I spent the last weekend at a cabin for a family reunion. I ended up playing 3 games of D&D with my nieces/nephews/cousins.

Game 1: The Book

The first game I played was a continuation of a campaign that started a few years ago (at this same cabin) at the start of the game with my older nephews (I think they were 5-9 at the time if I remember). To summarize the campaign so far: they were betrayed by a warlock named Malgrith during their first adventure, and he's shown up a few times since. Most recently they saw an illusion of him speaking with the Goblin Queen, telling her to "Find the Book if you know what's good for you." In that illusion they noticed a distinct change in him, he was missing his left eye (well-informed readers will know what this portends, others may wish to read on and be informed).

The party found a map in the Goblin Cave which had a few locations marked and crossed out. Notably, the Old Orchard Manor was circled and they decided to head there. They burned the house to the ground (because they are hooligans), defeated the specter, and found a Black Book in the ashes of the library. They briefly looked inside the book and were disgusted by its contents. This was the last session we played before regrouping at the cabin. I thought they had decided against reading the book, but I was wrong.

The first thing Louther the druid did once they got to town was read the book. If you haven't guessed yet, this is the Book of Vile Darkness. We rolled for his effects, notably aged 20 years, died from the shock, and came back as a Wight. So I had him sit by me behind the DM Screen. The other party members (Bob the Barbarian, and Lex the Archer) heard rumors of sounds coming from the crypt and went to investigate.

They went two rooms in and found some ghouls, fought them, and decided to turn back ignoring the newly dug tunnel. However, Louther had already gone down that road. There was a team sent by Malgrith to search for the eye of Vecna, which they found at the bottom of the dungeon. When one of the goblins grabbed the eye, a glyph carved into its shoulder began to glow and Malgrith burst out of his chest, grabbed the eye, and sighed happily. Louther witnessed this while hidden.

I decided to call the session there and pulled aside Louther's player to talk about what he learned in the book. So I taught my nephew about Vecna, the Eye and Hand, and why Malgrith wants them. We're deciding whether he's going to return to the party to try to use them to acquire the Hand and Eye or try to join Malgrith.

Game 2: Serpent's Isle

This is the game that I did a Let's Prep for. Look into that for a few more details. The party was my young niece and nephew. She decided to use one of the pre-made characters (elf fighter), he decided to be a dwarf barbarian.

They arrived at the jungle island, and as they approached they saw a trail of smoke from Covewatch Point, or the rock formation, Devil's Spire. They decided to push through the jungle toward the Spire.

As they traveled the barbarian got stuck in quicksand, and while they were trying to get him unstuck, a boa dropped from the trees overhead onto the fighter. They managed to take care of the snake and dig the dwarf out of the mud.

Eventually, they made it to the spire fought the Spined Devil, and killed it. The fighter ended up at 1 hit point for a round until she remembered her Second Wind ability. They pushed into the spire, fought the Lemures, and then wanted to take a break and play with cousins.

Game 3: Wild in the Street

My cousin (16) wanted to play D&D the whole weekend, but I prioritized the kids' games first (partly because I had already prepped before the vacation). So I went to Adventure Lookup and found this one-shot adventure to play. Another cousin was interested and I roped my brother-in-law in, but that night we started pretty late and they had to get to bed and couldn't make it. It was one of my first times running a solo adventure and it went pretty well.

He said he wanted a strong character, so I had him roll 4d6, re-roll 1s, and drop the lowest for stats. I had him roll 7 times take the best 6 and place them where he wanted. He didn't roll over a 13. So that character was eaten by a red dragon during character creation. So we tried again, as the son of the original character. Same result. So that character was likewise eaten by the same red dragon during character creation. The third time's the charm, the twin brother of the second character. He finally rolled a couple of 14s and ended up with a playable character: Forson the Rogue.

He was at the tavern in the border town of Thenwick (an Ilitian town near Idreal in my world) enjoying a mug of ale out of the rain. The door burst open and three men entered, one colorfully dressed man was dragged in with his arm behind his back. The leader of the group steps forward and introduced himself as the captain of the Thenwick guard. The colorful man (whose name is Jeggard) owned a menagerie and crashed his wagons. The captain was offering gold in exchange for collecting the animals before they could cause too much of a disturbance.

Jeggard described his animals as a black panther cub (displacer beast), a dire armadillo (anklyosaurus) and a manticore (rust monster). Forson found the "panther" quickly as it chases a series of stray cats out of a nearby alley. He rolled very well to grab it and managed to bring it back to the inn as Captain Bulrick took Jeggard to the guardhouse.

The "dire armadillo" was also pretty easy to find, it had broken into a barn and was eating the feed. He went back to town and bought some apples to entice it back. It worked too well. The dinosaur almost trampled him in its exuberance for apples. Forson ran all the way back to the guardhouse, with a giant vegetarian puppy nearly trampling following him. At the last second he scattered the apples into the air to distract the anklyosaurus long enough that the guards could help contain it.

Then he heard a disturbance at the town smithy and rushed to it. There he found the smith pushing back an insectoid monster with a stick (the destroyed remnants of a sledge hammer). Forson stabbed it, rusting his short sword and chasing it off.

He chased it into the dark night. I ran it as a skill challenge, which he failed so the monster was going to find him when he was unprepared. During the chase he realized that even though it couldn't see or hear him, it could smell the metal he was carrying. So he decided to cook up something with a string smell to cover his tracks (he took proficiency in chef's tools).

While making his stinky soup the rust monster smelled the soup pot and burst into the kitchen attacking him. Forson scored a critical hit and dropped it. He went back to the guard house and collected his bounty and we wrapped up the adventure.