Well, while not my first campaign (or even my second; that was Candyland), this is the first time my adventurers actually finished a long-standing mission which spanned weeks. The quest was to discover the secrets of one outcast druid who had taken up residence in a citadel which had sunk into the earth eons ago. The citadel had been a temple to a red dragon, and was now overrun by kobolds (with whom the party had decent relations) and goblins (who were killed by the party). The villagers hired the adventurers to find out what happened to some of their own who had gone down to find this mystical tree which produced a fruit once a year that could heal what ailed ya. In addition to the kobolds and goblins, the party had to deal with leftover undead from the times of the citadel as well as new monsters called Twig Blights: strange walking shrubbery which grows from the seeds of the afore-mentioned fruit. Last night was the final chapter of that particular module, and I guess it went okay.

The party made their way to the lowest level of the dungeon where they fought around for a while collecting experience points like mushrooms and fungus (which they also collected). They ran across bugbears and skeletons doing gardening, as well as a mysterious object known as &#034a rusted&#034 (because the book I was working from didn&#039t finish the sentence, though I suspect it was a bucket or wheelbarrow). Finally, they came across Belak, the druid outcast who had crazy ideas to mutate animals with plants, spreading his evil brand of druid work around the land. The battle was in a giant cavern filled with briars and leftover walls from the former days of the citadel. The far end of the room held the Gulthias tree, a tree which sprouted from the green stake used to slay an ancient vampire, the same tree which bore fruit twice a year: the red fruit in summer giving life while the white fruit from winter taking it.

I&#039m not really much of a DM, and I do better with role-playing and small skirmishes than with battles royale, so the actual experience of the battle itself was a little…shaky, I suppose I could say. Miller&#039s enchanter had the good sense of mind to cast spider climb and use the mossy/stalactite-covered ceiling as cover for getting close to the tree to bombard it with alchemist&#039s fire. Lushbaugh&#039s druid could manage the briars without taking damage and had plans to set the tree on fire once within range, but even his woodland stride couldn&#039t keep him from getting stuck once in a while because of several entangle spells. Ian&#039s half-orc cleric couldn&#039t pass through the briars easily, taking damage with just about every move he made, but the entangle was too much for him and he simply ground to a halt near the entrance. Jamie&#039s halfling rogue should have been able to handle the briars easily being small, but the entangle caught her not much further from the entrance than Ian. Having successfully frustrated the heck out of two players, the battle pretty much consisted of a distance fight between the casters, Belak&#039s henchmen really never seriously entering the fray. I&#039m sure that had I worked out a stratagem beforehand, I could have come up with more ranged fighting, more healing of the enemies, more something, but I&#039m not a good DM, I&#039m average at best, and I suppose the only thing which was really successful was pissing people off because they couldn&#039t move (which, oddly, is the point to entangle spells).

Overall? I guess it was okay. There were no glowing &#034Good game!&#034 comments afterward, and I got the distinct impression that everyone just wanted to end it and go home either because they were tired or wanted to get away from my DMing. Who knows? The adventure has more than enough room to continue with the same characters because I have modules which will take the characters all the way to level twenty. Of course, Jim always has some tricked-out campaign going on in his mind that he wants to run, Miller just came up with another campaign type he wants to try, and there&#039s always Random and Arena fillers to go on. I guess that at least I can say that even if it wasn&#039t a stellar campaign, it did get seen through to the last fight. Closure&#039s always nice.