How's your campaign going?

That sounds awesome!

it's still in pre-play prep, BUT, for the first time ever I have serious players.

I have the "first act" arranged with side-quests and a prime goal

I have a few named NPCs of positive, negative, and neutral disposition...just a little bit of politics...bandits, pirates, wild animals, man-made monsters,and more

in other words, I am HYPE AS BALLS about running this even if it will be inevitably clunky and stilted by my total lack of experience...

The game I was running just died on Christmas eve, one player wasn't communicating too well when they were forced to miss a session, two other players got real fucking butthurt about that, I refused to get involved in personal drama and then two of them quit within minutes of eachother. On the upside, now I get to take the good player of that group and start a new game.

Really well. Got a group together containing no neckbeards or grognards and the girl I've kind of got a blossoming thing with is playing with us so that's nice.
We're using my homebrew cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic/space opera/time travel setting (its more coherent than that description makes it sound) and everyone seems to be really into it.
Its become sort of a reverse cyberpunk game where we're cops trying to maintain the law by fighting both corporate corruption and anarchist punk scumbags.

Passion makes perfect

These things happen.
Onwards and upwards

man, passions gotten me jack-shit so far...this is planning and double cheching my plans and idiot-testing them here.

but then it wouldn't be going so well if I wasn't passionate about it

non-existent atm, but the way it fell apart is sort of interesting though. My brother was the GM, and we were playing online with local friend of ours, a guy from Cali and some rando he knew. The rando, however, refused to use his mic, and instead used a text-to-speech program, which he regularly displayed incredible command of; often adjusting the pitch and tempo of the words. The standing theory is that he was embarrassed of his accent, as he indirectly confirmed he could indeed speak. We didn't care though, and he made a golem character, so it was great for the construct to be speaking like microsoft-sam.
After a dozen or so sessions, the guy from Cali unfortunately announced that his irl business was eating up his free time, and he was going to have to duck out. When the next session rolled around the text-talk guy was MIA, so we passed on that session. When the next one rolled around he actually responded to our messages and told us he was uncomfortable playing with people he only knew online, and wouldn't be returning until Cali-bro came back.
This legitimately butt-flustered the GM/my bro, as he was a huge fan of text-talk and his character, so after another session went buy the whole thing was just called off.
Since then Cali bro has offered to start up a game twice, and now that we're all settled into new routines I imagine one will sooner or later. ; there are no hard feelings or anything, it was just weird that someone who seemed to be having fun by all accounts would duck out because one specific member of the party had to duck out. Nobody's heard form text-talk since; not even Cali-bro.

In my group's Mage: The Awakening game, our brawler accidentally summoned an abyssal creature by trying to speed up his healing process in front of a bunch of sleepers. I, a Time/Fate mage, jumped backwards in time a few seconds to try and stop that from happening, and got a chunk taken out of me for my trouble, only surviving because of a fairly powerful Life mage being nearby.

I fucking hate every single one of my players.

Tip: have fun. Act like a player who controls more guys. Don't be afraid to improvise.

None of my players RP. I have one that reads off the DMG when in a magic shop and tells me what he wants and throws a tantrum when ANYTHING bad happens. Ever. Even when enemies attack him.

I have an edgelord, a chaotic stupid, a powergamer, and my best friend that I have to treat as shittily as the other tards or they'll throw a fit about favoritism.

I do not enjoy my group at all. They are fucking terrible.

However, In the game that I'm not DMing that we play, I RP hard and it's basically just me in the spotlight the whole time while they sulk quietly. (My best friend runs that one). So I can deal with it.

Had a similar situation, where I brought in a new pc specifically designed to force the group's diisfunctional nature to the foreground.
After a near pc group implosion, we talked it out.
I got called out for making an agenda character (I did, and I denied it at no point, but it can be more than that, fortunately) and I lambasted the group with such vigor I made a player have a panic attack.
I... feel no shame about it. She was one of the primary issues, and we can't do much about it because she is the DM's gf and kicking her would make the game better, but make his life harder, and we love the DM like a brother enough to eat the grit.
But I went off with a ruthlessness that ought to have been seen.

DnD 5e: Only a few session in but it's fun. Shenanigans ensue because the party face is a lawful evil bard.

Demon: The Descent: Plothooks nowhere in sight, everything that happens is the result of player plans and retardation.

Pathfinder: Almost a month in, the game still hasn't actually started. It's just private/backstory sessions, and it's actually my favorite of the above.

I'm a first time DM, with a little play experience in things like Pathfinder. My players are also complete novices, but we're having a great time. They ask insightful questions, take notes, and genuinely enjoy the story I'm telling.

Not playing anything at the moment

DMing Ironclaw mainly.
The group of furry holy knights are about to chase after a criminal through pagan lands. Much religious tensions will ensue.

Shame really. Let's hope he gets his passion / enthusiasm back.

Sounds exciting!
Never played mage
Outhe of 10?

That's the spirit.
Play a grim campaign where they only know suffering.

Start off bright.
Give them things to care about.
Slowly destroy them.

Push the tantrum player.
Make him rage
He will break and normalise.

Gotta take the rough with the smooth.

Players are 2 rogues, a paladin, and a warlock. It's pretty interesting because the warlock is a Princess of an elven kingdom who ran away with one of the rogues (they are a couple now), and she made a pact with the archfey to break the spell wards keeping her in the castle (and safe of course), so the King/father decided to say "fuck you" and curse her long-distance style with lycanthropy. She meets up with the Paladin who's a Lathander worshipper who works for a secret slave abolitionist sect of the church and has a gnome child in his charge to be passed on to the next in member in a city that happens to be going in the same direction as the Thief and the Princess. The couple doesn't tell the paladin ANYTHING about her curse, and meanwhile they meet up with a Tiefling Spellthief while on the run from her father's men and two Uthgardt (who the players have no idea are lycans as well that have been tracking her down due to her scent).

Now they are on a ferry that is heading down river, the princess is tied up in a silver chain by the Thief who is reassuring the party that "everything is fine guys really, she's just a little cursed is all" and they have no idea that the Uthgardt snuck on to the ferry with them. The ferry itself is full of people and is pretty much an Inn, a bar, and a place where people gamble and a place for lots of "scum and villainy." The gnome child is interested in how the steamboat ferry operates, and both of them will be very interested to learn that the men who are working the ferry aren't being paid to work even though the owners claim that they do...

Next session is going to be...interesting. I'm open to any ideas, if you have any?

Pathfinder compared to dnd?

AWESOME.
The holy grail of exploration and enthusiasm

Awwww

I find it hard to get players invested in that kind of thing

Well, they are playing the holy knights, so they may be more invested in the catching of the fucker.

I would say go softly on the lycan revelation. Allow the players to do the.

Silver weapons rather than
"We tracked your sent wearwolf"

Other than that it seems like you have a great plan already.

Really great, sure I'm not a player in my old group of friends anymore, but i'm finally playing with people in person and i don't think i could ever go back to using roll20. feeling tension in a room makes me feel as if my game actually matters, and less as if my players are only "playing" when it's their turn to shine.

I miss the old friends cause we had some good times, but I think i'm better off without them and i hope they are doing good. If this wasn't vague enough, and they are reading this now, I hope they are having hella good times

We're at war with some kind of goblin/hobgoblin/orc army, my lawful evil character is trying to unite different groups to help. So far, we've uust left a trail of burned camps, and mutilated corpses, and we've had a less than positive discussion with the DMPC questgiver, to the extent that the centaur ranger had to knock out the cleric who basically challenged him to a fight. We have two reliable players (me one other) plus the DM, and if everyone shows up it's a party of about 10. This probably won't end well.

Well, really changed over the last 4 years I've been playing with tgis group. They've gone from min-maxing combat obsessed cunts, to bitching about every combat encounter and just wanting to play a dating simulator. I'm looking forward to this evening out, but worried about how long it will take. My best friend stopped playing a year ago, leaving me to play with the two worst players and a rotating cast of stoners. Despite it all, I'm still having fun.

As far as my actual stories and such go, I have 4 or 5 campaigns of my own, one from another player, and two from another. Right now I'm just hoping to get back to our first, and end it in a blaze of tragedy.

I've dmed a party of 10 before.
Players get lost and it all has to boil down to combat as individual player time can't be provided without othere players getting board.
It's a shame.

Never had a campaign end in anything but noble bright. How do the players react?

Main GM is on hiatus due to stressful life, best friend from childhood is about to pick up a game that died (due to party members betrayal in the FIRST SESSION) for the time he has off from national guard duty. ALso I'm about to get my desktop fixed so i can continue gming a small rules lite/rule of cool starwars game I run occasionally with two friends. So overall breddy gud.

Players are all getting antsy because we haven't played for a couple weeks due to the holidays. They're planning side campaigns and characters in our main chat, but personally messaging me to make sure what I'm running will still be our main game. Feels fucking fantastic. I've stopped DMing games before due to low confidence but this one is really taking off, even if I might have to kill the paladin-turned-edgelord

Going pretty well. The group is fairly new, never been to mid levels before so I'm running something like metal gear solid which they never played. They're on an island with a turn coat general and his cohort as well as a few special baddies who's trying to open a wizard kings crypt to grave rob some weapons of mass destruction. They figured out to hide bodies and leave no enemies alive to raise the alarm.

They're doing a pretty good job so far, jamming doors shut behind themselves so no one can sneak up on them or get away effectively, watching the enemy to see if there's a pattern to their look outs, and ease dropping on conversations to find some heads up for what's to come.

Little do they know each player has a secondary mission from make sure this PC stays alive until the crpyt is open to create a map of the wizard kings dungeons.

They met their first boss last game, a pair of goliath barbarians who were famous sport athletes at something akin to rugby quidich. One would bat stone balls at them while the other would smash through shitty walls and bullrush them into sturdier walls.

Been a lot of fun.

She's highly enthusiastic about the game, thinks about it constantly when we're not playing, and wants to play everyday.

However, I'm burned out and lazy, and I'm self conscious that I'm not doing as good a job as she thinks I am. I feel like I'm a shit gm because I can't follow the gm advice I read on blogs.

So I procrastinate and delay our games because prep drains me. Please help

Rule of cool
Nevery really played that way.
Does it work or is it an incoherent mess?

My group are the same.
Holiday get in the way of rp!

Sounds fun.
I like the idea of themed bosses. I never thought of that.

Last session he abandoned the party (like he always does) after they got arrested. They went and collected their gear, he went back 2 days later and his gear had been confiscated. He didn't speak a single word the rest of the session and hasn't spoken to me since.

Set plot points
Improvise in between.
A player will create something them selves.
Run with it.q

Hmmmmm talk to him as dm to player.
I could sort it.

The people in this game of 3.5 are me, the DM, a girl, and my other friend.

DM- relatively new to DMing not the most flexible of gaming style.

The Girl- Desparatly wants somones D and so lowers herself to playing with us. spends most of session on a tablet ignoring us.

My Friend- A nice guy IRL but a complete fucking spazz in game, example his halfling monk got tied upsidedown on a donkey after taking a shit load of drugs.

Me- another new gamer with some familiarity with DnD wants to have some good rp and an interesting story.

We have gone through three different campaigns over the course of a year all unfinished because of bullshit, with the only one i actually enjoy being the one the DM and i do alone.

It's crazy, I even grabbed some adventurer's league stuff and did two sessions, each with half of the party. Still wasn't enough for them.

The last campaign I had ended before it even began.
>My brother and his friends invite me to play a game with them.
>My brother's friend was going to be the DM
>We spent a week preparing, getting all of our character sheets in order as well as setting up a time.
>Eventually decide on a friday at my pace.
>The DM insists we do it on a friday because that's the only day when he'd be free.
>It was a lot of people's first time so they were excited, they bought all sorts of chips, drinks, ordered a lot of pizza.
>Everybody's there but the DM.
>The DM texts my brother saying that he's on his way.
>Thirty minutes pass which is weird because he's a five minute walk away.
>Eventually my one of the players gets a text from the DM.
>It's a picture of the DM hanging out with his girlfriend at some kind of local carnival.
Needless to say we never had that session, nor did my brother or his friends see the DM much after the session.

>The Girl- Desparatly wants somones D and so lowers herself to playing with us. spends most of session on a tablet ignoring us.
whose? Anyones? Im confused

So this is my first time DMing (5e) and so far...

>friend got drunk, read my notebook and shouted out that the underground fight club champion Viktor Poonchardz is cheating via magical buffs

>friends got scammed by Khajit trader who sold them magical floating orbs that if they crushed gave them a permanent free to use power that was OP as shit. they crushed it and it did nothing, so they went back, beat the cat to near death and stole all of his skooma.

>we have a monk named Haram who's brother is a gorilla named Harambe. Harambe got a magical hat that gives him higher INT so he can speak. Harambe loves peanut butter

>drow elf (which we all refer to as nigger-elf) got fucked into a coma by a half-orc bartender

>Made an easy to figure out quest which resulted in the two rival churches (Church of the Dragon/Phoenix) to finally end the feud...by setting the Phoenix church on fire which then had a phoenix rise up and set the town on fire

>Party is on the run while I whip up a dungeon for them for tomorrows session

It's been a fun campaign.

Pretty decently, with highs and low due some players joining in, dropping, rejoining, dropping, etc.
Lately we had a couple of schedule hiccups also due the festivities period.
This aside...the story so far summed up is this:

>One day, suddenly the town where the party members were, is attacked by a bunch of Inevitables that swarm the place. A weird bard with a weird witch kid, tell them a plan to stop the invasion. The party does so, but while stopping the attack, the bard also takes an artifact that rips off a piece of the material plane into another.
>Weird pieces of worlds all collide, odd monsters and animals appear everywhere, races too, there is plenty of chaos. Turns out the inevitables were trying to prevent the bard to do this stuff. The party takes the occasion to make money, meet people, and try to figure out stuff.
>They find the bard, but he manages to sweet talk them into a side job, and to investigate further by themselves. They do so, and they learn that this mix-matched world is above a chaotic mess of souls and oblivion made -apparently- by an hero that disappeared some years before.
>They learn said hero has been doing some impressive genocide from time to time to whoever stood in his way. The bard sweet talks the party again into destroying an artifact that would weaken the guy a bit. They succeed, and the bard manages to banish him into another plane temporarily.
>Now the party is looking for jobs, as they wait for its inevitable return. The bard keeps being weird, but surprisingly skillful with words enough to convince the party to do his bidding for now. The party wants to meet the Hero to know his version of facts.
>Right now the party is in an high-tech, high-magic large town of colorful and cute small porpoise people that work under a theocracy and are pretty rich. They are managing to get some good funds, and they are also getting some downtime between a side quest and another.

This sums up my campaign so far.
Should I add more?

We're basically considering it a "Core cast of two with random guest party members" for the main campaign, though, so it's not too confusing

I asked the players what they're favorite bosses were from video games and built them around that. One said the massive hand at the end of smash brothers so I have a wizard that speced in all the bigsby hands spells. Another was some sniper boss from an arcade game so I have a ranger that booby trapped the fuck out of an underground cave and is laying in wait. Another was a dragoon which will be a psychic warrior who will use up the walls and battle jump to charge with a lance in a multi level prison block. The last player said she wanted to fight caitlyn jenner so I named the goliaths kruce and braitlyn.

Crack open a module if you're not going to make a game.

don't you mean, excelsior?

We've had two sessions so far, and it's been fun. Rogue burned a kobold to death by pouring oil on it and lighting it, fighter has missed almost every swing of his greatsword, and the bard has done everything in his power to put his dick into something. They've accomplished almost nothing, but it's the journey, right?

My players are so annoying about female npcs that i have decided to never have important women npcs ever again

>hurrr my char has the huge trait that means his dick is huge that means the noble baroness (and all nobles are depraved who want to be fucked by peasant cock) totally wants to fuck me. Why is she refusing dm? I wanna dick her

The entire group is like this.

Make yourself a favor, and find a group that doesn't involve 12 years old kids.

>The guy who seems to think this is WoW and seems to be aggressive about basically anything he thinks is slightly wrong
>The slightly disinterested but comes up with good RP when he actually looks into things
>The guy who literally only plays to break the game and make things a hell for our DM
>The guy who tries to keep things going and calm down the group when they start to gang up on the GM about something dumb
>inexperience GM who can't say no to the bullshit antics
>This all gets worse when they believe that they have to be stoned to play RPGs

If it wasn't fun to hang out with them before and after DnD time, I'd probably have killed myself by now.

Everyone's been doing great fleshing out the party's interactions, making everyone's motivations seem at once reasonable and foolish, and ensuring flavourful RP/combat choices.

Covered a lot of ground so far--lots of NPCs met, lots of callbacks, dungeons crawls and plot-relevant bosses quashed--to the point that one player nearly thought the campaign was reaching the finale when they brushed with what they've been chasing after for months. It's really invigorating to see a player light up when they realize that, quite literally, this is only the beginning.

A 5e homebrew.

And the group is really good. We've got a skype chat going that remains pretty active, just chatting and such.

She wants yours, user.

But in seriousness I've heard that shit can derail games in more than one way. I'd say their best bet is to enforce a no phones/tablets during game rule and see if she either starts actually playing and having fun or leaves.

I wish I could. Most frustrating part is, theyre all 30 somethings and have girlfriends.

Fuck, one of them is married and has a kid

Screwed up.

Had a nice group going. But I added a new player and it has crashed the group. He is family to the rest of the group, so I can't kick him. The problem is that he is a good player and all, but he can't make sessions because of work. We will likely be able to play maybe one or two times more before I leave in a few weeks. We have missed weeks of sessions already.

What I should have done was started a new campaign for him and the others, kept the other one separate. So we would play one when he could make it and the original when he could not.

Sucks.

I have three actual 12 year olds in one campaign (two families and their kids). None of them act like that, not even a little tiny bit nor are they interested in actin like that.

It started good but things have been getting dicey recently. Our DM kept us on a pretty nice fantasy medium (in a world I wrote most of!) and had us go through all sorts of fun little challenges - but he always has some dumb OC bad guy and never lets them die. It's been adding up to the point that we have two Death Knight assassins (with red eyes, ooo), a Dark Elf duelist, and a shapechanging unkillable construct along with an epic level lich and a half-demon black guard (with red eyes, ooo).

It's giving me a bit of cancer rn, especially since he made me stop playing my wizard for being "too powerful" (having the ability to cast halt undead on his invisible teleporting death knight assassin oc's"

Hasn't started yet. Had a planned day, but people got busy, then the holidays. Currently just trying to build up more lore and world for the PC's to explore. Been bouncing ideas with one of the guys I was gonna play with, and considering running a solo session so he can learn how to play and we can build a background for his character.
Pic related, his character is a dootng skeleton.

All together the experience hasn't been good.
Trying to get into general DnD esque games among friends who are also new, whilst playing our DM's own Deathwatch 40K campaign.
To sum it all up:
-Not sure if DW is just linear objectives in fragments or is just the DM's fault at preparing the game.
-Half of our team is a bunch of autists and retards that slow the game to a crawl at times
-We only play for a couple hours every couple months

Only been through two missions and it's already been bad enough to question if I should continue trying to play this shit

Would be going well if I had a group who didn't flake.

How did the DM not know that?

It's going really damn well. It's part of a custom Hunter premise and conspiracy. The group I'm in and I are currently well into the finale of the current campaign arc, and will continue with it in the coming week.
Within said finale, we've already:

- All (except for one of us) ran outside into unnatural darkness full of bullshit shadow monsters that inflict internal injuries only, for varying reasons.

- Disobeyed the orders of one of our superiors, a former hitman with an anger problem and a penchant for violence, who responded by tackling people to the dirt and breaking someone's nose, and later dealt out straight up mutilations as punishments.

- Responded to said mutilations by two of us tackling the guy to the ground and beating the shit out of him, to the point of near death, and one of the Players fulfilling both their Virtue and Vice SIMULTANEOUSLY by doing so.

- Uncovered a vital clue as to what the fuck is going on with the current supernatural bullshit that's affecting the entire town we're in.

- Derailed and completely avoided an entire boss fight and subsequent impending town-wide massacre that the GM had meticulously planned out by doing all of this.

So yeah, I'd say its going well, OP. How's it going for everyone else?

Sorry mostly its the DMs D she wants but he has made clear several times that she is just a friend.

Going great, my players are being very creative, making real stories even out of made-on-the-spot one-offs. giving me a lot of positive feedback about enjoying the game, talking about story related shit like their further plans in character even while i go take a shit or grab a coffee from the kitchen, and roleplaying their characters in both strengths and weaknesses, caring more about depth than about winning everything.

Holy shit i love my group. Im like a proud mother hen.

I just finished a 6 month long campaign.

3 players, a Dragonborn paladin and 2 elf sorcerers.

after defeating the big bad and winning a civil war the characters all had their families murdered and saw the 3 biggest cities in the game wiped out by a magical plague left by the big bad.

To end things on a happy note, the characters went in search of "the golden lamp" a magical maguffen that will offer 1 rule free wish.

1 of the elf sorcerers (we'll call her girl 1) was really invested in finding the lamp because she was the ruler of one of the lost cities. So the characters journey to the bottom of a complex maze. where they find the lamp, the lamp had instructions engraved on the top that stated that a person must sacrifice their life to the lamp so that they can become the magical conduit for the wish.

Girl 1 lifts the lamp over her head and offers up her life.
Before she can say anything else Girl 2 jumps in.
"I wish I had a big Dick"
So it was done, after 6 months of playing that was how it ended, everyone died and the sorcerer got a big dick.

Girl 1 doesn't want to play with us anymore.

... this very accurately describes my situation, exactly describes it actually.

>One player was getting on the nerves of others

...does his name start with a Z?

I think you're in my group.

What kinda game you running monotreeme? You post all the time and seem to be into every genre

It's going pretty well, but we're about to fight something nasty. It's a construct that is a hybrid cleric10/wizard10/fighter10. It gets a standard for each of its faces, and a move for the whole body, so it can buff itself with 2 spells, then full attack if we're within range. It has 20 ft reach, and its weapon does something like 6d6 damage before any of its fancy feats kick in. To be fair, we did kill his fancy lich, and we're a pretty well-oiled killing machine, so he's justified in throwing ridiculous shit at us. The players are still pretty nervous.

The GM is good. He custom-makes like, everything. It can be a bit railroad-y at times, but whatever. The players are great, though many of us have depression, so we tend to think we're shitty players.

I wasn't here from the beginning, so I don't have the best grasp on the story, but it's good so far.

Pretty good I'd say. Finally get to run my homebrew setting with some old and new players. One of the characters was made seemingly in ignorance of the setting but I don't expect him to live long. The other three are really good though, despite half the players not really playing the style of game I want to run.

Is the DM retarded or...?

>Not telling the DM what you're playing
wat

I was fne with everything until the
>"they believe that they have to be stoned to play RPGs"
What the fuck. Like, seriously, what the fuck

Welp, my group's been on break for the holidays for the past couple weeks since our last campaign ended...with a TPK, and the plane being consumed by a chaotic evil god.

Super excited for our next campaign though. We're suppose to start in January.

Literally just had to restart the campaign because of another group/GM. We had two groups in the same meta-campaign and it just didn't work out. Had to shitcan three months of hard work. It's for a better game overall, but I'm still bitter as fuck.

It happens way too much
I only get to play one 4th of what I actually create, and these are always amazing, but damn is it hard sometimes to scrap something

Well one player the lawful neutral paladin took an NPC cleric of bahumat on a date ended up burning down a church of saint Cuthbert and temporarily dethroned the government

Just to confirm, you have a good reason to believe text-to-talk isn't Cali-bro, right?

What if he and Cali Bro are the SAME PERSON???

Hivemind

Group consists of six players: a Dwarf Barbarian, Female Wood Elf Ranger, Human Cleric, Female Human Sorceror, Human Fighter, and a Halfling Bard.

We're on a bit of a winter/holiday/new year break. Been about 2 weeks since we played and we're not likely to play for at least 2 more.

Even so, our last session was pretty significant and the perfect spot for a break. The party cleansed the ancient forest that the Elf Ranger's grandparents were from and restored the balance of nature. The elven forest kingdom had fallen when its prince had been tempted by dark magics and succumbed to evil. Ever since, it's been haunted by ghosts and various other manner of undead like zombies and whatnot.

Long story short, the prince of the forest kingdom fell in love with a human and was grief-stricken when she died of old age. He couldn't bear to be without her and so began to dabble in forbidden magic. His experiments became darker and more depraved until he finally created the school of necromancy. He raised countless corpses from the dead, constantly trying to improve his knowledge and technique. All he ever managed to create were zombies, though. Rotting zombies.

He was driven mad long before he attempted to raise his lover's corpse and had completely forgotten about his reason for dabbling in dark magic. He was consumed by his quest for knowledge to master death. He was completely oblivious to the fact that the zombies he rose, the experiments he conducted, literally slaughtered everyone around him. His parents, the king and queen, their court, their cities, etc.

>TL;DR - party fought their way through a dark forest (totally not Mirkwood, I swear) and slew a deranged necromancer (totally not Sauron, trust me) in his dark castle (definitely not Dol Guldur, believe me) and restored things to the way they should be