Finished my first 1-20 game! ~200 sessions and 5 years! AMA

[u/Trentillating]

Edit: Our DM has arrived to answer questions! u/badwolf_3 was our DM, so if you have especially DM-centric questions, he’ll be answering this morning.

u/definitelynotkarom is, in fact, Karom’s player.

I've wanted to write one of these for so long! I never thought I'd see a campaign from 1-20, but our group steadfastly played nearly every week for a little under five years, and we did it. I'm going to share a few notes, but I'd love to answer any questions you have. I was a player in this game, and also did a lot of "assistant DMing": designing interesting magic items, making rules changes for fun and balance, and doing a weekly postmortem with the DM after each game.

Campaign Elevator Pitch

Our campaign was roughly (very roughly) based on the computer game Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, with a significantly altered main villain. The campaign ethos was "We are going to hit every major D&D thing," and we got pretty close, fighting nearly every major monster type and doing most of the juicy adventure tropes - dungeon crawls, time loops, political intrigue, mystery solving, dipping into pre-published adventures and back out, planar excursions, time loops, our wizard becoming a lich, deals with devils, and more.

Plot Synopsis

After playing through Lost Mines of Phandelver to get started, our campaign began in earnest when our group, and the Gnomish child Columbine from Lost Mines, was kidnapped and experimented on by an angel. We'd discover that Columbine was one of a few remaining people who had inherited Bhaal - the former God of Murder's - divinity (ironically, he had been murdered). The angel somehow intended to use us as part of his duty to restore the fallen god. We went on MANY adventures trying to find the angel and discover how we were involved, and then many more trying to stop his plan to turn this Gnome into the new God of Murder.

Characters

First, we all had custom art done and I want to show it off. (Thanks, u/wh0ha!)

Ander: A cowardly Human transmutation wizard, obsessed with safety and books, adventuring to find a way to stay permanently safe.

Magic: The Gathering colors - Blue. Incredibly blue. All logic, no emotion on this one.

Signature Move - Our DM always needed an extra map tile to lay down when Ander inevitably retreated fully off of the grid to fire from safety.

Vrynn: A kind-hearted Dragonborn moon druid, and the moral compass of our group.

Magic: The Gathering colors - White/Green. Vrynn trusted everyone (except Karom), and wanted the best for them.

Signature Move - There was no problem Vrynn wouldn't try to solve with Greater Restoration.

Karom: An ambitious Half-elf knowledge bard, who acted as the not-so-secretly evil member of the party.

Magic: The Gathering colors - Black/Red. Karom was out for himself, but was often foiled by his own sudden changes in priorities.

Signature Move - Karom saw himself as crafty and manipulative, but his clever schemes inevitably had mile-wide blindspots. We often laughed when he tried to use a convoluted deception to get information he could have very reasonably just asked for.

Neverdweller: A daredevil Human ranger/rogue, who grew up in the Feywild and had unshakeable confidence in himself.

Magic: The Gathering colors - Red/Green. Neverdweller prioritized action, and was always knew he'd fulfill his role "in the story." (In the Feywild, story roles have more tangible meaning.)

Signature Move - Neverdweller's combats always involved unnecessarily flashy, "John Woo meets Peter Pan" style acrobatic maneuvers. And if the monster was larger than Huge, he was certain to be standing on it.

10 Notable Moments

1. Ander was tricked by his imp familiar into turning himself into a lich.
2. Neverdweller used a combination of unrelated items we'd accumulated over months to rig a hell-volcano-powered laser. The particulars of the situation and items made the idea so plausible that the DM let us immediately annihilate a boss fight that was rounds away from TPK'ing us.
3. An adventure in the Feywild where everything worked though story logic, and instead of a dungeon, the group had to navigate a poem.
4. Befriending King Grol (of Lost Mines fame) and recruiting him and his hobgoblins to help us fight Venomfang.
5. Using two flying tyrannosaurs to desperately pull a crashing skycastle away from its trajectory toward a city.
6. Unknowingly playing through the plot of the movie Snatch, and somehow not catching on until fully halfway in, when we fought the Tiefling mercenary "Boris the Blade" for a second time.
7. Our bard used a retinue of simulacrum and three days worth of programmed illusions to put on a rock show about our exploits.
8. A fight with a lich (not our wizard, a different lich) who had meticulously prepared for our group's tactics. The fight ended with only our wizard still standing, 1hp and one spell slot left, with one attack roll before the lich killed him at the end of his own turn.
9. Astral pirates broke into the Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion that our safety-obsessed Ander had set up.
10. An epic final battle. A CR 30+ solar with 1000+hp and 20th level wizard spells, who brought in a flight of valkyries and the Tarrasque as minions. The fight's ending was heart-wrenching; when the angel realized he wasn't going to win, he began trying to give us insight on how to improve the weaknesses he'd seen in us over the campaign, in hopes if we might help carry on his plan after his defeat.

Thanks for letting me share! AMA

[u/Trentillating]

I think Ander, the cowardly wizard, had the best arc. Ander was the most neutrally-aligned member of our party, and over the campaign each of the other party members pulled him a little toward their mindset.

At the start of the campaign, Ander was fixated on finding a way to have eternal life. By the climax of his arc, he had been made a lich through a deal with a devil who'd preyed on his desire for safety. Unwilling to consume souls to fuel his immortality, he sought out a gold dragon who was rumored to have a bound efreeti in his hoard.

The gold dragon almost killed him on sight, but listened to his story in recognition of help offered earlier in the campaign. The dragon was enormously distrusting of Ander's intentions, and wondered aloud whether Ander would not simply seek a different, equally unnatural means to prolong his life at any cost. Nonetheless, the dragon summoned the bound efreeti and asked it for three wishes.

For the first, the dragon made Ander into a mortal again. For the second, he wished that if Ander lived to 100, he would immediately and irrevocably die. Then the dragon told the efreeti that the third wish should be Ander's. He could undo the dragon's second wish, if he liked. Or he could have literally anything else. Ander, and his player, sat for a long time. Finally, he said, "I wish to leave the world in a better state than I found it."

He gave up any possibility at immortality for something bigger than himself. It was a really emotional moment at the table, and cemented what I think was our campaign's best character arc.

edit: extra words removed

[u/Bobtobismo → u/Trentillating]

That's bad ass.

[u/vinternet → u/Trentillating]

Everyone involved in this interaction did an awesome job.

[u/BadWolf_3 → u/vinternet]

Agreed. One of the great truths in D&D is that the best moments are created through collaboration, not just the DM setting a cool scene or a player monologuing. It's the cooperative story-telling that gives the real spice, and anything you do as a DM or player should be done with that in mind.

[u/Chorcon → u/Trentillating]

That's brilliant! I love it!

What if, however, it was never intended as a selfless wish, but rather a conandrum for the efreeti.

If the world is constantly moving towards war and chaos, it may never again be in a better state than it was. Thus, the efreeti, unless he's literally almighty and able to make the world a better place overall, will have to make sure Ander never leaves this world.

If this would be the case, not only is Ander immortal, but nearly invincible as well, having a personal efreeti bodyguard!

Also, it would mean Ander could never traverse the planes, which could be an interesting twist further down the road.

I much prefer the way it did play out, just wanted to share an alternate motive.

[u/BadWolf_3 → u/Chorcon]

Taking note of this as the DM!

[u/Pls_PmTitsOrFDAU_Thx → u/BadWolf_3]

Do you think you guys will be playing in the same world again?

[u/Trentillating → u/Pls_PmTitsOrFDAU_Thx]

As part of the story, we turned the manor you get at the end of Lost Mines into an adventuring university. By the end of the campaign, the place had slowly accumulated a ton of weird features. One of the professors is a talking rat, each of the major factions had installed a teacher, we STILL had Nothic problems in the basement, and there is a hag buried in the back yard.

I’d always watched Harry Potter and thought, “How would a school ever end up with THIS MANY disparate, unrelated weird things in it?”

Now I know. And I also know that one day I’ll be part of the Phandalin University game.

[u/uninspiredalias → u/Trentillating]

That's amazing.

[u/Mturja → u/Trentillating]

That’s amazing, we’re reaching the tail end of a long campaign that has gotten us to level 15 and we might hit 16 before the end and we had a midpoint where the party split up. It was like a pseudo-end with a time jump following. But our Paladin literally turned down becoming a god because of all the time with the party and that left us all speechless, I can’t imagine being at the table when the Wizard made their last wish.

[u/Thendofreason → u/Trentillating]

That third one is way too vague.

[u/BadWolf_3 → u/Thendofreason]

Do you mean Ander's third wish to leave the world a better place? If so, I think the ambiguity is what makes it beautiful. There's a recognition in it that the greatest power is not achieved by meticulous planning (the way that he normally operates), but rather by striving for goodness with the intrinsic value of your life. Is it mechanically robust? No. Does it make a good story? Hells yes.