Sandbox Campaign, Week 2: Assault on a Fortified Position

This is part two of my ongoing sandbox campaign, now meeting twice weekly when possible.  Click here to read the first part or refresh yourself on the cast of characters.  

The session began with the party on the run, headed north to Castle Morbis in search of a healer to remove the ghoul fever from Monty the dwarf fighter and Cameo the roc (general consensus is that a roc ghoul would be terrifying).  They traveled all night, then realized what a bad idea it was to exhaust yourself in a dangerous forest and slept in the daytime.  Upon returning to the road, they discovered a riderless warhorse, saddled and in plate barding armor, with blood on his flanks.  They calmed the horse and determined that the horse was uninjured and thus the blood must be someone else's.  In the saddle bag, they discovered a map showing a route through the forest to a big X.

Monster Monday: Giant Starfish

Today's Monster Monday is a two-fer: the giant starfish and the giant thorny starfish, two related creatures that won't fit in your average tidepool.  Use them in conjunction with the giant sea anemone for a surreal, slightly rubbery beach-party brawl!

source

The OGL, PFSRD-compatible monster is available after the jump.
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Lodestone Ooze

I know updates have been irregular throughout the infancy of my blog, so I am going to try to inject a little bit of regularity with a segment I'm calling: Monster Monday.  I chose monsters because you can always use more monsters, and I have an ever-growing Word doc with about 90 pages of homebrewed monster content.  All monsters will be Pathfinder-compatible and available under the d20 OGL.

Today's Monster Monday monster is the Lodestone Ooze, a dastardly slime that builds on the rules for magnetism I established in my post about magnetism spells.  This creature is a "gotcha monster" in the same vein as the rust monster or grey ooze in that it's attacks tend to damage the players' beloved equipment.

The OGL, PFSRD-compatible monster is available after the jump.
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.

Sandbox Campaign, Week 1: Zombie Bombs and Shadowy Figures

This summer, I've started running a sandbox campaign.  This is my first time doing such, as I tend to have a central plot that drives the story (Choo-chooo! All aboard the Plot Railroad!).  I am excited about the prospect of letting the characters guide the story completely, taking the main plot out of my hands but still  letting me infuse the game with mini-stories and adventure hooks.  I keep telling the players, "You can do anything you want.  Well, you can try to do anything you want."  That is quite freeing for the GM as well, because there is no plot-critical event that must happen, no NPC that must be encountered, no monster that must be slain, no player character that must survive.  Not that I ever really force that stuff in anyways, just that there is a greater air of freedom in this campaign.

I'm running the campaign about twice a week, and I figured I would post short updates here for your reading pleasure.