Diary of a D&D Game - Episode Three

Follow along on the adventures of one of our D&D groups!

The 8-10 year olds on Thursday evening are playing The Lost Mine of Phandelver - one of the official published D&D campaign books. Please note that there will be spoilers for that adventure in this blog series!

If you missed the first two posts in this series you can read Part 1 and Part 2.

So having successfully provided a new home for a green dragon within the small mining town of Phandelin, much to the Town Master’s horror, our heroes celebrate by purchasing horses for themselves. The Ranger immediately casts speak with animals to find out their names. One is called Spot, the other is called Prince and expects to be treated as a Prince, thank you very much.

At this point Sildar finds the group in town and reminds them that poor Gundren is still being held captive by goblins at Cragmaw Castle and perhaps it would be a good idea to go and try to rescue him?

So our heroes… do not do that. They head instead into the woods to catch more fish and to try to catch some birds.

The Ranger entices a song bird with tasty treats but then is dismayed that it doesn’t want to stay with them, because it wants to fly free. Meanwhile the Fighter and a new addition to the party, a Rogue, manage to convince a Hawk and an Owl to join them as companions. The Ranger then summons a Drake companion with their new found skills from their last level-up. At which point the number of tokens on the map for this party is getting a little ridiculous.

The group eventually decides to head towards Cragmaw Castle, but does a little deer hunting on the way. The Ranger attempts to befriend a deer to become their new mount, as they are not keen on Prince’s attitude. But unfortunately the Fighter has been deer hunting in a more literal sense, and this understandably causes the deer to become frightened and run away.

Eventually the group make to to Cragmaw Castle, where they proceed to storm in through the entrance and set off a rock-fall trap on themselves. Undeterred, and only mildly wounded, they defeat a handful of Goblins and one pet Grick (a sort of snake-like monster with tentacles around its bird-like beak).

They then encounter a Goblin priest who is doing dark rituals to an evil Goddess, and through clever use of Thaumaturgy manage to convince it that they are a Sign! An Omen! And the Goddess wants them to get all their buddies to leave the castle immediately please. The priest attempts to obey, but well, they are not taken seriously by most of the rest of the Goblins, who are not so religious and more intent on doing what their boss, King Grol, has ordered them to do, since he’s quite scary.

Eventually the team feel that they have sufficiently dealt with the goblins and are ready to face King Grol.

Storming into his chambers they immediately see Gundren unconscious in a corner, and King Grol speaking with a mystery Drow. The team demand Gundren’s release and King Grol refuses and attacks. The fight is a tough one, but as always our heroes eventually emerge victorious. In the scuffle though the mystery Drow manages to escape the castle.

Having successfully saved Gundren, he is very thankful but will not leave the castle without his map, which King Grol has taken and hidden somewhere.

Whilst searching for the map, the gang discover a tower with a door that has been barricaded from the outside, and because they appear to have no regard for consequences of any kind, they go right on and open it up.

Inside they find a very angry Owlbear, which of course they try to befriend. Luckily for the DM, they don’t roll nearly high enough on their animal handling checks for that to happen (unlike the 11-15 year olds playing the same adventure, who rolled a Natural 20 and ended up with a pet Owlbear, which made combat just a little bit tricky to balance). So the Ranger settles for just helping it out of the castle to find freedom.

Just as the team are thinking about leaving the castle, there is a commotion, and a Drow arrives riding on the back of a giant black spider… (For anyone familiar with this particular D&D adventure, you’ll realise that we have now radically departed from the book here due to a constraint in the number of sessions remaining).

It’s the Black Spider! The criminal mastermind who is behind the kidnapping of Gundren, and the theft of his valuable map! Having been alerted by the other Drow who escaped earlier, he has come to stop this band of adventurers from meddling in his affairs, and to finally secure the map that he so desires.

An epic boss battle ensues. Fire! Magic! Swords! The usual.

Our heroes of course emerge victorious, and thus ends this particular campaign (with all of them wanting to play a Dragonborn in their next campaign).

If your child would like to go on their own epic adventures, drop us an email to hello@bristoladventurersguild.co.uk to find out more about joining a D&D group. Suitable for ages 8+, all of our groups consist of 2-4 children of a similar age and are run by trained Dungeon Masters. We can also run one-to-one games for children who might struggle with a group setting. Get in touch to find out more.