DF Whiterock 2019 Year In Review

Assuming the numbers in the session recaps are correct, we played 79-32+1 = 48 sessions of DF Whiterock in 2019.  So almost every week.

Most RPG campaigns don't make it this many sessions, so I'm really happy we're still going.  My advice for people who don't want their campaigns to die is: keep playing on as regular a schedule as possible.  If some people can't make it, play without them.  (This requires either running each other's characters, finding a safe way to pick up and drop off PCs between sessions, or just not caring too much about continuity.)  Because once you start cancelling every time real life affects someone, you keep cancelling, and pretty soon you don't have a campaign.

I'm also happy to have written a recap for every session, even though it's a lot of work.  It gives the players a way to catch up on what they've done without reading the full Roll20 logs, and hopefully it exposes a few other RPG players to the possibilities of GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

After a bit of player turnover and one PC death in 2018, we had the same group of 5 PCs for all of 2019: Elias, Garreth, Ibizaber (who we mostly call Zaber), Polly, and Seépravir.  They started 2019 at 247 - 310 points, and ended 2019 at 392 - 463 points.  I mostly award points for attendance, so the variation mostly just reflects how long each PC has been in the game and how many sessions their player has made.  But, as point totals climbed, I started slowing down awards at various point thresholds, which makes it a bit easier for the lower-powered characters to catch the higher-powered ones.  (And, I hope, keeps the higher-powered ones from getting so powerful that I can't challenge them at all.)

At the start of the year, the PCs were on the Underground River Level, featuring Derro and an Aboleth and various river creatures.  At the end of the year, they were in the Bleak Theater (which is still in progress), a gladiatorial arena run by duergar.  In between was the massive Immense Cavern, taking up 12 Roll20 maps, and featuring a diverse array of creatures like stirges, trolls, a huge turtle, a gelatinous cube, purple worms and the drunk adolescent stone giants who ride them, and a nasty groaning spirit.  Also, they went through a gate to the Far Garden, a forest demiplane, where the good guys were centaurs and fey, and the bad guys were goblins led by a half-fire-giant half-bugbear kung fu master.

In addition to the main levels, they explored several sublevels this year.  Off the Underground River, they found a Hidden Fane of Justicia, with only one monster (a mohrg) but a lot of backstory and a holy artifact.  At the end of the Far Garden they found a gate to the Unicorn Glade of Farewell.  The Immense Cavern contained three distinct sublevels: the Black Pyramid containing a huge clay golem and mummies and low mana zones, the hidden Inverted Tower full of drow and their spider pets, and the hidden pond of a gnome named Penduncle who somehow owned a magic submarine.  Finally, while they're not done with the Bleak Theater yet, they found two sublevels off of it: the tomb of a heroic human warrior named Koborth, and then, behind it, the tomb of a less-heroic halfling thief named Nimboltin Softstep.

So, you can say they only explored three levels this year, and part of a fourth, which seems pretty slow.  On the other hand, this group believes in fully clearing levels.  Garreth and Polly both have Bloodlust and Polly is especially offended at the idea that any hostile monster is left alive, Elias really hates undead and wants to eradicate them all with similar fury, Zaber has high levels of Perception and rarely misses much, and Seépravir has the spells (See Secrets, Seek Earth, Seek Magic) to find all the treasure.  So when they clear a level, they tend to really clear it.

Because Castle Whiterock is so huge, I tend to leave cleared levels cleared rather than restocking them, just to give opportunities for more exploration and less repetition.  But the front guard room of the Bleak Theater, and the trapped room before it, have been an exception.  Every time the PCs have cleared them and gone home, the duergar have posted new guards and reset the trap.  This has annoyed the PCs into staying in the dungeon between sessions more often, rather than going back to town every time.  And also caused some discussion of creating a base inside the dungeon.

Despite their mostly bloodthirsty nature, the PCs have befriended some NPCs inside the dungeon.  They freed an invisible air elemental named Aeraelith from an organ where it had been imprisoned by a drow.  They spared Vulgaris the Minyad on the river level, and she has become fairly friendly, sometimes using the PCs to carry her mushroom beer to Cillamar for trade.  The hard-partying purple-worm-riding young stone giants of the Immense Cavern have been bribed with lots of beer, by both the PCs and Vulgaris.  The PCs also have friendly relations with the ettin Gar and Nar, but quite friendly enough to keep Zaber from stealing their magic ring.  They managed to visit Penduncle the gnome without hostilities, and even gave back some of his treasure that they had accidentally looted.  They returned a greatsword with permanent Affect Spirits named Damarel to an angel that had been turned into a kobold.  And they are currently mostly friendly with the ghost of Korboth's squire Elweiss, though Garreth really doesn't want to return Elweiss's magic spear.

On the backstory front, Seépravir learned some mysterious history about Lady Chauntessa and the Order of the Sundered Scale, a group of paladins who were tasked to kill the great red dragon Benthosruthsa.  Lord Flitwick, the group's enemy since they feel he reneged on a deal to paint pictures of the dungeon for them, has fled the country for warmer lands, and Seépravir bought his vacant townhouse.  Finally, the ghost of Elweiss has started spewing backstory about Koborth, but his memory is somewhat fuzzy and he needs his spear back...

The group has also found a couple of very interesting items.  The Ring of Water Breathing that was gifted long ago to the group by the nixie Nemoura Shimmerscale for saving her from a giant crab turned out (after they accidentally activated more powers) to be an intelligent ring named Aquil'iya.  And a silver rapier that they found in the Black Pyramid turned out to be an intelligent sword named Charithmysis, The Bard Blade, which is sadly so full of itself that it doesn't think any of the PCs are worthy of wielding it.  Fortunately for the haughty rapier, the PCs love magic items too much to destroy it for being a horrible snob.

Finally, besides Lord Flitwick, there is one other recurring villain who has been met multiple times: Gora-Khan the hobgoblin vampire, who has an annoying habit of assuming gaseous form and escaping.  There a couple of duergar leaders who have been mentioned but not yet encountered: The Impressario, who directs the Bleak Theater, and his ruler the Thane Hrolad Vejik of Narborg.  Finally, the group suspects that the ancient red dragon Benthosruthsa, who destroyed the town of Cillamar 320 years ago, might still be down there...

I think we finish this campaign sometime in 2020.  So, here's to one more good year.