Dungeons and Dragons is one of my favorite things to do and I love sharing it with friends. This group is made of three of my best friends. We may not all live in the same state but we love playing video games together over steam and Discord. Once I suggested that we play D&D together, it just made so much sense and why hadn't we done it before.

Coming to the table we have my dearest DM Bork who was my original DM back for AD&D during my introduction to table top gaming back in high school. We also have TimintheFlesh of Team Effort Games who has been a close friend of ours and has been learning 5th edition D&D at other random tables of mine (through a completed Sunless Citadel game and my current Storm Kings Thunder Thursday game). We also have Ryan, the other half of Team Effort Games who is new to my table and I am so thrilled to have him join us.

Why the Essentials Kit?

I like starting "new" players or players returning and learning 5th edition with modules and tools that were made to help learn the system. A while back I wrote an article that compared the Starter and Essentials box kits. I am a big fan of handouts and I wanted to use this new group as an excuse to use the hand outs for the npcs and quests. There are many types of cards that you are given inside of this kit including cards for: conditions, magic items, NPC's, quests and initiative order numbers.

Another reason why I picked Dragon of Icespire Peak and the Essentials Kit is there are other modules that were built off to help keep the adventure going to higher levels with the continuation to Storm Lord's Wrath, Sleeping Dragon's Wake, and then Divine Contention or to the point when my players are content with their adventure's story.

We start with Dirk and Cirden entering the small mining town of Phandalin after escorting a cart and some traders from Neverwinter to this rough neck back woods town. Cirden started his Phandlin journey by making it straight to the blacksmith to try and get rid of his boomerang. Making his way to the dwarven Blacksmith he looked for a different blade to replace his wooden boomerang. The dwarf, Almar, produced a short sword for Cirden to purchase as they burned the boomerang in the forge.

During that time Dirk found the Job Board with three notices for current jobs in the area. One was for the Dwarven Excavation, one was to go to Gnomengarde and the third to go to Umbrage Hill. It seems that a dragon has been making an appearance in the nearby lands and the quests are to go warn people and see if they can get anything useful from the Gnomes to guard against a dragon.

Cirden made his way back to Dirk where they were accosted by a very zealous Sister Garaele by the Shrine of Luck the two of them made their way towards the tavern/Inn.

Coming into session two the party looked at the remains of the gazer in the corner and helped Adabra down from her room. She was quite distressed over the state of the mill and was persuaded to go back to Phandalin, quite sad to leave her post.

The party returned to Phandalin where they discovered what an absolute scared individual Harbin Wester is. Harbin's absolute lunatic fear of dragons made Cirden start to wonder if Adabra is a dragon in disguise and Sister Garaele had to come to the rescue to explain that this is normal. The party waited patiently as Harbin put their first reward gold coin after gold coin under the door.

Toblen Stonehill was more than happy to have his paying customers back for an evening of drinks and snacks. He also helped set Adabra up with a room next to the parties.

As the three adventurer's were trying to get a full evening worth of sleep, Toka had a terrible dream filled with the image of a terrifying young white dragon with pale blue crystalline eyes. This helped the party be at ease no longer feeling that Adabra could be the dragon in disguise (as she has brown eyes).

Next on the list of quests the party made their way towards Gnomengarde. On the forest path they came across a boar, and as they road off they heard the howls of wolves behind them.

Gnomegarde is quite vast and the party looked around trying to find the gnomes to talk to as none of the kitchen staff wanted to talk to the party members. Dabbledob and Fibblestib were able to tell the party that Korboz and Gnerkli the kings were going through some madness and there were gnomes going missing from the caves. If the party help the gnomes cure the kings madness and find out what happened with the missing gnomes these two promised to give the party the rewards that they seek to finish their quest.

The party was led by Fibblestib and Dabbledob making their way into the Gnomengarde throne room where Cirden noticed a secret passage between the throne room and the royal bedchamber. There they find that King Korboz has locked themselves into the bedchamber as Korboz fears a “Shape changer” is lurking in Gnomengarde, and that gluing King Gnerkli to a chair for safekeeping is the best option. The party now realize that it is this shape changer that they are hunting that is most likely the reason for the other gnome’s disappearance. The party leaves, promising to take care of the shape changer and King Korboz pushes something heavy against the backside of the secret door, properly barricading them inside this time.

The party starts with a battle as orcs and their wolves enter the Dwarven Excavation causing the party to come to protect their new Dwarven friends. As the battle ends the group finds that the wolves were mistreated and Cirden makes friends with one of the wolves.

The party goes back to town and bashed their way in to the town master's hall to turn in their quests and take some new ones from the job board. Now the players have purchased a very expensive elven wine to make their way to the next quests. The party start with taking Don Jon Raskin, the very annoying new overseer for the Mountain's Toe Gold Mine to the mine. When they arrive they are surprised to find that the mine has been taken over by a band of Wererats and present a new obstacle to overcome. They meet with the Whiskered Gang's leader, Zeleen Varnaster, who said that their once lair, an old shrine near Conyberry, was taken over and said that if the party cleared out their old lair they would consider leaving the mine. Currently the party has left Don Jon, and the remaining dwarf minders in one of the back rooms with the promise to return. The party also has taken a wererat with them.

We have been taken by surprise and have a great appreciation for all of the amazing donations that have been made to our Ko-Fi page during our stream. Each donation has been a blessing as we make our goals to bring more content to Dungeon Fox Chronicles. We love having player/audience interaction and the added encounters have been quite fun. Thank you for your generous support and your love towards your players and DM. More fun is yet to come thanks to your donations.