He's back...

The man behind the DM's screen that is...

(And really, why do I say that?  I haven't used a screen in years.  Other than a laptop screen that is.  Does that still count?)

Laptop decided to take a dirt nap over the last few weeks.  Had to resort to my wife's old laptop, which had a hard drive crash, and put my hard drive in it, since the CPU and mobo were going going gone in my laptop.  I got nearly 3 1/2 years out of it, so I won't complain too much.

Ran another good Forgotten Realms session last night.  Two weeks ago, as a sendoff to a player who was moving, I had this big battle against a 7-headed hydra-like creature.  All sorts of teeth-gnashing and spell-casting goodness.  Took out two of the PCs, and wounded all of the others pretty gravely.  One of those games where I as DM took satisfaction in a great battle, and the players came away with satisfaction of having destroyed a big monster and (mostly) surviving. 

But I wanted to do something a little different than I normally do.  Over the years, I've tended to give the players a break session (or two or three) after a big battle to recuperate, buy magic items (if treasure was involved), get married, whatever tripped their fancy.  But that didn't feel right.  I wanted to shake my own game up. 

I had a couple of player handouts to give out to begin the game (one involving one of the dead heroes rising back up from the ashes, and the other involving how another players reacted to said rising, and bringing his own past back to bite him in the ass as well).  But right after that, in the confusion after the battle against the hydra creature, and then said past making a return, I had the players, still where they were from the previous battle, surrounded by a number of individuals.  The cocky leader, a cleric of Cyric, commended the group for being as chaotic as possible, making the Strifelord's work even easier.  And then proceeded to attack the group.  So with spells already having been cast, hit points already exhausted, special abilities used up, the group rose up to fight again. 

The battle worked out really well for introducing two new players.  One brand new to the game, the other a player bringing in a new character after his last one died during the battle with the hydra creature.  And I love how he did it.  He's playing a tiefling ninja (normally I'm a stickler for a little verisimilitude in my games and players, but decided to let it go and let him play what he wanted).  To hide who he was working for, he threw a few shurikens at one of the NPCs traveling with the heroes, to get them to think one thing, then, when he had the chance, he backstabbed the cleric to the point that the cleric used up a Word of Recall spell to return to his home.  Then the wizard who was a part of the cleric's band of villains got to foreshadow bad things happening to an NPC "friend" to another PC before he himself teleported away.

Good battles, foreshadowing, pasts returning to haunt PCs.  Good session I say.