Bumping our record to three out of three scheduled Dungeons & Dragons sessions for the first time in years, my group playing The Leeching Wastes met for our third session following the revival of the campaign. Last time, I revealed that their characters were caught in a time loop situation and that there was something going on with the moon thanks to a (relatively) young god performing her first miracle, finally living out my dream of bringing Majora’s Mask to my D&D table. This time, the party reviewed their plans, ran through a short scene that turned into a long scene (which is my favorite way that a short scene can go) between two characters, decided to wait until they could start fresh with a new loop, and one of them even turned into a weretiger. We also talked through the mechanics of the time loop and how they weren’t designed to be punishing since they’re only third level character, talked about how the checkpoints worked in case they needed to try again, and then they absolutely aced it on their first full attempt to get through, all without using the skills of the NPC I’d created to fill in some of the somewhat alarming gaps in the party’s abilities (suffice it to say that there are no terribly cerebral characters in the group). They just strolled right through it, arrived at the boss fight, and even learned a little bit about everyone’s favorite cute, little NPC that they were guiding to a central point in The Grove so she could perform a druidic ritual to help The Grove’s balance be restored. A good, fulfilling session where everyone got to have a good character moment or two, where everyone got to show off their stuff in combat, and where the paladin obliterated half of the two-monster boss fight in a single critical hit thanks to some hefty damage rolls and a damage type vulnerability. Good times, all around.
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