The Hayes Code here reporting on our group’s latest adventures!  This writeup is by Smilla, our dwarven cleric and token non-Avocado party member.

“The party has found a winning strategy: failing upwards. After finally taking out the straggle of goblins we encountered, retrieving a bored pony, and including burned scraps of leather in our “loot” (thanks to Andraste, Goblin-Fryer), we managed to track down the goblin lair without falling down too many times.

Then, of course, we actually entered the lair in search of traces of our employer, and things did not improve for a while. The room of goblin-trained wolves made us briefly excited to remember that we had a druid with us; unfortunately, they did not appreciate Dare’s inadequate pokings, and we left them chained to their guard posts. We could see a goblin guard further down the hallway, and, while attempting to sneak up on her, discovered instead some new goblin friends that Andraste also toasted, as he is apparently the only one in the party who aims like they’re sober. (With some light assistance from a few crossbow hits.)

We then managed to face our greatest challenge yet: a slightly larger goblin with the intelligence of a smashed badger who nevertheless managed to extort us into doing some dirty work for him. In our defense, he was holding a very distressed captive hostage when he asked us to kill everyone left in the cave so he could take over. Our master strategist Colfax managed to squeeze some extra information out of him about how best to do so, and then promptly misfired an arrow during our attempted sneak attack. The ensuing chaos, which brought two-thirds of the cave’s remaining inhabitants down on our heads, was supremely thrilling: our stalwart fighter, Guyryn the Clever, actually hit something! The party commenced on some efficient slaughter, aided by a well-placed grease spell from Andraste and a bless spell from the cleric Smilla (whose main function is neither healing nor fighting, as might be expected, but continually casting bless to make up for the party’s inability to land blows).

There still remained one final assault: the wolves we’d already offended, the bugbear Klarg, his bodyguards Thing One and Thing Two, and his pet, Other Wolf. This was further complicated by our decision to sneak up on them via a thirty-foot chimney encumbered by various kinds of armor and a nervous wizard. The party did not expect the performance of Dare, the auxiliary druid. Not only did she charm the chained wolves out of their pants (and sniffs and licks) she launched herself into the Klarg & Co party like one of the famous exploding sheep of yore, instantly killing half our opponents with thunderwave and wounding the remainder so badly that the rest of us merely needed to shrug and do a little mopping up.

Having located our employers’ (and others’) stolen goods, and rescued the hostage, we salvaged what we could and left the cave to its proud new emperor, Yeemik the Lucky Hostage-Taker, and made our way to town. ”

Learning to DM has been a blast for me so far!  For those of you in other campaigns: how are yours going? If you’re not in a campaign yet and would like to be: consider this thread your tavern to meet other interested violent randos!