've met Bobo.

Anyway, he was always fun to portray and the PCs kept going back to him over and over again, even though they had other options, so I felt like they enjoyed the character, too.


The other NPC that leads the pack is Baron Althom. This character is mentioned as a benefactor in the 3.0 Dungeons & Dragons module The Forge of Fury, but had made more than that appearance in my attempts to run the Sunless Citadel adventure path and various other tries at Eberron campaigns.

Normally, I wouldn't put forth a character from a module as a favorite, but when first running the character, an eclectic art collector and Karrnathi noble, a good mix of the voices (and attitudes) that Peter MacNicol used for Dr. Janosz Poha, and Martin Short's Franck Eggelhoffer came to the fore and I ran with it. This character served in my long-running Eberron campaign as an ally and benefactor on more than one occasion, so I'm pretty sure he was liked by the party.

I've also used my "Baron Althom" voice and portrayal for various NPCs across settings, effectively making a multiversal character in my games.

30 Day Challenge, Day 13 - Favorite Trap/Puzzle

Quite a few years ago, when running a Forgotten Realms campaign, while the PCs were trapped, unbeknownst to them, in a demiplane at the end of a lengthy subterranean adventure, I introduced a cave filled with statues on plinths.with plaques, each bearing writing - some familiar, some completely alien to anything they had seen. Each statue seemed to depict a warrior of some sort in an action pose.

This room, in keeping with the whole basis of the Forgotten Realms, was a room full of portals. In order to activate any individual portal, a person need only to read the name inscribed on the plaque aloud and reasonably well. At this, all characters in the room would be transported to a location fitting the statue subject's locale, with said subject present and battle ready. Initiative was immediately rolled.

The trick to this was, if any of these people were defeated in battle (Often single combat with the person who spoke the name), then the PCs would be transported back to the statue room, but that locale - without the mandatory fight - would be open from then on, by simply standing in front of the statue and speaking the name again. If a PC failed to defeat the subject, then that area was locked for a year and a day more.

One of the statues, of course, led back to Faerûn, the rest led to different campaign settings, and one, featuring the name "Wm. H. Bonney" on the plaque, led to an alternate Earth that the PC would have to face Billy the Kid for entrance. Though this statue's subject was tested, that plane remained locked. When it seemed as if the group were destined for entrapment in the Demiplane of Dread (the Ravenloft campaign setting), because the subject featured was a former inhabitant of the Realms, a Knowledge (History) check revealed he had been missing for decades, and the PCs chose the wrong plane in the end (surprisingly, my homebrew of Khardtha - keeping in mind I told them nothing about where they actually led), they eventually were able to go home.

I understand that while this wasn't truly a trap OR puzzle, it had features of both and could have been very detrimental to the party, as they could have been trapped in certain locales or locked themselves out of all the portals with a string of losses, which would have been worse, since they were the only way out of the demiplane they had found themselves in.

30 Day Challenge, Day 12 - Favorite Dungeon Type/Location

Due to the adventure modules The Sunless Citadel and Heart of Nightfang Spire, I really like what are technically traditional dungeons, in the sense that they descend, but both start at the top of towers and work down. It just has a separate visceral feel to the descent into adventure.

My absolute favorite dungeon type and location rolled into one, however, is a ruined city in the desert. I've only utilized it once in an rpg, but there are lots of movies and such out there that present the type of location I'm talking about.

In this, you have a vast sprawl of ruined buildings serving the role of your dungeon rooms, connected variously by open plazas and sand-clogged avenues that serve as your corridors. The area is usually open-air, and gives the impression of a place ripe to (and ability to) openly explore, while the isolation and desolation creates an illusion of oppressiveness that acts, albeit falsely, as the dungeon walls.

Cellars, basements, tombs, and sewers can all serve to allow dungeon levels and sublevels, and the dryness of the whole location can really create a nice change of scenery for a campaign usually mired in moldy, dank dungeons adventurers are used to.

30 Day Challenge, Day 11 - Favorite Adventure You Have Ran

This turns out to be a tough one, too. Not because I don't run published adventures or anything of the like, but that I would like to nominate an adventure path, instead.

I suppose the term "Adventure Path" is slightly more modern than the adventures that I have in mind, but it is what it is, and what I'm talking about is the first series of adventures published for the 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, that ranges from The Sunless Citadel to Bastion of Broken Souls, and should - in its unmodified state - take adventurers all the way to the cusp of 21st level and grant them a boon in the form of divinity by way of Divine Rank 0.

A few years back, I ran a successful campaign that spanned all these adventures and finished the first "complete" campaign I have ever ran. I have found, in the past, that published adventures usually break down in the mid levels and are completely unplayable in the late game. Not so this span. The challenges and story entice and test the PCs with a great sense of scaling.

Barring my ability to choose a whole path, however, I think I would go with the adventure that kicks the whole thing off. The Sunless Citadel is easily droppable into any campaign world with little work.

One of the best for 3.x

• In Athas, a demented Druid could be jealously guarding the tree he feels is a relic that could usher in a new Green Age.
• On Krynn, recent tremors have uncovered a sunken tower from the time of the Cataclysm and a recent expedition has yet to return. What secrets does this ruin of Istar hold?
• A warmer-than-usual winter and a hot spring has caused a heavier melt this year in northern Faerûn, exposing a crevasse with a tower jutting out of it. Some brave adventurers have already went to its depths, but will you let them beat you to the possible riches of Netherese or Evereskan artifacts?

These are just a few of the things you could do with the adventure, and just a little reskinning of monsters and names is all it would take to plop into your own campaign's neck of the woods.

I've ran this module three or four times over the years, and my only complaint is that the adventure itself is rather linear, though if ran as part of the path, can hardly be called so if you don't want it to be. My group hopped all over the place in the year+ we played. At any rate, it's a great adventure for newbies and vets alike, with a good mix of the unique and new with the old dungeoncrawling tropes present.

30 Day Challenge, Day 10 - Craziest Thing That's Happened That You Saw

So, this "question" is really oddly phrased, because it also apparently can be just a thing that you saw happen to one of your gaming buddies, but I'll keep it in the context of at the game table. I also assume that it could be worded as "Most Memorable Moment", and that's kinda how I've approached this.

I have to say that out of all my years of gaming, the Eberron game I ran from September '08 to December '09 has had the most consistent stream of memorable characters, scenes, and interactions I've witnessed. One of these instances is the forerunner in my mind for the craziest thing I've seen at the table that has happened during a game.

The party had been beset by devils and demons for quite some time, often taking on vrocks and bone devils (osyluths). During a confrontation with one of the bone devils, at a time when the party was low on resources and actually had to fight hard, Taylor decided his Artificer's Iron Defender, a small construct built to resemble a dog (and not much more powerful than the animal it favors), was going to attack the thing.

In this campaign, I was using the critical hit charts I posted long ago, which had effects ranging from negligible to deadly. Taylor rolled for his construct and scored a natural 20. If I remember correctly, the thing could only hit on a 19 or 20, but nevertheless was able to confirm the critical hit, then subsequently rolled head on the hit location and then high enough on the effect chart that the iron defender ripped the bone devil's head clean off. Everyone at the table roared with excitement and laughter.

It was just one of those moments where the chips are down, you're using all your tools - in this case, a construct with barely a chance to damage this thing - and then, sudden triumph. We still talk about it, because it was just that awesome.