(Usually my campaign updates aren’t quite as crafting-heavy as this one will be, but given I’ve been working up to this one for a few months, I can’t help myself. I think I’m mentally viewing it as the culmination of “phase 1” of my interest in the crafting side of this hobby.)

The Wild Sheep Chase is a fun, free adventure suitable for a small group around level four to five. Spoilers for it abound below.

Health codes were violated

We’re going to be running some bits of the adventures in the new Essentials Kit in the near future, so I decided to foreshadow that a bit by telling the players that there were rumors in town of a white dragon bring spotted in the area. They overheard from passersby that a drunk dwarf on his way to work in the mines was regaling the patrons of the local tavern about his encounter with said dragon, so the characters went in to investigate.

After a bit of drunken ranting by the dwarf about the dragon’s theft of his mule on the road from Triboar, a sheep burst through the door carrying a scroll that would allow the party to communicate with it. The sheep asked for their help, but before he could explain, the tavern door slammed open and a half-orc named Guz barged in with an entourage of wolves and bears (all formerly human), demanding the return of his master’s sheep.

Negotiations were short-lived and combat ensued.

At one point Rusora threw the sheep out a window to get it away from the wolves that were circling to attack it. After the nearest wolf went down she climbed out after the wooly creature and tied some rope into a sheep-capable baby harness contraption so she could carry it around to keep it safe. The sheep was rather indignant about it and struggled a lot at first, but wasn’t strong enough to resist a dragonborn barbarian.

My wife’s sketch of Rusora the Dragonborn barbarian carrying around a protesting wizard-sheep in a makeshift harness

Building the tavern

Assuming ahead of time that there would be a combat encounter inside the tavern, I used some of my tiles and some of the scatter items from my bits and pieces series to toss together a simple two-tiered area to depict the site. (Enjoy the pale white unpainted minis!)

With the fight in progress, the patrons headed for doors or windows or flipped over tables to hide behind while the barmaid yelled about who was going to have to clean up the mess.

With Guz and company defeated and the sheep safe for now, the team learned that the sheep was a wizard whose apprentice had turned on him and polymorphed him into his current form. So it was time to head out to the wizard’s lair a half day southeast of Phandalin.

(It was also time to take a break and resume the next day, since we’d gotten off to a late start and were all tired. This conveniently gave me lots of time to set up the terrain for the next scene.)

To the trees!

The wizard-sheep led the party to his former home, a trio of raised platform-houses shaped from giant trees. There they encountered another formerly-human bear and guardsmen transformed into greatsword-swinging apes. The apprentice watched from above and assisted with haste spells on cast on his minions, but he could do little else given his relative lack of ranged powers and the distance of the combat from his window.

Once his minions were defeated… well, I don’t want to give away everything! Let’s just say the aprrentice’s bedroom set joined the battle.

In the end, the apprentice was defeated and the wizard restored to his original form.

Treehouse construction 101

The builds of the components for this scene were covered in a previous series of posts:

Up until now I’d done numerous test fits of various parts, but hadn’t yet put everything together in one place. I was pleased with the results when I finally did so.