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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish

Mugdulblub – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 44 Lazy GM Prep

Fri, 11 Oct 2024

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Prep for the finale of Mike's Shadowdark Gloaming campaign! Visit the Sly Flourish Blog https://slyflourish.com/ Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter https://slyflourish.com/subscribe/ Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Podcast https://slyflourish.podbean.com/ Support Sly Flourish on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/slyflourish Buy Sly Flourish Books: https://shop.slyflourish.com/ Shadowdark RPG https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark Cursed Scroll 1 https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/products/cursed-scroll-zine-vol-1-diablerie-print Using Notion for RPG Prep https://slyflourish.com/lazy_dnd_with_notion.html

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0.629 - 18.238 Mike Shea

Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. In this case, we are going to have the campaign conclusion to my long-going, shadow-dark, gloaming campaign.

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19.518 - 39.047 Mike Shea

Shadow Dark is an excellent role-playing game made by Arcane Library. The Gloaming is a setting available in Cursed Scroll 1, also available from the Arcane Library. We've been running it about a year now. I think we're into 40-some sessions at this point. I don't remember exactly what the number of this session is, but we are going to be having the conclusion to our Shadow Dark campaign today.

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39.067 - 60.679 Mike Shea

It's very exciting. So today's prep show is going to be diving into our conclusion for our Shadow Dark prep game, what that looks like and how that is all going to play out. This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of tools, tips, tricks, adventures, source books, and other things to help them run their RPGs.

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61.059 - 78.94 Mike Shea

They also get access to the incredible Lazy GM community over on Discord, and they help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support. Final conclusion day. Today is it. Today, we're one way or the other. Our Shadow Dark game is going to end.

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79.501 - 96.958 Mike Shea

So in our last session, the characters had left Haldrin's Tower and were making their way from Haldrin's Tower and the giant drained lake in the center of... The gloaming Fenmir Lake here had completely been drained because of something they had done long ago where they found a sphere. I'm trying to remember what it was.

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96.978 - 110.892 Mike Shea

They found like an object that represented the world and they forced it out of like this thing. And when they did, it cracked. And when it cracked, the entire lake in the center of the place had drained. And then later they're like, I don't know. There was one character who remembered that it happened. All the other characters had died off.

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111.392 - 126.562 Mike Shea

And that character's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Wow, that's amazing. Such a natural disaster to have occurred. And everyone's like, yeah, I wonder how that happened. And all the players are like, you did it. You cracked it. So that was really funny. So they made their way around Fenimir Lake, and they ran into...

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127.502 - 145.895 Mike Shea

the werewolf queen, and they had some fine conversations with Victoria who talked about what else was going on in the area of the gloaming. They saw a set of standing stones. I switched into standing stones in area 102 that is doing some weird effect on time. I don't know if that's going to come into play or not. We're going to have to see.

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145.955 - 164.644 Mike Shea

But we know that only about a half day's journey away are the standing stones where they can confer with, potentially confer with Kytheros, which they might need to do. And then they made their way to 702. On their way, they ran into this river, and along the riverbank, they saw a knight. And the knight was sitting there at the riverbank. There were a bunch of dead bodies around.

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165.044 - 184.65 Mike Shea

There were a bunch of, like, evil knights that were taking people and impaling them on stakes, like the dead bodies impaling them on stakes while this shining knight was there. And this shining knight stood up and turned around and looked at the characters, and it was none other than Saint Yidris themselves. So Saint Yidris is the corrupt... sort of archangel of the Knights of St.

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184.67 - 204.181 Mike Shea

Yidris, who is now out and about consorting with demons and murdering people, whose whole motivation, and I don't remember if I had prepped this ahead of time or if it just made sense at the moment, their whole motivation, St. Yidris' whole motivation was the souls of the people who are still here are going to be damned if they are devoured by Almazats.

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204.561 - 221.011 Mike Shea

So I need to kill every one of them so that their souls are saved before they go, before Almazats devours the entire planet or they'll be cursed on death. So his idea was like, look, they all have to die in order for their souls to be released from this place before Almazats eats it. When you're like, well, that's not an unreasonable argument. And he said, yeah, I can do it for you guys. Right.

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221.051 - 239.821 Mike Shea

Like you want to die, fall upon my blade and you will be saved and everything will be fine. And they're like, they look at each other and go, nah, nah, you're terrible. And we had one of the characters is a knight, now a knight of St. Taragnas, who said to hell with you, man, I was a former knight of St. Yudras and you're a big jerk.

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240.962 - 263.217 Mike Shea

and we're gonna fight so they fought at which point the the saint yidris's wings flew out from his back from their back and and they began to fly around and fight the characters as an archangel so i had switched it i originally was going to have them be a planetar and this is like you know violating the shadow dark rules right but that's going to be a lot more fun if we do it this way and it turned out to be really much more fun i think but

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263.417 - 286.241 Mike Shea

As soon as that player said, I'm going to use the one charge left on my Saint Taragnus armor to summon Saint Taragnus to fight for us as an Archangel. And I said, well, if you're going to have an Archangel, then Saint Yudris is going to be an Archangel. And then I switched Saint Yudris' stats from a Planetar to an Archangel. And it was a crazy fight. So the Archangel attacked... The St.

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286.262 - 309.359 Mike Shea

Taragnus Archangel attacked St. Yidris, but St. Yidris went after Uralt, who is the now St. Taragnus knight, and had taken him down. He's the one that's got like 21 AC. Nothing ever hits him. But boy, St. Yidris hit him. Hit him hard. Knocked him down until he was unconscious and then turned their sword around and was about to impale them upon the sword, like stick it right in the neck down and...

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309.839 - 330.22 Mike Shea

And he's like, I'm going to save your soul even if you don't want me to. And I think they had used Hold Monster. And this is where I'm talking about, like, there are some clear save or suck spells that still exist in Shadow Dark that can change everything. And the one cure for save or suck spells that seems to work across editions is more monsters.

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331.261 - 355.864 Mike Shea

and so they they used hold monster on saint yidris and i think they even had to roll a really high check against them but they still succeeded on the checks that they were held and they had to make a strength save and the archangel strength is not great and that and the dc to make it was like a 20 it was like a 24 or something the only way they were going to make it is if they rolled a 20 and i rolled for saint yidris's and i rolled a natural 20 and i was like that's it

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356.505 - 379.642 Mike Shea

Gabriel, you know, that, that the Uralt is going to die. Like there's, you know, he shatters the thing like that. The dice are telling you something at that point. And then St. Taragnus got to act before St. Yidris did and stabbed St. Yidris and killed St. Yidris. So the, the, the Archangel of St. Taragnus, you know, I said like the blade is about to pierce down through Uralt. And St.

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379.922 - 400.128 Mike Shea

Taragnus kills St. Yidris. Yidris screams out, turns into weird light and disappears. All the other knights were killed. And St. Taragnus then like gave a salute and then disappeared. And then they went over and ran over and got Geralt back on their feet, who is now a pure knight of St. Taragnus. So that was like a great big conclusion. And that was a great big fight. And they really enjoyed it.

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400.148 - 418.564 Mike Shea

The players were like, oh my God, edge of their seat kind of thing. And then they made their way to Bittermold Keep thinking they were going to find the keep. And they didn't find the keep. Instead, they found out that Mugdalblub has completely devoured the keep. And now there is like a crater there. And the Knights of Mugdalblub, the remaining Knights of Mugdalblub stand outside.

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418.704 - 437.7 Mike Shea

And so our conclusion for our campaign today is going to be basically one big fight and then the conclusion. And then like a one year later. So it's going to be a very straightforward session today. This is when we're like, we know... You know, the narrowing point of the yam of a yam shaped campaign is definitely it's narrowing down.

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438.281 - 452.935 Mike Shea

I narrowed it down as tight as I could get it so that we're like, I know exactly what's not. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know what scenes and beats are going to take place so that we can finish our campaign in a way that is fun and exciting for everybody that is there. So we're going to get our notes together.

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452.996 - 472.121 Mike Shea

This is probably the last time I will be using Notion as our camp for our campaign notes. I'm going to be switching over to Obsidian next time, which is going to be interesting because I got to switch windows a lot more often when I'm using Obsidian. I still have this ancient list of characters in here. And why fix it now? So we still have Kalem. We still have Dazdar.

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472.841 - 497.575 Mike Shea

We don't have Bram Apples anymore. We still have Uralt. We do not have Irena. And we certainly don't have Morrigan. So at least three of these characters that have been on my list for months now. We have Squee, the kobold wizard. Man, I'm going to have a lot of trouble remembering everybody. Let's see if my character notes have something a little bit better if I put it into characters.

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499.057 - 508.504 Mike Shea

So it wasn't Scree, it was Squee. I think we have Lared. No, we have Scroin now.

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510.988 - 539.26 Mike Shea

I'm so bad you think like in the final one I remember all the characters and I don't and my notes are upstairs I'm not going all the way up there but there's one more character who I am forgetting and look at all these yeah Laird stabbed a plane oh I remember Laird blowing up when he stabbed a plane in Iraq yeah I think we're missing a death I think we're missing a couple of deaths here so we don't have scroing anymore what was their name

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541.038 - 566.916 Mike Shea

Damn. I don't remember. I suck. Laird is dead. Maybe they'll come to me. But I know I've got one more character than this. So we will move these characters and move them over here. I think this is the same list that I've got. Yeah, Irina's gone. So I'm missing two characters. I will leave little spots for them so I can put them into my notes. And then I can think about their stuff later.

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569.133 - 605.947 Mike Shea

So, the strong start is pretty straightforward. The Knights of Mugdalblub face the characters. We almost don't need a strong start because we're going to put it right into our scene, right? The Knights of Mugdalblub. We have Mugdalblub facing Mugdalblub. Destroying Mugdalblub. Negotiating with Kytheros. Saving the gloaming. And Finn. One year later. Pretty straightforward on our scenes.

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606.668 - 655.483 Mike Shea

And we're going to talk more about these things here to try to figure them out. Secrets and clues wise. So what do we have? Mugdlblub still believes the characters went on a quest for them. Mugdlblub doesn't understand deception or why any creature would not want to be broken down into its base oozy state. The Knights of Mugdalblub still have some of their humanity. Mortality, we'll put mortality.

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657.051 - 697.306 Mike Shea

and thus know the betrayal of the characters and their desire to destroy Magdalblub. They exist to draw that connection between Magdalblub and the land of the living and the land of mortals. I had an idea. Let's talk about what makes a good conclusion. We're looking at a campaign conclusion, and I think there's a few things that really help a campaign conclusion.

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697.407 - 718.638 Mike Shea

It's nice to have a good, fun fight where you get to use all of the things that you've got. I like that a lot. And really get to see your character shine. That isn't like a Shadow Dark-y sort of way, but it's the last session of a 45-ish session campaign. I think we can go with making characters look cool. So things like lightning rods and stuff like that.

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718.658 - 731.2 Mike Shea

And we'll talk about that when we figure out how the Knights of Mugna blood fight is going to go. I have some other ideas about things. And one is that we already know that... I mean, I guess this isn't a huge surprise, right?

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732.168 - 758.061 Mike Shea

But there are parallels between the relationship of Haldren, who's now a lady, Gwendolyn, who was a witch that was burned at the stake and was the mother of one of the characters who died some time ago, and Shun the Vile, who is the queen of the witch queen, and Kytheros, the lord of time. So we could actually have like Gwendolyn and Kytheros.

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758.742 - 791.268 Mike Shea

We could have Gwendolyn and Haldren show up and show that they are in fact the walking avatars of Kytheros and Shun. And that could make for some fun sort of conversation bits. And we could even have... So one of my players, the player who played Morrigan, actually had Morrigan show up in another campaign and cast a wish spell to be resurrected in her home world.

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792.148 - 803.296 Mike Shea

And the player's like, you know, I don't think it's allowed to have a wish spell transcend multiple campaigns from different DMs. And I'm like, maybe that sounds pretty cool. So maybe Morrigan is still, you know...

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805.234 - 820.928 Mike Shea

morgan and could still be around or he could still have some kind of image of morgan sort of show up i want morgan to show back up but it's also a little like a you know happy the super happy ending to a dark campaign but who cares right it could be a it could be a fun thing so i sort of want to keep that in my back pocket if it makes sense

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822.505 - 834.47 Mike Shea

This is an example where that same player said, I had a dream where I fought a bear, so I'm totally ready for my D&D game today. And then I had them fight a great big bear. And she's like, oh my God, is that because of my dream? I'm like, well, I don't know what you're talking about. Like bears exist, right? Like evil bears.

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835.731 - 874.783 Mike Shea

And when I totally brought the bear in because she had dreamed about a bear. So I think we're going to have that. Gwendolyn... are the walking or were the walking avatars of Shun and Kytheros, respectively. Gwendolyn still resides in the gloaming as a wayward spirit. Kytheros walks the gloaming as a careless lich. I think we can have another thing, which is Undeluk.

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877.119 - 934.762 Mike Shea

The Marrow Fiend is the walking avatar of Almazotz, the planet eater. I have some other things that I think are more important. So in order to destroy Mugdlblub, one must do the following. A, place the Well of Worlds. B, pierce the Well of Worlds with the Obsidian Witchblade. So it opens parallel portals to all known worlds, including one where Morrigan still exists. Hmm. Hmm. C, ensure

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936.815 - 980.587 Mike Shea

Mugdalblub cokes Mugdalblub into said portal. D, once Mugdalblub has connected to all other Mugdalblubby worlds, once Mugdalblub has connected to all other Mugdalblubby worlds, deploy the Sphere of Annihilation to destroy Mugdalblub. In all known worlds. Let's see. Failure to destroy Mugdlblub in time and Mugdlblub invades all worlds.

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981.287 - 1009.67 Mike Shea

Failure destroying Mugdlblub too soon means Mugdlblub still exists in other worlds. So that's some tricky business. Are there mechanics associated with this? A fun thing we could do... is one of those worlds when they pierce, if they place down the thing, and there'll be some kind of fun, I think it'll be mostly like, well, how do they do it? We won't just fall back to ability checks, right?

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1009.73 - 1026.977 Mike Shea

I think, like, you definitely don't want to fall back to ability checks as long as they do it right. I think there will be a... like contested check of the sphere of annihilation part. But other than that, I don't think there'll be any like checks for any of this stuff. They can sort of just do it.

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1027.798 - 1048.214 Mike Shea

But a lot of it is them having to convince Mugdalblub to do what they want it to do, recognizing that it doesn't understand that they would be betraying it, right? They can't understand the concept of betrayal or why any living creature would not want to be oozed stuff. So it's pretty easy to manipulate, like with, you know, with tact.

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1048.895 - 1081.303 Mike Shea

But now, do we want to have something where they could look and they could see Morrigan in another world and draw Morrigan back into this world at that moment? And will they be able to do so? That could be kind of a fun final conclusion in one of these worlds. Morrigan is still alive, about to be disintegrated by... What was the name of the demon? I got to go back. I got to go look at old notes.

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1082.844 - 1107.052 Mike Shea

Who was the demon that killed... Is it in my character notes? Let's see. I don't think I mentioned the name of the demon. Morrigan impaled by Memnon's Discordant Blade. Go to my old session notes. This was a while ago. Was it back in June? Olgar, the champion of Romlot. Yay. So they could try to rescue...

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1109.182 - 1131.737 Mike Shea

uh morrigan and they could they could peer into one of these worlds but it's going to be right at the last second and like they might lose themselves in the destruction of all worlds so there could be like a crazy you know right out of poltergeist sort of scene where they're reaching through portals but at the same time the big disintegration thing is about to disintegrate muggle blood in all possible worlds and that can be pretty interesting

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1132.432 - 1168.343 Mike Shea

Any, let's see, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So I got two secrets left. Are there any other big secrets or big conclusions that we want to have here? Titania is still willing to take in refugees for powerful magic items, but the cost is much higher now. I also thought it might be kind of fun to have Titania show up. Right.

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1168.383 - 1187.946 Mike Shea

Like we could have sort of like the final battle after they conclude it. And like, you know, two, you know, two fairy creatures kind of plant two seeds, which grow into an archway. And then stepping through an archway is Titania, who's like, oh, look, you know, wow, you did it. Oh, well, you know, planets, the gloaming still kind of sucks. Do you want to come to our place?

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1188.046 - 1220.869 Mike Shea

And they could have that offer, too. That would be kind of fun. Are there any other gods now? We could have St. Turagnus. And what was the other god that happened? Was that in August? I think it was before this. Miranol. Saint Miranol. Saints Ragnos and Saint Miranol are figuring out their stuff, but they're glad to see the gloaming return. Return.

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1221.638 - 1249.604 Mike Shea

I could have a fun scene from Dogma, the movie Dogma, where I think it was Bartleby who Bartleby and Loki were the two angels that went on their rampage. And God shows up, who is played by Alanis Morissette. And Bartleby had just been murdering a bunch of people and all this stuff and wanted to take over. And God just looks at Bartleby, who just breaks down in tears and says, I'm sorry.

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1249.964 - 1268.272 Mike Shea

And I think it would be very cool to have St. Taragnus do the same thing with Miranol. that Miran all shows up with her kind of cracked face, you know, cracked porcelain face and then angelic wings and St. Taragnas just looks at her and just drops down to her knees and weeps for having murdered her own sister and sent her off as a lost God.

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1269.033 - 1294.537 Mike Shea

That could be a fun, that could be a fun little conclusion there too. So we have lots of like little fun potential conclusions here that could occur. So we have Negotiating with Kytheros slash we have Saving the Gloaming. Then we have Titania comes. Saint Taragnas comes. Right. Like it could be a lot of like, you know, we're tying off a lot in loose ends.

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1294.677 - 1315.369 Mike Shea

So when I talk about like the things that you want to do for a final game, give them what they want. You know, the four, you know, five words that I think are most critical for a good conclusion is give them what they want. What do the players want out of their conclusion? And, you know, that means not shaking things up too much.

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1315.409 - 1334.718 Mike Shea

It means no great big surprises, no final betrayals, no big pull off the mask and it turns out that there was this person all the time. You know, make them feel like they made the accomplishments that they wanted to make. Now there's some like, hey, Shadow Dark is a grim and brutal kind of RPG. Do you want to have some kind of grim and brutal stuff? And maybe...

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1335.478 - 1354.075 Mike Shea

can you still do that and have everybody live happily ever after? And probably you can still kind of have everybody live happily ever after, but you really want to say like, well, what do they want out of this? And I think, I mean, they want to see their characters do stuff and that, and then a great way to make sure that their characters still have fun is

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1354.836 - 1372.102 Mike Shea

is to give the story over to them that, you know, you can kind of put everything in play and then say, you know, what do you do? And one year later, where are you? And I love the one year later montage. It's my absolute favorite way to end a campaign to say one year later, where are your characters? And then each of the players gets to talk about where their characters are one year later.

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1372.722 - 1392.607 Mike Shea

And I think that would be, I think that would be really, really cool. I don't have to worry about fantastic locations today. We just have the pit of Muggleblub, right? I'm not going to worry about that. NPCs, I have them all kind of like listed out under here. I'll make like a little comma list, right? But I need to worry about the fight.

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1392.647 - 1421.654 Mike Shea

So we still got to spend some time worrying about the fight. And we have, let's see, if we go into our characters, we have the remaining, we have our remaining Knights of Muggleblub right here. They killed King Kalash. So we have Azshara and Clovilla. Azshara and Clovilla of Set are the two. Azshara and Clovilla. And we were gonna use a Mage. I think we might soup them up a bit.

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1421.834 - 1445.847 Mike Shea

I think we could use an Archmage stat block. It could be really brutal. Level 10, Wizened Mage, Death Bolt. One target level 9 or less within Nier. DC 15 counter, go to 0 hit points. Ooh. Enravate. What do they get? They get two spell attacks. Enravate. One target within Nier is stupefied. Is that an actual thing? We have Fire Blast.

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1446.867 - 1475.176 Mike Shea

4d6 fire damage to all within near size cube within far float self dc15 mithril skin ac becomes 18 for five rounds void step so i think we could have the arc and then the archmage ashara the archmage we'll put a page number here page number is 197. That's going to be really tough. And then we have Clovilla. What is Clovilla? So I originally was going to start with a druid.

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1475.956 - 1515.899 Mike Shea

That Clovilla was a fallen druid. But I could choose something else. Something sort of equally nasty. Is it time for a brain eater? I could use a brain eater. I could use a demon. It could be a marilith. That would be kind of fun. Six longsword attacks, though. Marilith might be fun. They haven't fought a Marilith. The drow priestess might not be bad. Only level six, though. Snuff, summon spiders.

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1518.8 - 1545.259 Mike Shea

Web. We could take a drow priestess. We could beef up the hit points a little bit. I mean, these are pretty lame, though. Yeah, I'm not going to use that one. The druid had what? Imbue has a magical staff and summon bears and thunderclap. I like this one that fills a near-sized cube extending from a druid. Creatures within are thrown 2D20 feet in a random direction.

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1545.559 - 1569.73 Mike Shea

The funny thing about that thunderclap one is they don't use feet pretty much anywhere else in the game. So they're just hurled. You could say hurled random near-sized cubes away. That could be fun, but that doesn't do any damage. On the other hand, you have the other people that are doing a lot of damage. And instead of summoning a bear, it could summon oozes.

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1569.75 - 1592.98 Mike Shea

Because I think we're going to have a big pile of oozes. And you could use the brown bear stat as like an uber ooze. So maybe the druid stat block slightly modified would work. Let's flip it through to see if there's anything else that we want to throw here. Probably not giants. They already fought a giant. Like this is our chance. Do we have any? Oh, a night hag. Level eight.

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1593.44 - 1624.605 Mike Shea

Can blind and does two bite attacks and blind. That's pretty good. That could be fun. Kraken. Mummy Lich. Rhyme Walkers. Human-shaped beings formed from black space eyes or two flickering white lights can fly and does four claw attacks. That looks pretty nice, too. That Rhyme Walker's pretty nasty. That could be, that could certainly be fun. We have Primordial Slimes, too.

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1625.045 - 1647.185 Mike Shea

We could drop a couple of these. But I like the Rhyme Walker because it's just a straightforward monster. Enemies within near of the Rhyme Walker are DC-12 con at the site or they lose an action. Ugh. That sucks. But it fits. I think we're going to do that. Let's just, you know, we're just going to do that. The Rhyme Walker on page 241.

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1649.924 - 1666.57 Mike Shea

Action denial kind of blows, but they sort of have ways to deal with that. I don't know. Do I like the Rime Walker? I could use the Rime Walker idea, but I could take the Marilith who doesn't steal actions. Because stealing actions from people in the final battle of the game kind of sucks. But this one doesn't. This one can make a melee attack miss. That's pretty good.

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1667.131 - 1688.746 Mike Shea

So I think we're going to do that. We're going to use the Marilith on page 205. And then we have, I think, so who are the remaining ooze knights? I think we could just use regular knights. Let's look for knights here. Dragons, elementals. So they have some humanoid knights and then some oozes. We're going to have a lot of critters around.

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1689.067 - 1725.888 Mike Shea

So these are on level three, 14 hit points, two attacks, plus three. So we have Mugdleblub's ooze knights. And those are on page 228. And then we're going to have some actual oozes, like those who have not, who have succumbed. We have oozes. Ochre jellies. Do we have, is it like a gray ooze? Whoops. I can look at my little list here. Look for ooze. Gray ooze. Yeah, really like 223.

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1725.928 - 1757.085 Mike Shea

A lot of, so gray oozes. And they're pretty low. So... This is sort of the final battle. We can put these under monsters instead of NPCs. That feels pretty solid. And the idea is how many gray oozes might be around. And this is where we can get into some randomness if we want to. We could roll some dice and figure out how many ooze knights are there and how many gray oozes are there.

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1757.955 - 1783.742 Mike Shea

But are you really better off rolling the number of this than you are just picking a number? So we know the characters are like between 8th and 10th level and there are six of them. That's a lot of characters. So we certainly have Azshara the Archmage and Clovilla of Set. And I was originally going to make Azshara a mage. Let's just look at the mage stat block.

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1785.06 - 1810.242 Mike Shea

because again like dropping somebody to zero with you know kind of it's right so this one has a blast you know we could we could essentially beef up this mage now i think we'll use the archmage stat block we just won't use some of the suckier you know the saver suck spells i think that'll be okay so how many ooze knights are there six are there six ooze knights I mean, that'd be pretty tough.

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1810.322 - 1834.156 Mike Shea

And then maybe 12 gray oozes. It's a lot of monsters, right? That's 20 monsters against six characters. But some of them are pretty low. I think that could be okay. And they've got so much area effect stuff at their disposal that I think that that could work out. Treasure we don't need to worry about.

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1835.436 - 1858.805 Mike Shea

So I think that that's, you know, it's going to be, I mean, you know, right, this is our Baldur's Gate 3 big final battle. And I know that the characters have lots of area effect stuff at their disposal. They have lots of fireballs. They have lots of summon clouds of, you know, vermin to eat things. They've got lots of hold monsters. They've got walls of forces.

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1859.425 - 1884.977 Mike Shea

I think we have four spellcaster types or something like that. It's pretty close to like four spellcaster types. So, you know, so I think that even though we're hurling 20 monsters at them, including two very high-level monsters, I think they will still be able to pull it out. We'll see. Like, I think we're just going to kitchen sink this thing. And, you know, I like the kitchen sink fights.

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1885.017 - 1887.879 Mike Shea

And in this case, like, I don't mind having all the big bosses out.

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1888.559 - 1917.835 Mike Shea

initially you know i think that that can work out so npc wise almost just to have a list of who's you know who's going to show up we have haldren might show up we have gwendoline might show up i think we're gonna we're gonna just comma separate these so i don't use up a ton of space on my in my notes haldren gwendoline kytherios and Almazotz. Or Undeluk. Almazotz. Of course, Mugdoblub.

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1918.316 - 1952.672 Mike Shea

Oh, Titania. Saint Taragnus. Saint Miranol. Are there any other NPCs? Yeah, so who was the town who ran the first town? Whisper is still around. Matilda Bower, the Wardenwood Elder. Any other NPCs that would be fun to have anybody show up? Drusilla's long dead. The Remnant of Memnon. I think the Remnant of Memnon was put back in the... put back in the Vault of Memnon. Rayanne Dusklover.

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1952.772 - 1979.543 Mike Shea

No, let's see. Who was the one that was in, who was, that's a great, that's a great picture. Who is the guy? Donnell, Donnell Corrant, who was in love with Rayanne Dusklover. That's a deep cut because that's back to the very first session. So those are the NPCs. So how do I feel about this? Do I feel like I've got everything I need for the battle? I've got a big battle.

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1979.563 - 1998.681 Mike Shea

I'm going to hurl the kitchen sink at them. 20 different monsters I'm going to have to fight. A lot of them are pretty low level. And, you know, hopefully they don't hit particularly hard. But they'll have to deal with them. Like, you know, when you have 12 oozes, you've got to deal with the oozes. Like, how do you stop 12 gray oozes? And how do you get rid of six ooze knights of Mugdablub?

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2000.042 - 2014.968 Mike Shea

And then still defeat an Archmage and a Merylith. You know, I think... But there's six characters. Like, when you have six people, that's a lot. They have a lot of stuff they can do. And they're high-level characters with lots of magic items and stuff like that. I think they'll be able to pull it off. And we'll see how it plays out.

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2015.409 - 2041.76 Mike Shea

And then I'm going to play a lot of it by ear, but I've got some ideas about, like, who could show up that, like, you know, having, you know, having, you know, Kytheros, having Haldoran slash Kytheros show up. I think that that could be really good. And then that idea of, like, can you save, you know, can you save Morgan? Yeah. That could be really interesting stuff.

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2041.78 - 2061.358 Mike Shea

So we're going to play it by ear. Do I feel like I've got all of the material that I need for my prep to be able to go with the flow as the game goes out? And I think the answer is yes. I think I've got everything I need. And I don't know that there's any more stuff that if I prepped it would make the game better. So I feel pretty good about it.

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2061.378 - 2072.213 Mike Shea

I'm just trying to go through my head and think if there's anything else that's missing, but I don't think there is other than the fact that I can't remember who two of the characters are, but I'm going to go look at my notes before I go and then I'll have an idea. That's what's going on.

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2072.273 - 2091.76 Mike Shea

So friends, I want to thank you for hanging out with me in this final episode of lazy GM prep for my shadow dark game. If you enjoyed this show and you like the work that I do, the best thing you can do is subscribe to the sly flourish newsletter. There is a link down in the show notes. It is absolutely free to sign up and you get a free adventure generator PDF just for signing up.

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2091.8 - 2112.134 Mike Shea

You also get a weekly RPG related article that includes links to all of the other work that I do all over the internet. You can also become a patron of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of awesome tools, tips, tricks, books, online tools to help you run your game. You also get to join the awesome Lazy GM community over on Discord, and you help me put on shows like this.

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2112.834 - 2125.445 Mike Shea

And you can pick up any of my books, including Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, the book that I'm using to do all my campaign prep here. That is all available in the Sly Flourish bookstore. Links for all of those things are in the show notes. Thank you so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.

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