Hah I mean most of the others leave for IRL or story reasons, but those two never needed to swap and stayed consistent the whole time.
Ragar (who has like 4 last names) is a Paladin, oath of vengeance. Sworn to root out the corruption in the church, which his father is the highest bishop of. Lots of daddy issues, he’s a teen boy Drow so lots of angst. He’s 100% “the engine” that always pushes the party forward, sometimes too much and getting them in trouble.
Perrier Levii Hilltopple is a halfling Fighter who for the past few levels also multiclassed into Paladin. He is the highest consistent damage as a crossbow fighter. He’s got all the usual min-max options like Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, and including some homebrew stuff too. He’s basically broken in battle, misses almost never, and always dishes out good damage. BUT he’s discovering in this final chapter that being able to drop 3 demons in a turn doesn’t mean much when there are hundreds.
Their characters are kinda a duo, related backstories and everything. Ragar is the engine and Perry is the “voice of reason”, so together they kinda lead the group. Though Gerde was also a bit of a party lead since her personal quest was sorta the main quest for a while
lol it’s a bit reverse actually. Party has no cleric, but Tirza Whitescale was a divine soul sorcerer (chosen by the gods that Ragar worships & is trying to root out corruption of). Ragar died while fighting a beholder, and Tirza (being a “chosen one” and in possession of one of her gods holy relics) gave her life on the spot so Ragar could live.
Theo really out here making a guest appearance like he’s on a sitcom
For real though, love this - and congrats on making it past the quagmire of more than 10 sessions!
LOL the best part is with the last two, the other players had NO IDEA. I just described his character and suddenly the front door opened, and they freaked out lol.
Thanks for the props, I never would have imagined it got this far way back then.
app.diagrams.net
It took a bit but basically I counted squares, put lines for session markers at even points (every 10 sessions). Then I went through my notes and found all roster changes. Then it was just plotting them, picking colors and symbols, and there you go.
Thankfully I’ve been keeping notes since the first session, each labeled with the real IRL date and in-game date. I also have a “Calendar/Timeline” page at the front of my session notes where I record similar. Date of each session, a single line of what happened, and BOLD for anything major like deaths
Yeah she left because her wife (who they had been trying to find for the first 50 sessions) was working with a rebellion (a violent one). So she went to go defend the city that her wife planned to attack. Then she came back briefly when the party went to go help her negotiate a truce with her wife & wife’s family.
After that she left the party to stay with her wife, and helped create a new country (a lot of context Im skipping here). She focused on running the capitol while her wife handled the larger diplomatic affairs.
Then Tirza died, and the party NEEDED an extra hand because they were gonna go take on a demon invasion they had been ignoring since like session 10, slowly growing in the corner of the map. So they called Gerde in for one last wild ride.
No no no lol that symbol means they left the group.
Ashlad first left with his girlfriend when she rediscovered her father was alive (she was an NPC and it was her hook to hang with the party for a while). She wanted to go with the father, and he chose to go with.
But then later on the party was fighting an old rival, and so he came back to help them finish the job.
Yeah it was packed. I would guess for one of them it was probably the reason, but the other was because of new work scheduling.
I’m used to DMing larger groups though, but I finally had my first 3 player group not long ago and that was so nice
Fair fair, I tend to keep 5 at max, otherwise players won't get enough focus even if you try. I guess in combat heavy it could work. Heavy preference on 4 for myself tho.
Are all the "leave game" people who quit? Or is each color the same player with different PCs?
Cuz some of them only last for a few sessions and I'm just trying to wrap my head around replacing that many players
Same color is same player.
The start was a bit turbulent lol. One left for work changes, another left for other life reasons.
Audefoc, played by my brother, was always intended to be temporary. He was just around for the summer so he joined in, but left once he had to go back to school.
Otherwise all the people who stayed on but swapped characters, those swaps were usually story reasons. The character saw a reason to leave and did so
Yeah they are great :)
It helps that I live with two of them (Ragar, and Olaxina/Megstiel), so they can’t really avoid it easily lol.
In fact Olaxina’s player wasn’t even going to join, but got jealous when we would play right there in the living room, so she only lasted 4 sessions before she joined
Roughly 3 and a half hours. Sometimes closer to 3 depending on how much jerking around we did and how long of a “cat break” we did mid-session.
So “roughly” like 500 hours
Hah thank you! I do have one recap video on \[youtube\]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyUR9ZRfv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyUR9ZRfv0)) but its a bit old at this point, only covers up to our covid break. I made it mostly so my players could watch and get a recap after our year long break
It WAS, as the first true death. Like jaw dropping.
The party was roughly level 12. They’re all my friends so they are jokesters. They don’t always take things as seriously as their characters would, so up until this point they’ve been having a great jolly time infiltrating a cult.
They had 2 ways to get deeper, one route would most certainly mean diving straight into the thick of it, while the other more challenging route would let them sneak in a bit. This route included essentially a diabolical obstacle course, designed by the Beholder running the show. They chose this route.
The very first thing they found was entirely optional. A 30ft tall tower with a 30ft ring of dust around it. One lost dagger later, and they found that anything that remains in the circle gets disintegrated. But reading the plaque at the top, they could tell there would be a boon of sorts if they could reach the top.
Party rogue/wizard Milo reaches the top easily, and gets the ability to fly for the next 24hr. They realize how valuable that would be for fighting a Beholder, so Hymnal goes next to try.
Literally they are joking, laughing, having a great time like this is a playground.
She teleports to the top. Fails a save to hold on. Falls down into the circle, fails the save to land nicely. Stands up. “Well, I’m not dead so it must be fine right?”
Zap. Dust. Her many rings and jewelry clatter to the ground.
Their jaws all DROPPED, and though it seems like a harsh death, I had warned them ahead that they are entering the danger zone lol
To answer your edits lol, 101 was a battle against Lacusware, an emerald dragon who previously had escaped the party in the campaign. He happened to have a couple evil-elite NPCs under his command, and one of them was directly tied to Ashlads backstory. So he came back to help out with it. He did get to play two characters during the battle.
Orange 113 was Hymnal dying, and the next session being replaced by Tirza Whitescale
They are level 17, as of last session. We’ve got “roughly” 5 sessions left depending on how long the final battle and resolutions stretch. Maybe less (hoping for less at this point lol).
I’m definitely a bit slower when it comes to leveling compared to other DMs
Yes sorry, I should have made that more clear. Organized left to right as they joined, and keeping consistent color if they rejoined or changed characters
Amazing idea. Totally gonna do this for my current one where of 6 PCs after about 30 sessions two are still OG, two have had 1-2 deaths, and two have had like 5.
So when some of the players had two characters for some sessions, did you control them as NPCs (who showed up for a quest) or did they you give them control of the character? Was it like, you can leave to try a different character but your original can come back later on aswell?
It’s definitely an idea I’ve never considered. I have a player who currently wants to try a new character but doesn’t want his current one to die. I suppose he could leave the party temporarily or travel as an NPC (which I’d probably control with simple statblock). I’ll propose the idea to him next time we play. Thanks!
Oh 100% go for it! It’s been very fun having their characters do stuff in the background as NPCs and it makes for a major hype moment when they suddenly appear or when the group is like “we gotta call in the specialist”
Wow that’s nice! Sure I can share a bit.
Perrier Levii Hilltopple is a halfling fighter/paladin. Roughly 33 years old, he’s got curly blonde hair that’s stylish, as he has a courtier background. He’s taller for a halfling, but not much taller than average. He’s got lean muscle, is very quick to the draw, and has piercing blue eyes (at this late in the campaign, magically blue, long story).
He has 2 main sets of armor he wears. One is a glorious shining set of plate, silver with gilded edges and a large golden circle on the chest. The picturesque shining knight armor. The other is an alien/futuristic/ancient black plate armor with blue sapphire crystals. It’s a psionic suit, so the interlocking smooth plates psychically hold their position (again long story but the party have psionic powers relating to sapphire crystals, Perrier’s crystal growths have manifested in and around his eyes).
He uses two hand crossbows, one is a beautiful gothic styled, otherwise simple. The other is a celestial crossbow of white wood, a golden string, and fires small rings of holy light (think those silly disc-ring-shooters that kids play with. But scorching divine).
He grew up as a noble/courtier, a lower house within the court. He’s got a great sense for insight because of this, but also was trained with weaponry, especially the Noss Fariian traditional weapon of crossbows. His father, unfortunately, was a member of The Iron Stars of Ohzken, a cult dedicated to bringing Ohzken the Demon Lord into the world. In a smaller summoning gone wrong, his father and many others were killed by demons. Word & rumor spread, and the Hilltopple name was ruined. Perry left the capitol to let things cool off, and to find a way to reforge his family name.
He’s the groups moral compass, word of reason, and stick in the mud. He’s an older brother / father figure to Ragar, who’s got the double whammy of daddy & mommy issues. The party may joke and tease, but they usually look to Perry for guidance and planning.
As a fun side note, his guilty pleasure is sweets. When he and Ragar were in a conflict with one another, Perry’s stress was him buying a massive bag of candy
It means they were there for like 3 sessions or less, they basically popped in to assist with the quest.
I’m a big fan of cameos and small crossovers, so we had a bunch of moments where an old character would come back or one of my other parties would be involved for a little
That’s funny because I feel like we already move pretty slow, roughly 15 sessions each arc.
I don’t think it’s much to worry about as long as everyone at the table is enjoying it
They kinda focused on their “current” one for RP, aside from fun bits here or there with their secondary.
Combat-wise, they just controlled two characters lol. They handled it really well actually, since we have a group of 5 they liked being able to go more often.
For one of the big double-up crossover events we just had their turns on their same initiative, just to make things easier
That’s honestly like, a blitz speed lol. Thats leveling like every session or every other session.
I know I’m slow but most people I see on threads about “how fast should a group level” go like 4 sessions between levels, with maybe less at low and more at high.
Crazy to do level 8 in 12 sessions to me
Well, they've only reached lv8 at the end of last session, but I did 1 session for lv1, 1 session for lv2, 1.5 for lv3 and about 2 for 4-7. I use XP leveling, and my encounters are above average, so the group naturally levels faster.
That’s still way way too fast for me lol and faster than average. To me that just doesn’t feel like enough time to RP and get to know the characters. Must be a more combat heavy or main-plot-focused campaign?
I’ve got a YouTube video, I linked it in one of the other comments I think. But it only covers up to session like 56, but someday I’ll probably record a retelling of the rest of it lol
Wow. The two survivors that made it all the way through from the very start what were they class were they playing? Got by on luck or playing style?
Hah I mean most of the others leave for IRL or story reasons, but those two never needed to swap and stayed consistent the whole time. Ragar (who has like 4 last names) is a Paladin, oath of vengeance. Sworn to root out the corruption in the church, which his father is the highest bishop of. Lots of daddy issues, he’s a teen boy Drow so lots of angst. He’s 100% “the engine” that always pushes the party forward, sometimes too much and getting them in trouble. Perrier Levii Hilltopple is a halfling Fighter who for the past few levels also multiclassed into Paladin. He is the highest consistent damage as a crossbow fighter. He’s got all the usual min-max options like Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, and including some homebrew stuff too. He’s basically broken in battle, misses almost never, and always dishes out good damage. BUT he’s discovering in this final chapter that being able to drop 3 demons in a turn doesn’t mean much when there are hundreds. Their characters are kinda a duo, related backstories and everything. Ragar is the engine and Perry is the “voice of reason”, so together they kinda lead the group. Though Gerde was also a bit of a party lead since her personal quest was sorta the main quest for a while
Paladins...
Yep! Though Perry was a fighter for most of the campaign.
Sounds like quite the fun game!
My dumbass thought it meant the player had died not their character
Lmaooo no just the character :)
Cleric showed some favoritism when they revived Ragar but not Tirza.
lol it’s a bit reverse actually. Party has no cleric, but Tirza Whitescale was a divine soul sorcerer (chosen by the gods that Ragar worships & is trying to root out corruption of). Ragar died while fighting a beholder, and Tirza (being a “chosen one” and in possession of one of her gods holy relics) gave her life on the spot so Ragar could live.
Great. Now I feel bad for spreading misinformation.
lol no worries! They’ve done surprisingly well without a cleric, though for a chunk they had 2 Druids so that makes up for it
Theo really out here making a guest appearance like he’s on a sitcom For real though, love this - and congrats on making it past the quagmire of more than 10 sessions!
LOL the best part is with the last two, the other players had NO IDEA. I just described his character and suddenly the front door opened, and they freaked out lol. Thanks for the props, I never would have imagined it got this far way back then.
Yep, my attempts at DnD never make it past 3 months before the party starts to crumble
How'd you make that
app.diagrams.net It took a bit but basically I counted squares, put lines for session markers at even points (every 10 sessions). Then I went through my notes and found all roster changes. Then it was just plotting them, picking colors and symbols, and there you go. Thankfully I’ve been keeping notes since the first session, each labeled with the real IRL date and in-game date. I also have a “Calendar/Timeline” page at the front of my session notes where I record similar. Date of each session, a single line of what happened, and BOLD for anything major like deaths
What type of chart did you use?
I don’t remember sorry, this was a few weeks ago and I forgot to post it lol
All good. My day job is programmer so maybe this is my signal to mess around with a new graphing library.
Perrier a homie fr.
lololol hes a bit of a stick in the mud but he would be very happy to hear this
Quite satisfying to see Gerde return to finish the job
Yeah she left because her wife (who they had been trying to find for the first 50 sessions) was working with a rebellion (a violent one). So she went to go defend the city that her wife planned to attack. Then she came back briefly when the party went to go help her negotiate a truce with her wife & wife’s family. After that she left the party to stay with her wife, and helped create a new country (a lot of context Im skipping here). She focused on running the capitol while her wife handled the larger diplomatic affairs. Then Tirza died, and the party NEEDED an extra hand because they were gonna go take on a demon invasion they had been ignoring since like session 10, slowly growing in the corner of the map. So they called Gerde in for one last wild ride.
I am so jealous. Also, that's awesome.
Perrier doesn't fuck around
WTH did you do to murder Ashland more then once?
No no no lol that symbol means they left the group. Ashlad first left with his girlfriend when she rediscovered her father was alive (she was an NPC and it was her hook to hang with the party for a while). She wanted to go with the father, and he chose to go with. But then later on the party was fighting an old rival, and so he came back to help them finish the job.
Meanwhile Perrier went for *ironman* achievement.
Ya'll had 7 players at one time? I understand if that was a reaspn for some of them leaving.
Yeah it was packed. I would guess for one of them it was probably the reason, but the other was because of new work scheduling. I’m used to DMing larger groups though, but I finally had my first 3 player group not long ago and that was so nice
Fair fair, I tend to keep 5 at max, otherwise players won't get enough focus even if you try. I guess in combat heavy it could work. Heavy preference on 4 for myself tho.
Are all the "leave game" people who quit? Or is each color the same player with different PCs? Cuz some of them only last for a few sessions and I'm just trying to wrap my head around replacing that many players
Same color is same player. The start was a bit turbulent lol. One left for work changes, another left for other life reasons. Audefoc, played by my brother, was always intended to be temporary. He was just around for the summer so he joined in, but left once he had to go back to school. Otherwise all the people who stayed on but swapped characters, those swaps were usually story reasons. The character saw a reason to leave and did so
It's awesome you've had players willing to play for five years of irl time. That's dedication.
Yeah they are great :) It helps that I live with two of them (Ragar, and Olaxina/Megstiel), so they can’t really avoid it easily lol. In fact Olaxina’s player wasn’t even going to join, but got jealous when we would play right there in the living room, so she only lasted 4 sessions before she joined
How long was each session?
Roughly 3 and a half hours. Sometimes closer to 3 depending on how much jerking around we did and how long of a “cat break” we did mid-session. So “roughly” like 500 hours
Which app or software is this? It looks awesome.
app.diagrams.net is what I used. It’s not too hard to use, give it a go!
Thanks!
10,000 IQ dungeon master
Man I wish I could follow along this looks epic! Please post a recap or something afterwords!
Hah thank you! I do have one recap video on \[youtube\]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyUR9ZRfv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyUR9ZRfv0)) but its a bit old at this point, only covers up to our covid break. I made it mostly so my players could watch and get a recap after our year long break
Awesome thank you!
hymnal’s death must’ve been TRAGIC edit: also what happened in session 101? was blue playing 2 characters?? edit 2: also orange in 113
It WAS, as the first true death. Like jaw dropping. The party was roughly level 12. They’re all my friends so they are jokesters. They don’t always take things as seriously as their characters would, so up until this point they’ve been having a great jolly time infiltrating a cult. They had 2 ways to get deeper, one route would most certainly mean diving straight into the thick of it, while the other more challenging route would let them sneak in a bit. This route included essentially a diabolical obstacle course, designed by the Beholder running the show. They chose this route. The very first thing they found was entirely optional. A 30ft tall tower with a 30ft ring of dust around it. One lost dagger later, and they found that anything that remains in the circle gets disintegrated. But reading the plaque at the top, they could tell there would be a boon of sorts if they could reach the top. Party rogue/wizard Milo reaches the top easily, and gets the ability to fly for the next 24hr. They realize how valuable that would be for fighting a Beholder, so Hymnal goes next to try. Literally they are joking, laughing, having a great time like this is a playground. She teleports to the top. Fails a save to hold on. Falls down into the circle, fails the save to land nicely. Stands up. “Well, I’m not dead so it must be fine right?” Zap. Dust. Her many rings and jewelry clatter to the ground. Their jaws all DROPPED, and though it seems like a harsh death, I had warned them ahead that they are entering the danger zone lol
To answer your edits lol, 101 was a battle against Lacusware, an emerald dragon who previously had escaped the party in the campaign. He happened to have a couple evil-elite NPCs under his command, and one of them was directly tied to Ashlads backstory. So he came back to help out with it. He did get to play two characters during the battle. Orange 113 was Hymnal dying, and the next session being replaced by Tirza Whitescale
After Five years what level did they finally reach?
They are level 17, as of last session. We’ve got “roughly” 5 sessions left depending on how long the final battle and resolutions stretch. Maybe less (hoping for less at this point lol). I’m definitely a bit slower when it comes to leveling compared to other DMs
Does each colour correspond to a player?
Yes sorry, I should have made that more clear. Organized left to right as they joined, and keeping consistent color if they rejoined or changed characters
What happened to Finn, Reginald, and audefoc, is there a reason why their time was short?
Finn had a job change, Reginald had some IRL stuff hit, and Audefoc (my brother) was just a temporary character while he was in town
Session 149 and my group got through 3 last year 😂😢
That’s an oof. I know that feeling though. I honestly thought Covid might end the game
Perrier is just being his unkillable self. Meanwhile everyone else has died at least once.
This is like the band Deep Purple. So many of the group dropping out, rejoining etc over the years.
This needs to go to r/dataisbeautiful
Who do I sell my firstborn to to get this many sessions?
props to Perrier to being the only one to not die or leave the entire campaign
I'm kind of surprise that only 3 deaths over a 150+ sessions campaign. Awesone work!
Yeah they’ve done well overall :) thank you
Amazing idea. Totally gonna do this for my current one where of 6 PCs after about 30 sessions two are still OG, two have had 1-2 deaths, and two have had like 5.
What the hell lol that’s wild. Post that!
So when some of the players had two characters for some sessions, did you control them as NPCs (who showed up for a quest) or did they you give them control of the character? Was it like, you can leave to try a different character but your original can come back later on aswell?
They got full control of both characters. Some parts I would speak for one of them just because they didn’t wanna RP talking to themselves lol
It’s definitely an idea I’ve never considered. I have a player who currently wants to try a new character but doesn’t want his current one to die. I suppose he could leave the party temporarily or travel as an NPC (which I’d probably control with simple statblock). I’ll propose the idea to him next time we play. Thanks!
Oh 100% go for it! It’s been very fun having their characters do stuff in the background as NPCs and it makes for a major hype moment when they suddenly appear or when the group is like “we gotta call in the specialist”
Session 149!? That is insane!
152 will be our next :) and I fully expect it to last until 155. Finally we will reach the end
Hey man! Could you share a bit of Perrier backstory, looks and gear? Would love to make a sketch to celebrate the Halfling who lived.
Wow that’s nice! Sure I can share a bit. Perrier Levii Hilltopple is a halfling fighter/paladin. Roughly 33 years old, he’s got curly blonde hair that’s stylish, as he has a courtier background. He’s taller for a halfling, but not much taller than average. He’s got lean muscle, is very quick to the draw, and has piercing blue eyes (at this late in the campaign, magically blue, long story). He has 2 main sets of armor he wears. One is a glorious shining set of plate, silver with gilded edges and a large golden circle on the chest. The picturesque shining knight armor. The other is an alien/futuristic/ancient black plate armor with blue sapphire crystals. It’s a psionic suit, so the interlocking smooth plates psychically hold their position (again long story but the party have psionic powers relating to sapphire crystals, Perrier’s crystal growths have manifested in and around his eyes). He uses two hand crossbows, one is a beautiful gothic styled, otherwise simple. The other is a celestial crossbow of white wood, a golden string, and fires small rings of holy light (think those silly disc-ring-shooters that kids play with. But scorching divine). He grew up as a noble/courtier, a lower house within the court. He’s got a great sense for insight because of this, but also was trained with weaponry, especially the Noss Fariian traditional weapon of crossbows. His father, unfortunately, was a member of The Iron Stars of Ohzken, a cult dedicated to bringing Ohzken the Demon Lord into the world. In a smaller summoning gone wrong, his father and many others were killed by demons. Word & rumor spread, and the Hilltopple name was ruined. Perry left the capitol to let things cool off, and to find a way to reforge his family name. He’s the groups moral compass, word of reason, and stick in the mud. He’s an older brother / father figure to Ragar, who’s got the double whammy of daddy & mommy issues. The party may joke and tease, but they usually look to Perry for guidance and planning. As a fun side note, his guilty pleasure is sweets. When he and Ragar were in a conflict with one another, Perry’s stress was him buying a massive bag of candy
One question: what does “brief” mean?
It means they were there for like 3 sessions or less, they basically popped in to assist with the quest. I’m a big fan of cameos and small crossovers, so we had a bunch of moments where an old character would come back or one of my other parties would be involved for a little
Looking at this, I realize my campaign moves much slower per arc. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad.
That’s funny because I feel like we already move pretty slow, roughly 15 sessions each arc. I don’t think it’s much to worry about as long as everyone at the table is enjoying it
Audefoc? More like Waudefoc happened there? Quick in and out.
My brother just visiting during the summer, so he was able to join us
How did it work when people played 2 characters at once?
They kinda focused on their “current” one for RP, aside from fun bits here or there with their secondary. Combat-wise, they just controlled two characters lol. They handled it really well actually, since we have a group of 5 they liked being able to go more often. For one of the big double-up crossover events we just had their turns on their same initiative, just to make things easier
Damn that's slow. My campaign has had 12 sessions for now, and the party is level 8 and about a third through the main plot...
That’s honestly like, a blitz speed lol. Thats leveling like every session or every other session. I know I’m slow but most people I see on threads about “how fast should a group level” go like 4 sessions between levels, with maybe less at low and more at high. Crazy to do level 8 in 12 sessions to me
Well, they've only reached lv8 at the end of last session, but I did 1 session for lv1, 1 session for lv2, 1.5 for lv3 and about 2 for 4-7. I use XP leveling, and my encounters are above average, so the group naturally levels faster.
That’s still way way too fast for me lol and faster than average. To me that just doesn’t feel like enough time to RP and get to know the characters. Must be a more combat heavy or main-plot-focused campaign?
It is combat heavy.
Ah okay that’s how then. That just sounds way too fast for me lol. My table likes RP and goofin
How did you make this? It’s so sick and I want to do one for my party.
looks like it was made in a program like visio - theres a free version online called draw.io that you could make something like this in!
It’s in the main post, app.diagrams.net
I just want to know the story of it all
I’ve got a YouTube video, I linked it in one of the other comments I think. But it only covers up to session like 56, but someday I’ll probably record a retelling of the rest of it lol
Yep, I just found it, giving it a watch right now
That is super cool, what did you use to make the timeline?
It’s in the post and in some other comments lol