Extra-Life 2015

This weekend we streamed 24 hours of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.

We assembled 913.52 USD putting os on the 29th highest donations on the D&D team. The D&D team gathered 98,291.29 USD, placing us on the 5th largest group to gather money for Extra-Life. We thank all of our participants, donators, and sponsors for your contribution, which has gone directly to the Children's Hospital at Providence in Anchorage, Alaska.

The Game

The game was a modified version of the Princes of the Apocalypse premade adventure by Wizards of the Coast. It was modified so that it consisted of small 4 hour adventures that were placed in my homebrew world of Aresia. This meant that viewers could log on to our twitch streams and follow the stories at 4 hour increments. Every 4 hours we had a 15 minutes break followed by giveaways that were sponsored by Farao's Cigarer, Færge's Kælder, and Dreamstone.

The first adventure we played was "Trouble in Winterhaven" where the party explored rumours about monsters present in an abandoned hut outside the village of Winterhaven. They only discovered a nest of stirges. They were also sent to clear out the Alune Lair outside of town, which was infested with zombies. They cleared out 3 rooms before we ended the adventure abruptly, saying that the characters simply cleared out the rest of the zombie lair.

The second adventure was the "Tomb of Moving Stones" where the party experienced an earthquake that created a sinkhole. They discovered a mysterious dwarven tomb in the sinkhole, that the leaders of Winterhaven knew about. They didn't want the part to investigate the tomb, but in the end they made their way down there anyway. They encountered Larrakh, a mysterious cultist of the Black Earth who tried to recruit the party into the philosophy of the Black Earth. This adventure ended with Larrakh escaping after being attacked and fleeing from Winterhaven.

The third adventure was the "Sacred Stone Citadel". The party travelled to a mysterious fortress in the Cairngorm Hills that housed the cult of the Black Earth. They infiltrated the fortress and captured its leader, a man called Qarbo. Investigating the dungeon beneath the fortress revealed that the cult of the Black Earth hired orogs, ogres, and even used an umber hulk to keep dozens of prisoners working in underground mines. The party freed the prisoners and chased out the cult of the Black Earth, leaving the Sacred Stone Fortress abandoned.

The fourth adventure was "The Sardonyx Knight". The party was called to Rivenroar where they met the Earthwalker Imdarr Relvaunder who tasked the party to retrieve the body of a Sardony Knight called Hamas Bourne. The body was being freighted from Harken in the north to Rivenroar to be interred with honors, but it had never arrived. The party discovered that the group travelling with the body had been ambushed by the cult of the Black Earth. When they returned the body of Hamas Bourne to Imdarr Relvaunder, the Earthwalker revealed himself to be the necromancer who had raised all the zombies at the Alune Lair. He tried to get his vengeance, using Hamas as a newly created zombie, but was slain in the process.

The fifth adventure was the "Lavashield Orcs". A tribe of orcs known as the Lavashield Orcs was coming down from the Zephyra Peaks and raiding the nearby valleys. The party travelled to the valley to protect it and ended up at the Dellmon Ranch where they prepared its defences. The players successfully defended the ranch from the Lavashield Orcs. After the orcs had been defeated, a water elemental sprouted forth from the well in the middle of the ranch and attacked the players, who easily destroyed the monster.

The sixth and final adventure was the "Dangerous Secret". A druid hired the party to travel to the Scarlet Moon Hall in the Cairngorm Hills and infiltrate the druid circle there to discover the secrets of the Rite of the Wicker Giant. Investigating the hill around the hall revealed a group of hell hounds, which drew the attention of fire cultists who summoned a fire elemental. When the fighting erupted, many of the druids in the area didn't know what to make of what was transpiring, but when the elemental went rampant, they fled. After the players defeated the fire elemental, a dragon by the name of Verthicha came forth from Hell through the dying embers of the elemental and eventually brought the party to their final resting place, except for the dwarf Aldric, who avenged his fallen comrades with the help of Kord, the Angel of Strength.

 

 

Donations

We received many donations. Some of these donations were made to influence the game.

$5 was donated for NPCs to “Mention Tabby, the most awesome mercenary EVER!”. This became such a common occurrence that even the players started saying it.

$15 was donated to "include an exciting twist at a key moment in the game, such as a betrayal. This could be an NPC that betrays the players, or an NPC that betrays someone else to the players' benefits." The twist and betrayal was the fact that Imdarr Relvaunder, who was a benign Guinacoia (priest of Lithor, the Angel of Earth) was actually the mysterious necromancer, and that he had sent the party on a quest for an undead that he had hoped would help him have his vengeance upon the party. This NPC was even one that two of the players had gotten to know over the course of a few months.

$25 was donated to give the Dungeon Master a reroll. I wanted to use it to help some of the villains escape, but they all made it away alive without needing to resort to any rerolls, so I never got to benefit from this donation.

$25 was donated "for having one of the bad guys (or an innkeeper) say "I see you are busy reducing the worlds idiot/retard population to just yourselves."" It was mainly the villains who said this to the players, who threw it back in their faces by pointing out that the villains were calling their followers and guards for retards.

 

$25 was donated “For the very cheap healer!". This healer was supposed to be a representation of the American healthcare system. When the players were fighting the fire elemental at the Scarlet Moon Hall, they required healing. I sent in a cleric that came to their rescue and started healing them. I pointed out that she was a representation of the American healthcare system, and they immediately started to talk about cost. True enough, the NPC was supposed to bill the party afterwards. I live in a country where we didn't have to think about the hospital bills when our son died. This is why we started supporting Extra-Life, to help out families in the US with potential financial issues of having children at the hospital. This NPC showed that everyone knows how the US operates when it comes to healthcare, and also shows that it should be changed.

$50 was donated "for adding more dwarf specific". As I've mentioned, we changed the Tomb of the Moving Stones into a dwarven tomb and two of the dragonborn prisoners into dwarves to accomodate this donation.

Part of the $90 giveaway (the wooden snake sculpture by Dreamstone) required me to give the party a break at some point during the game. At the Scarlet Moon Hall they drew a lot of attention to themselves when they drew the attention of the hell hounds. This should have drawn the rest of the druids into the fight, and fighting should have erupted all across the hill. I decided to give the party a break and keep the fighting only to the small area where the players were.

$150 was donated to add a special red dragon called Verthicha. I decided that Verthicha would be Drake's, the Angel of Air (and a red dragon), avatar and consort. She came up from Hell after the party defeated the fire elemental, and the money was also donated to show how powerful Verthicha actually is. In the end, she simply breathed fire on the party dealing 90 points of damage to most of them in a single attack.

For every $192 (which is 1,337 DKK) that was gathered, the party gained an "extra-life". In the end they had 4 resurrections, which Drake used to bring back the four players that Verthicha had slain.

The first threshold of $400 meant that the players got to experience elemental weather. They experienced everything from earthquakes (which opened up the Tomb of Moving Stones) to tornadoes, forest fires, and torrents of rain and floods.

The second threshold of $800 meant that the players got to fight an encounter against an elemental. I therefore summoned a water elemental at the Dellmon Ranch for the party to fight.

 

Future Plans 

This was the second year we ran Extra-Life. We gathered more money than last year, but the experience wasn't as rewarding as the first time we did it. I think the first time we ran our Extra-Life game, it was a unique 24 hour live streaming experience, but now it has already become a chore. Gathering sponsors and advertising for the event was something I did this year to change it a bit, but in the end I believe that the work that was put into the event didn't live up to the reward. There just isn't the same incentive for Extra-Life in Denmark as there is in the US. I will therefore definitely not gather sponsors and giveaways next year. I doubt that we'll even run Extra-Life next year.

We will definitely run some kind of unique roleplaying event, but I believe that we will attempt to run a LAN/roleplaying event instead that will advertise for our local community. We're taking this one step at a time so we'll see how it progresses.

The next two projects we have running is our gamemasters game that begins in December, and my own 3.5 adventure that begins in spring/summer of 2016.

I'm not sure what I'll write about next week. I have just run a 24 game, I'm very ill, and I haven't gotten much sleep. I will therefore surprise you. If you have any stories or ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.