#call of the netherdeep game

[sessenaa]

My friend's warlock Idrya for our Exandria campaign! Plus @trucbiduleschouettes' Rangy.

Love running these sessions!

[luckthebard]

Would have posted more about running Call of the Netherdeep for D&D today but I was too distracted because….

they are still making their way through the Betrayer’s Rise section and my girlfriend is out of town so they were jagering her character and I almost killed her character outright with a chasme. While she wasn’t there! I was a little stressed. 😭😭

Luckily Tyler the frat boy Chronurgy wizard used Chronal Shift after my player remembered at the last minute she could do it and we undid the attack when my reroll missed.

For real though, this was not supposed to be that deadly an encounter but they were rolling shit and I had like 10 natural 20s. Dr. Gordo, our elderly former dentist, ended the encounter with a max HP of 2.

I guess DMing is like that sometimes but players know that’s STRESSFUL from the DM side.

[glossolali]

i made the @souperdeep gang gang some moodboards because i love them dearly and everyone's vibes are on point

twiggy (yours truly)

wren (@fjorests-of-wildemount)

juice (@flashhwing)

amora (@hotboiessek)

keeps (@esseekthelyss)

ritty (@marymauk)

keelan (@watcherswill)

[thrythlind]

Art by AbrahamDHR (blue/white) and Shanice TJN (green/brown)

This is Proper Ruin, my yuan-ti Battle Smith along with her steel defender, Mittens, and her familiar Luce.

I've been playing her in a Call of the Netherdeep campaign where we've recently arrived at Bazzoxan with the Rivals in possession of the Jewel of Three Prayers, something our group is generally fine with as we're following our own stories and helping the rivals out as we can.

But I'm more going to talk more about how I play her than the campaign right now.

My idea of Proper Ruin is that she is would present quite a bit like I think I might if I had never had a need to learn to mask my neurodivergence.

And this is harder than it sounds and it's making me aware of just how deeply ingrained that practice is into me. My mask mostly slips when I'm either too tired to keep it up, or else I've been so surprised or presented with something unexpected that I default to blank non-reaction.

I've also recently realized that my tendency to practice expressions, in the mirror, or as I'm watching a video, is probably also connected to me masking. At this point, I mostly do it without thinking about it.

Proper probably would still occasionally practice things like smiling and the like. My thought is that her mothers would've been unlikely to force her to be "normal" for their sake, but she'd still have to deal with the other academics at the Alabaster Lyceum. And before she was adopted she did have a good six years of pretty traumatic early childhood at the hands of the cult that created her and were disappointed with the results.

So, there's no habit of unconscious expression mimicry for Proper. When she did do it, it would be deliberate. When she does try to add expression, it does tend to be stilted.

On my part, playing Proper does present some anxiety as it does poke that constant fear of being misunderstood. This tends to lead to me to add some third-person description to add clarity on top of what is a deliberately bland and monotone presentation.

[ihaveseentruebravery]

It's infuriating to have GMed Netherdeep for a year and a half and be in the middle of the final Netherdeep combat and WANT TO KEEP GOING FOR HOURS UPON HOURS 😔😔😔 But you can't. Bc real life.

Ugggggh. People from critrole land ask my questions about Netherdeep pls. I don't get to finish the combat for another week and a half.

[raymurata]

oak - 1, 2, 13 and tarlyn 46

1. What drives them? what’s their ultimate goal?

They don’t know. As far as they understand it, they want to do good for their country, and they want to understand the world better, and they want to make lasting friendships.

Deep down, I think what drives them is wanting to be whole; they just haven’t realized that yet (and the one way through which that could have been achieved became a scary burnt bridge a month and a half ago, so they’re literally lost and just going with the flow right now).

2. What was your original concept for this character? how did playing them change that concept?

I think I talked a bit about the original concept and some changes I’ve experienced in rey's ask. I didn’t ever consider integration when I created them. I didn’t know we’d be around Oak’s former family or friend either, and those have certainly affected them a lot and allowed me to explore their reactions to the echoes of the past. I thought they would be way more mistrustful of all Drow, too, but Espen made sure that wasn't the case XD.

But I think Tarlyn is the one who, while still keeping the themes I’d planned, ended up surprising me the most when I was actually text-roleplaying him. Probably because I didn't originally plan how Tarlyn spoke or acted or thought, for instance. Just his circumstances. And now that I've actually made his character sheet and written him in a couple of scenarios, Oak and I have both discovered a lot about him as a result. T_T And it hurts.

13. Rey beat you to it.

46. Have they taught themselves any skills just for fun?

I think Tarlyn taught himself several things, but not one just for fun.

[crouteann]

im in 3 dnd campaigns rn and having a great time :3333

[chaoticcomposition]

our next game is gunna be call of the netherdeep and I've decided to play ves! I settled on ascendant dragon as her subclass which means at level 3 she gets a breath weapon 😎

[utilitycaster]

this may seem needlessly finicky but I do actually believe it's important: calling Verin a himbo is just one of many examples where like, one of the cast says something off the cuff and it's not exactly the right word or it is highly contextual, and that is fine because no one is perfect especially in improv, but then it gets repeated ad infinitum within the fandom when it never really fit in the first place. We have Verin's stats and he's decently more intelligent than average with a 13 (smarter than most of Bells Hells for one; as smart as Pike); it's just he's the guy with a bachelor's degree with good grades followed by military service in a family where everyone has two PhDs - Matt said "himbo of the family" the way in a family where most people are exceptionally tall you'd call the 5'11" child the short one. In Call of the Netherdeep he appears as thoughtful and competent and promoted to a difficult position at a very young age, and in the campaign his appearance is simultaneously as a leader of troops in a dangerous mission, and someone who cares enough about poetry from a completely foreign and distant culture to have tried to learn more about it. I'm sorry, but if you're using the word "himbo" I don't think you're processing a thing about the character yourself; you're just the latest repetition in a game of telephone that's been going on since mid-2021.

And that's not deeply bad on the surface, and I'm using Verin not because he is the character most wronged by this sort of thing but because he's recent and it's really clear where the word came from and that it's not a good assessment, but something I happen to have a decent knack for is pattern recognition in language. I usually find it really easy to pick up on when someone's plagiarized because of the language and pattern shifts. I tend to remember urls and out of place words well. So I do tend to notice when everyone suddenly starts using a single turn of phrase and I tend to flag it. Sometimes that's not bad; sometimes it means everyone came to a similar conclusion and that's the best way to express that conclusion. But like, when Taliesin called the Yios episode a gas-leak episode and the entire fandom started parroting it? The line "bone-dry takes"? The fact that a lot of ship defenses I see were phrased precisely as "I have eyes"? without actually talking about the ship itself? the fact that I've seen a spike in the use of the term "ontologically evil" including in myself and not all uses are actually correct? And extending this beyond strictly language but consider any headcanon with minimal textual support that catches like wildfire (sidebar: remember how we make, or made fun of the SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE tendency on Tumblr a decade ago? same concept of repetition of a specific turn of phrase without internalizing) all sort of ping this.

And it's fine, truly, to come to fandom and turn off your brain. I know this will sound sarcastic from me, and that's because I don't personally agree, but I do strongly agree that you can do what you want in fandom and you don't have to listen to my opinions so in the end, yeah, it's fine because I am not the arbiter of "fine". But I think critical thought is a vital exercise and I think precision with language is part of it and so if you find yourself using the same exact words and thoughts as everyone else, that should, ideally, trigger a process of "but are these the right words? what do I see when I see this character and how would I describe them? do I agree with this assessment?" Fandom is an interesting and easier microcosm than reality in which to start doing that.

[cloaksandcapes]

We are so excited to finally unveil our new card designs! Our artist Eotia has spent so much time and effort looking over what we love and what makes other creators work stand out and came up with something we think is just as sharp!

This magic item was actually created for one of the players in my Call of the Netherdeep game. A former noble with amnesia, this fishing pole was a gift from his father that he now uses as a Monk to fight off his Vampire Godmother.

Oleandre’s Legacy

Weapon (quarterstaff), rare

“This carefully handcrafted fishing rod is adorned with designs and decorations befitting a family heirloom. Despite its antique appearance, it is quite sturdy and holds up exceptionally well even when used as a weapon. Due to its magical nature it can be completely collapsed down into the palm of your hand.”

You have a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.

You can use a bonus action to transform this magic item into a fishing pole or back into a quarterstaff. The quarter staff and fishing pole are collapsable and can be easily concealed when not in use.

Catch of the Day. When you take the attack action you can substitute one of your attacks to instead summon a magical tether. Target one creature within 30 feet that you can see. That creature must make an opposed Strength (Athletics) check against you or be pulled up to 20 feet toward you in a straight line. If any object or creature would impede their path, the movement stops. A creature can choose to fail this check. Once you have used this property you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Join us on Twitch every Mon\Wed\Fri to create new Homebrews and check out our Patreon for 524+ magic items, tokens, maps, and more.

[triaelf9]

Air genasi barbarian self-proclaimed archivist (of dangerous items) with looooow CHA can have a little accidental ruidium corruption on a failed save, as a treat XD. Whoopsies! 😘

Ahhh, Call of the Netherdeep is a blast, love me some Critical Role campaign settings XD

(Quick post-game doodle because how could I not draw my disaster child taking on yet another curse in stride XD)

[oddthesungod]

the full party 4 the call of the netherdeep game i'll be playing! <3 conandir (half-elf/wizard - school of necromancy) - huffleswag98 @ Twitter praxis (changeling/cleric - knowledge domain) - @faerieprincen cerise (halfling/druid - circle of the shepherd) - @czpeterp virion (aasimar/paladin - oath of vengeance) - mine! tadashi (fire genasi/monk - way of mercy) - @ravenqueensspecialboi and gm'd by @candelasobscura ! ✨💖

[supereffectiveartblog]

TTRPG's in 2024

So compared to the last couple years of tabletop games with friends, we got a lot more game sessions in. A large part of that being my willingness to step into the role of Dungeon Master, and basically pushing my campaign for a large part of the year. We were also flexible in availability and the number of players per session. But I'll go into those details later when talking about specific campaigns.

The other big change this year is to do with the title of this post. This is not just a celebration of D&D play anymore. Our other recurring Game Master this year had us playing other types of Tabletop RPG, experimenting in different types of game rules and storytelling. This same GM introduced us to the Pokémon TTRPG a couple years back, but with the addition of Vampire the Masquerade this year, I felt it disingenuous not to acknowledge our variety in game systems in the title.

Here's our stats for 2024:

We played 27 sessions of TTRPGs this year, across 3 ongoing campaigns in D&D, PTU, VtM, and 2 One-shots. This corresponded with 27 session arts.

I was a player character in 2 campaigns, and a DM for 1 campaign and the two One-shots.

The Lich Who Stole Christmas was last year's Christmas/New Years One-shot, but I finished the art and summary this year.

Call of the Netherdeep was our main Dungeons & Dragons long campaign for the year, and I was the DM.

We completed sessions 1-4 of Netherdeep last year, and sessions 5-16 this year. This also includes accompanying parallel sessions 5A, 10B, 11B, 12B, 13B which were played from the perspective of a rival party. The total number of sessions in this campaign this year was 17, bringing the total to 21.

Pokémon Oster, our Pokémon Tabletop United campaign, returns from last year. Sessions 1-5 happened in 2022, sessions 6-9 happened in 2023, and sessions 10-16 happened this year.

The GM for Pokémon Oster decided to put the campaign on hiatus at the end of the year to start his Vampire the Masquerade campaign.

The Southern Blood Rush is our VtM campaign. We played one session this year, and it will return next year.

Phandalin After Dark was our D&D Halloween One-shot for the year, and our first time trying the 2024 rule changes.

Call of the Netherdeep

My main contribution to D&D for the year was as Dungeon Master for a prewritten campaign called Call of the Netherdeep. This is an adventure set in the world of Exandria, the setting for Critical Role, which I made sure was not required reading for my players. Player buy-in became more about integrating the stories of individual characters as part of the adventure.

Since this year of TTRPGs was just as about my players as for me as a DM, I decided I would highlight their characters as a main part of this art.

Since I ran Netherdeep as a milestone campaign, it was up to me to decide when my players had achieved enough to level up. In my opinion, the middle part of the adventure, that aims to cover levels 5-9, is nowhere near enough content to justify that much experience. So I used aspects of several characters' backstories to invent longer side-quests. Of the 17 sessions I ran this year, 8 sessions explored adventures not in the book. Refer to sessions 10A-14A for one side adventure, and sessions 12B, 13B and 15 for the other.

Since I was running for 8 players, 5 in one party, and 3 in a rival party, I decided that once the party reached the main hub town, I could just run for whoever was free that week. This changed when I started running those aforementioned original adventures, but since those two stories ran in parallel, it became, "If I have all the players of Party A free, I'll run a session in their POV, if I only have players from Party B free, I'll run a session in their POV". The number of sessions I ended up running would not have been possible without this flexibility.

Pokémon Oster

Pokémon Oster is based in the fictional continent of Oster, the Pokémon equivalent to Australia. Our party of trainers has been exploring the west and central parts of the continent to uncover the mysteries of corrupted Pokémon called "Typos", and thwart the plans of evil(?) organisations Tech Industries and The Galactic Corporation. Last we saw our party, they met with a group of researchers searching for Oster's obscure Legendaries in hopes to stop a bigger force.

In this campaign I play as Darryl Fisher, a bogan from the south-east of Oster who has a drive for mystery and adventure. Darryl is a man of the sea; a fisherman, and a diver, who only trains Water type Pokemon. His partner Prinplup has helped the group out of a few scrapes, and his recently evolved Gyarados is sure to help them overcome many odds.

I play Darryl as blunt and a little stupid, but he is curious, and has a taste for the supernatural that I use to prompt my natural note-taking playstyle. I have the final roster of Pokemon he wants to train in his team already (once they all evolve of course). But if one of those mysterious Oster legendaries is a Water type, maybe he'd be intrigued.

The Southern Blood Rush

Vampire the Masquerade is a system that takes place in a world adjacent to the real world, but vampires and other supernatural creatures are real, and hide in the shadows, pulling the strings and having hidden wars of politics and espionage. The Southern Blood Rush is a story based in the World of Darkness's equivalent to the south coast in NSW Australia. The GM is actually running two campaigns that will run in parallel, with my group's campaign set in the city of Wollongong. Maybe further into the campaign we will have a crossover?

Graham Watson is my Vampire character. An Englishman by birth, Graham lived most of his long fulfilling life in Australia, before being turned into a Vampire at the age of 77. Graham's natural inclination to both the sciences and the occult attracted the attention of House Tremere, a clan of vampire mages. Since turning, Graham has gained the ability to control water, a discipline called Neptune's Wrath, and has used it to convince other vampires in Wollongong to make alliances.

I play Graham as careful, studious, and paranoid. He was about to ready to die, but now that he has eternity ahead of him, he is afraid of death more than ever. Graham tries to take a back seat in his coterie, but knows that the smaller presence of Tremere in his city means that he must sometimes show his hand to get what he wants.

One-Shot Adventures

The Lich Who Stole Christmas

October-November last year, I had my players for Netherdeep make spare characters for a One-Shot I ran called Frozen Memories. When it came to actually running the adventure, only 4 of my 8 players were free. But I had another adventure I wanted to run later, so on New Years Eve 2023, I ran another one-shot called The Lich Who Stole Christmas for all 8 players.

This was a fairly short and lighthearted adventure, and there's not much more to add. There were a couple riddles and puzzles that engaged the whole table. Combat wasn't difficult overall, even if the final boss gave them a bit of a scare. But the point wasn't to be challenging, it was to be fun, and I think this One-shot achieved that.

Phandalin After Dark

Toward the end of 2024, a couple of new D&D core books came out introducing updates to the current edition of D&D, unofficially known as 5.24 Edition. Since one of my Netherdeep players, Aerith the monk, had been using playtest versions of the new character options already, I decided we could use a one-shot to try out the new rules, and see if I want to implement them in the core campaign.

Phandalin After Dark was a prewritten adventure about a group of characters visiting a portion of the Shadowfell. I had all 8 players make up a character, but again, only 4 could play on the day. The adventure was good at building atmosphere, and the combat encounters were often very intimidating. But many puzzles often led to no tangible reward, just letting the characters live. It was an overall positive experience, and served its playtesting purpose, but I think the next one-shot I'll run will be more of a traditional dungeon crawler.

Next Year…

As of a couple months ago, I had decided to put Call of the Netherdeep on hiatus. The DM for Princes of the Apocalypse has expressed interest in starting up again in January, and the GM for Vampire wants to get in a few months on that campaign before getting back to Pokemon eventually.

After a good break, I will pick up Netherdeep again and hopefully finish that campaign next year. After that, who knows.

[penandswordprod]

What is Pen & Sword? Pen & Sword is an Extremely Professional D&D Actual Play Show using 5th Edition D&D. Campaign 0 is set in the world of Exandria in 837PD. Why "Campaign 0"? The recorded episodes of our campaign began with the PCs at level 11. This campaign could include large, world-changing events, so we decided to film the late game of our campaign to document these events. As it is not a full campaign and it may alter the world we plan on continuing with, "zero" felt apt! How do I watch Pen & Sword? We have a handy recap video that goes over the events of our Campaign 0 party pre-recording! It can be watched here if you are interested, though it is not entirely necessary. (Please note that the recap includes spoilers for Critical Role's "Call of the Netherdeep" adventure module.) Episode 1 can be found here, and all subsequent episodes can be found on Pen & Sword's YouTube channel. Episodes premiere live on Twitch (most) Mondays at 6:30pm ET and are uploaded to YouTube 24 hours later.

[luckthebard]

We did the ghost tablets in Cael Morrow encounter in my Call of the Netherdeep game today and I have to admit, even DMing, I got a little emotional!

[we-are-inevitable]

End of Year Ask - 25

25: Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

YESSSSSSSSS

his name is Errias Pierce and he is my D&D character! my party is doing critical role’s Call of the Netherdeep campaign :)

technically he’s a human, but he ended up in the world our campaign is in for some unknown reason- we’re still trying to figure it out. in the campaign world, Errias is a Tiefling Warlock. his patron is The Fathomless, and he has… an odd relationship to them.

see, Errias is an addict. back in the human world, he’s a scrawny 22 year old trans man- he got mixed into some rough company and he owes someone a lot of money, so he he deals on the side to make it up to them— just weed and cocaine, maybe ecstasy when he has access to it— and he doesn’t really. keep himself from doing drugs, either. he smokes every day. does a few lines when he feels like it. it’s just his thing, and he has to pay the money back somehow.

but when he’s taken into the fantasy world of out campaign, his debt to his dealer is translated into a debt with his patron. he’s an addict at heart, like i said, and he doesn’t have drugs to keep him company anymore— but he has magic. he has power. spells. he makes sacrifices to his patron and he gets more and more benefits from it, and it gives him the rush he’s been missing.

he doesn’t want to be like this. he doesn’t know how to fix it. doesn’t know how to let people in yet— but the rest of the party is slowly chipping away at his walls and he’ll get there. he has to.

fun facts:

he has a fully normal human deadname. he chose Errias because he’s a freak.

his family disowned him, but his sister still tries to contact him (not for the trans thing- for the drug thing); he has a phone that still works in this world and the only people that text him are his dealer, who is pissed that he seemingly skipped town, and his younger sister. she misses him. he doesn’t text back.

above table, i gave blanket permission for my DM to make me roll with disadvantage during big fights— because wearing a binder for 16 hours a day hurts, and wearing a binder while fighting monsters and enemies hurts worse. rib damage, shortness of breath, etc. errias is too stubborn to take it off and as of now, no one in the party knows he’s trans either!

he gets advantage when rolling constitution saving throws but only for alcohol consumption

he’s a douchebag and frequently cusses the other players out but he’s smart, he has a 20 charisma, and he’s a big softy on the inside

he looks like dis (thank u tiefling maker picrew)

(just imagine this guy in a ratty old hoodie and patched up jeans and duct taped converse with a penjamin in hand. black hair. pale skin bc he never goes outside. pimpley face. that’s human errias)