The best stories are the ones that go where we least expect them, but still come to a satisfying conclusion. With that in mind, I asked my friends to share their favourite campaign moments of the past year…and it turns out that I wasn’t the only one who found my top picks to be the most memorable moments of the year.

Kevin (who plays Ruskel in Mourners of Lhazaar) joined the table in August 2021.  He might be the new kid on the block, but he’s already made his mark on the story, and his favourite moments include the use of the Ace! adventure card (an automatic success with a raise on any trait “roll”) to impersonate a vengeful priest of His Watery Deepness The Devourer, and leading the charge into the sea during a daring rescue that was going perfectly fine…until Rus decided to take matters into his own hands, dive off a spar, and suffer a critical failure all at the same time (and acting on a joker, no less).  That set off a cascading series of events that led to the entire party except Trucco following him into the water, and it was the kind of glorious madness that can only occur when players are willing to build off of each others decisions, roll with them, and support the story they are telling together.  

A little white lie takes on a life of its own as Rus puts the fear of the Devourer into Cutthroat Grok

The GM is as much a part of the story as any of the players, and one of Phillip’s favourite things about running our table is the ways in which we surprise him as much as we surprise ourselves. His most memorable moments from Seekers of the Ashen Crown mirror my own, and they both involve trouble caused by my character, Jak. After the turning point in that story where everything went wrong, Jak found his major hindrance — “Shamed” — come home to roost when his attempt to warn a fellow Dark Lantern about the treachery of one of their own resulted in himself being framed and arrested for the murder and treason his new archnemesis had committed right under the party’s nose. Now, there is a general GM wisdom to never, ever arrest your PCs. It often ends in players either upset at being stripped of their agency, or going on a town guard killing spree, causing collateral damage, and any sort of other really bad situation. However, two things occurred here: first, Phillip firmly believes that major hindrances should make an appearance in the story at some point, and this wound up being the perfect opportunity for Jak’s. Second, Phillip later revealed that he fully expected me to resist arrest, and Aruget was leading the charge on that (literally) until he agreed to Jak’s pleas to stand down and not make matters worse so that…Jak could submit to the arrest peacefully. Initially, Jak was convinced that he would be able to prove his innocence as long as he went quietly, but he was young, and he was frightened. Turning to look up at one of the orc guards towering over him, he met her eyes and in a small, desperate voice pleaded “you believe me…right? Please, you have to believe me!” And then I played my adventure card:

The table exploded with laugher. I’d never provoked a reaction like that from them before, and I haven’t provoked one like it since. But in that moment, in the last minutes of the session, with everything hitting the fan, I thought to myself “well, Jak’s a spy, surely he’s taken advantage of lovers as assets before, and what do I have to lose?” The guard, Korbus, did indeed end up being Jak’s ticket out of jail, but not before every last one of his Hindrances coagulated into a soup of self-loathing and despair that forced Aruget to knock him out cold and drag him to freedom.  Korbus quickly became not just a fan favourite, but a table favourite.  To this day they tease me about “breaking Korbus’ heart” every chance they get. In fact, if I say that they teased me about it just last week, no matter when you read this post that will probably be true.

Phillip’s other most notable moment of that campaign, and my no.1, actually came about as a direct result of Jak’s arrest and subsequent escape. During the session that Jak was in jail, Aruget found himself in desperate need of succeeding on some Perusasion checks — but he was completely out of bennies. Out of character, Ernesto began to hesitate, and polled the table for our opinion. He was sitting on the Betrayed! adventure card, which does exactly what it says on the tin: a trusted ally or friend turns against the party. The carrot offered with that stick? Three new bennies, right there on the spot. I was actually (albeit in a slightly stressed-out way) kind of enjoying running with the extraordinary mess we were in, so I just laughed and said, who is possibly left at this point to betray us besides Korbus? Play the card. Do it. Let’s see where the chips fall. Things can’t get any worse. Well, you don’t go around issuing that kind of challenge to your GM without expecting something juicy in return. Phillip is very happy to let stories burn low and slow until the time is right to boil, and this one simmered in the background for six weeks after that card was played.

The party clandestinely returned to Sharn in the hopes of ending things and clearing their names, and Jak had sent a message ahead asking his best friend and fellow Dark Lantern to meet him privately. He wanted to tell his side of the story, and he wanted Thom’s help. Jak had done Thom wrong in the past, in fact, he’d nearly taken Thom down with him when he was kicked out of the Lanterns. But they’d since reunited, Thom had forgiven him, and they were brothers once more…right? Well, they met at the appointed place and time, Jak spilled his guts, and as Thom repeatedly apologized for not knowing what to believe, the traitor appeared at the door, taunting Jak with his trademark arrogant sneer. Thom had given him up. The real traitor was very well-regarded within the Dark Lanterns, Jak was on the outs and not considered trustworthy even before this new accusation (again playing off his major Shamed hindrance), and while Thom didn’t necessarily want to believe that his friend would commit murder and treason, Jak had lied to Thom for the better part of a year…and if he was willing to do that, and go too far in other ways, well, Thom genuinely didn’t know who to believe. He believed that he was doing the best he could with the information he had. That betrayal not stemming from a cliched place of malice or hatred was an absolute tour de force of storytelling that twisted the knife that much deeper…but an adventure card saved the day again! Kayde, who’d come into the tavern with Jak to keep an eye out, pulled back his hood, jumped up on a table, and forced the traitor to monologue about all his dastardly plans right in front of Thom as the rest of the patrons rose to their feet and attacked us on his command. That fight was the most extraordinary, most fun chaos I’ve ever partaken in as far as TTRPG combat goes. Before it was over, there were twenty-three characters crammed into one very average-sized tavern, not counting the bottleneck of corpses that quickly overtook the front door. It was spectacular. And the story that got us there? That’s one I won’t forget.

There were so many other great moments this year, far too many to recount in detail here. From the time we schemed for about 45 minutes of real time in order to end up throwing every last plan out the window in favour of an impulsive hare-brained scheme Kayde actually managed to pull off to the assassination attempt on an airship immediately dubbed “our most Eberron session ever!” to more recent events involving an unplanned sacrifice to the Devourer, the guys rallying around Daina during a session I wasn’t even able to attend, and a small incident in the bilge, the stories keep flowing and, with them, the memories. It’s always been my opinion that the best stories we can tell are the ones shared with the people we love, and as we keep the story going in 2022 — as the guys have heard me say on more than one occasion — I’m here for it.

Do you have a favourite moment from Seekers of the Ashen Crown or Mourners of Lhazaar this year? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter!

The second [dream], it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.

And then I woke up.

– Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men

Friends, readers, listeners — I don’t think you need me to tell you about all the struggles 2021 brought.  You had them, I had them, and we all know what the score is.

But, like in Ed Bell’s dream, there’s always a fire at the end of the dark, cold road.  And this year, my friends and I lit a fire.

The spark started in early April when Kristian Serrano, who at the time was working for Pinnacle Entertainment Group (aka PEG, the company that makes Savage Worlds), revealed himself to be lurking my posts on the Eberron Discord and approached me about the idea of consolidating my game tales and mechanics talk into a blog.  It would be organized, accessible, able to reach a wider audience, and hopefully help cross-pollinate the Savage Worlds community with the Eberron community and bring together more people to enjoy these two things that Kristian and my table and I love so much.  I was skeptical at first, but eventually agreed that there was no harm in trying, and Tales from Savage Eberron was born.

It surpassed my wildest expectations.  From the beginning, it saw a steady influx of readers — far more than the handful of people I thought to be reading my content on Discord.  Now, not only did I have a platform to indulge in the writing and storytelling I’ve always enjoyed so much, but it seemed to be one that others enjoyed sharing in as well.  And that’s always been my favourite thing about creating — sharing it with others.  We concluded our first campaign together in early August of 2021, and by that point preparations for Mourners of Lhazaar were well underway, but planning a new campaign wasn’t the only thing we had to discuss.  Phillip had floated the idea of turning our adventures into an actual play show months earlier, but there were some logistical issues that prevented it at the time, and the idea was shelved.  As we wrapped up Seekers of the Ashen Crown and moved on to planning Mourners of Lhazaar, he broached the subject again.  We talked about it, we were all interested and willing, and with the exact same attitude I’d brought to the blog, we came to the consensus of “where’s the harm in trying?”  With even more help from Kristian, as well as Rebecca from Eberron: A Chronicle Echoes guiding us through the technical logistics of producing a podcast, the details were hammered out, the site was rebranded to Savage Tales of Eberron, we put two episodes in the can, and we waited to see what would happen.

We didn’t have to wait long.  The show was well-received from the get-go — again, wildly surpassing my expectations.  Michael (who played Ivello in Seekers and now plays Torlan in Mourners) volunteered to lend his expertise at handling all the audio editing and has knocked it out of the park every single week finding appropriate music, trimming dead air, adjusting the levels, and making us sound really good.  I learned how to navigate Twitter (if you see a tweet from @SavageEberron, you can safely assume that I’m the one who wrote it), Phillip decided to dip his toes into writing GM-facing mechanics articles for the site to compliment my player-facing ones, and together, we make an incredible team.  Ernesto’s portrayal of Trucco the cocky rogue has quickly become a fan favourite among our listeners, and Kevin?  He might be the “new guy,” but he came to the table as a known quantity — as a dear friend — and he slid so easily into both the camaraderie and the campaign that it’s easy to forget that he hasn’t been with us from day one.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: being at this table feels like I won the lottery, and the prize was four brothers (five counting Daniel who portrayed Kayde in Seekers of the Ashen Crown and has since moved on, but we continue to be in touch).  The amazing story we have built and continue to build together at the table pales in comparison to the story of…look, I’m just going to come right out and say it.  The real story is the friends we made along the way.

Me and the New Guy at PAX Unplugged 2021

We’ve also made a few friends outside of this little ragtag crew.  Kristian Serrano, mentioned above, isn’t just some guy who badgered me into starting a blog — that proposal kicked off a journey that’s blossomed into a friendship, and he has not just been a mentor and cheerleader but has freely loaned his voice to provide what in my completely unbiased opinion the most epic intro of any AP show on the air.  Through that connection, I began a correspondence with PEG COO Jodi Black. She has also been incredibly supportive of our little project, and it was a delight to be able to speak with her face-to-face at PAX Unplugged in mid-December (and for the record, she gives the best hugs). 

Kevin, Elly, and PEG COO Jodi Black on the convention floor at PAX Unplugged

Through the Eberron Discord, I’ve forged bonds with other content creators like Jarrod Taylor, Joseph Meehan, and the previously mentioned House Sivis Echoers, and Kevin and I (along with Jarrod, Joseph, and the Echoers) have had the pleasure of corresponding, playing with, and even enjoying a slice of pizza with Eberron setting creator Keith Baker — who is not just an amazing worldbuilder and storyteller, but an absolute delight of a person.  And the list of community members who are not “content creators” or “worldbuilders” but just plain old good, dear, amazing people and friends is too long to list here.  We have been welcomed into this community with open arms, and I’m incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support and friendship that’s come with it.

Clockwise from left: Stephen and Rebecca (House Sivis Echoers), Keith Baker, Jarrod Taylor, Joseph Meehan, Kevin, Elly, Sierra, Emma, and Andres enjoying a slice

I also enjoyed a personal tabletop milestone this December. Being invited to run a game of Savage Worlds as part of a corporate event at BioWare Edmonton wound up being the catalyst to finally get off my butt and try my hand at running Savage Worlds like I’d been talking about for the past five months while doing exactly nothing about it. Though I was previously experienced at running D&D 5e, I felt a bit nervous about GMing this system for the very first time as an event guest, but my friends were happy to serve as guinea pigs. What I learned from the experience is that Savage Worlds is an extremely friendly system for new GMs, and by all accounts, my players had a blast. Handing out chocolate loonies and toonies as bennies might have also helped earn their favour. 😉

We set up shop in the bar of the Sheraton, and didn’t leave until well after last call. You wouldn’t either if you were having that much fun.

So to all of you who continue to read, listen, and support, to all our friends old and new — all of us at Savage Tales of Eberron wish you a New Year filled with light, hope, and a wealth of new stories to share with those you hold dear.  See you on the other side.

Savage Tales of Eberron is a labour of love which Elly has been writing since April 2021. Originally created as a place to house her session recaps and mechanics talk, it’s now expanding to include an actual-play podcast of our tables continued adventures in Eberron using the Savage Worlds system. There’s a good deal of content to sift through already, so let’s get you started!

Campaign 1: Seekers of the Ashen Crown (text recaps only)

This epic, 45-week journey took the party from Sharn to Droaam and back again. It’s a story of hair-raising battles, hidden motives, friendship and treachery, and the fluid nature of honour. Click here to get started.

Campaign 2: Mourners of Lhazaar (text recaps)

Join us on the high seas of the Lhazaar Principalities! New narrative recaps every week, featuring behind-the-scenes looks at each session that you won’t get anywhere else. You can find those in the Session Recaps menu, or click here to get started.

Savage Tales of Eberron: An Actual Play Podcast

Mourners of Lhazaar will be the first campaign featured on our podcast! Those episodes will be available to stream or download via the Podcast menu, as well as on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Podbean. Click here to get started.

Table Talk: Playing Savage Worlds

This category features dedicated mechanics articles that take a deeper dive into core aspects of Savage Worlds, such as hindrances, bennies, and cinematic combat.

Follow us on Twitter @SavageEberron!

While the Savage Eberron community is still a small one, it continues to slowly but surely grow. Since 2019, gamemaster Dylan Ramsey and the Pizza Party have been doing their part with an epic, evolving story that’s taken them all across Khorvaire and beyond, with Savage Worlds Adventure Edition helping them get there. Dylan is an accomplished GM, skilled storyteller, incredibly talented artist, and this past year he has twice lent his voice and acting chops to portray plain, simple tailor Deven Sar’kaas in the collaborative campaign hosted by Eberron creator Keith Baker for his Patreon supporters. I had a chat with Dylan about our mutual love of Savage Worlds, the adventures of the Pizza Party, and a slightly distressing coincidence of sorts involving an eel. Enjoy!

Dylan, which came first in your life, Eberron or Savage Worlds (and how did you get from one to the other)?

DR: Oh, Eberron, for sure! I’ve been an Eberron fan since I was in elementary school and remember carrying around that original campaign book just about everywhere. Granted, I never PLAYED a game in Eberron until after I discovered Savage Worlds (via the actual plays of Saving Throw Show). After my group finished up our last campaign in 2019, I was glad they decided to give a new system and a new world a shot with me for Towering Tales.

Excellent. It hooked you in pretty quick, then! So, why do you love Savage Worlds as a vehicle for Eberron so much?

DR: The mechanics really do it for me on a lot of levels. Edges and hindrances help get across that pulp-noir feel of Eberron (no hero is perfect), and are just a great foundation to build characters off of in general. You can really mix and match them and make just about any character you can imagine – and there are A LOT of characters you can imagine in a setting like Eberron. Bennies and exploding dice are also some of my favorite game mechanics ever. I love being able to reward players in a meaningful way and for the dice to be able to REALLY tell a story when they decide to keep on acing (or critically fail)!

You have been running and chronicling a Savage Eberron campaign called Towering Tales for over a year now. How would you describe Towering Tales in five sentences or less?

DR: Oh gosh, over TWO years at this point–where did the time go?! Towering Tales is an odyssey of love, war, and hijinks, all tying back to a conspiracy of nightmare spirits pulling the strings of the waking world to try and save their own from utter annihilation. Over the course of the campaign, the Pizza Party have encountered everything from pint-sized velociraptor luchadors and flumph-based vigilantes, to dancing leprechaun slavedrivers and a warforged detective who goes off on monologues at the drop of a hat. I love blending drama and silliness to really get players invested in the world, and it’s definitely worked out! So if that sounds like your cup of tal, get ready to laugh, cry, and lie awake at night wondering how in the world my players get away with some of these ideas.

What’s the hands-down best thing that’s ever happened in Towering Tales? I guess if you have to you can pick more than one moment. But it’s okay to say you have a favourite. I won’t tell your players, I swear.

DR: Dramatic: picture a runaway lightning rail emerging from the dead-gray mist of the Mournland. A warforged boxer named Crown is locked in combat with warforged fanatics atop the speeding car, electricity arcing all around them; while inside, Waxillium d’Cannith (whiskey-loving lawman and team dad) tries to defuse bombs rigged to explode when the train hits Vathirond station! I ask Wax’s player to make a Vigor roll. CRITICAL FAILURE! I read verbatim from the book: Wax WILL die by session’s end. His friend, the drow fashion designer Lana, swoops in to try and help him as he begins bleeding profusely from the toxin the Lord of Blades injected him with, but he asks her to give his final regards to their friends and pushes her off the train. Wax takes one last swig of whiskey and tells his dead wife that they’ll be together again soon as he derails the train at the last possible second and saves the city. A sobbing Lana is silhouetted against the explosion, vowing never to let this happen again.

Silly: probably that time they yanked an eel out of an undead fishman’s butt and then shoved a staff up there, which they promptly used to summon a couatl INSIDE the dude, causing the necromancer to explode in a burst of radiant energy! I guess you could say they rekt ‘im.

Okay, first of all, I’m just gonna point out that my very first TTRPG was Jason Statham’s Big Vacation, and one of the random complications you can roll for a scene is eels. So while I am kind of grossed out by this story, I also feel a strange connection to it. Anyways, last question: where can people find the full and continuing adventures of the Pizza Party? Shamelessly advertise yourself, my friend. I’m here for it.

DR: A scene with eels is such an oddly specific complication… But hey, here’s a handy-dandy link to the main session directory. That page includes links to every session recap, as well as to the player character pages, which list their edges, hindrances, advances, etc. We play pretty much every Friday, and I usually have new recaps done by Monday. I foresee things getting even more insane as we speed on towards session 100 and the fate that awaits the Pizza Party at the end of this road, so stay tuned. Whether you pick things up at session 1, 21, 65, or anywhere in between, I hope you all enjoy reading about whatever happens NEXT TIME ON TOWERING TALES!

That’s all for now, folks! Keep your eyes on this space later this week for more pre-campaign planning…and a very exciting announcement.

Though our plans for the next Session 0 continue to be foiled by Hurricane Ida, new Eberron content is always on the menu! I recently sat down with Rebecca and Steve, the creators and hosts of a wonderful podcast called Eberron: A Chronicle of Echoes and we took a deep dive into Steve’s weird relationship with pizza, the Jason Statham cinematic universe, and, of course, Savage Worlds.

Eberron: A Chronicle of Echoes began a little over a year ago as a response to the question “what if talk radio existed in Eberron?” In character as a pair of House Sivis gnomes named Sylas and Alufi, hosts Rebecca and Steve present and explore Eberron lore – with a few twists of their own – and more often than not with special guests from the Eberron community lending their own voices, insights, and good times. It’s a fantastic project that’s built on collaboration and community, and if I keep saying nice things about it, they might ask me back one day. 😉

Check out the full interview here! You can also find Eberron: A Chronicle of Echoes on Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple podcasts.

Hey there! I’m Elly. Or, as some of you may know me in other spaces, TheLostSkeleton.

My love for all things tabletop began in July of 2018, when I found myself playing an impromptu game of Grant Howitt’s Jason Statham’s Big Vacation…and next thing I knew, I had a D&D character sheet in front of me, and my adventure began.

Fast forward to August 2020. I was browsing Discord when I saw an LFG post for something called “Savage Worlds”, and in my favourite setting: Eberron. Something in me clicked; that little voice in my head wouldn’t shut up until I messaged the DM, and Savage Worlds quickly became my favourite system for Eberron adventures. I fell into the role of my party’s unofficial official chronicler, and after posting tales of our adventures on Discord for several months, I was encouraged to branch out and spread the word. So sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy hearing about our adventures as much as I enjoy being a part of them.