I might be grouping it under one session blog entry, but my campaign notebook records 3 sessions of me actually sitting down and moving my characters through a part of this adventure. And that's not counting all of the prep work of accounting for travel expenses, tracking sidequests, writing my character's backstory, reading the location descriptions in the book, and reading through the chapter to figure out how this adventure to end. I'm still let down by the fact that this journey has no real point and Harshnag is supposed to show up randomly and end this chapter.
As a result I played very conservatively and rushed through as much as I could. I avoided all combat where possible and generally didn't play at all like a live group, who relish combat, the hunt for treasure, buying and selling items, and generally becoming more powerful and rich.
Highlights from this session include:
Writing Sergor as a Reghed Barbarian separated from his tribe. He wears a Bear skin pelt, so he might be from the Clan of the Bear, but he holds no ties to them and is unsure what clan his father really did come from.
I felt that the Reghed barbarians were the best fit for Sergor, as the more civilized Northlanders are based around Viking Scandinavia, and are seafaring raiders replete with longboats, and Sergor lived his life inland as a forester. On the other hand, I chose not to make him Uthgardt because I think the name is dumb, the clans are dumb, and they're set up to be antagonists in this module so I would prefer if there were rivalry and hostility between the two. Plus the Uthgardt have very specific territories so I would be tied to a specific clan territory that Sergor would have had to come from.
Aldellah on the other hand was a much easier choice: Wood Elves in the Savage Frontier live primarily in the High Forest, the largest wooded land in the region which takes up a majority of the map, and they live in small, reclusive, natural communes. So without having to strictly tie her down to any one village or tribe, Aldellah is free to be a Wild Elf from the forest, going on a journey wherever nature takes her.
All the NPCs from the Defense of Triboar survived, so Sergor and Aldellah were accosted with many quests, and decided to take the Evermoor Way out of Triboar and head East to Yartar and Calling Horns. Though there were many campaign hooks in Yartar, but Sergor and Aldellah ignored them all and simply went about their business.
At Calling Horns they were attacked by a pair of hungry trolls, and killing Trolls is what Sergor and Aldellah are all about. Defeating them was tough but they managed, and as a result they were brought in to track down the source of the increasing troll attacks. Searching the Evermoors for 2 days brought them to a Fire Giant who was using the trolls to bring food to her from raids. Sergor and Aldellah chose not to engage a Fire Giant, which was a metagaming fail on my part since I read the directive in the book that said they would be rewarded anyway. After all was done, the party wasted 3 days in Calling Horns chasing down trolls, and are more than happy to be on their way.
I feel like this campaign would take many more mini-sessions. I might throw out the onerous travel expenses and time keeping rules, since I would do those as both player and DM, which means double work and less fun, as it more accurately simulates accounting than role playing. The only casualty would be the lower frequency of random encounters, but I can always work random encounters in at my discretion.
And I finally leveled my characters up, just to fight the two trolls at Calling Horns.
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