The Dragon Souls reach the surface and begin their search for Tiamat's corpse in a town known as Orchid Row. A treasure is found, a monster is slain, friendships are strained, and sacrifices are made. Do you still cling to your shells, mortals? Time has grander things in store for you than the dirt and rock and darkness.

Roll For Your Lives

The Underground 05: Escalation

In his book "The Prismatic Age," the dwarven historian Gron Shalecliff argues that it's important to remember the Five Dragonsouls came together not because of a mutual goal, but out of convenience and necessity and partially against their own will. It is therefore unsurprising, he argues, that as more and more unexpected difficulties bombarded them, cracks began to form in their relationships both among themselves and with their guild leaders. That Miriel still sent them to the surface to recover Tiamat shows how desperate she was to finally bring the dragons together.

The Underground 04: Breakdown

As the party comes to grips with their new employment situation--some better than others--trouble strikes once again. A man studying the five dragons has gone missing, and the players are tasked with finding him. And to make things more complicated, the dragon spirits taking up residence inside them have begun to stir and exert their will.

The Underground 03: Dogma

The party splits. Mortimer, Rick, Run and Cordelia are trapped between many rocks, a hard place, and a golem made of rocks and hard places. Rick makes a desperate gambit that nearly gets someone killed. Nol, all alone, discovers a power long thought dead and gone. And when all is said and done, the guilds of Prism are forced to intervene.

The Underground 02: Purification

Welcome to a new campaign using a new system and featuring some new faces. Stilts returns as the host and GM of a Dungeon World game where civilization has all moved underground after a catastrophe rendered the surface too dangerous. A post-post-apocalypse, if you will. Neo and Blue are back as players, and they're joined by newcomers Tal and Theodore. On this episode, we run down the campaign's basic background, meet our cast of characters, and fail a whole lot of rolls.

The Underground 01: Infection

Oh my gosh, what year is it? 2016? Really? Man, I should not have taken that extended rest. On this fourth and final (for now) episode of John's Dark Sun adventure, our kinda-sorta-heroes avoid acid traps, teleport people into acid pools, and attempt to bend the rules to make other acid-related actions happen. Some of these things work out for us. Others do not.

Episode 7.4 - The Acid Gambit

On this much-delayed episode of Roll For Your Lives, the "team" investigates some ancient ruins that have been taken over by...a cult or something? Shane gets ambushed in the bathroom, the party takes down a mecha-chef that tries to burn them to death, Tyberius has strange ideas about what constitutes a post-battle snack, and I valiantly resist defiling a sacred fountain with my drug-blood. Also: Luke's pacifist whining finally works out for once.

Episode 7.3 - Shane's Latrine Adventure

As the caravan arrives in the massive city of Tyr, the team splits up to explore the city and prepare for their next adventure. Once Dustin literally sews the seeds for a secret drug cult and Shane successfully weirds out everyone in the market, The team get together and discuss whether they should take up mercenary work or open up a pizzeria. Unsurprisingly, they go for the mercenary work. Also, Luke is now editing these episodes, so you have to put up with his musical taste now instead of Dustin's. May God have mercy on your soul.

Episode 7.2 - Feet Shoes

We return to Dungeons and Dragons for this arc, this time by way of the Dark Sun campaign for 4th Edition. John GMs for the first time in his life, while the rest of us try to make his job as hard as possible. And by "the rest of us" I mean "mostly Luke." The cast of characters for this arc is a hamadryad sun cultist cleric (played by Dustin); a naive psion who holds a grudge (played by Luke); a werewolf barbarian who super loves fighting (played by Tyberius); and an aloof thri-kreen ranger who's a bit too into skinning his enemies.

Episode 7.1 - Blood on the Sand

Look, I'm gonna be honest here. There was some alcohol involved in the recording of this session. Some bad decisions were made, both in-character and out. That's okay, though, because we had a whole lot of fun laughing and doing terrible, terrible things to a nightmarish horse monster. And when you get right down to it, isn't brutalizing nightmarish horse monsters why we play these games in the first place? No? Just us? Huh.

Episode 6.2 - 24 Horse Dicks

It's once again time for a new adventure, and it's Shane's turn to take the wheel. The setting? A monster-filled wilderness where small pockets of civilization try to stay alive and push back against the aberrant creatures. The players? A chipper young woman trying to prove herself, a boisterous blacksmith who loves hitting things with blunt objects, a wild woman who trusts sheep more than people, and a brawler who turns out to have a special talent for mounting. Audio credits for this episode go to Woody Allen and "Blut Im Auge" by Equilibrium.

Episode 6.1 - Don't Drink the Moosewater

In this episode, we conclude our trip into the abandoned mine of Dardun and come face to face with a dragon who has definitely seen better days. Luke gets brave, Shane gets creeped out, and John gets really, really messy. And while they all manage to live through the encounter, they soon discover that their job is about to get a lot more complicated. Intro music for this episode is "No Light, No Light" by Florence + The Machine. Additional audio credits go to Neil deGrasse Tyson and StarTalk Radio.

Episode 5.3 - The Void

On this episode of Roll For Your Lives, the Pathfinder gang (I really need to find a better name for these guys) gets wet. Like, really wet. They have to fight in a giant lake, is what I'm saying. If you've ever wanted to hear what it's like when I force everyone to do something they would really rather not do, this is the episode for you. Also, one of them almost dies. That was pretty fun.

Episode 5.2 - Shark Wrangling

In this arc of RFYL, we return to Pathfinder and the mostly-competent group of adventurers comprised of Henson (the gunslinger frogman), Hildegard (the dual-shield warrior princess), Mokugyo (the monk who loves hugging maybe a bit too much), and Inara (the kitsune summoner with a body-horror spirit companion). Rather than pretending to be investigators, their next job sees them doing some actual adventuring in the remote mining village of Dardun. Dardun has recently gone completely silent, it's up to our players to figure out what happened and stop any threats before they get too big to handle. Seems simple, right? Surely there won't be anything strange going on. Nothing strange at all.

Episode 5.1 - Return to Dardun

Our "heroes" have been captured will soon be thrown out an airlock. Will they survive? Well, yes, obviously they will. But how they escape may surprise you. And possibly disgust you. Look, I'm gonna be honest, Luke throws dark in this episode. I give you a warning in the episode itself before it happens, but I'll go ahead and mention here that if you aren't keen on hearing somewhat graphic descriptions of a foot being almost completely torn off, you might want to be ready to skip ahead a bit somewhere around the 25-minute mark. I also apologize for my terrible attempt at singing along with Italian opera. In my defense, I had less than a minute to learn the damn thing.

Episode 4.4 - Body Horror

Guided by one magical story weaver, five souls who have no idea what they're doing sally forth on the nerdiest, silliest, most socially dangerous quest they've undertaken: playing Dungeons and Dragons.

hubhopper

Roll For Your Lives

hubhopper