This post is a bit tongue in cheek, as I realize it doesn't matter, but it's something that came up when I was running my Under the Hillfort Ruins game a couple weeks back (and I'm just getting to blog about it now).
In my game the other night, Jeremy was looking for a character he had already rolled up to play, and grabbed one he had used in Justin's Vaults of Ur game. Dean also had used a character he has used a few times before in different game systems, most memorably to me in Justin's "Panoply Sector" Stars Without Number game. The thing is, in other games both of these PCs had died.
Now, don't get me wrong. I was running a play test. I didn't really care where the PCs had been used before, or if they were "still alive" or not. For a play test, it just isn't an issue. But during the course of play, Jeremy mentioned that his fighter, Danyael, should level up because he already had 1000xp from Ur. I reminded him that Danyael had died in Ur (partially my fault, Thidrek ran away rather than risking paralyzation at the hands of ghouls after Danyael and another PC had gone down). So does the character still get to keep its XP for use in other games after death in one campaign?
It made me think about the whole FLAILSNAILS conventions a bit. I'd considered in the past the fact that anyone could show up to a game with a character at level X, with magic items A, B and C, and who's to know if that PC actually earned that or not? Of course, the FLAILSNAILS Conventions give the DM power to nerf anything egregious in any way they wish (all ability scores are 18 and you have a Staff of Wizardry at level 2? Well, you're suffering from a curse in this realm, and you find the staff is nonfunctional at the moment).
Now, I'm not arguing that there should be a FLAILSNAILS police or anything, but shouldn't what happens to a character actually matter? Even if it's just taking your favorite character to another game as a one-shot, if good things happen you wouldn't ret-con them into not happening. Why should we ignore the bad just because we can? Is that cheating to just pretend your character didn't die, or didn't lose their best magic sword to a rust monster, or whatever?
Is this cheating? Should it be discouraged?
Or is it a case of "What happens in Greyhawk stays in Greyhawk"?
Showing posts with label Constant Con. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constant Con. Show all posts
Monday, October 26, 2015
Sunday, January 4, 2015
A Tale of Trees
Last night, I participated in my first gaming session of 2015, and the first game I'd gotten to play at all in a while. This was Dean's 4E Eberron Game, which is a weird, fractured fairy tale Eberron, using 4E rules but without a grid.
I reprized my character from...what, a year or two ago?...Ryuden Kenjumon, a Githzerai Swordmage whose Astral Monastery has materialized in Eberron. One nice thing about 4E, it really allows you several options for wuxia style characters. The Swordmage is a Fighter-type class (Defender) with the ability to spontaneously enchant their sword with elemental magic effects.
Jeremy was playing an Orc...surprise! He was using the 4E Essentials Fighter/Slayer build to be more of an "orcish assassin" with a huge honking blade. If you know Jeremy's art work from his Omegapointilist Studios, you'll know what sort of vibe he likes. Big muscles, bigger weapons. [And I like to tease Jeremy on this. I'm actually cool with him playing the big muscle-bound dude with big weapon almost all the time.]
The other two players have been playing in Dean's game a long time, but it was the first time I'd played with them. Brad plays Rhea the (Human?) Witch. Not sure which actual class he plays, but she's ancient and feisty and swears like a sailor. Jason plays Jade the Half-Elf Ranger.
Our adventure had us on the road to the Tower of Prophecy, but there was this huge, semi-unnatural tree along the path. The tree had leaves with arcane symbolism on it, and after much debate and experimentation, we finally climbed the tree (well, Jade and Ryuden did) and we saw an enormous bear heading toward another tree in the distance. We collected some leaves and acorns and headed on our way.
That next tree was all sparkly and "fae." It had a sickeningly sweet odor to all but Jade, who thought it was excellent. This was an oversized apple tree with glowing rainbow colors and firefly-like sparks in the air around it. We gathered some fruit from it and continued on after a brief debate about whether to camp under that tree or not (we decided not, obviously).
The third tree was a strange, dead thing with screaming faces in the trunk. Surrounding it were ghosts, including that of Ralex the haughty NPC Fighter from our Vaults of Ur game and one of Thidrek's chickens. Rhea's ghost also appeared, as did a drow that attacked the Orc (trying to remember his name, Azog or Atrog, or something like that). The attack froze him in ice, but a timely assist from my Swordmage and a critical hit ended the ghostly threat. We gathered a branch and set out to the next tree.
This one was a hellish, burning thing. And it was inhabited by demonic birds. There was a crane-like ground runner, a gorilla-owl, a flying squirrel-turtle, two baboon-sparrows, and two monkey-birds. This was the big set-piece combat encounter for the night, and true to form for 4E, even without the grid the combat took a long time.
In fact, it took so long that Jason had to log off (we play on G+ Hangouts) after only one round, so Dean decreed that his PC ran off, horrified by the tree, and one monkey bird thing followed him. That left three of us versus the remaining six bird-demons, and it was a tough fight. We were all low on HP at the end, with Ashrog having dropped and recovered due to a 20 on the saving throw. We put our various powers to good use, though, with Rhea "controlling" the enemies, Atorg "striking" for big damage, and Ryuden "defending" with his good AC and high hit points.
The Prophecy in the game involves the "Seven Realms" and these trees were obviously representative of the first four, Eberron, Faewild, Shadowfell, Underworld. So we've got trees for the Dreamlands, Far Realm, and Celestial Realm coming up before reaching the Tower. While I don't like how slow 4E combat can be, I think I'm going to try and make it for the next session just because I dig Dean's quirky take on Eberron.
I reprized my character from...what, a year or two ago?...Ryuden Kenjumon, a Githzerai Swordmage whose Astral Monastery has materialized in Eberron. One nice thing about 4E, it really allows you several options for wuxia style characters. The Swordmage is a Fighter-type class (Defender) with the ability to spontaneously enchant their sword with elemental magic effects.
Jeremy was playing an Orc...surprise! He was using the 4E Essentials Fighter/Slayer build to be more of an "orcish assassin" with a huge honking blade. If you know Jeremy's art work from his Omegapointilist Studios, you'll know what sort of vibe he likes. Big muscles, bigger weapons. [And I like to tease Jeremy on this. I'm actually cool with him playing the big muscle-bound dude with big weapon almost all the time.]
The other two players have been playing in Dean's game a long time, but it was the first time I'd played with them. Brad plays Rhea the (Human?) Witch. Not sure which actual class he plays, but she's ancient and feisty and swears like a sailor. Jason plays Jade the Half-Elf Ranger.
Our adventure had us on the road to the Tower of Prophecy, but there was this huge, semi-unnatural tree along the path. The tree had leaves with arcane symbolism on it, and after much debate and experimentation, we finally climbed the tree (well, Jade and Ryuden did) and we saw an enormous bear heading toward another tree in the distance. We collected some leaves and acorns and headed on our way.
That next tree was all sparkly and "fae." It had a sickeningly sweet odor to all but Jade, who thought it was excellent. This was an oversized apple tree with glowing rainbow colors and firefly-like sparks in the air around it. We gathered some fruit from it and continued on after a brief debate about whether to camp under that tree or not (we decided not, obviously).
The third tree was a strange, dead thing with screaming faces in the trunk. Surrounding it were ghosts, including that of Ralex the haughty NPC Fighter from our Vaults of Ur game and one of Thidrek's chickens. Rhea's ghost also appeared, as did a drow that attacked the Orc (trying to remember his name, Azog or Atrog, or something like that). The attack froze him in ice, but a timely assist from my Swordmage and a critical hit ended the ghostly threat. We gathered a branch and set out to the next tree.
This one was a hellish, burning thing. And it was inhabited by demonic birds. There was a crane-like ground runner, a gorilla-owl, a flying squirrel-turtle, two baboon-sparrows, and two monkey-birds. This was the big set-piece combat encounter for the night, and true to form for 4E, even without the grid the combat took a long time.
In fact, it took so long that Jason had to log off (we play on G+ Hangouts) after only one round, so Dean decreed that his PC ran off, horrified by the tree, and one monkey bird thing followed him. That left three of us versus the remaining six bird-demons, and it was a tough fight. We were all low on HP at the end, with Ashrog having dropped and recovered due to a 20 on the saving throw. We put our various powers to good use, though, with Rhea "controlling" the enemies, Atorg "striking" for big damage, and Ryuden "defending" with his good AC and high hit points.
The Prophecy in the game involves the "Seven Realms" and these trees were obviously representative of the first four, Eberron, Faewild, Shadowfell, Underworld. So we've got trees for the Dreamlands, Far Realm, and Celestial Realm coming up before reaching the Tower. While I don't like how slow 4E combat can be, I think I'm going to try and make it for the next session just because I dig Dean's quirky take on Eberron.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Sailing the Seas of Weird
Got to play! Yes, that's right, after a four month break for fatherhood duties, I finally managed to work in a session of D&D last Saturday! It felt a bit rocky at first, partly because Jeremy (who was the DM) was starting us in a new game world and partly because I'm feeling a bit rusty and was sometimes distracted by my family duties (they didn't stop just because I was gaming, you know).
Anyway, Jeremy's pitched this idea a few times in the past, so I know he's got this idea fairly well developed (or at least he appears to). I played Uwynn Glynddwr, a Psychic (sort of a Cleric with combination MU and Cleric spells), while Dean played Friar Little Sparrow (a Specialist, sort of LotFP style, devoted to scholarship, music and herbalism) and Justin played Storm (also a Specialist, devoted to scouting and ranged combat).
We are agents working for Jarl Knute in a post-apocalyptic fantasy realm where the various islands have been separated by a sea that is now part Astral, and haunted by weird psychic threats and mutation-inducing agents. We piloted a bathysphere to an allied island that we'd lost contact with, and commenced an investigation/salvage operation. [Hey, they may be allied, but if they've been wiped out, Jarl Knute could use whatever's left over!]
The beginning of the session involved me making a lot of piloting rolls of which the purpose/consequences were murky [constructive criticism to Jeremy, as I'm pretty sure you'll read this: too many rolls. Encounter/mishap rolls may be best done behind the screen rather than forcing them on the players. I didn't feel "empowered" by all that rolling, nor did I get a sense that the outcomes of my roll had much to do with my character's ability to pilot the craft].
OK, complaint finished. When we reached the island, things went more smoothly. The place was deserted, and plants were dead and brittle to the touch. A purplish tint colored everything in the place. Not a purplish light, everything's color had shifted towards purple. And there were moving objects watching us from the orchards that surrounded the 'castle.'
The castle itself was a reclaimed apartment complex, and the Jarl of this place had a penthouse suite as his throne room. We had to penetrate the orchard, make our way into the complex by defeating a raised drawbridge/moat. Luckily, Dean's character, the Friar Little Sparrow, had an artifact digging hand that gave him burrowing speed. He used it to dig our way past the barely seen entities in the orchard. Then, either Justin or Dean (Justin I think) had the idea that I could try to reverse my Hold Portal spell to open the drawbridge (yes, on the fly conversion of a L1 spell to a related L2 spell). Jeremy had me roll an Int check, which I passed, and the drawbridge came down.
Now, Justin was worried that we'd be trapped inside. I was worried that the things outside would try to come in. So our next order of business was to deal with the drawbridge. Justin wanted to jam the works so no one could close it behind us. I suggested we raise it to about a 20 degree angle first, then jam it. That would give us about a 30' drop, roughly 5' away from the normal far end of the drawbridge when we wanted to leave. Enough to keep baddies out, but allow us to climb down easily enough.
Getting there was the tough part. There were two towers flanking the drawbridge (apartment towers, not medieval style castle towers, remember). As we went up the first, the way was blocked by a large fleshy thing. It turned out to be some sort of six-limbed mutant bear, which was too tough for us to fight. After engaging it and getting sorta beat up, we retreated and tried the other tower. In the second, we ran into a mutant wolf thing (beat it), and some undead children (the things that had been lurking in the orchard). Luckily, my starting "artifact" was a mace with advantage vs. undead. Little Sparrow and Uwynn both took a fair amount of damage, but we managed to defeat them. Also, I forgot that the wolf thing had some sort of funky biomechanical bracelet, which Uwynn took and is hoping will give him an corrosive breath attack like the wolf mutant had.
We were pretty beat up, and hadn't fond the drawbridge mechanism, but needed to rest. We found an apartment inhabited by an old withered woman, a survivor, and after Justin managed to successfully negotiate with her, we were able to use her apartment to rest and recouperate.
It was a fun session, and Jeremy definitely has a gift for creating interesting weird-punk settings. I'm looking forward to playing more of this, and hopefully getting my GamMarvel World game going soon as well.
Anyway, Jeremy's pitched this idea a few times in the past, so I know he's got this idea fairly well developed (or at least he appears to). I played Uwynn Glynddwr, a Psychic (sort of a Cleric with combination MU and Cleric spells), while Dean played Friar Little Sparrow (a Specialist, sort of LotFP style, devoted to scholarship, music and herbalism) and Justin played Storm (also a Specialist, devoted to scouting and ranged combat).
We are agents working for Jarl Knute in a post-apocalyptic fantasy realm where the various islands have been separated by a sea that is now part Astral, and haunted by weird psychic threats and mutation-inducing agents. We piloted a bathysphere to an allied island that we'd lost contact with, and commenced an investigation/salvage operation. [Hey, they may be allied, but if they've been wiped out, Jarl Knute could use whatever's left over!]
The beginning of the session involved me making a lot of piloting rolls of which the purpose/consequences were murky [constructive criticism to Jeremy, as I'm pretty sure you'll read this: too many rolls. Encounter/mishap rolls may be best done behind the screen rather than forcing them on the players. I didn't feel "empowered" by all that rolling, nor did I get a sense that the outcomes of my roll had much to do with my character's ability to pilot the craft].
OK, complaint finished. When we reached the island, things went more smoothly. The place was deserted, and plants were dead and brittle to the touch. A purplish tint colored everything in the place. Not a purplish light, everything's color had shifted towards purple. And there were moving objects watching us from the orchards that surrounded the 'castle.'
The castle itself was a reclaimed apartment complex, and the Jarl of this place had a penthouse suite as his throne room. We had to penetrate the orchard, make our way into the complex by defeating a raised drawbridge/moat. Luckily, Dean's character, the Friar Little Sparrow, had an artifact digging hand that gave him burrowing speed. He used it to dig our way past the barely seen entities in the orchard. Then, either Justin or Dean (Justin I think) had the idea that I could try to reverse my Hold Portal spell to open the drawbridge (yes, on the fly conversion of a L1 spell to a related L2 spell). Jeremy had me roll an Int check, which I passed, and the drawbridge came down.
Now, Justin was worried that we'd be trapped inside. I was worried that the things outside would try to come in. So our next order of business was to deal with the drawbridge. Justin wanted to jam the works so no one could close it behind us. I suggested we raise it to about a 20 degree angle first, then jam it. That would give us about a 30' drop, roughly 5' away from the normal far end of the drawbridge when we wanted to leave. Enough to keep baddies out, but allow us to climb down easily enough.
Getting there was the tough part. There were two towers flanking the drawbridge (apartment towers, not medieval style castle towers, remember). As we went up the first, the way was blocked by a large fleshy thing. It turned out to be some sort of six-limbed mutant bear, which was too tough for us to fight. After engaging it and getting sorta beat up, we retreated and tried the other tower. In the second, we ran into a mutant wolf thing (beat it), and some undead children (the things that had been lurking in the orchard). Luckily, my starting "artifact" was a mace with advantage vs. undead. Little Sparrow and Uwynn both took a fair amount of damage, but we managed to defeat them. Also, I forgot that the wolf thing had some sort of funky biomechanical bracelet, which Uwynn took and is hoping will give him an corrosive breath attack like the wolf mutant had.
We were pretty beat up, and hadn't fond the drawbridge mechanism, but needed to rest. We found an apartment inhabited by an old withered woman, a survivor, and after Justin managed to successfully negotiate with her, we were able to use her apartment to rest and recouperate.
It was a fun session, and Jeremy definitely has a gift for creating interesting weird-punk settings. I'm looking forward to playing more of this, and hopefully getting my GamMarvel World game going soon as well.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Outcasts of Ur
Justin ran another session of Vaults of Ur last Saturday, the last game of the year for me. Fitting that the play report of it then becomes my first post of 2014!
We had some new players joining us. Gord has been in our Facebook group for a long time now, but finally got around to playing with us, as ...crap, maybe I should have posted this earlier, I forgot his character's name, but he was a gecko-like Beastman.
Gino, who is new to Busan, also joined us, as a Tengu Thief named ...again I forget. Sorry, guys. Usually I write them down. I will for sure next time.
And while Dean couldn't make it (and Elder Karl's character sheet was lost in his computer crash), Alexei was there playing Maya the Elf (with more or less the same retinue from my megadungeon game the week before), Jeremy had Noctis the Orc with new sidekick Sadaauk the Orc (more of an assassin type than gladiator type), and I was playing both Thidrek the Sleestak and Thomas the Visionary.
I joined a bit late, with the party having been sent through one of the teleportation pools out of Fort Low into exile. We were in a large chamber that was apparently part of the old orcish civilization's underground city. We explored quite a bit, and had a battle with garbage. Living garbage. Or maybe it was a magical construct of some sort. Thidrek got pretty beat up by it, but managed to give it the killing blow in the end.
Every round in the combat, Justin had Thomas the Visionary up first on the roster, so he kept asking what Thomas was doing. The answer every round was - staying the heck back. Thomas has divination type spells, and lots of useful knowledge, but other than a shield spell, he has on combat prowess at all. :D
We didn't find any loot, so we continued our explorations. Thomas's Locate Object spell did cue us in that there was a large source of water across a chasm, so we made our way towards the bridge. Across it, Gino's thief scouted ahead and heard a large force. He was less than perfectly stealthy coming back, and the force sent some of their men our way. After a brief parlay in orcish done by Noctis, we made peaceful contact with a merchant and his savage, tattooed guards and mutant white ape pack beasts.
After discussing our options and trading the undead captain's helmet for information (with Thidrek using one of his ESP potions for insurance purposes), we decided we could trust this guy well enough, and plan to travel with him to the "City of the Veiled Ones" (apparently the freak masked orcs we fought just before getting framed for murder by the ogres).
Should be interesting, but Justin will be back in the States most of January, so it will be a while before our next adventure.
We had some new players joining us. Gord has been in our Facebook group for a long time now, but finally got around to playing with us, as ...crap, maybe I should have posted this earlier, I forgot his character's name, but he was a gecko-like Beastman.
Gino, who is new to Busan, also joined us, as a Tengu Thief named ...again I forget. Sorry, guys. Usually I write them down. I will for sure next time.
And while Dean couldn't make it (and Elder Karl's character sheet was lost in his computer crash), Alexei was there playing Maya the Elf (with more or less the same retinue from my megadungeon game the week before), Jeremy had Noctis the Orc with new sidekick Sadaauk the Orc (more of an assassin type than gladiator type), and I was playing both Thidrek the Sleestak and Thomas the Visionary.
I joined a bit late, with the party having been sent through one of the teleportation pools out of Fort Low into exile. We were in a large chamber that was apparently part of the old orcish civilization's underground city. We explored quite a bit, and had a battle with garbage. Living garbage. Or maybe it was a magical construct of some sort. Thidrek got pretty beat up by it, but managed to give it the killing blow in the end.
Every round in the combat, Justin had Thomas the Visionary up first on the roster, so he kept asking what Thomas was doing. The answer every round was - staying the heck back. Thomas has divination type spells, and lots of useful knowledge, but other than a shield spell, he has on combat prowess at all. :D
We didn't find any loot, so we continued our explorations. Thomas's Locate Object spell did cue us in that there was a large source of water across a chasm, so we made our way towards the bridge. Across it, Gino's thief scouted ahead and heard a large force. He was less than perfectly stealthy coming back, and the force sent some of their men our way. After a brief parlay in orcish done by Noctis, we made peaceful contact with a merchant and his savage, tattooed guards and mutant white ape pack beasts.
After discussing our options and trading the undead captain's helmet for information (with Thidrek using one of his ESP potions for insurance purposes), we decided we could trust this guy well enough, and plan to travel with him to the "City of the Veiled Ones" (apparently the freak masked orcs we fought just before getting framed for murder by the ogres).
Should be interesting, but Justin will be back in the States most of January, so it will be a while before our next adventure.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
We fail the quest
Last Saturday, we had yet another session of Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign. Has this been going on for nearly two years now? I'll have to check my records.
Anyway, last session we finished in the middle of Little Bear Carolly's trial by dream-quest in which we were all transformed into pole arm wielding bears. This time, Jeremy couldn't make it so it was just Dean as Carolly, Alexei as Maya who was also accused, and me as Thomas the Visionary who was just along for moral support (which is interesting in that he lacks many morals with which to support them...).
We had to recover the MacGuffin...I mean the broken pieces of the Franklin Mint collectible plate with dogs playing poker. We had one last session. Three to go. Then we could prove Elder Karl and Maya's innocence and expose the lies of the ogre partisans in Fort Low.
To get the remaining pieces, pixies who stole our weapons shrunk us down to 1' tall and sent us into a tree-stump dungeon. We explored a bit, rescued the pixie they wanted us to rescue, found out that the mage who created the dogs-playing-poker plate was supposedly buried under the stump, and went back in to fight more spiders.
Just as we got into an inescapable situation, I (who had been drinking a fair amount that evening so I wasn't on top of my game) realized that when we took the pixie back out, we should have just had ourselves returned to normal size and then we could have dug up the mage's bones without having to battle spiders. As Justin commented when I said this, it would have completely bypassed the dungeon.
As it was, we were trapped and poisoned by spiders and all of us died.
Upon awakening, Karl and Maya were pronounced guilty, sentenced with exile. Next session, all of our PCs, alternate PCs, and whatever NPC help we can scrounge up will be heading off through a portal into the wilderness on a continuing mission to find new life and new civilizations, kill them and take their stuff. That's a Prime Directive that Thidrek can get behind.
Anyway, last session we finished in the middle of Little Bear Carolly's trial by dream-quest in which we were all transformed into pole arm wielding bears. This time, Jeremy couldn't make it so it was just Dean as Carolly, Alexei as Maya who was also accused, and me as Thomas the Visionary who was just along for moral support (which is interesting in that he lacks many morals with which to support them...).
We had to recover the MacGuffin...I mean the broken pieces of the Franklin Mint collectible plate with dogs playing poker. We had one last session. Three to go. Then we could prove Elder Karl and Maya's innocence and expose the lies of the ogre partisans in Fort Low.
To get the remaining pieces, pixies who stole our weapons shrunk us down to 1' tall and sent us into a tree-stump dungeon. We explored a bit, rescued the pixie they wanted us to rescue, found out that the mage who created the dogs-playing-poker plate was supposedly buried under the stump, and went back in to fight more spiders.
Just as we got into an inescapable situation, I (who had been drinking a fair amount that evening so I wasn't on top of my game) realized that when we took the pixie back out, we should have just had ourselves returned to normal size and then we could have dug up the mage's bones without having to battle spiders. As Justin commented when I said this, it would have completely bypassed the dungeon.
As it was, we were trapped and poisoned by spiders and all of us died.
| "Guilty!" "Guilty!" "The vote must be unanimous, Jor-El." |
Upon awakening, Karl and Maya were pronounced guilty, sentenced with exile. Next session, all of our PCs, alternate PCs, and whatever NPC help we can scrounge up will be heading off through a portal into the wilderness on a continuing mission to find new life and new civilizations, kill them and take their stuff. That's a Prime Directive that Thidrek can get behind.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Ur-sine Adventures
After many many weeks (nearly many moons!), we finally got to play an adventure in Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.
We'd left off in September with the arrest and confinement of Venerable Carolus (now leveled up and called Little Bear Carolly) and Maya the Elf, for the wanton slaughter of the Homesteaders. Long story short, he was framed, man!
Well, the powers that be in Fort Low, being Lawful to a fault, don't allow humans to interfere with JUSTICE! They use random chance to decide court cases. And Carolly and Maya were sentenced to Trial by Anthropomorphic Spirit Journey. We all got to come along!
Of course Dean was playing Carolly and Alexei was playing Maya. Jeremy had Noctis the Orc, and since I'd said Thomas the Visionary (my backup 70's style pervy magic-user) was in Fort Low and willing to help out with Karl, I ran him instead of Thidrek.
After imbibing some potions, we entered the Dream Quest forest as Soldier Bears. We had to readjust stats, using a variant of Pendragon stats where Strength became Gentle/Savage, with a 3 being a bonus for Gentle but penalty for Savage and 18 vice versa, and all the other 5 ability scores split into dual system as well. As with the Hill Cantons monster stats, we each had 2d6+2 hit points (Swords and Wizardry). [Justin is trying it out for a possible future Arthurian game using this setup.]
We actually started out in a home under the name of Sanders. We grabbed pole arms (much discussion of Gygax's fascination with them, some posting of pictures followed), with Carolly taking a glaive-guisarme, Thomas taking a Bohemian ear spoon, Maya taking a bardiche, and Noctis taking IIRC a pole axe.
Wandering in the forests, we were attacked by swine-men, trapped and escaped an ogre's clutches, and then confronted by My Little Pony unicorns and told that in addition to the ogre's pendant we'd need four more tokens to beat the accusers (our former henchmen), escape and prove Karl's innocence.
We'd left off in September with the arrest and confinement of Venerable Carolus (now leveled up and called Little Bear Carolly) and Maya the Elf, for the wanton slaughter of the Homesteaders. Long story short, he was framed, man!
Well, the powers that be in Fort Low, being Lawful to a fault, don't allow humans to interfere with JUSTICE! They use random chance to decide court cases. And Carolly and Maya were sentenced to Trial by Anthropomorphic Spirit Journey. We all got to come along!
Of course Dean was playing Carolly and Alexei was playing Maya. Jeremy had Noctis the Orc, and since I'd said Thomas the Visionary (my backup 70's style pervy magic-user) was in Fort Low and willing to help out with Karl, I ran him instead of Thidrek.
After imbibing some potions, we entered the Dream Quest forest as Soldier Bears. We had to readjust stats, using a variant of Pendragon stats where Strength became Gentle/Savage, with a 3 being a bonus for Gentle but penalty for Savage and 18 vice versa, and all the other 5 ability scores split into dual system as well. As with the Hill Cantons monster stats, we each had 2d6+2 hit points (Swords and Wizardry). [Justin is trying it out for a possible future Arthurian game using this setup.]
We actually started out in a home under the name of Sanders. We grabbed pole arms (much discussion of Gygax's fascination with them, some posting of pictures followed), with Carolly taking a glaive-guisarme, Thomas taking a Bohemian ear spoon, Maya taking a bardiche, and Noctis taking IIRC a pole axe.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Catch Up
I'm way behind on my actual play updates. I'm not even sure if I can remember everything. Not sure how many people actually enjoy reading these, either, but I like keeping them here for posterity (and bonus XP).
In Justin's Stars Without Number game, Panoply Sector, we had a session quite a while ago now where we continued to explore the asteroid sky tomb where we had a TPK the first session. This time, we managed to clear it out of the bug aliens that lived there, only one PC died (although my warrior Tommy "Six" Gunn just barely managed to hold onto life long enough for a lazarus patch to be applied), and we managed to make a bit of money from the alien relics and gear salvaged from there. Looking forward to playing more in this game, and I've got a Psychic rolled up to join the fun and replace Gawain "Greasebox" Mifune, my Expert killed in the line of duty in the first session.
Also quite a while back, Jeremy ran a short playtest of one of his "kludge" systems, marrying Microlite20 with something called the Effect Engine. It was a fairly standard fantasy game, but I was able to really exploit the system for my mage, making it ridiculously easy for him to cast and resist spells, although he was totally ineffectual in physical combat. We explored a cave filled with bandits and their zombie slaves. I think this was supposed to tie into Jeremy's "The Siege Perilous" trans-gender... oops, I did it again, trans-genre game, but that has been switched to TriStat dX, at the d8 level. Dean and I are currently making characters, but I don't think anyone else has bothered. Not much interest in that game, I'm afraid.
I was hoping one of the players would do a write-up of my Chanbara playtest game the other week, but so far no luck. I just flat out granted a level up to the characters that participated, in order to better test the level spread/power curve of the system. They still have a lot of Ghost Castle Hasegawa left to explore. Maybe I'd better offer them minor magic items for pictures or write-ups. I'd love to have some of both.
And finally, last weekend Alexei ran a 2E game (no bells and whistles, pretty much PHB only), using the module The Halls of Tizun Thane. I dug out some old 2E PCs I'd made either in Evansville or in Toyama between games, just out of boredom. I had a Dwarf Fighter/Cleric and a Human Bard in a folder on my bookshelf, so they finally got to see action after 15 or so years wait. We explored a bit, got a pittance in loot, but hopefully we can convince Alexei to run it again, as I sure had fun with it.
In Justin's Stars Without Number game, Panoply Sector, we had a session quite a while ago now where we continued to explore the asteroid sky tomb where we had a TPK the first session. This time, we managed to clear it out of the bug aliens that lived there, only one PC died (although my warrior Tommy "Six" Gunn just barely managed to hold onto life long enough for a lazarus patch to be applied), and we managed to make a bit of money from the alien relics and gear salvaged from there. Looking forward to playing more in this game, and I've got a Psychic rolled up to join the fun and replace Gawain "Greasebox" Mifune, my Expert killed in the line of duty in the first session.
Also quite a while back, Jeremy ran a short playtest of one of his "kludge" systems, marrying Microlite20 with something called the Effect Engine. It was a fairly standard fantasy game, but I was able to really exploit the system for my mage, making it ridiculously easy for him to cast and resist spells, although he was totally ineffectual in physical combat. We explored a cave filled with bandits and their zombie slaves. I think this was supposed to tie into Jeremy's "The Siege Perilous" trans-gender... oops, I did it again, trans-genre game, but that has been switched to TriStat dX, at the d8 level. Dean and I are currently making characters, but I don't think anyone else has bothered. Not much interest in that game, I'm afraid.
I was hoping one of the players would do a write-up of my Chanbara playtest game the other week, but so far no luck. I just flat out granted a level up to the characters that participated, in order to better test the level spread/power curve of the system. They still have a lot of Ghost Castle Hasegawa left to explore. Maybe I'd better offer them minor magic items for pictures or write-ups. I'd love to have some of both.
And finally, last weekend Alexei ran a 2E game (no bells and whistles, pretty much PHB only), using the module The Halls of Tizun Thane. I dug out some old 2E PCs I'd made either in Evansville or in Toyama between games, just out of boredom. I had a Dwarf Fighter/Cleric and a Human Bard in a folder on my bookshelf, so they finally got to see action after 15 or so years wait. We explored a bit, got a pittance in loot, but hopefully we can convince Alexei to run it again, as I sure had fun with it.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Keebler's Journal - Yeffal's Great Dungeon
Last Wednesday I ran a session of my Megadungeon. Michael, I guy I know from the local board game group, joined the game as Keebler, and Elf of course. Dean was playing his converted 2E Elf Ranger Copperleafy, and Jeremy was playing Uriah the Mage. Along for the ride were all the NPCs they know of, plus a new one Uriah charmed after Felix the Cat and Frog the Toad were slain, Gomer Pyle. He didn't make it back either.
Although they never set foot inside the dungeon, they did find a new entrance to the lair of the Orcs of the Dripping Fang, while pursuing bounties on the leader and witch doctor of said orcish tribe. Michael wrote up a journal entry from Keebler's perspective.
Although they never set foot inside the dungeon, they did find a new entrance to the lair of the Orcs of the Dripping Fang, while pursuing bounties on the leader and witch doctor of said orcish tribe. Michael wrote up a journal entry from Keebler's perspective.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Out of the frying pan, into the George Foreman grill.
Our Ur adventures continued last night. We had left off last session with our characters retreating to the farmsteads set up in the ruins in order to rest and recharge before taking another stab at the cannibal orc warrens. But our old friends the ogre mercenaries were running the show there.
The players: DM Justin, Dean playing Venerable Carolus, Jeremy playing Noctis, Alexei playing Maya, and myself as Thidrek.
This session, we began bargaining with the ogres. They'd just pulled a "bring out the gimp/Deliverance" thing of some sort (off screen) on our NPCs Webberan and Chomondelay and set them free. Thidrek offered a truce, and offered to assault some enemy of theirs, figuring that nearly every faction in Ur is our enemy as well, and it might just give us a chance to slip back to Fort Low, hire mercenaries, and come back to wipe them out.
The ogres (by the way, if you didn't read the link above, Ur ogres are lycanthropic nightmare machines, appearing like normal humans one minute, grotesque mutant mostrosities the next) were wary of such schenanigans, and planned to send us back to Fort Low to basically lead an insurrection for them. Roll initiative time.
Karl's spell "repudiation of light" managed to soften up the opponents, but Haarkon the spider-centaur ogre leader escaped since we lost initiative. Wez the other leader type also managed to escape, but we took out several of their underlings and then fled. Escape was too easy.
We were pursued, however Karl used Speak with Animals to call the carnivorous apes (not that they're too fond of us either), who responded and attacked the ogre pursuers, giving us time to flee.
On the way back to Low, we were ambushed by a group of masked cannibal orcs - or so we thought. During the battle, we realized that they were humans, which is why they had Fort Low armor (Romanesque) rather than cannibal orc armor (Mad Max-esque). Luckily, Maya rolled a 1 on one roll, dropping her spear, and forcing her to use the nonlethal damaging Sky Hunter whip. Not often that you hear someone thinking a natural 1 is lucky, is it? Well, turns out that the leader of this band was Iago, brother of the Fort Low official who had gone missing. We ended up taking him and one other prisoner thanks to the whip.
A large body of troops from Fort Low was approaching as we finished the battle. We hid the bodies, and quickly looted them (a magic war hammer from Iago, two magic swords like Thidrek's, a scroll and a potion). Karl went out to talk to the troops, Maya joined him. Thidrek and Noctis skulked off into the ruins, Mattaki Shiptu, nerd orc magi NPC, following us. Our former hirelings Webberan and Chomondelay were with the army, and were raving about how we'd slaughtered all of the humans at the farmstead (the ogres were actually doing that as we escaped - clever plan by Haarkon).
Maya, Carolus, Iago and his companion were all taken into custody. Next session, Dean will have some use for all the "dealing with folks" skills Carolus has taken like Bureaucracy and Diplomacy and Religion. Noctis and Thidrek (and Mattaki) are hoping to slip past Low to the Hive, rally some allies, hopefully a Great Mind or two who can dispel magic, and expose the ogre treachery.
Should be a fun session! (Oh, and Noctis made 5th level last session, Karl made 7th level this session, and Thidrek made 6th level this session!)
The players: DM Justin, Dean playing Venerable Carolus, Jeremy playing Noctis, Alexei playing Maya, and myself as Thidrek.
This session, we began bargaining with the ogres. They'd just pulled a "bring out the gimp/Deliverance" thing of some sort (off screen) on our NPCs Webberan and Chomondelay and set them free. Thidrek offered a truce, and offered to assault some enemy of theirs, figuring that nearly every faction in Ur is our enemy as well, and it might just give us a chance to slip back to Fort Low, hire mercenaries, and come back to wipe them out.
The ogres (by the way, if you didn't read the link above, Ur ogres are lycanthropic nightmare machines, appearing like normal humans one minute, grotesque mutant mostrosities the next) were wary of such schenanigans, and planned to send us back to Fort Low to basically lead an insurrection for them. Roll initiative time.
Karl's spell "repudiation of light" managed to soften up the opponents, but Haarkon the spider-centaur ogre leader escaped since we lost initiative. Wez the other leader type also managed to escape, but we took out several of their underlings and then fled. Escape was too easy.
We were pursued, however Karl used Speak with Animals to call the carnivorous apes (not that they're too fond of us either), who responded and attacked the ogre pursuers, giving us time to flee.
On the way back to Low, we were ambushed by a group of masked cannibal orcs - or so we thought. During the battle, we realized that they were humans, which is why they had Fort Low armor (Romanesque) rather than cannibal orc armor (Mad Max-esque). Luckily, Maya rolled a 1 on one roll, dropping her spear, and forcing her to use the nonlethal damaging Sky Hunter whip. Not often that you hear someone thinking a natural 1 is lucky, is it? Well, turns out that the leader of this band was Iago, brother of the Fort Low official who had gone missing. We ended up taking him and one other prisoner thanks to the whip.
A large body of troops from Fort Low was approaching as we finished the battle. We hid the bodies, and quickly looted them (a magic war hammer from Iago, two magic swords like Thidrek's, a scroll and a potion). Karl went out to talk to the troops, Maya joined him. Thidrek and Noctis skulked off into the ruins, Mattaki Shiptu, nerd orc magi NPC, following us. Our former hirelings Webberan and Chomondelay were with the army, and were raving about how we'd slaughtered all of the humans at the farmstead (the ogres were actually doing that as we escaped - clever plan by Haarkon).
Maya, Carolus, Iago and his companion were all taken into custody. Next session, Dean will have some use for all the "dealing with folks" skills Carolus has taken like Bureaucracy and Diplomacy and Religion. Noctis and Thidrek (and Mattaki) are hoping to slip past Low to the Hive, rally some allies, hopefully a Great Mind or two who can dispel magic, and expose the ogre treachery.
Should be a fun session! (Oh, and Noctis made 5th level last session, Karl made 7th level this session, and Thidrek made 6th level this session!)
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Sleestak, your life force is running out!
Last Saturday, we again ventured forth in the ruins of Ur, City of the Ten Cataclysms.
Justin DMed a fun little game, which was fairly rough on us. Jeremy played Noctis the Orc, Alexei was Maya the Elf, Dean was Venerable Carolus, and I was Thidrek the Sleestak. We had (NPCs) a hired sellsword, Webberan, a tag-along nerdy Orc Magi Mattaki Shiptu, and fussy butlerish shield-bearer Ghomondelay with us as well.
Carolus, learning of ancient Urish technology that might be able to regrow his lost hand the way orcs are grown in vats, was interested in exploring the installation below the harpies' thorn maze. On the way, when we got to the statue of the vulture-headed death goddess, Karl decided we should "consecrate" it (vandalize, in other words). So we knocked it down, loaded it up on Thidrek's triceratopsian-cart, and trucked it back to Fort Low and set it up in the rich part of town. We ignored the locals' talk of "curses."
We also heard of a local official's brother and his party who had gone missing in the ruins. Altering our plans, we headed to a new homestead north-east of the thorn maze. They seemed friendly enough, although we did wonder how they kept themselves safe in the middle of the ruins. They gave us directions to the temple the brother had been exploring.
Under the temple were of course some tunnels, and in them, a new tribe of black masked orcs. They were none too fond of us, and after a skirmish, we chased them and ended up in a trapped area with lots of rooms with levers to pull and various things to happen. Thinking he had the puzzle figured out, Thidrek tried a lever that Webberan had pulled several times, with nothing but a few coins lodged in the ceiling dislodged. One failed saving throw later and the ceiling was caving in on him. Negative hit point time!
As the party came to Thidrek's aid, the orcs attacked en masse. It was a pretty good scrum, but we managed to win in the end. Sorely wounded, however, we retreated and went back to the homestead to rest up.
Turns out, as night fell and we were brought in to see the leader, that the community are actually Ur Ogres (they look human, then shapeshift into monstrous forms, sorta lycanthropish) led by Harrkonn Spiderlegs, an old nemesis of ours.
End of session cliff hanger! I've updated by backup PC just in case Thidrek finally cashes in the last of his nine lives next session.
Justin DMed a fun little game, which was fairly rough on us. Jeremy played Noctis the Orc, Alexei was Maya the Elf, Dean was Venerable Carolus, and I was Thidrek the Sleestak. We had (NPCs) a hired sellsword, Webberan, a tag-along nerdy Orc Magi Mattaki Shiptu, and fussy butlerish shield-bearer Ghomondelay with us as well.
Carolus, learning of ancient Urish technology that might be able to regrow his lost hand the way orcs are grown in vats, was interested in exploring the installation below the harpies' thorn maze. On the way, when we got to the statue of the vulture-headed death goddess, Karl decided we should "consecrate" it (vandalize, in other words). So we knocked it down, loaded it up on Thidrek's triceratopsian-cart, and trucked it back to Fort Low and set it up in the rich part of town. We ignored the locals' talk of "curses."
We also heard of a local official's brother and his party who had gone missing in the ruins. Altering our plans, we headed to a new homestead north-east of the thorn maze. They seemed friendly enough, although we did wonder how they kept themselves safe in the middle of the ruins. They gave us directions to the temple the brother had been exploring.
Under the temple were of course some tunnels, and in them, a new tribe of black masked orcs. They were none too fond of us, and after a skirmish, we chased them and ended up in a trapped area with lots of rooms with levers to pull and various things to happen. Thinking he had the puzzle figured out, Thidrek tried a lever that Webberan had pulled several times, with nothing but a few coins lodged in the ceiling dislodged. One failed saving throw later and the ceiling was caving in on him. Negative hit point time!
As the party came to Thidrek's aid, the orcs attacked en masse. It was a pretty good scrum, but we managed to win in the end. Sorely wounded, however, we retreated and went back to the homestead to rest up.
Turns out, as night fell and we were brought in to see the leader, that the community are actually Ur Ogres (they look human, then shapeshift into monstrous forms, sorta lycanthropish) led by Harrkonn Spiderlegs, an old nemesis of ours.
End of session cliff hanger! I've updated by backup PC just in case Thidrek finally cashes in the last of his nine lives next session.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
We rescue a real live Space Princess!
Last Thursday (8/15) being a national holiday in Korea (VJ Day/Korean Independence Day), Wednesday night we finished up our excursion into the vaults beneath the old Spiked Circle stockade that was the source of the Nightzone in our Vaults of Ur campaign.
We started off more or less where we had left off, playing just a bit in play-by-post in our facebook group. Thidrek had gone down the pit and scouted around, and the rest of the party* followed him down.
*5 orc magi men at arms left sans spells, their captain Thorn, Tark our NPC ghoul hunter, plus Venerable Carolus, Noctis the Orc, Thidrek, and Maya Culpa (replacing Alexei's other elf PC since she had her body back).
We followed the stream of darkness down a hallway, and were attacked by shadows. At the same time, a shadow-creature in the stream itself attacked. It was sort of a "shadow hydra" in that it had lots of shadowy pseudopods that could be destroyed the way hydra heads are, but did strength drain like shadows. It was a nasty fight, and we lost all of the troops (Tark survived).
During the battle, Thidrek managed to get to the control panel of a stargate type thing that was producing the darkness, and shut it down. After we managed to finish off the monsters, we smashed the stargate thing to keep Helemor the Awakened from reactivating it (d'oh! Found out later we might have been able to use it for planar hopping adventures!).
Exploring a bit more, we found another ghoul altar, with the remains of former companion Yargrob Elderbob. Carolus pained it up with hippy flowers and teddy bears to reconsecrate it to the Great Bear (he's got a Grateful Dead bear thing for a deity, if you're new to Ur).
The next room had five sarcophogi, one open (presumably Helemor came out of that one). Three more had skeletons or other remains of people from before one or another of Ur's ten cataclysms. The final one (actually the second one we checked after Helemor's, but the last one we opened) contained Lamara the Ancient, a "buxom and comely" survivor of ancient Ur! We took her back to town and hopefully she will be able to provide us with all sorts of good intel about the wackiness of Ur's ruins!
We started off more or less where we had left off, playing just a bit in play-by-post in our facebook group. Thidrek had gone down the pit and scouted around, and the rest of the party* followed him down.
*5 orc magi men at arms left sans spells, their captain Thorn, Tark our NPC ghoul hunter, plus Venerable Carolus, Noctis the Orc, Thidrek, and Maya Culpa (replacing Alexei's other elf PC since she had her body back).
We followed the stream of darkness down a hallway, and were attacked by shadows. At the same time, a shadow-creature in the stream itself attacked. It was sort of a "shadow hydra" in that it had lots of shadowy pseudopods that could be destroyed the way hydra heads are, but did strength drain like shadows. It was a nasty fight, and we lost all of the troops (Tark survived).
During the battle, Thidrek managed to get to the control panel of a stargate type thing that was producing the darkness, and shut it down. After we managed to finish off the monsters, we smashed the stargate thing to keep Helemor the Awakened from reactivating it (d'oh! Found out later we might have been able to use it for planar hopping adventures!).
Exploring a bit more, we found another ghoul altar, with the remains of former companion Yargrob Elderbob. Carolus pained it up with hippy flowers and teddy bears to reconsecrate it to the Great Bear (he's got a Grateful Dead bear thing for a deity, if you're new to Ur).
The next room had five sarcophogi, one open (presumably Helemor came out of that one). Three more had skeletons or other remains of people from before one or another of Ur's ten cataclysms. The final one (actually the second one we checked after Helemor's, but the last one we opened) contained Lamara the Ancient, a "buxom and comely" survivor of ancient Ur! We took her back to town and hopefully she will be able to provide us with all sorts of good intel about the wackiness of Ur's ruins!
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Uptown Ghoul
A week ago, we played another session of Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign.
Thidrek and Noctis having penetrated the Nightzone only to find stiff resistance from the undead army, and losing most of our men at arms, in our last session, we gathered together a much larger force.
Thidrek hired a platoon of twenty Orc Magi heavy foot, each immune to ghoul paralysis and packing a magic missile spell, and their third level captain.
The Venerable Carolus returned to action! Maya had suffered a mind-body swap curse in some FLAILSNAILS adventure, so Alexei pulled out another Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User Elf from his files, and now I've forgotten his name...Earilion or something Tolkien-ish like that. Sorry!
Tark, the NPC Orc Magi ghoul hunter we met last session, stuck with us.
We penetrated to the heart of the Nightzone, and found the old fortress where some previous adventurers (Karl, Burg/Noctis, and a few others) had failed to recover a magical amulet. Night was flowing up from the fortress through the ground. After fending off a returning ghoul patrol, we went underground.
That's when we found ourselves in tight passages, with large numbers of ghouls and ghoul-centaurs (worm-like bodies, ghoul torsos, and praying mantis claws) all around.
Using a potion of invisibility and Alexei's elf's elven cloak, we found the leaders, Helemor the Awakened and a ghoul shaman. In a large knock-down-drag-out fight, Thidrek was paralyzed and lost his sleestak horn, Noctis nearly died due to Helemor's ministrations, and Karl's spellcasting saved the day.
Helemor fled, the ghouls were destroyed, and we've still got about 1/3 of our troops.
We're playing a bit of exploration PbP on Facebook, so things are continuing...
Thidrek and Noctis having penetrated the Nightzone only to find stiff resistance from the undead army, and losing most of our men at arms, in our last session, we gathered together a much larger force.
Thidrek hired a platoon of twenty Orc Magi heavy foot, each immune to ghoul paralysis and packing a magic missile spell, and their third level captain.
The Venerable Carolus returned to action! Maya had suffered a mind-body swap curse in some FLAILSNAILS adventure, so Alexei pulled out another Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User Elf from his files, and now I've forgotten his name...Earilion or something Tolkien-ish like that. Sorry!
Tark, the NPC Orc Magi ghoul hunter we met last session, stuck with us.
We penetrated to the heart of the Nightzone, and found the old fortress where some previous adventurers (Karl, Burg/Noctis, and a few others) had failed to recover a magical amulet. Night was flowing up from the fortress through the ground. After fending off a returning ghoul patrol, we went underground.
That's when we found ourselves in tight passages, with large numbers of ghouls and ghoul-centaurs (worm-like bodies, ghoul torsos, and praying mantis claws) all around.
Using a potion of invisibility and Alexei's elf's elven cloak, we found the leaders, Helemor the Awakened and a ghoul shaman. In a large knock-down-drag-out fight, Thidrek was paralyzed and lost his sleestak horn, Noctis nearly died due to Helemor's ministrations, and Karl's spellcasting saved the day.
Helemor fled, the ghouls were destroyed, and we've still got about 1/3 of our troops.
We're playing a bit of exploration PbP on Facebook, so things are continuing...
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Incident on Outer Reach
Outer Reach, the scummy hive of wretched villainy, in the Dramune System, the Frontier. These are the wanderings of a band of jaded mercenaries, on a continuing mission to get more cash, bigger guns, seek out new enemies and kill them.
It is a time of great unrest. Rebel forces, striking from a hidden base, have been a thorn in the side of GovernorCohaagen Tulving. And there are two groups of rebels, the Rebels, and the Techno-Warriors, who have a small army of combat robots and a handful of 50m tall (yes, Godzilla-sized) robots as well. And of course, the Sathar have landed! Not to mention all the criminal elements on the planet.
This is what happens when I pull out a set of adventures I made for Star Frontiers roughly 25 years ago, and run it for my current group of players. We spend a few days actually getting them familiar enough with the rules to make their characters, and discussing any special needs they might have.
Justin - Krueger, a 7 1/2' tall human techie, former Techno-Warrior, with a bracing exoskeleton (flavor only) because of his frail physical condition. Had all tech skills plus demolitions and environmental.
Jeremy - Z.E.D., an AI robot (actually full conversion cyborg, think robocop without even the lips, just half a human brain inside a robotic shell). Combat specialized (Beam, Projectile, Melee weapons, plus Environmental) and packing a bladed gauntlet (sword) and needler pistol.
Rick - Mason Hawke, a human ex-military sniper, with his mouth sewn shut and a neural-interface robotic hawk mounted on his shoulder that talks for him (again just for flavor, and everyone calls a parrot). Purely a military man (Projectile and Melee weapon skills only).
Dean - Sister Pompeius Izabelle Giulius, 9-year old Bene Gesserit human, just beginning her training in all that Bene Gesserit Jazz (Psycho-Social and Martial Arts skill, plus some special rules for using Intuition as a "power pool" for increasing chances to perform certain actions/rolls) wearing Tibetan monk robes and light-up Hello Kitty sneakers.
Dean actually wasn't able to make it, which may have been a good thing, considering how things played out with the three hard-case mercs that went on the adventure. Or maybe her calming influence would have changed the dynamic? Who knows?
So the PCs decide to hire on with the autocratic governor who controls the mining operations to put down the rebellions, mostly because they assume he's got the deepest pockets. Gov. Tulving's underling sends them on a mission to track down the hidden Sathar base so the government forces can roll in and wipe them out. The only real lead they have is that the Sathar arrived during a battle between the government forces and Techno-Warriors that destroyed the city of Glaxon.
Finding some Glaxon refugees after a bit of computer searching, they learn from a refugee that they need to pacify that there are potentially many hypnotized Sathar agents around, and that a Pan Galactic Corporation research facility, Pwason, was shut down but people have reported seeing activity there.
Before going to the research facility, they stop at a military munitions factory and manage to con the commander into loaning them hover cycles and giving them more ammo (but not the rocket launcher they'd hoped for). Heading to the Pwason Facility on the cycles, they run into an ambush of soldiers (they were Rebels, but the party gunned their engines and left them in the dust rather than stopping to find out).
They scout out the Pwason facility for a day, watching the eight scientists going about their day doing SCIENCE!!! stuff. At dinner time, Krueger goes to the lab building to snoop around while ZED and Mason lob doze grenades into the dining hall window. All but one of the scientists are knocked out, and she opens fire with a shotgun. She manages to resist needler anaestetic the first time, but after getting a burst shot from Mason, ZED's needlers put her under the second time.
Krueger is meanwhile investigating the scientists' work, finding some strange unknown types of genetic experimentation going on.
Mason decapitates the human woman who resisted, and leaves the corpse there for the others to see when they wake up bound. The first to come around is a female Vrusk, and Mason takes her into another room while ZED watches over the prisoners. Mason then tries to get her to talk by telling her that he and ZED saved them from an attack, but waking up tied up next to a dead and disfigured companion and seeing the "rescuers" not untying the other prisoners, she's suspicious and uncooperative. Mason, with help of Krueger on the chronocom, tricks her into revealing her false PGC contact, Bobward Strumm. Krueger checks, there's no record of such a man working for Pan Galactic. Still, the Vrusk refuses to cooperate, so Mason kills her.
The party radios into the military to send some troops to pick up the prisoners. When they arrive, the medic uses Telol (truth serum) to get them to talk, and lo and behold, yes, they are hypnotized Sathar agents, and reveal the location of the hidden base.
Mission success! (sorta)
Anyway, the team took the Sathar agents' armory and got paid by Governor Tulving. Hopefully I'll be able to run a couple more of these games over the summer. It was nice to play Star Frontiers again, and while I had to look up more rules than I thought I would, we didn't really have any hitches as far as the rules went.
It is a time of great unrest. Rebel forces, striking from a hidden base, have been a thorn in the side of Governor
This is what happens when I pull out a set of adventures I made for Star Frontiers roughly 25 years ago, and run it for my current group of players. We spend a few days actually getting them familiar enough with the rules to make their characters, and discussing any special needs they might have.
Justin - Krueger, a 7 1/2' tall human techie, former Techno-Warrior, with a bracing exoskeleton (flavor only) because of his frail physical condition. Had all tech skills plus demolitions and environmental.
Jeremy - Z.E.D., an AI robot (actually full conversion cyborg, think robocop without even the lips, just half a human brain inside a robotic shell). Combat specialized (Beam, Projectile, Melee weapons, plus Environmental) and packing a bladed gauntlet (sword) and needler pistol.
Rick - Mason Hawke, a human ex-military sniper, with his mouth sewn shut and a neural-interface robotic hawk mounted on his shoulder that talks for him (again just for flavor, and everyone calls a parrot). Purely a military man (Projectile and Melee weapon skills only).
Dean - Sister Pompeius Izabelle Giulius, 9-year old Bene Gesserit human, just beginning her training in all that Bene Gesserit Jazz (Psycho-Social and Martial Arts skill, plus some special rules for using Intuition as a "power pool" for increasing chances to perform certain actions/rolls) wearing Tibetan monk robes and light-up Hello Kitty sneakers.
Dean actually wasn't able to make it, which may have been a good thing, considering how things played out with the three hard-case mercs that went on the adventure. Or maybe her calming influence would have changed the dynamic? Who knows?
So the PCs decide to hire on with the autocratic governor who controls the mining operations to put down the rebellions, mostly because they assume he's got the deepest pockets. Gov. Tulving's underling sends them on a mission to track down the hidden Sathar base so the government forces can roll in and wipe them out. The only real lead they have is that the Sathar arrived during a battle between the government forces and Techno-Warriors that destroyed the city of Glaxon.
Finding some Glaxon refugees after a bit of computer searching, they learn from a refugee that they need to pacify that there are potentially many hypnotized Sathar agents around, and that a Pan Galactic Corporation research facility, Pwason, was shut down but people have reported seeing activity there.
Before going to the research facility, they stop at a military munitions factory and manage to con the commander into loaning them hover cycles and giving them more ammo (but not the rocket launcher they'd hoped for). Heading to the Pwason Facility on the cycles, they run into an ambush of soldiers (they were Rebels, but the party gunned their engines and left them in the dust rather than stopping to find out).
They scout out the Pwason facility for a day, watching the eight scientists going about their day doing SCIENCE!!! stuff. At dinner time, Krueger goes to the lab building to snoop around while ZED and Mason lob doze grenades into the dining hall window. All but one of the scientists are knocked out, and she opens fire with a shotgun. She manages to resist needler anaestetic the first time, but after getting a burst shot from Mason, ZED's needlers put her under the second time.
Krueger is meanwhile investigating the scientists' work, finding some strange unknown types of genetic experimentation going on.
Mason decapitates the human woman who resisted, and leaves the corpse there for the others to see when they wake up bound. The first to come around is a female Vrusk, and Mason takes her into another room while ZED watches over the prisoners. Mason then tries to get her to talk by telling her that he and ZED saved them from an attack, but waking up tied up next to a dead and disfigured companion and seeing the "rescuers" not untying the other prisoners, she's suspicious and uncooperative. Mason, with help of Krueger on the chronocom, tricks her into revealing her false PGC contact, Bobward Strumm. Krueger checks, there's no record of such a man working for Pan Galactic. Still, the Vrusk refuses to cooperate, so Mason kills her.
The party radios into the military to send some troops to pick up the prisoners. When they arrive, the medic uses Telol (truth serum) to get them to talk, and lo and behold, yes, they are hypnotized Sathar agents, and reveal the location of the hidden base.
Mission success! (sorta)
Anyway, the team took the Sathar agents' armory and got paid by Governor Tulving. Hopefully I'll be able to run a couple more of these games over the summer. It was nice to play Star Frontiers again, and while I had to look up more rules than I thought I would, we didn't really have any hitches as far as the rules went.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
The End of the Long Road Home
Wow, this adventure arc in our Vaults of Ur campaign went on for nine sessions, since the first week of last December when the party became stranded in the caves beneath the Hive. It took the lives of my alternate PC Fantasmo Argento (a masked Luchadore), the NPC Ralex, FLAILSNAILS favorite the Venerable Carolus (Very Elder Karl), the last of Thidrek's chickens, and several red shirt hirelings of FLAILSNAILS adventurers from across the Veil. The promising young mage Yargrob Elderbob also went missing during the affair, and the party was unceremoniously stripped of most of their gear along the way, resulting in the loss of much treasure and a few prized possessions.
Anyway, the session recap. Justin of course is the DM. Jeremy was playing Noctis the Orc (on the verge of Level 4 but without a FLAILSNAILS game to pick up that last necessary XP, but he did alright anyway). Alexei was playing Maya Culpar the Elf, now 3rd level and in possession of many spells but no magic items. I was of course playing Thidrek the Sleestak. Dean and Rick couldn't join us due to a commitment to play one last session of Dean's 4E game with a player that's leaving the group, so Udumbara the Pacifist Cleric and the Scented Shade of Venerable Carolus were not available to join us. Luckily, a pair of NPC half-orc thief chicks joined us. Being part of Bolt's crew (they're not quite Spiked Circle, but they're not friends either), Thidrek was predisposed to dislike them, and only referred to them as Orcess and Orcette. Noctis, being an orc, was predisposed to like them and hit on them all the time.
Bolt gave us maps and suggested three ways to infiltrate the Sky Hunter temple. Overland was patrolled by Sky Hunters. The ghoul warrens were of course the home of the ghoul undercity dwellers. The river was also a way in, but the last group to go there never returned, so they assumed something nasty was there. We ended up choosing the ghoul warrens.
We nearly made it through without discovery, and did manage to get through without engaging them in combat (paralysis is nasty, especially with no cleric to cure it). We got through the secret door just in time, and Maya used a Hold Portal spell to make sure we weren't followed.
Inside, we were assaulted by the Sky Hunters' guards, which were pasty gollum-like things with arms and legs twisted and bending in the wrong directions. Sneaky bastards liked dropping down from the ceilings on us. We entered the main hall, and found a giant energy ball with swirling shadowy shapes inside, suspended in mid air by beams of light shot from four statues. While tussling with more of the gangly guardians, a troop of Sky Hunter legionnaires and a sorcerer emerged and engaged us. Due to an untimely natural 1 from Thidrek and natural 20 from the gangly thing, Thidrek ended up down with the baddies and paralyzed by the sorcerer's energy whip. They demanded the party surrender. Maya cast web, saving Thidrek's life. Maya, Noctis and the orc chicks managed to kill the enemies on their side of the web, while the sorcerer and one guard retreated.
Freed, Thidrek slew the remaining gangly thing and Sky Hunter guard. Then he and Noctis went to get the Orb we were sent to bring back while Maya and the NPCs took on the sorcerer and guard. A rough battle took place with the guard, who managed to wound all three of the adventuring ladies, but they managed to bring him and the sorcerer down, and free an Orc Magi. Thidrek and Noctis used a Land of the Lost style crystal matrix table to shut down the giant magic sphere and free the shadow elementals that were inside who apparently run the black water pool portal system.
We retreated through the river, since the ghouls were alerted to us and we didn't want to face more Sky Hunter patrols in our weakened state. Down the shaft, there were strange shadowy things but they went past the party and up the shaft after Sky Hunters, we assume. We found a skeleton (with phat lootz!) and got on our boat, distracting giant crabs with one of the Sky Hunter corpses and made our escape.
We rendezvous with Bolt, who takes us to the portal and we gave him the Orb, then took Karl and Ralex's bodies back to Fort Low - only to find out that the bastard stole Karl's psionic Stone Fist.
So things are complete, but there are now lots of things we could do again sandbox style. Justin says we're entering Vaults of Ur 2.0. Dean's not sure what to do about Venerable Carolus. His character was changed by the ordeal. We don't want to lose his character, but Dean's not sure he wants to keep playing him. We'll see what happens. He may end up retiring Karl. Or we may go on a quest to get him (or make him) a new, better hand.
In the meantime, Thidrek plans to keep busy with some research, some plotting, and maybe the formation of a Brute Squad to help clean out the ruins.
Anyway, the session recap. Justin of course is the DM. Jeremy was playing Noctis the Orc (on the verge of Level 4 but without a FLAILSNAILS game to pick up that last necessary XP, but he did alright anyway). Alexei was playing Maya Culpar the Elf, now 3rd level and in possession of many spells but no magic items. I was of course playing Thidrek the Sleestak. Dean and Rick couldn't join us due to a commitment to play one last session of Dean's 4E game with a player that's leaving the group, so Udumbara the Pacifist Cleric and the Scented Shade of Venerable Carolus were not available to join us. Luckily, a pair of NPC half-orc thief chicks joined us. Being part of Bolt's crew (they're not quite Spiked Circle, but they're not friends either), Thidrek was predisposed to dislike them, and only referred to them as Orcess and Orcette. Noctis, being an orc, was predisposed to like them and hit on them all the time.
Bolt gave us maps and suggested three ways to infiltrate the Sky Hunter temple. Overland was patrolled by Sky Hunters. The ghoul warrens were of course the home of the ghoul undercity dwellers. The river was also a way in, but the last group to go there never returned, so they assumed something nasty was there. We ended up choosing the ghoul warrens.
We nearly made it through without discovery, and did manage to get through without engaging them in combat (paralysis is nasty, especially with no cleric to cure it). We got through the secret door just in time, and Maya used a Hold Portal spell to make sure we weren't followed.
Inside, we were assaulted by the Sky Hunters' guards, which were pasty gollum-like things with arms and legs twisted and bending in the wrong directions. Sneaky bastards liked dropping down from the ceilings on us. We entered the main hall, and found a giant energy ball with swirling shadowy shapes inside, suspended in mid air by beams of light shot from four statues. While tussling with more of the gangly guardians, a troop of Sky Hunter legionnaires and a sorcerer emerged and engaged us. Due to an untimely natural 1 from Thidrek and natural 20 from the gangly thing, Thidrek ended up down with the baddies and paralyzed by the sorcerer's energy whip. They demanded the party surrender. Maya cast web, saving Thidrek's life. Maya, Noctis and the orc chicks managed to kill the enemies on their side of the web, while the sorcerer and one guard retreated.
Freed, Thidrek slew the remaining gangly thing and Sky Hunter guard. Then he and Noctis went to get the Orb we were sent to bring back while Maya and the NPCs took on the sorcerer and guard. A rough battle took place with the guard, who managed to wound all three of the adventuring ladies, but they managed to bring him and the sorcerer down, and free an Orc Magi. Thidrek and Noctis used a Land of the Lost style crystal matrix table to shut down the giant magic sphere and free the shadow elementals that were inside who apparently run the black water pool portal system.
We retreated through the river, since the ghouls were alerted to us and we didn't want to face more Sky Hunter patrols in our weakened state. Down the shaft, there were strange shadowy things but they went past the party and up the shaft after Sky Hunters, we assume. We found a skeleton (with phat lootz!) and got on our boat, distracting giant crabs with one of the Sky Hunter corpses and made our escape.
We rendezvous with Bolt, who takes us to the portal and we gave him the Orb, then took Karl and Ralex's bodies back to Fort Low - only to find out that the bastard stole Karl's psionic Stone Fist.
So things are complete, but there are now lots of things we could do again sandbox style. Justin says we're entering Vaults of Ur 2.0. Dean's not sure what to do about Venerable Carolus. His character was changed by the ordeal. We don't want to lose his character, but Dean's not sure he wants to keep playing him. We'll see what happens. He may end up retiring Karl. Or we may go on a quest to get him (or make him) a new, better hand.
In the meantime, Thidrek plans to keep busy with some research, some plotting, and maybe the formation of a Brute Squad to help clean out the ruins.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Desperate Times
Late updating the Chronicles of Ur. It's been over a week since the game.
This session, Justin is of course the DM. Jeremy played Noctis (formerly Burg) the Orc. Dean played the Ghost of Very Elder Karl. Rick (who DMs the Pathfinder Dragon's Delve game) played Udumbara the pacifist Cleric. I was of course Thidrek the Sleestak.
We were camped out near the subterranean river with the corpses of Karl and Ralex the Fighter. Our other companions had slipped back across the Veil to their home universes. We found a skiff coming down the river, containing Udumbara, the only survivor of an expedition. We made friends with her, and used her boat to head downstream.
We discovered some unusual statuary in the river, quite old. There was a fork in the tunnels, and we were forced to quickly choose one or the other. Reminded me of Dragon's Lair. We went left.
After a little while, we heard a loud rumbling - assumed it to be a waterfall ahead - and found a place to dock. While resting, the ghost of Karl did some scouting, but couldn't go too far from his corpse. We got scouted while resting. We explored up a staircase a bit, and found some ner-do-well types. After a bit of negotiation, trying to get safe passage to the surface, we were introduced (re-introduced in Noctis's case) to their leader Bolt, the leather-bondage gear clad smuggler we'd ran into shortly after the bees killed Karl. His short, cloaked magically adept friend was nowhere to be seen (Karl seemed to sense another presence in the room).
We made a deal with Bolt. He wants us to invade the Sky Hunters' temple and steal a key to the black pool portal system like the one we had that got us into the current mess we're in. He promised us safe passage back to Fort Low if we open up the portal system and give him the key.
Thidrek is planning to double cross Bolt. Some of his men have Spiked Circle emblems, and they've been one of our biggest enemies in Ur. But we'll see how things play out next session.
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In other news, I've got a few other posts I'd like to write up as well, but don't seem to have much time or motivation to write on the blog these days. But I'm gonna try to get back to posting a bit more.
This session, Justin is of course the DM. Jeremy played Noctis (formerly Burg) the Orc. Dean played the Ghost of Very Elder Karl. Rick (who DMs the Pathfinder Dragon's Delve game) played Udumbara the pacifist Cleric. I was of course Thidrek the Sleestak.
We were camped out near the subterranean river with the corpses of Karl and Ralex the Fighter. Our other companions had slipped back across the Veil to their home universes. We found a skiff coming down the river, containing Udumbara, the only survivor of an expedition. We made friends with her, and used her boat to head downstream.
We discovered some unusual statuary in the river, quite old. There was a fork in the tunnels, and we were forced to quickly choose one or the other. Reminded me of Dragon's Lair. We went left.
After a little while, we heard a loud rumbling - assumed it to be a waterfall ahead - and found a place to dock. While resting, the ghost of Karl did some scouting, but couldn't go too far from his corpse. We got scouted while resting. We explored up a staircase a bit, and found some ner-do-well types. After a bit of negotiation, trying to get safe passage to the surface, we were introduced (re-introduced in Noctis's case) to their leader Bolt, the leather-bondage gear clad smuggler we'd ran into shortly after the bees killed Karl. His short, cloaked magically adept friend was nowhere to be seen (Karl seemed to sense another presence in the room).
| Justin's image for us of Bolt |
Thidrek is planning to double cross Bolt. Some of his men have Spiked Circle emblems, and they've been one of our biggest enemies in Ur. But we'll see how things play out next session.
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In other news, I've got a few other posts I'd like to write up as well, but don't seem to have much time or motivation to write on the blog these days. But I'm gonna try to get back to posting a bit more.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Another Delve, Another Dollar
After a brief discussion and several requests, I ran my Megadungeon again last night for the... can't really call us the "Busan Gamers" anymore, since Justin's up in Pohang and Rick's up near Seoul (forget exactly which city he's in, sorry Rick!), and they plus Jeremy (who is in Busan, along with me) were my players.
I think I may have to bring back the Mao-tze Tigers group name. One of these days, I am hoping that Jez Gordon of the Kanga-Rat Murder Society games with us again, he was a blast to play with.
Anyway, the dungeon. The adventure. The horrors. The glory.
I'm really gonna keep it short, as I'm hoping one of the guys will do a proper write-up for bonus XP. Four PCs and one NPC (Valeria the Fighter from the previous session) again went through the side entrance guarded by the "gnomosexuals" and three came out alive, with a bit of treasure to show for it, and a plan to get at a bow they assume to be magical that they can see but not reach.
The plan's a good one, and if they can afford enough booze to keep the gnomes happy, it just might work!
Now back to your regularly scheduled blog silence and grad school readings.
I think I may have to bring back the Mao-tze Tigers group name. One of these days, I am hoping that Jez Gordon of the Kanga-Rat Murder Society games with us again, he was a blast to play with.
Anyway, the dungeon. The adventure. The horrors. The glory.
I'm really gonna keep it short, as I'm hoping one of the guys will do a proper write-up for bonus XP. Four PCs and one NPC (Valeria the Fighter from the previous session) again went through the side entrance guarded by the "gnomosexuals" and three came out alive, with a bit of treasure to show for it, and a plan to get at a bow they assume to be magical that they can see but not reach.
The plan's a good one, and if they can afford enough booze to keep the gnomes happy, it just might work!
Now back to your regularly scheduled blog silence and grad school readings.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Elder Karl is dead, and I don't feel so good myself
Saturday night, after a long break (games were happening every week, I was just busy with grad school stuff), Justin ran a session of Vaults of Ur. Last time, Venerable Carolus (Elder Karl) had shuffled off his mortal coil thanks to a giant bee sting. Ralex the Fighter (NPC, but played by Dean), Thidrek the Sleestak, and Noctis the Orc (Jeremy) were holed up in a pill-box type ruin.
Time doorways opened, and we were joined by our companion from across the Veil Maya Culpa the Elf (Alexei M.), plus two new-comers to Ur, Megasthenes the Hoplite (Dallas M) and Fang Tigerheart, Paladin of Bast (Steven Goodman), and Fang's torchbearer.
After a LONG discussion (over an hour of real time, although that also included time spent answering questions about the campaign and the two new characters and general table talk), we decided to try to use the underground passages from the pill-box to try and at least get past the killer bees.
We wandered around what was apparently a complex of the ancients, found a small amount of loot, and then stumbled across a room with three alcoves containing zombie owlbears with something like yellow mold growing on them. We managed to kill one, and burning oil kept the others at bay. But we had a dead end, and had to circle around another way.
We found a room that looked to have once been an important person's bedroom. Past that, a corridor linked to the owlbear room, plus in another dead end there was a skeleton that was half embedded in the wall. We couldn't find a secret door or anything, so had to turn back again. Back in the VIP's room, there was a bright light, which turned out to be some sort of mobile time doorway that attacked. Thidrek ended up on the wrong side of it, cut off from the party, who were trapped between the portal (which had grasping claws that drained Wis - Thidrek's a bit more careless than he used to be) and the owlbears.
A nasty melee ensued. The owlbears eventually went down, but Ralex and the young torchbearer both perished. Thidrek had tried to sneak back around, but ran into some of the ghouls. Wounded, he knew he couldn't take on four of them himself, so after a round of melee he had to make a choice - try to run north to the exit, or back toward the portal. Hoping to find some way around the portal or somewhere to hide, he chose the latter. Luckily, for whatever reason the portal had retreated, and Thidrek was able to get around it and it moved toward the pursuing ghouls.
Beaten and battered, with more losses, the party retreated to a gate over the subterranean river to rest and lick their wounds.
The first day's worth of adventuring to save Karl was unsuccessful. We've lost Ralex and we're all beat up without a cleric. Good times! I'm looking forward to the next session.
Time doorways opened, and we were joined by our companion from across the Veil Maya Culpa the Elf (Alexei M.), plus two new-comers to Ur, Megasthenes the Hoplite (Dallas M) and Fang Tigerheart, Paladin of Bast (Steven Goodman), and Fang's torchbearer.
After a LONG discussion (over an hour of real time, although that also included time spent answering questions about the campaign and the two new characters and general table talk), we decided to try to use the underground passages from the pill-box to try and at least get past the killer bees.
We wandered around what was apparently a complex of the ancients, found a small amount of loot, and then stumbled across a room with three alcoves containing zombie owlbears with something like yellow mold growing on them. We managed to kill one, and burning oil kept the others at bay. But we had a dead end, and had to circle around another way.
We found a room that looked to have once been an important person's bedroom. Past that, a corridor linked to the owlbear room, plus in another dead end there was a skeleton that was half embedded in the wall. We couldn't find a secret door or anything, so had to turn back again. Back in the VIP's room, there was a bright light, which turned out to be some sort of mobile time doorway that attacked. Thidrek ended up on the wrong side of it, cut off from the party, who were trapped between the portal (which had grasping claws that drained Wis - Thidrek's a bit more careless than he used to be) and the owlbears.
A nasty melee ensued. The owlbears eventually went down, but Ralex and the young torchbearer both perished. Thidrek had tried to sneak back around, but ran into some of the ghouls. Wounded, he knew he couldn't take on four of them himself, so after a round of melee he had to make a choice - try to run north to the exit, or back toward the portal. Hoping to find some way around the portal or somewhere to hide, he chose the latter. Luckily, for whatever reason the portal had retreated, and Thidrek was able to get around it and it moved toward the pursuing ghouls.
Beaten and battered, with more losses, the party retreated to a gate over the subterranean river to rest and lick their wounds.
The first day's worth of adventuring to save Karl was unsuccessful. We've lost Ralex and we're all beat up without a cleric. Good times! I'm looking forward to the next session.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Lost in the Dungeon
Last night, several of us were in the mood to play - including me, since I will be busy tonight with grad school stuff and will miss our regularly scheduled Saturday game. And since Justin was out, I offered to run my Megadungeon.
Jeremy and Rick were the only players to show up, and they rolled up a couple of new level 1 PCs, Evinarus the (Elf) Thief and Max the Fighter. Rick didn't have the Basic Fantasy RPG and I was too lazy to look it up since I had my homebrew players' guide right there, so he ran a normal Thief class character and role-played the Elf parts (I did let him have infravision and better secret door detection and we didn't meet any ghouls so the paralysis never came up). Jeremy of course rolled another 18 Str Fighter with a polearm (great axe), and while he's perfectly fine to imagine for himself massive anime bulging muscles that would put the Incredible Hulk to shame, my world just doesn't work that way. ;)
They gathered some rumors in the town of Silverwood and set out for the dungeon. They circled around the outer curtain wall and found a boarded up wooden shack against the outer wall. Discussions with the occupants (who refused to show themselves) sent them back to town to get a pony keg of beer and they also hired Valeria, a buxom mercenary, to accompany them for 10gp up front and a share of any treasure.
Back at the shack, they found it was manned by thirsty gnomes, who happily let them pass and use the stairs down to the dungeon in return for the beer. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a closed doorway and Evinarus heard singing beyond. Going out into a wide corridor running north-south, they heard the singing coming from a side passage straight ahead - and after some cautious moves, discovered it to be a party of young halflings having a party in the dungeon! Much discussions hinted that goblins lived to the east.
They explored a bit more and found and set fire to a rickety barricade with alarms that summoned a large warband of kobolds, who shot at them and wounded Max with a crossbow. A patrol of more gnomes had passed them and had rushed off to get the beer their companions were swilling, but the party followed them back up and convinced them to help take on their ancestral enemies, the kobolds. Big battle led to all but two kobolds dead, the last two fled, with only one gnomish loss. Then the party tried to sucker the gnomes into tangling with the halflings over beer, but the halfling party was just wrapping up and they were about to head back to their village, all the beer consumed.
With promises to bring more beer once they found some treasure, the party next investigated a hallway with many doors. One led to a makeshift latrine. Another had a basin collecting run-off water. Yet another had two strange walls, one a shifting wall trap of some sort which they avoided setting off, the other a secret door. In the secret chamber was a strange crystal wall blocking them from reaching an alcove where they could see a finely crafted elven bow. While searching for secret levers or some other mechanism to move the crystal wall, a pair of hungry giant racer snakes slithered in and attacked.
Rolls went against our party. Although they managed to slay one snake, Max was eaten and instead of fleeing, Evinarus decided to keep fighting and his 4 hit points didn't last him long. Valeria the NPC fled with the measly 200 cp they'd managed to loot off of the kobolds.
She does, however, now have a map of the area explored, and along with Geissler and Kessel, will join the rouster of local NPC armsmen for hire.
Jeremy and Rick were the only players to show up, and they rolled up a couple of new level 1 PCs, Evinarus the (Elf) Thief and Max the Fighter. Rick didn't have the Basic Fantasy RPG and I was too lazy to look it up since I had my homebrew players' guide right there, so he ran a normal Thief class character and role-played the Elf parts (I did let him have infravision and better secret door detection and we didn't meet any ghouls so the paralysis never came up). Jeremy of course rolled another 18 Str Fighter with a polearm (great axe), and while he's perfectly fine to imagine for himself massive anime bulging muscles that would put the Incredible Hulk to shame, my world just doesn't work that way. ;)
They gathered some rumors in the town of Silverwood and set out for the dungeon. They circled around the outer curtain wall and found a boarded up wooden shack against the outer wall. Discussions with the occupants (who refused to show themselves) sent them back to town to get a pony keg of beer and they also hired Valeria, a buxom mercenary, to accompany them for 10gp up front and a share of any treasure.
Back at the shack, they found it was manned by thirsty gnomes, who happily let them pass and use the stairs down to the dungeon in return for the beer. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a closed doorway and Evinarus heard singing beyond. Going out into a wide corridor running north-south, they heard the singing coming from a side passage straight ahead - and after some cautious moves, discovered it to be a party of young halflings having a party in the dungeon! Much discussions hinted that goblins lived to the east.
They explored a bit more and found and set fire to a rickety barricade with alarms that summoned a large warband of kobolds, who shot at them and wounded Max with a crossbow. A patrol of more gnomes had passed them and had rushed off to get the beer their companions were swilling, but the party followed them back up and convinced them to help take on their ancestral enemies, the kobolds. Big battle led to all but two kobolds dead, the last two fled, with only one gnomish loss. Then the party tried to sucker the gnomes into tangling with the halflings over beer, but the halfling party was just wrapping up and they were about to head back to their village, all the beer consumed.
With promises to bring more beer once they found some treasure, the party next investigated a hallway with many doors. One led to a makeshift latrine. Another had a basin collecting run-off water. Yet another had two strange walls, one a shifting wall trap of some sort which they avoided setting off, the other a secret door. In the secret chamber was a strange crystal wall blocking them from reaching an alcove where they could see a finely crafted elven bow. While searching for secret levers or some other mechanism to move the crystal wall, a pair of hungry giant racer snakes slithered in and attacked.
Rolls went against our party. Although they managed to slay one snake, Max was eaten and instead of fleeing, Evinarus decided to keep fighting and his 4 hit points didn't last him long. Valeria the NPC fled with the measly 200 cp they'd managed to loot off of the kobolds.
She does, however, now have a map of the area explored, and along with Geissler and Kessel, will join the rouster of local NPC armsmen for hire.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Ur Gazette: Obituaries
Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 (Residimosday, Fourth Cycle, Year of the Beetle local time):
Friends, family and parishioners are mourning the loss of the Venerable Carolus: upstanding citizen of Fort Low, adventurer, dimension-hopper, and Follower of the Great Bear Spirit (birth name Father Karl), at the wrong end of a giant bee stinger during an encounter in the Zoo. Carolus succumbed to poison. His remains are now being transported back to Ur by his companions Ralex the Fighter, Thidrek the Sleestak, and their henchman Noctis (alias Burg the Orc). Carolus leaves no family behind. His accomplishments include the establishment of diplomatic relations between Fort Low and the Hive, and the clearing of the Alchemist's House which is the center of the new Crossroads settlement. Donations in his memory can be made to the Shaman Gusorius on Bear Island, or to the seer who saw these events transpire in his crystal ball from the safety of Fort Low, Necronal the Sage.
In other news, it's been nearly a year since we started this campaign! And it's been pretty awesome. Thanks, Justin! Anyway, here's the skinny on what happened last adventure.
So we (Ralex the NPC, Thidrek, Venerable Carolus and Burg renamed to Noctis) left Golden Pond, the lizardmen's village built atop giant lilypads, and headed south through the jungle that used to be the Zoo. We had a rough map to follow, and soon struck a road headed mostly in the direction we wanted to go.
Soon after, we found a "pillbox" sort of structure on a small hill just off the road, on what we assumed was the border of the zoo and Sky Hunter territory. After a brief investigation, we found that no one was home, but there was a large hatch in the floor leading down to the undercity, and nothing else. Heading back to the road, we found the vegetation was becoming more sickly, and assumed we were heading to what the lizardmen had called the "diseased ones" and their "god."
Heading onto side trails, we seemed to be making good time. Then we heard the buzzing. Before we had decided what to do, a swarm of five giant killer bees attacked. In the first round, Venerable Carolus failed his saving throw. The rest of the party made a heroic effort to kill the bees and save Carolus. Unfortunately, the best we were able to manage was getting back to the pillbox and creating a barricade to block the entrance (after managing to fend off many more giant bees, luckily without serious injury or further losses).
During Thidrek's watch (Noctis' watch passed uneventfully), there were noises outside. Infravision showed several very hot signatures low to the ground, with cold spots as if they were carrying loads. A vague humanoid blur was also off in the brush. Waking the others, we were attacked. A large rock flew through our barricade, and Thidrek was beset by ghouls. He was managing to fend them off by himself, but neither Noctis nor Ralex came to his aid - because they saw him flailing around at nothing. A bit of assistance from Noctis brought Thidrek around as our assailants were pelting the walls and floors and Ralex (who was being played by Dean now) with oil. Noctis went out to negotiate, and was told for his companions to come out. Thidrek, not wanting to get captured again, dived into the tunnels while Ralex joined Noctis outside.
Asked about the "third one" in the party by the bondage-leather clad leader and his short, robed companion, they produced Carolus's corpse. They were told to go to the road, wait one hour, then return to the pillbox. Being good soldiers, they did as ordered.
Underground, Thidrek found an underground river (maybe the same one we explored before beneath the Hive), with a pier where some beastmen had loaded up a boat. Hearing footsteps approach, he hid in an alcove and watched as a bondage-leather clad dude and a short robed companion led four pack-bats to the boat, board, and then set off into the river. As the boat passed his hiding spot, the beastmen noticed Thidrek. He shouted in Beastman language (Sleestak are a subspecies of Beastman) for them not to shoot, and they obliged.
Noctis and Ralex came back and went down into the tunnels looking for Thidrek, and we met up again and returned to the surface to watch over Carolus's remains for the rest of the night.
This may not be the end for Elder Karl, though. Justin informed us after the game that Dean can choose to roll up a new character with 1/3 of Carolus's accumulated XP, but if he does there's no chance of resurrection. We've got four days of in-game time, however, to try to get back to Bear Island with the remains and see if, like Ripper, they can bring back Karl's spirit. I'm hoping we make it. The bear afterlife is likely just as interesting as the orc afterlife was.
Friends, family and parishioners are mourning the loss of the Venerable Carolus: upstanding citizen of Fort Low, adventurer, dimension-hopper, and Follower of the Great Bear Spirit (birth name Father Karl), at the wrong end of a giant bee stinger during an encounter in the Zoo. Carolus succumbed to poison. His remains are now being transported back to Ur by his companions Ralex the Fighter, Thidrek the Sleestak, and their henchman Noctis (alias Burg the Orc). Carolus leaves no family behind. His accomplishments include the establishment of diplomatic relations between Fort Low and the Hive, and the clearing of the Alchemist's House which is the center of the new Crossroads settlement. Donations in his memory can be made to the Shaman Gusorius on Bear Island, or to the seer who saw these events transpire in his crystal ball from the safety of Fort Low, Necronal the Sage.
In other news, it's been nearly a year since we started this campaign! And it's been pretty awesome. Thanks, Justin! Anyway, here's the skinny on what happened last adventure.
So we (Ralex the NPC, Thidrek, Venerable Carolus and Burg renamed to Noctis) left Golden Pond, the lizardmen's village built atop giant lilypads, and headed south through the jungle that used to be the Zoo. We had a rough map to follow, and soon struck a road headed mostly in the direction we wanted to go.
Soon after, we found a "pillbox" sort of structure on a small hill just off the road, on what we assumed was the border of the zoo and Sky Hunter territory. After a brief investigation, we found that no one was home, but there was a large hatch in the floor leading down to the undercity, and nothing else. Heading back to the road, we found the vegetation was becoming more sickly, and assumed we were heading to what the lizardmen had called the "diseased ones" and their "god."
| art by Dean |
During Thidrek's watch (Noctis' watch passed uneventfully), there were noises outside. Infravision showed several very hot signatures low to the ground, with cold spots as if they were carrying loads. A vague humanoid blur was also off in the brush. Waking the others, we were attacked. A large rock flew through our barricade, and Thidrek was beset by ghouls. He was managing to fend them off by himself, but neither Noctis nor Ralex came to his aid - because they saw him flailing around at nothing. A bit of assistance from Noctis brought Thidrek around as our assailants were pelting the walls and floors and Ralex (who was being played by Dean now) with oil. Noctis went out to negotiate, and was told for his companions to come out. Thidrek, not wanting to get captured again, dived into the tunnels while Ralex joined Noctis outside.
Asked about the "third one" in the party by the bondage-leather clad leader and his short, robed companion, they produced Carolus's corpse. They were told to go to the road, wait one hour, then return to the pillbox. Being good soldiers, they did as ordered.
Underground, Thidrek found an underground river (maybe the same one we explored before beneath the Hive), with a pier where some beastmen had loaded up a boat. Hearing footsteps approach, he hid in an alcove and watched as a bondage-leather clad dude and a short robed companion led four pack-bats to the boat, board, and then set off into the river. As the boat passed his hiding spot, the beastmen noticed Thidrek. He shouted in Beastman language (Sleestak are a subspecies of Beastman) for them not to shoot, and they obliged.
Noctis and Ralex came back and went down into the tunnels looking for Thidrek, and we met up again and returned to the surface to watch over Carolus's remains for the rest of the night.
| more art by Dean |
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Return to Dragon's Delve
Last Friday was a holiday in Korea, so on Thursday night we (being Rick the DM, myself, Dean and Jeremy) played another session of Rick's Pathfinder game set in Monte Cook's Dragon's Delve megadungeon. Dean plays Little Sparrow, a Human Monk (planning to multiclass Monk/Cleric at level 2), a staff-wielding friar. Jeremy plays Harathys, a Human Fighter, rather mercenary in outlook. I play Wooderson, an Elf Cleric of Manidono, purveyor of halfling herb, magic mushrooms, and other mind-altering goodies. [Erin, not sure if you read this, but if you do, thanks for the inspiration!]
*Warning: module spoilers for the adventure. If you think you might play this and don't want it spoiled, you should probably skip my Dragon's Delve posts in the future.*
We'd done a bit of RP in town (well, mostly Dean and Jeremy) and learned a few things. We set out to explore the ruins with Evanerys the Elven Rogue (our NPC companion). The entranceway, for those following along from my previous post or who followed Monte's Dungeon-a-day Blog where this thing got started, has three stairways. This time, we returned to the pool room where we had found the books and fought the ghast.
There was another door with scratching sounds behind it. Opening it, we managed to release another undead creature. Luckily for us, it went down to one solid hit from Harathys's sword. It was also inhabiting a small cell with no other doors or anything of interest. Returning to the pool room (as in scrying pool, not billiards hall), we found a secret door to the north.
It led to a short hallway with another secret door at the far end. We heard some voices talking, but no one understood what they were saying. Bursting out of the doorway, we found an orc/hobgoblin dinner party underway. We were matched numbers wise, and they seemed tough. The leader spoke common, and gave us a chance to identify ourselves. Harathys failed at a bluff, but Wooderson's diplomacy and doobies earned us a chance to return the way we had came.
Exploring a bit more, there was another corridor from the pool room headed east. It led to a room with a magically locked glowing blue door (Wooderson had heard rumors that these were password protected creations of a group known as the "Mages Four"). In another room, we found an ornate key. And that seemed to be as far as we could go without the password or trying to fight the orcish dining club.
Returning to the entrance and then going west, we came to an oblong room with a skeleton at the base of the stairs we were descending. Wary of traps, we found that there was nothing immediately threatening. We did hear animal growling in the distance. Wooderson also found a secret door in the floor. The growling was getting nearer, so we prepared ourselves for battle. It was a mountain lion, and we quickly dispatched it. Following it back to the lair, we encountered its mate, guarding their young. We spent a couple of ranged attacks and damaged it, but it didn't pursue. Instead, it just held its ground and guarded its young. Feeling bad about that (although there were some thoughts of trying to sell the cubs in town), we retreated back to the oblong room.
The trap door opened onto a ladder going down. We decided not to explore that yet. At the south end of the room, a door led us down a slope into a very large room with catwalk-type galleries or balconies. A trio of moldering skeletons were in the room. We burned them with oil, avoiding potential dungeon funk mayhem, but also destroying any treasure they might have had.
After that, we headed back to town. We didn't find any loot, but we explored a fair amount of real estate, eliminated a few threats, and have some leads to follow up on in town.
*Warning: module spoilers for the adventure. If you think you might play this and don't want it spoiled, you should probably skip my Dragon's Delve posts in the future.*
We'd done a bit of RP in town (well, mostly Dean and Jeremy) and learned a few things. We set out to explore the ruins with Evanerys the Elven Rogue (our NPC companion). The entranceway, for those following along from my previous post or who followed Monte's Dungeon-a-day Blog where this thing got started, has three stairways. This time, we returned to the pool room where we had found the books and fought the ghast.
There was another door with scratching sounds behind it. Opening it, we managed to release another undead creature. Luckily for us, it went down to one solid hit from Harathys's sword. It was also inhabiting a small cell with no other doors or anything of interest. Returning to the pool room (as in scrying pool, not billiards hall), we found a secret door to the north.
It led to a short hallway with another secret door at the far end. We heard some voices talking, but no one understood what they were saying. Bursting out of the doorway, we found an orc/hobgoblin dinner party underway. We were matched numbers wise, and they seemed tough. The leader spoke common, and gave us a chance to identify ourselves. Harathys failed at a bluff, but Wooderson's diplomacy and doobies earned us a chance to return the way we had came.
Exploring a bit more, there was another corridor from the pool room headed east. It led to a room with a magically locked glowing blue door (Wooderson had heard rumors that these were password protected creations of a group known as the "Mages Four"). In another room, we found an ornate key. And that seemed to be as far as we could go without the password or trying to fight the orcish dining club.
Returning to the entrance and then going west, we came to an oblong room with a skeleton at the base of the stairs we were descending. Wary of traps, we found that there was nothing immediately threatening. We did hear animal growling in the distance. Wooderson also found a secret door in the floor. The growling was getting nearer, so we prepared ourselves for battle. It was a mountain lion, and we quickly dispatched it. Following it back to the lair, we encountered its mate, guarding their young. We spent a couple of ranged attacks and damaged it, but it didn't pursue. Instead, it just held its ground and guarded its young. Feeling bad about that (although there were some thoughts of trying to sell the cubs in town), we retreated back to the oblong room.
The trap door opened onto a ladder going down. We decided not to explore that yet. At the south end of the room, a door led us down a slope into a very large room with catwalk-type galleries or balconies. A trio of moldering skeletons were in the room. We burned them with oil, avoiding potential dungeon funk mayhem, but also destroying any treasure they might have had.
After that, we headed back to town. We didn't find any loot, but we explored a fair amount of real estate, eliminated a few threats, and have some leads to follow up on in town.
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