Going Back to the Beginning
For the epic Demonweb adventure, I wanted a unique gaming experience. Not only did I plan to bring the two groups together for a massive combined session, but this game would also feature a shift of geographical proportions.
That's
right, we weren't going to be in Kansas (or, in this case, Washington) any more.
So on Friday, November 14th, 2002, seven players, one DM, and three very patient significant others packed up the cars and hit the road. Our destination: the coastal town of Cannon Beach, a.k.a. Great Rock.
(OK, it wasn't actually that organized. Greg had already spent a few days down there, thanks to his "post-employment" status, and he'd been joined midweek by Kevin Kukas, who brought along his wife Kate and son Joshua [both of whom wisely departed before the horde descended]. Most of the rest of us arrived Friday night, with a couple stragglers showing up on Saturday.)
Once there, we spent approximately half of the next 48 hours rolling dice.
Fortified by bacon cheeseburgers from Bill's Tavern, alternating bottles of
alcohol and heavily sugared caffeine, and a half-dozen pounds of pot roast lovingly cooked by
webmaster and better-half Gwendolyn Kestrel, we somehow made it through the
weekend.
This wasn't the first time the Bloodlines campaign had injected
verisimilitude by going on the road. Back in the campaign's infancy, I brought a few players down to Cannon Beach to introduce them to their
characters' childhood home. But the scope of that session couldn't compare to
this one, which featured more players, characters, terrifying threats,
and sheer hours of gaming than the first time around.
(Wake up, Viet--there are still more spider elves to slay!)
When the dust finally settled, the ten characters who had participated in the session had gained an aggregate total of about 15 or more levels and a king's ransom of gold and magic. That, and they managed to put the kibosh on a truly fiendish plot by knocking off a foe who seemed to share the same kind of ancient bloodline that many of the characters possessed. Truly, this would be a game not soon forgotten.
We Few, We Happy Few...
L-R: Beth Dupke, Jesse (Seth, Stannis) Decker, Kevin (Duran) Kukas, Greg (Adarrial, Quinborough) Collins, Viet (Alarion, Falaster) Nguyen, Dennis (Jarvis) Worrell, Chris (Thorgrimm) Galvin, Andy (The DM) Collins, Marc (Beran) Russell, and Gwendolyn (The Better Half) Kestrel.