The Talking Bookcase

Game Report: The Arcer

2009-06-04T13:00:00.001-07:00

With the Traitor’s Lot successfully reforged, Ishtahar felt the pull of the weapon, and the One knew that the longer the artifact was in their house, the more danger they were in. The party decided that it was time to leave, but were kind of hoping that they wouldn’t have to walk.
As luck would have it, the morning they were packing up and saying goodbye to Leroy, they were approached a finely-dressed man who introduced himself as Rasputin Gold and offered them a ride. After some questioning and finding out if he was legit (Rasputin merely asserted that he hoped he would assist them on an errand or two), they decided to take him up on his offer.

It turned out he owned a flying boat called the Arcer, which ran a small crew and was stationed outside. As they walked up to the ship while the captain ran over the finer points of his fine ship, they rounded the corner to find it set upon by a small squadron of air elementals.

The party leapt into action to help defend the ship as the crew members, a small group of bullywogs and some other humanoids, were quickly incapacitated by the elementals. The wizard turns his attention to a rock elemental who was tossing exploding stones into combat and managed to push him off a pier to the sand below. The rest of the party had trouble gaining ground when they were set upon by the cyclones who frequently tossed creatures into the air.
Eventually the party overtook the minions and gained access to the ship, although not without many unfortunate detours upwards. Nari-Kar found herself 20 feet up, but managed to prevent a quick descent by summoning her newly befriended earth mephit familiar directly underneath her feet, a clever trick indeed. They took a long while eating through the elemental’s hit points, but eventually defeated the group.

They set sail shortly after, and was introduced to the crew. Esme, an elf healer, spent a few minutes bringing the slain bullywogs back to life. Rasputin noted that bullywogs were so unnatural that it was easy to take them from death’s door, making for mighty cheap labor. A grumbling deurgar started barking orders at the recently revived bullywogs, and a slim man with ridiculously red hair started hitting on all the female members of the party. Ishtahar felt the need to speak with the bullywogs, only to find them incredibly disgusting. They also discovered that the boat was possessed with an air elemental named Booth who was disliked by his compatriots, explaining the earlier attack.

After sailing for a few hours, they catch a strange sight on the blue desert, a metal man being harried by a group of centaurs. It was Mute, obviously injured, and they quickly jumped off the boat to save him. They seemed to hold their own against the large creatures, able to deflect their massive attacks and stand against their anti-maneuvering abilities. The archers who stood a long ways from the combat were eventually drawn in the warlock, and the large open space proved easy to move in.

After defeating the centaurs, they check on Mute, who seems a little more somber than usual, and offer him a ride to wherever he is going. He accepts, and they continue south towards the Salt City to revisit the warlord’s allies, the Order of Gold.

Lessons Learned: Pretty standard session, a bit of a curfuffle with the maps but otherwise it worked. The crew of the Arcer should be interesting for as long as they remain. I severely nerfed how the crew members acted, as it seemed really unfair to have 10 extra allies in every combat. I also didn’t expect the bullywogs to be given anything but a cursory glance, creatures I could randomly kill whenever I felt the urge, but the warlock’s player interest in them only provided for more comedy, as I handed off the duties of vocalizing the disgusting creatures to the wizard’s player, which lead to a hilarious exchange.

Game Log: Reforged

2009-05-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

All was ready to rejoin the two pieces of the Traitor’s Lot, it was just a matter of time. The party took a much needed rest inside the bar at the edge of madness that was Repentant Leroy’s, learning new skills, gaining new abilities, and forging new off-screen friendships. After about a month, they find themselves jolted awake suddenly by a sudden feeling of uneasiness.
They quickly look around their small room to realize that something is amiss. While the majority of them are awake, their cleric friend is still sleeping soundly. Upon examining him, they find that he in fact in no longer their cleric friend, but has been swapped with a dragonborn warlord. The dragonborn relates how he was just in the Salt City, and this appearance is unexpected in the least.

They hold off their examination of this odd turn of events to investigate some odd sounds. The first weirdness they identify is that outside, it appears that the Sandsea isn’t…sand anymore. The ocean is suddenly crashing against the beach, and they quickly surmise that something has happened to make the world return to its previous state. It doesn’t take them much longer to realize that they are in the same inn as former ruffians and alignment-shifted devils.

They sneak downstairs and enter the main drinking hall to see a large bruiser known as Big Tony holding a nearly-naked man against the wall while a lowling goes through a sack, proclaiming it a bunch of junk. When they enter, Leroy, who is behind the counter of the bar, says “Who the hell are you people?” When the party attempts to act diplomatic, reminding them that they were given a room last night, Leroy responds by saying, “I apologize for the lack of service. We should have robbed you in the night.” He takes out an intense crossbow and opens fire.

The players engage the bandits lightly, pulling their punches to avoid killing their former friends. They manage to clear out many of the ruffians and severely weaken Big Tony, but are taken by surprise from some street fighters who were positioned in the hallway behind them, who manage to pin in a few of the players. Combined with the general ignored Leroy constantly peppering the party with barbed crossbow bolts, they got in bad shape quickly, but the newly-conscripted warlord offered his help as best he could. They eventually take care of the outliers and corner Leroy, who they manage to intimidate into giving up when he gets him to remember he used to be good.

After Leroy comes back to his senses and the party helps get the bandits back on their feet, they take stock of the situation. The near-naked man made his escape as soon as possible during combat, despite taking a few hits while he ran away, and very little of his possessions were left behind. Everyone is aware that there is a pack of devils in their basement, and so the strongest of the thugs, Big Tony and Leroy, offer to go down with the party and check it out.

When they arrive downstairs, they find that a few fires have been set and a bone devil is standing in the middle of the room, just basically being scary. He and a few bearded devils are watching Liling, the succubus that they rescued from the palace and resident blacksmith, who appeared to be arguing with someone around the corner. The devils aren’t happy about the intruders, and attack.

The party answers the challenge gladly, putting the bone devil in a world of hurt, with the wizard concentrating the majority of his area effects on it. Big Tony proves a bit useless, but Leroy manages a couple of critical hits against the devils. The bearded devils and their minion allies manage to surround a few PCs, but they respond in kind and are able to take out the heavily-armored enemies. Then they get a look at who Liling was arguing with.

It was Il-selk, the pit fiend who leads the One. He seemed inflamed, and moves threateningly towards the party. They quickly realize they have absolutely no chance of defeating him, and decide that grabbing the Traitor’s Lot, which Liling is wielding, is the highest priority.
With the bone devil and a set of cohorts properly partitioned off by one of the wizard’s area effects, the rogue turns invisible and sneaks up on Liling to snatch the weapon. She succeeds, and Ishtahar runs forward to grab the object. Once she does, the devils suddenly seem a little less angry, and everything returns to “normal.”

The Traitor’s Lot actively accepts Ishtahar as its wielder, an argument that the good devils cannot argue with, and so they put out their fires and quickly apologize for their sudden reversion. With the artifact’s mission driving them and the request from the dragonborn to return to his home, the players have nowhere to go but back into the madness.

Lessons Learned: It’s been a long while since we’ve played this campaign, and a lot has happened since then. One of our players left us…again…(I could literally put together a party out of the characters we’ve lost in this campaign), and the release of another corebook made the three arcane characters want to switch around their powers. So, I fixed all these troubles with a little logical timeskip, which I love doing (it makes certain plot points so much more plausible).

The party was in good form, although they are a lot more powerful than I remembered. I liked the encounters this time around, the players seemed to be likely the developments, and really, everything seems fine. My only concern is that I don’t know where to go from here. Luckily, a player actually suggested a plot point, which made it easier, and with the newest Monster Manual in my hands (two words: It’s great), I should be able to create some very interesting adventures. Here’s hoping.

Game Report: Palace Siege

2009-04-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

The mission was simple: get into the palace to rescue the away party of the One who had been out of contact. The only thing they knew about the Palace for sure was that it was a main point of contention among the various gangs in the area, but other than that they were unsure, so they approached cautiously.

They came to the front of the building to see there was some hubbub about, as small pockets of people seemed to be entering the building. Trying to blend in with the crowd, they walked up the front steps, only to suddenly be set up by a small troupe of angels; one large Angel of Battle, his bodyguards, and a few lower-level soldiers.

The party was divided by a steep set of stairs, and while the ranged warriors tried to manage the soldiers around them, the swordmage was struggling to hold her own around the Angel of Battle. After a long and drawn-out battle, they managed to cut down the majority of the soldiers and severely wounded the Angel of Battle, and were able to stop an escaping angel, but it attracted the attention of some of the roving fighters in the area. The party quickly ducked into the Palace and into a nearby hallway.

The building noticeably shakes as they walk down the hallway, looking for a passageway into the basement. They easily find a stairway going down into a poorly-lit room, where they eventually discover a room with a guy playing with a knife. The rogue decided to try to get the jump on him, and throws a shuriken at him and steps into the room. Unfortunately, she failed to notice two vicious drakes in the room as well, who immediately surround her. The rest of the party streams into the room to see that there’s a huge glass dome against the wall, which seemed to contain some psychic feedback.

The man with the knife drops it and instead hits the party with a few stunning fists, while the drakes use their teleport ability to put any weak-willed party members into the dome. Anyone in the dome took some mild brain damage whenever they started there, and couldn’t interact with the world outside of it. When another monk and a psychic showed up, the party knew it had a fight on its hands, and struggled to take down the guards. They screwed at one point when they realized that all teleports with diverted into the dome, and accidently put two of their own party members into harm’s way. However, clever use of an Orb of Farseeing and general hard hits eventually killed all the guards, including a classic trick of setting a table on fire and closing the door.

The party finds among the remains a glass orb, which they break to cause the dome to melt away. Behind they find a short passageway with an occasional hole through the side. The party rightly guessed that they are slits leading to a trap, so they place an illusionary wall to cover one side of the hallway. This act managed to completely break the encounter, as half the enemies needed those slits to join the encounter. They eventually courageously march forward to attract the attention of the slaad, who is quickly brought below half health in under a round. They also discover a hidden room behind the wall, in which a firebelcher roams, and the swordmage teleports in to skewer the beast. With the other pair of enemies unable to get past the illusionary wall, the party easily sneaks through to the next room, where they find the missing cell of the One.

They ask the devils if they are alright, and if they happen to have a blacksmith among them. The devil hesitate, and say that their leader and the only one with the knowledge they seek has been taken captive. So, they have one more stop before they leave the palace.

The party heads back upstairs to see that it’s a bit more chaotic upstairs than before. They see groups of clergy in funny hats running around, and even manage to attract the attention of some of the invaders and defenders, soundly defeating the hammersmiths and Clerics of Bane that confront them in the hallway. After some more muddled wandering around, they manage to get upstairs to the ruined second story and come across a room where they hear muffled cries.

They pick in to find some clergy muscle sitting around playing cards, after the rogue lets loose another sneak attack, they all wandering into the room, only to find that the muscle is exceptionally strong and they have a wizard friend, who shows up to launch elemental bolts and stunbeams at them.

The party still holds, however, and shortly after a pale, mildly vampiric man wearing only boxer shorts steps out of a nearby room, he uses his kukris to rip apart the party, and with the ability of the muscle to knock them flat, they have a hard time maneuvering. Eventually the wizard gets into the room the dhampyr came out of, to find a succubus tied to a bed. They try to untie her and provide her with some minor healing, but the dhampyr quickly returns after his allies fall, and kicks over a pot to cause part of the floor to burst into flames. After a few failed attempts on the villain’s part to kill the succubus, he uses his fading ability to escape through the walls.

The succubus is revived and released, and as the building continues to shake, they run out, passing many panicked enemies who are running from something they only call “The Crusher.” They easily make it through the streets back to the docks.

Lessons Learned: This adventure actually spanned three sessions, and we only made it through one session every two weeks, with various distractions and a second game interfering. The first session took over long, because for some reason the first encounter ate up over three hours of time, which made me realized I needed to make sure things were moving at a decent pace. The second session was ran better, but the encounter killing event should have been more avoidable. The third session also ran quickly and fine, although at this point I had already forgotten just what I was thinking with each encounter that even I was a bit incredulous with each new development. There wasn't a extended rest at all, which gives me a good sign of how long the party can survive without taking a nap. However, now that the party is finally out of the Palace and with the necessary plot coupons, I have a few weeks to come up with the next grand arc of the campaign.

Game Report: The One

2009-03-02T14:39:00.000-08:00

The boat suddenly stops when the party catches sight of Alreta on the horizon. The Halfling refuses to go any further, and when the party attempts to convince him that he lied to them, that Alreta is clearly not on fire and that is should be safe to approach, he merely says, “Well, it’s clear some people are delusional.” With a response of “yeah, some people are,” they get off the ship and start walking towards the city.

They come across a platform a few miles from the city. The warlock wants to walk around, sensing a pattern whenever they get close to something like this. She was correct, they caught sight of a salamander lounging underneath the platform, and tried to walk around. The plan failed, however, when some banshrae came charging out of a small hut and started shooting darts at them.

The party maintained their distance, only closing once they’d dealt a good deal of damage to the salamander. The banshrae had some effects that stopped actions, but otherwise the party managed to soundly defeat the creatures with some sound abilities and strategy.

They looted the room that the banshrae came from and found a small haul, and then continued into the city on the horizon. They arrived at midday, to find that the sky was clear, the grass was green, the buildings were made of brick and wood, and everything seemed disturbingly normal. The one thing that wasn’t normal was that there was no one in the streets. They walked tentatively through the streets, in what appears to be the docking district, which is unusually clean and graffiti-free.

They find themselves on a street facing a large building that appears to be labeled “Leroy’s.” They walked towards it, but as they approach an eladrin comes flying off a roof and attempts to stab the swordmage. It’s an ambush, but the players aren’t flustered. Another eladrin and a couple of human wizards appear to fight the party.

The party is much stronger than this threat, however. They manage to pin the eladrin and use multiple area effect attacks on them, and they eventually collapse under the party’s hammer, helped by good attacks by the PCs and poor rolls on the enemies’ part. While the wizards hit them with fireballs and such, they eventually broke and one tried to run, only to be trapped in an alley. The PCs decided to show him mercy, and demanded to know why they were attacked.

The wizard said that they had been jumping newcomers that were coming into the city, just to take their stuff. Apparently the city itself was divided into a number of gangs, and the wizard represented the Outsiders. The party tells him to tell his people that they aren’t to be disturbed while in town, and the wizard runs off scared. They learn that Leroy is a bit of an outlier among the gangs in town, and they step into the bar.

They are greeted with the most charming and nice brand of brigands possible. Everyone looks like a common thug, but are warm and receiving. They meet the bartender and owner, Repentant Leroy. He offers them his place and asks what they are there for. They mention the blade that they’ve been carrying around, and how they want it repaired. He takes them downstairs to an underground market, but come across a surprise when there are multiple devils just walking around. One imp sees them and immediately freaks out and flies off to another room.

The hubbub attracts the attention of what appears to be Leroy’s secret patron, a pit fiend whose alignment was shifted by the End; Il-Selk, leader of the One. He allows the party an audience and replied that he knows where the sword came from and that he wants to see it repaired, but the only artisan of skill his group has was cut off from communication a week ago. He is willing to provide what resources he has to restore connection and get the sword into one piece. The party prepares for the journey.

Lesson Learned: It looks like my tendency for random encounters are coming to an end. The party is starting to catch wise of the obvious traps and are unwilling to actively approach them, and the cleric has some kind of device that makes it impossible to be surprised. It looks like dungeons are going to be the way to go for a while.

The long-distance is working well, and I’m looking for more ways to improve the method. Also, my improvisation skills for names needs to be looked at again; while every single NPC isn’t named Jerry, I flubbed by calling the gang the Outsiders. I need to flesh out the city of Havmarch more before I hit the table again.

Game Report: Guarding the Boat

2009-02-24T10:12:00.003-08:00

After defeating the flameharrow, the party continues to make its case to the Halfling in the boat. He’s still pretty skeptical of allowing the party aboard, but they make a good point about protection on the sands and offer use of their store-in-a-bag, and he eventually agrees. He takes them north a good distance, allowing them to take turns resting, and eventually needs to rest himself. He stops the boat and forces them out, telling them to let him sleep. They widdle away their time guarding the boat.

Eventually they catch sight of a figure of a horizon, which appears to be a mummy. The mummy doesn’t approach them, but instead makes a motion and summons a couple of scorpions and swarms to harry the party. They manage very well against the creatures, managing to wrangle them quickly, while they kept an eye out for the mummy, who might appear at any moment. After the last scorpion falls, the mummy is nowhere to be seen, and they take some time debating whether to pursue the creature or not. They decide that the boat is more important, and take up positions around the craft, in case the mummy comes back.

The mummy does come back, flirting outside their available range east of the ship, when an odd pairing come over the hill on the west of the ship; a hooded and maniacal human, and a large and rotting undead dog, who immediately charge the nearest player. The party manages to regroup quickly, however, and after the hooded human calls reinforcements in the form of tiny flesh abominations, the wizard drops an area effect that completely obliterates the minions. The party manages to knock back and daze the dog, and then drop area spell after area spell until the creatures are handily defeated. They quickly run to the other side of the ship to stop the mummy, who must obviously be taking advantage of the distraction, only to find nothing, and they resume their watch.

A long hour later, they finally see the mummy again, this time approaching fast over the hill, sliding across the sand. Expecting the worst, they all get onto the boat, ready to snipe the mummy if need be. This turns out to be a horrible plan, as the mummy reveals his source of transportation is in fact a brown dragon. The rogue rushes forward to deal an incredible amount of damage to the creature, and the rest quickly jump ship to try to avoid its breath weapon, but its all for not, as the dragon opens with a blast of sand that engulfs a huge piece of the playing field.

The two enemies split up, the dragon going after the rogue and warlock while the mummy stays back and takes pot shots, while shrugging off any attack against it with his psychic powers. The wizard creates large damaging areas, but the enemies stay off to the side of either area and continue their assault. The dragon continued to create huge sandstorms that shut down entire turns when a player found himself trapped inside. The players start to fill the pressure, but eventually the wall breaks, and the mummy gets taking down inside a zone of cold while the dragon is quickly surrounded and quartered. It attempts to burrow away from the players, but too late, as he died to ongoing damage underground. The players spent the rest of the day digging him out and fingering their new treasures.

Lessons Learned: When I decided to run a mostly-wilderness campaign, I knew I’d run into issues where the players couldn’t get supplies, so I took a lot of steps to make sure this wasn’t a problem, first with free rations bag (because tracking food is obnoxious), then Mute, and finally the store-in-the-bag. But I find that they use the store-in-the-bag as a bargaining chip a lot more than they should be able to. Hopefully as they approach the only civilized area of Atia, that becomes less of an issue. Also, the webcam scheme we have to allow our swordmage to play is working better than expected, especially after last time we played, but I need to do more preparation so that he isn’t left staring at the backsides of figurines the entire time.

Game Report: The Many

2009-02-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

The party settled in among the abandoned ship and slept, waking to travel by twilight to avoid being seen. Their plan fails spectacularly when the reach a tall dune, and the rogue rushes to the top, only to be surprised by a bearded devil teleporting in and declaring, “The Many have chosen you.” It takes a swipe at the rogue and then his companions also teleport into the area.

The party has trouble getting up the dune to the bearded devils and their legion forces, and burn many of their teleporting skills getting into position next to the devils. Once everyone is positioned, a new threat in the form of assassin imps appear to aggravate the spellcasters. The party just shrugged and cut down the minions to allow to them focus on the larger creatures.

The devils’ abilities proved horribly dangerous, however. The imps caused poison that would eventually put the players to sleep, while the bearded devils caused bleeding with their glaives. These effects combined with horrible luck on the party’s part caused three characters to fail unconscious and susceptible to the imp’s deadly finishing attacks, and it was only through the use of their limited resources that they managed to keep everyone alive and defeat the devils.

Exhausted, the party fell asleep on the dune, setting up defenses to prevent such a sudden incursion again. They managed to survive a day on the sands and continue north, promising to stay close to the furrows that cuts across the Sandsea.

Later, they come across a boat that seems in perfect condition, perched atop the sand and apparently magical enchanted to chop through the sands as if it were water. They encounter a halfling on the boat, who seemed stubborn in his negotiations in allowing them access to his craft. He also stated that Alreta had burned to the ground, which still didn’t deter the party in their pleading.

At one point, the warlock suggested soft-spokenly that they should just kill the halfling and take his boat. Suddenly, a cloaked figure behind them said that they should continue with that strategy. They turned to see the mysterious stranger, and when the stranger pressed the issue, they tried to walk away, only to discover this stranger was a sadistic undead who summoned three ghosts to his side.

The party was hit by some powerful area attacks, which immobilized and dazed some of them, but after a few turns they managed to spread out to prevent such wideswiping attacks. The party was stunted by these debilitating effects, but they focused their fire against the primary undead, knocking him down quickly, and it didn’t take much longer until the three ghosts were defeated, with the assistance of the halfling in the boat.

Lessons Learned: Sometimes the dice hate you. The first fight of the evening was the worst example, as the dice hitting the table simply refused to go above a 10, making the party’s best attempts fall flat and what should have been an easy encounter, with low-damage enemies turned into a nightmare, with two characters coming really really close to death and everyone going bloodied at some point. The morale killed the table, and they were looking for payback as they went into the second encounter, that went better, but by no means well. Sometimes a fluke is a fluke, and no amount of strategy can protect you from the dice, but luckily the party managed to get through this.

Also, I don't know if it was the atmosphere or failure to read beforehand, but more prep time is still on the agenda, due to a major flub I made when revealing the sadistic undead. To the eye, he was obviously a skeleton in a cloak, but in my description, I managed to say, "He has a bone head, no wait, a bear skull, no I mean..." All seriousness the mysterious stranger had at that point was instantly lost.

Game Report: Pirates

2009-02-12T14:05:00.001-08:00

The party finally finds itself on the shore of the Sandsea, near the completely broken and abandoned capitol city of the former kingdom of Ar, and they head to the docks of the city, to move into the foreboding blue dunes. They see the hulks of broken ships out among the desert, and in a fit of fervor, the cleric rushes forward to look around.

He managed to step directly into a trap, and some kuo-toa jump out from under the deck to attack. This ugly froglike creatures used their spears and sticky shields to torment the party, but overall they fail to deal significant damage, only occasionally sticking the players with their harpoons to deal aggravated damage. The kuo-toa fall easily, but not before their leader makes his escape, running to a specific ship some ways from the dock.

The party sees the danger of allowing one of those who attacked them to get away, especially since the players drew similarities between these creatures and certain creatures from another game. They followed the rogue leader to the ship, which was partially collapsed in the sand. As they approached, they catch sight of a kuo-toa whip in the crow’s-nest, who shouts, “You shall never defeat the Dread Pirate!” Another group of the monsters attacks, fitted with eyepatches and three-cornered hats.

The whip casts some nasty spells at the players and managed to remain mostly unharmed until late in the fight by constantly blinding the most dangerous PC. The rest of the kuo-toa who assisted, however, had less of a chance and were quickly swept up the party, who then were able to focus attention of the spellcaster. Multiple players also managed to teleport into the crow’s-nest, making this an interesting three dimensional fight.

The players took a short rest and decided that it was to their benefit to finish off this Dread Pirate. They take a pick inside the derelict ship to see a single kuo-toa taking to an unseen entity that seemed to be the Dread Pirate. They decided to enter and start the fight, all falling through the porthole into the enclosed space. The wizard put up a wall of fire to take out the leader whip and his entourage, which they quickly maneuver away from. After everyone was inside the boat, through the wall of fire came…a floating brain-in-a-jar wearing a pirate hat and with an eyepatch strapped across its faceplate.

The Dread Pirate immediately dominates the wizard, and has him fling spells at the party. The melee characters get into position around the kuo-toa, sending them back into the fire, while the rest stood back and mopped up the remaining minions hiding among the rafters. The brain-in-the-jar found itself quickly injured, only to remain standing for an extra round to the fervor of his demagogue follower, and after the Dread Pirate fell, its lock on the wizard’s mind faded and the rest of the fight went easily.

After tripping over the corpses of the unusual pirate gang, they discovered some much needed booty; a large pile of treasure to weigh them down as they made their way across the Sandsea.

Lessons Learned: I like throwing something goofy in every once in a while, and after acquiring the Open Grave book and seeing the Brain-in-a-Jar, my players knew it was only a matter of time before they encountered one. By making it a pirate being worshipped by a group of extremely misplaced kuo-toa, I made the inevitable appearance as silly as possible. That should satisfy my need for the inane for at least a month.

On the other hand, the execution in the final fight wasn’t as well-tuned, and paragon tier has proven that there is a lot more paperwork than usual. Nearly half of all paragon tier monsters have started dealing ongoing damage and require multiple saves per turn, and the players have so many actions and options that they are difficult to track. The wall of fire that proved so instrumental in the final fight shouldn’t have been, and it broke a lot of the dynamic of the fight in the player’s favor. Keeping track of these things more closely is becoming more necessary.

Also, the wizard’s player would like you to know that the Dread Pirate was technically a Brain-in-a-jaaaarrr.

Game Report: The Way North

2009-02-02T15:13:00.001-08:00

The PCs return to the table loaded up with new feats, powers, and abilities, and get a taste of what has been happening in the world now that they have a little room to breathe. They had spent a week being cared for by the vampires, who were using this time to try to recover the objects that the players had taken, but the players held out well against the interrogation, and managed to slip the objects away to their store-in-a-bag for storage. Eventually they are released, their powers and limbs intact.

They walk north back towards the Salt City, discussing their next plan of action, when they are suddenly attacked by a tiny rogue. The wizard walled off the rogue while the others stood back and batted it off, until some creatures leapt out of the ground and attacked the whole group. The swordmage asked the rogue to play nice for a small bit, and they took on the new enemies, known as blasphemes.

The blasphemes charged into combat, one jumping to the front line, another sneaking behind and sneak-attacking the backline, and the third knocking players out of combat by sending them ten feet under. Literally ten feet under, as it manipulated the ground around him. The PCs had little trouble handling the first two, although the gravedigger stuck around a little longer and pushed many melee characters to the ground. It eventually fell, however, and they decided to talk to their new frenemy.

This little Halfling rogue had mistaken the party for another group, and had attacked them out of habit. It turns out they were headed in relatively the same direction, so they allow the new adventurer to join them on their way up.

After walking for only a few short minutes they run into a familiar face, the warforged known as Mute, who immediately sets up his little shop and allows the party to do a little shopping. They ask him if he is capable of fixing the Traitor's Lot, only to be told that their best chance is heading to Alreta. He informed them what’s been happening in the area, including the dragonborn making a grand push into the city and Merc abandoning his previous lair. They purchased a suit of armor and then went on their way.

The party continues, but manages to miss the telltale signs of a cosmic rift and get ambushed by some fire elementals. However, they far outmatch the creatures, and quickly destroy them thanks to their natural resistances and strong powers.

They traveled for a few more days, working their way north to the capital city of the former Kingdom of Ar. While dodging the notice of some huge creatures, they step close to a small barn when they hear a screech and notice a wyvern advancing on them. They take position and advance, but manage to attract the attention of the residents of the house, a family of basilisks. The stone rays manage to annoy and slowdown the players, while the wyvern useless attacks the players. The baby basilisks pose little threat, and the players eventually handle the creatures with a wall of fire.

It wasn’t without consequence, however, as the swordmage managed to be turned to stone by an errant gaze. It took a small amount of old fashioned herbology to bring her back to life.
Lessons Learned: This was the first session for a player, as well as an opportunity for me to play a little plot catch-up. These two goals didn’t mesh too well, but the fun encounters and showing off of the new abilities made this game pretty fun.

Game Report: The Big Confrontation

2009-01-29T10:56:00.000-08:00

They burst through the double doors, and wait, noticing that there are two doorways open in the hall. They discuss the best course of action and decide to cast an illusory wall in front of the doors and pick off any enemy that arrives. This is done, and once they create a distraction, what appear to be floating zombie brains emerge from the first room. They begin to fire their ranged effects through the wall, and the brains charge, but cannot seem to grasp the fact that the wall isn’t actually there. Only one manages to get through, and provides the only resistance when it dominates the swordmage and sends her after the wizard.

However, at the end of the hall, a blood ooze pops out of the second door, followed by skin kites, flying patches of skin. The players use the protection of the wall to fire off some area effects that destroy the skin kites easily, but the blood ooze easily breaks through the wall of deception to start grabbing the PCs and draining their healing surges. They manage to bat it back, and after a few hits, it decongeals and melts, leaving a single bloodied brain to dispatch, which they quickly did.

They find that the room the brains came from have four dead bodies inside, apparently tricked into slaughtering each other by the flying brains. The room the ooze came from was a lab used for growing new undead creatures, and they had escaped not a short while ago. After collecting themselves and a little loot, they step into the next room, a small antechamber. Two infused suits of armor attack them, but fall shortly after doing not much damage to the melee fighters.

They open the next set of doors to final find the Margrave, who sits on his raised throne awaiting them. He applauds them for destroying their forces and asks them what they want. When they say that they want the hilt and the black blade, the lich tells them to take them, he doesn’t care. The party thinks it can’t be that easy when a githzerai appears next to the lich, telling them that he refuses to let them leave. He is outrageously upset that they keep disrupting his business’s operations, and wants only revenge for what they’ve done to his headquarters, his minions, and his lover.

The players weren’t that into talking to him either, and the wizard lets loose an icy ray at both him and the githyanki that materialized nearby. The players quickly bumrush the githyanki and disarm him quickly, taking back the black blade that the doppelganger needed to retrieve. The doppelganger quickly runs up and grabs it, then turns to the rest of the party and gives a shrug. Luckily, someone pointed out that she wasn’t unbound yet, so she should continues to fight.

The githzerai is furious, and powers up for a devastating attack against the wizard. He takes a swing, which is guaranteed to be a critical if he hits…and the fist bounces pointlessly off the wizard’s magical shield. He lets loose psychic bolts after that, while drawing the party closer and closer to the lich so they are hit by his aura. Unfortunately for him, the lich’s aura also affects him, and at some point during the combat, the lich decided that their alliance wasn’t that important and included the githzerai in the area attack. The githzerai fell from the necrotic influence of the lich, and the lich continued to throw lowballs at the PCs, most of its power wasted now that the group had moved outside his range.

Eventually they get the lich to below 20% of its hit points, and the doppelganger sees an opportunity to get out of there. She throws open the double doors only to see a small crew of heavily-armed vampires. They take aim at the lich and destroy it with magical crossbows, and then march in, preventing any characters from leaving.

The brother and sister leaders of the vampires and thank the PCs for clearing the path to allow them to take over the Margrave’s land. They offer their condolences, let the PCs take whatever they like, and give a blood oath to allow them to stay safely within the mansion’s walls. The PCs, completely sapped, reluctantly agree, but also find the missing hilt. They pass out, exhausted, but wake up more energized, more powerful, and ready for the paragon tier.

Lessons learned: The final fight was obnoxious for the PCs because they had a hard time actually hitting the two villains. It took some lucky rolls, but all those misses really dampered the party. The flavor also didn’t stand up too well, and a lot of explanation and storyline didn’t make its way out of the enemy’s mouth. Still, it managed to be a tough fight, which was the point, just not in the most elegant way.

Anyway, so long heroic tier. The PCs have achieved a lot, discovering an artifact, saving a drunken dragon, rescuing a number of refugees, destroying a roaming devil’s caravan, constantly flustering the Company, having numerous run-ins with vampires, fulfilling an angelic order, and nearly killing a lich. The lost two among their ranks, but gained new allies, and likely will gain more along the way. The paragon tier will be interesting for them as they continue their adventures.

Game Report: The lamia

2009-01-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

The players wait patiently in the corpse room for the floating teeth of the Margrave to appear, and he does, taunting them and guiding them to the next and final room, the Devil Room, which is on the other side of the mansion. They step into the hallway only to walk into an ambush, where a drow arachnomancer and two driders were waiting. The drow cast a web in the hallway to slowdown the character, and they managed to get split in the hallway, the cleric and the doppelganger getting trapped in the corpse room while the casters find themselves right next to the enemies, with only the swordmage to protect them.

The fight drags, with no way to dispel the magic web and the forces split. The party does eventually burn down the enemies, and exhaustedly truck it to the next room, to complete this level of the quest as soon as possible. They find the devil room, which appears to be a suite of some kind. The first room is empty, but in the main area they find a bone mongrel dragon - a hastily put together collaboration of dragon bones – and a pain devil guiding it.

The players charge in, fending off the mongrel’s bone shard volley and dodging the pain devil’s triple flail. Further enforcement found its way into the room, more lower-ranked pain devils and a couple of cambians, humanoids twisted by devils. The doppelganger took enough hits to convince her to leave the combat for a bit, and the swordmage found herself tapped of energy near the end, but after defeating the mongrel they had little trouble clearing the area.

Further in the suite they find a contract to provide forces to the Margrave from a devil named Tarnil, which only remained useful if the Margrave possessed it. They steal this and wait for the teeth to come again. They wait for about ten minutes until it finally arrived, at which point it congratulated them for managing to get all three items, and demand that they give the items to him. The party isn’t keen on it, and manages to fluster the teeth just enough to cause it to offer them one more stop on their quest, further down the hallway.

They continue down the hall to find a small ante-chamber near the back. Inside it is dirty and trashridden, but behind a secret door in the room they discover a lavish little room where a thin, long-haired man sits, who greets them in the same voice the floating teeth spoke in. They also notice that he has a bit of a skin problem, as it would occasionally pulsate and crawl.

It was a lamia, who had taken up residence inside the Margrave’s palace and whiled away his time causing mischief and tormenting the Margrave. He had been the one who was guiding them to steal those three items from the Margrave’s forces, with no real motivation besides the fact that it would be funny. He informs them on facts about the mansion, such as the lich’s missing phylactery, which makes him vulnerable but also relatively unkillable in his current state, and various other forces around the mansion. For a small fee of a 1000 gold coins worth of residuum, it lets them sleep in the opposite room to regain their strength.

After they get rested, and with a few cursory glances back at the creature, they return to the main hall to discover that the skeleton army they had bypassed had taken up guard duty. The phalanxes of skeletons were led by a pair of skull lords, who ordered the minions to attack. The wizard used his walls and area attacks to handle the majority of the army, but some stronger skeletons still managed to slip through the party’s defenses and deal major damage. Combined with the pushing effects of the skull lords, the players had a little trouble keeping the casters alive, but otherwise came out alive. They take a short breather before charging into the central chamber.

Lessons Learned: A good deception is a lot of fun, especially when it goes unnoticed for as long as this one did. They didn’t catch on that the Margrave they were talking to wasn’t the real one until the final moments, making this fun. Also, the doppelganger was proving more and more useless with each combat, and needed a bit of an upgrade if the players stood a chance against the lich.

Game Report: Chattering Teeth

2009-01-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

The party, now through the front door of the Margrave’s mansion, charged up the stairs and took a left turn, trying to find some more trouble. While they moved quickly down the hall, the pair of teeth from before appeared to interject and let them know that reaching the Margrave wouldn’t be that easy. It stated that they needed three items in order to access his inner chamber, in three separate rooms.

The party, confused by the teeth’s forwardness and suspicious of a trap, agreed to be led to the first room at least, and walked a short distance through rotting hallways to find a room littered with dirty dresses with a couple of devourers standing within. Devourers are demons that thrive on the lifeforce of others, and a dangerous enemy, which they found out shortly.

They charged in, confident and unsure how to handle their enemy. The two viscera devourers are ineffective in their first motions, unable to attach their tendrils onto the party, and the battle swings easily into the party’s favor until a larger spirit devourer came around the corner. It spent a turn threatening the party until its main ability went off, the ability to consume a PC, removing it from the board and slowly chomping on it. At this time, the viscera devourers managed to get a hold onto a number of PCs, and they found themselves in a spot.

Every member of the party found themselves inside the horror space that was the spirit devourer, and the draining ability of the smaller devourers kept them alive and the party drained. Deep in the combat after a lot of tricks had been pulled, the cleric called pulled into the spirit devourer’s void and went unconscious, putting on the pressure to save him. A few well-placed dailies and a quick save from the doppelganger dropped the devourer and expelled Kasul. It only took a few turns to finish the remaining monsters.

The players wanted to rest immediately, and only through some coaxing from the NPC did they look around to find a safe room to rest in and the first item, a soul vault and the attached key that locks it. They grab the key and then bed down for the afternoon, to gain back their powers.

They wake up to the teeth again, floating and taunting. It informs them the next item is right across the hallway, and they step over into what is called the corpse room, to find a pile of corpses about 15 feet tall and 30 feet wide. After some vomiting, they notice that some of those corpses were moving, one headless and floating, and two brute zombies.

The wizard proves his merit in this fight, first putting an illusionary wall around one zombie, which locks him out of combat for a good three turns, and then dispelling the extremely dangerous blade storm that the headless corpse had placed on them. After that the lethality of the creatures was seriously nipped, and it was mere running and gunning after that. The headless corpse continuously did a shockwave that pushed melee characters back, but the swordmage used this as an opportunity to charge the enemy. The battle didn’t last long.

After the finished the combat, they stepped behind the pile of corpses to find a book of necromancy specifically linked to this pile of corpses. The wizard even managed to raise two zombies, which immediately attacked him. With two items in their hand, they stood a moment and waited for the teeth to reappear.

Game Report: Crapload of zombies

2008-12-29T15:24:00.000-08:00

The party retreats from the dracolich’s lair, escaping to a nearby outpost and spending their time stocking up on supplies and changing equipment, realizing that this was going to be more difficult than they imagined. As they finished resting, a pair of teeth suddenly appeared in the air and started taunting them. A quick check found it to be a Leomund’s Magic Mouth ritual, and the voice said it was the Margrave, expecting further intrusion into his manor.

The PCs weren’t discouraged, however, and headed back to the mansion, looking for a way in. The front was crawling with zombies, the back with skeletons. They decided that it would be easier just to charge through the front door, and walk up to the front door, only to see something they didn’t really expect. Every inch of the courtyard directly in front of the graveyard was crawling with zombies. Over 400 zombie minions. The only safe ground was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

Not at all discouraged, they let loose a few area-of-effect abilities and charged forward, trying to get to the center before pushing forward to the door. The plan was good, but their timing was off and soon the melee combatants found themselves surrounded by minions. It was bait-and-switch for a number of turns, creating an opening only to have the zombies close in and attack. Teleportation and other effects allowed them to move around, and in under a minute (game time) they managed to destroy nearly half of the horde and push through the front door.

What greeted them on the other side wasn’t very friendly, however. They found themselves staring at zombies of a different sort, both flying creatures and zombie dogs, being led by a drow sharpshooter. They felt secure until a pair of blade spiders came out from underneath a set of stairs, and with a three-fold front the PCs found their interests split, and themselves unrested.

The fighter and doppelganger stood toe-to-toe with the dogs and the drow, while the cleric and the arcane casters tried to keep the spiders off of them and freeze the rotwings in place. The fighter had little problem mopping up the zombie dogs and keeping the drow from getting combat advantage, but the backrow was struggling with the spiders, and only through cautious movement did they get away from the mess while the doppelganger took some aggro.

Once the drow fell, the party was able to reconvene and take down the spiders. They had a difficult time, however, with many running out of encounter powers and unwilling to use their dailies so soon in the adventure. They eventually took down the last creature and sighed in relief, only to realize that there was way too much standing between them and their final objective.

Lessons learned: The zombie horde was very fun, although logistically it could have been handled better. I was concerned with clean-up, and instead decided to make every spot that didn’t have a zombie instead of using a crapload of pennies for the encounter. Unfortunately this got confusing, and twice I mismarked where the zombies went because I forgot the system. The players did handle themselves well when they jumped into the next encounter, and can probably handle more than I’ve been throwing at them as long as they have enough prep time. Also, after seeing potions work in combat both in this session and a Living Forgotten Realms session the day before…I understand why they work the way they do. I’m hesitant to switch back now, however, after so many months of resisting. It doesn’t seem fair.

Game Report: To the Margrave

2008-12-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

The PCs deal with the sudden death of their warlord and confront the genasi’s part in it. A writing of the event is here.

The players discuss how they are going to continue, and where they are going to go. They realize that the majority of their plots point to the Margrave, and they have an artifact that seemed to tug them in that direction, so they follow their instinct and head out towards the Margrave. The second they step out of the room they were staying in, an archer thuds against the door. They step back inside, put on their gameface, and charge out of the room.

The warlock steps out and sees two shadar-kai blocking the path to a medusa in the back. She steps around the door to be missed by an invisible shadar-kai, and then provokes another when she fires an eldritch blast. The rest of the party charges into the hallway, drawing the fire of the shadar-kai as everyone teleports back and forth while the medusa stays back and fires arrows at them. They take out the formerly-invisible stalker characters easily, and only have a little trouble with the rest due to the shadar-kai’s ability to go substantial for a round. The swordmage ping-pongs back and forth down the hall, dealing damage to anyone who threatens her newfound allies, and eventually they corner the medusa, who continued to unsuccessfully turn them to stone until falling.

After the battle, they find a nearby teleporter pad and find themselves once again outside, far from the Company’s headquarters. They use the blade to guide them towards the Margrave. They make it about 25 miles when they come across a broken statue. Seeing this as not the finest location, they start to veer around the statue when the earth shakes and a bullette leaps out of the ground. Its mate soon follows, and when the statue’s base turns out to be trapped, the PCs find themselves cramped.

They eventually separate and bunch the bullettes together, after the majority of them being taken down to bloodied. The creatures made things difficult by charging underneath the players and knocking them over. They eventually manage to fell one of the beasts, and the other one soon followed. Exhausted, they rested in an abandoned building, after first catching sight of the Margrave’s manor, with a dark dragon circling above it.

They walk up to the huge estate and wander around the outside, looking for a possible way in. The front area is crawling with zombies, packed together in front of the front doors, and skeleton soldiers were training in the back courtyard. Nothing seemed terribly interested in fighting them. They eventually decide to try sneaking through the servant’s quarters at the edge of the compound, thinking there may be a hidden entrance.

They were so wrong. Instead they found a saltbound dracolich, a raised dragon fossil that immediately attacked them. The PCs had some control over the dragon for a while, able to put it in a wall of fire and immobilize it, but their plan fell to pieces when the dracolich stunned the party with its frightening presence, ending all of their daily effects, and placed itself in the center of the party, knocking every down with its tail swipe effect. The doppelganger, who had been tagging along, fell unconscious and was getting coup de graced, and they had to quickly give her a potion to keep her from dying.

The players found themselves low on resources and power. They had nothing that could do significant damage to the monster, and so they stumbled along until they eventually landed the killing blow. They had a massive fight against a powerful enemy, only to discover that this building wasn’t connected to the manor at all. They decided to take a minute to collect their thoughts.

Lessons Learned: Gaming day was bumped up an evening due to a conflict, giving me little time to prepare, so there were again a number of encounters that were planned minutes before they occurred. In addition, the recent departure of one of the player’s made me feel the need to fill the gap by fleshing out the character sheet of the tag-along doppelganger. Of course, I couldn’t do it the usual way, and instead created a homebrew class for her. These distractions caused the game to run a little unsmoothly, compounded by the more difficult than usual creatures and unlucky rolls. More effort will be required to make sure this next session doesn’t end in disaster.

Game Report: Entrance and Exit

2008-12-08T14:13:00.000-08:00

The players rest inside the white dragon’s lair, while the warlock translated some ruins that would allow them to continue. They finally managed to unlock the code to the jail, which they jump through. They take down three ridiculously easy enemies, and start looking around the cells.

Inside one of the cells was a woman, wearing civilian clothes. She asks to be let out, and they hand her a pair of gloves that they found in a bag. She made a bag of holding appear, and started pulling out weapons and armor from the sack. This was Nari-Kai, the genasi swordmage, who would be tagging along with the party.

They start to explore the area, soon discovering a room full of teleportation pads. They step inside to activate the event flag, and an eladrin and a couple of ghosts showed up. Two glass walls suddenly appearing, cutting the room into four quarters, and the enemies started teleporting them around the room. Fortunately, the swordmage that just joined the party could handle teleporting well, as could the wizard and warlock, and the players were never divided for long.

They took out the enemies easily, as they didn’t hit very hard, and the minions were no trouble. After cleaning up, they continued through the room and found a hallway that led to the main office. They took that hallway only to be stopped three mildly familiar characters, a tiefling, a shadar-kai, and a satyr. Not feeling like talking, the wizard shot an acid arrow at them, and the three would have fallen quickly had a troll not intervened.

The players had some trouble getting past the troll in the small hallway, and got knocked down often by its sweeping blade ability. It was the wizard’s wall of fire that proved the day, burning the shadar-kai to ash and slowly taking down the troll, who was locked in by the melee players. Still, when the wall fell away, they found the satyr had gotten away from them, and they rushed forward.

Inside they find a large office, and behind the desk is a succubus, who demands to know what they are doing there and then tries to summon a dragon. Now, the party killed the dragon, so she immediately launches an attack, as well as three chain devils appearing out of nowhere. The chain devils immediately break the rules and do three attacks against the casters, knocking off ¾ of their life totals. The succubus tries to do a midnight kiss against the swordmage, but fails.

The party divides the enemies easily, exploding the satyr and taking out the succubus in no time. They had some trouble with the chain devils, but eventually targeted each one and took them all down. The chain devils were…played correctly, so they ended up being pretty useless later in the combat.

So, after they finished there, the doppelganger went over to the succubus’s dead body and starting looking through a book that she had in her pack. The wizard got nosy and took the book, and saw only pictures that seemed to coincide with the succubus’s life. She stole the book back quickly, and was able to discern that the succubus was the lover of the main boss of this facility, and he had recently left to give the Black Blade to the Margrave.

Meanwhile, the warlock started to hear a whisper, and discovered a blade without a hilt under the desk, which seemed to be of the same general type as his missing Traitor’s Lot, if not as angry. They took this information and these goods, and quickly got out of there.

While they were resting, something weird happened. The warlord and the swordmage found themselves on a black dreamplane, and started fighting. The fight was pretty even, although the warlord started to pull out some odd abilities, such as orb of force and lightning bolt. He was apparently channeling or actually was a soul from another dimension, but it became moot when the swordmage knocked his soul out of his body. The character was found dead in the morning.

Lessons Learned: It always sucks when a player chooses to stop playing, but it is necessary. You should work with them so they leave on their own terms, if need be. Also, don’t try to run a monster if you can’t be bothered to read his stat block beforehand.

Game Report: A departure

2008-12-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

After diving headfirst into a teleportation pad with the doppelganger, they come to the Grand Central Station of teleportation pads, and are cheerfully greeted by an eladrin, who asks why they are there and how she can help them. They almost get to where they want to go when a tiefling on an upper balcony shouts “Stop them!” and the room is locked down. The minotaurs guarding the door leap into action and more eladrin show up to harry the players.

The minotaurs prove little trouble, just tend to be obnoxious with their charges, but the encounter abilities of the eladrin proves capable of take players out of combat for an entire round, not to mention that minions kept teleporting through the pad set up around the room. The party had enough of the reinforcements, and the wizard leapt into the nearby information booth and threatened the cowering attendants there to shut down the whole operation.

The warlock pushed some enemies out of the room and at one point the doppelganger was suddenly surrounded by many minions and saved by the fighter, but otherwise the number game won out and the last enemy fell to its knees and begged for mercy. They spare her, only to be immediately flung into the next encounter

The doppelganger demanded that they chase after someone they saw before the fight and takes off. The wizard tries to stop her, but she just gets snarky and they go. They run into people, they try to keep up pace, and eventually they end up outside, looking at a number of warehouses. They charge into one and get inside to find a Yuan-ti, who admonishes the doppelganger and sics his allies on them.

The battle seems easy, until two ogres come crashing through the supply shelves, giant clubs in hand. The party was shocked, but shortly recovered, using AOE to slowly take out the remainder. The doppelganger disappeared and reappeared behind the Yuan-ti, and threw him into a box for later interrogation. The ogres were taken down and the doppelganger demanded to know where the sword was. When the Yuan-ti wouldn’t adequately answer, the doppelganger left him and told the party to set the box he was in on fire.

They left the warehouse, moving back towards the central building, when they saw something on the horizon. It’s apparently a white dragon, who lands before them and demands to know why they are disrupting his partner’s business. The doppelganger tries some of her usual tricks to convince the dragon that they are supposed to be there, only to get smacked for a healing surge of damage by the warlord. She was obviously pissed, and stepped back. The rest of the party tried to parlay with the creature, but he smelled something funny, and decided that it would easier just to kill them.

The fight went fine…a frightful presence early stopped the martial characters, but proper placement prevented the breath weapon from targeting everyone, and the party could now reliable deal over 80 points of damage a round if it wanted to, so the dragon wasn’t in play for very long. After a few rounds of fight, it suddenly decided it had enough, stunned everyone around him, spent an action point, grabbed the fighter and flew away. Everyone on the ground panicked, of course, and started climbing over themselves to try to find out where the dragon took him. The doppelganger, feeling a little spiteful, came around the corner as Garvan, only to be shouted at by the wizard.

They eventually saw that the dragon’s lair was nearby inside a building, and marched over and dove into his lair, a cold hovel, where the dragon was trying to like its wounds. It didn’t get far, and fell within seconds. The party searched the entire lair, even cutting the dragon open, but all they found was two teleportation pads that they couldn’t get to activate. The fighter was gone.

Lessons Learned: Don’t begrudge the players for having commitments and errors that prevent them from appearing. People are busy; if they are too busy, you can ask them if they really want to keep playing, but otherwise, they play to have fun. This isn’t WoW. If they can’t make it, don’t let it bother you. On the same note, I write my encounters assuming everyone will be showing up, and tend to use whatever elements I find fun or interesting.

Also, I need to start allowing the players a diplomatic out, if they so choose. I keep getting caught off guard when they don’t want to kill whatever I send at them.

Game Report: The Doppelganger

2008-11-18T13:23:00.000-08:00

The party are standing above Riley’s body and trying to figure out what was going on. They discovered that his being quartered had nothing to do with his death, it happened after he was killed. No, he seemed to have been killed by stabbing. With this knowledge in mind, and reviewing their myriad of options, they gently repose the poor guy and carry his body via Tenser’s Floating Disc* out of the estate and back towards the dragonborn base for a proper burial.

They make a ways before they come across some foulspawn, a leader and a fighter, who demanding an absurd toll to allow the party passage. The party obviously demurs, only to be jumped by a multi-armed assailant who tries to stab the fighter and fails. From another rooftop another smaller creature tries to launch a psychic attack, and the fight is in full swing.

The party easily sidesteps and halts the stabby rogue, and is able to hold off the swordsman no problem. The grue** on the rooftop gets frozen and then forcibly dragged off the roof, leaving him out of combat while the party gets grossed out by an area effect spell. They quickly recover, even though most of them are dazed, and swing the tide within two turns, leaving only the grue to stand around and get slapped around by the party. They defeat everything and find a handful of gems, and then rest for the evening…or day, or whatever wacky sleep schedule they are on. It’s remarkably unreliable.

They travel a bit further, only to see an object approaching from the north. It appears to be an attractive elven woman being pursued by fiery angels. The woman hides behind the party while the angels line up, swords drawn. The party calls a truce, and tries to figure out what’s going on. The woman says that these angels are after her sword, and the angels say that the sword belongs to their god, Pelor. There’s a great deal of pussyfooting, which involves the woman giving the sword to the PCs, the PCs trying to give the sword to the angels, the woman reappearing and revealing herself as a doppelganger, ringing a little bell, and causing the angels to start swinging.

The party acts confused for a round, even trying to freeze the angels to death, only to instead knock the doppelganger unconscious and call off the heavenly host. They take a look at the sword, and the angels sheepishly admit that this wasn’t the sword that was taken from them. The PCs wake the doppelganger, who transforms back into the elf lady, and she says that she swapped the sword with an associate some half-mile back, and led the angels off the path. The PCs, exasperated, offer to get the sword back in exchange for bringing Riley’s body back to the dragonborn. The angels agree, but only after having their god cast as geas on both the doppelganger and Kasul, the cleric.***

With that…sorted, the doppelganger is ready to go and marches them to the nearest teleportation pad owned by the Company, who she was previously working for, which is in the same building the party stumbled into a few days ago. They walk in easily, with the doppelganger playing as Riley to smooth and the deal, and she guides them into the heart of the company.

Lessons learned: That I haven’t learned enough lessons at all. This session was a mess, only lasting about two hours, with a couple of confusing encounters and me playing everything completely by ear, and in my attempt to piece together something playable I introduced some confusing and ridiculous elements. Probably my biggest mistake was assuming that my mostly good party would willingly fight a team of angels, and this led to some huge railroading that I eventually just had to scrap and let the party take the lead. It was pure luck that they wanted to dig a little deeper into these circumstances, and it led some place I eventually wanted them to go anyway. It’s just unfortunate that my complete lack of planning had caused me to do a bit of veil-revealing sooner than I had hoped…but that’s what I get.

So, the biggest lesson is…prepare! Always be prepared, even if you have no idea what is going to happen. Whatever you do, don’t implement an encounter a full minute after you think of it.

I apologize to the party for this disaster, but I promised that I’ll make it up to you somehow. Anybody want an airship? No, you can’t have one, nevermind.

*This isn’t apropos to anything, and it’s been said before, but how come the only spells that are named in D&D are extremely lame? Why are the creators of the generally unnecessary and unimaginative spells the only one’s immortalized? Tenser’s name has graced nerd lips for decades, despite the fact that basically invented a wheelbarrow, Bigby has that whole hand motif going, which just go to show you what twisted things he was interested in, if you know what I mean, and Mordenkainen was so cheap he wouldn’t even pay rent, instead preferring to live in an elaborate mansion that only he could see. (I guess he had that sword and that weird counterspell too, but still, penny-pinching asshole.)

** That’s what they call the thing, even though it’s small sized, only level 5, doesn’t involve an eating-flavored power, and can clearly be seen in the daylight. While it’s an evocative name, it also carries a lot of baggage, and even though I thought that was cool at first, the name starts to grate on me every time I see it.

***Thoroughly confused? Yeah, me too.

Game Report: It was a Monster Mash

2008-11-03T13:25:00.001-08:00

The PCs found themselves in the exact same room, and started to look around. They found that there was limited correspondence between the people they just took down and the Order of Gold, making their mission a little suspect. As they attempt to leave the room, the room went dark and the following happened.

“As you prepare to leave, all light in the room guts out. All attempts to reignite them, magical or otherwise are worthless. An examination of the door proves it to be locked. After 15 seconds, you see eyeslits suddenly glowing red from where the machination stood. A guttural growling and whirling of gears can be heard. (Wizard: “Get behind the table!”) The heat in the room climbs greatly, and you can feel the moisture of steam against your skin. A sudden pungent odor of oil and copper hits your nose, and the ground beneath you vibrates. (Wizard: “Get behind the table!!”) You watch as more red lights pop into existence, outlining the shape of a noble red dragon head, its eyes darkening, its mouth slowly opening to reveal a vast oven fire inside. (Wizard: “Get behind the table!!!”) You prepare as the fire within its maw crackles and sparks, and you feel the immediate burst of hot air that heralds the blast of flame from the ancient device. The dragon's breath tumbles out of its metallic maw…

As the flames would engulf you, the light turns on, and all your senses immediate reject the illusion. The ground is firm, the air smells only of moss and old stone, you can only hear your allies breathing heavily, and the rusty machine still sits in the corner unmoved, its mouth closed. It is different though; it appears to be covered with a fine white powder, with blue circles around its eyes and its mammoth mouth traced in red. Also, perched on its nose is a pale man with dark long hair and piercing eyes, wearing a high-shouldered flowing cape of purple and a multi-zippered black vest with dark slacks, slyly smiling.”

It was a nameless vampire, there to invite them to a party, apparently. He was going to invite the people the party just killed, but seeing as they were “preoccupied,” invited the PCs instead. He also made it clear that this was a mandatory event, but they would returned to this very room in the exact same condition when it was over. Not seeing a choice in the matter, they agreed, and were transported to a grand palace with no windows deep in the city, and there were given a magically enchanted room to rest up in, getting eight hours of rest in only a couple, as well as getting a chance to bath, which they apparently leapt at.

Their host returned to take them to the party…where they discover the following:

“The grand ballroom is of the same stock as the other buildings you've seen in the city, but has been decorated in oranges and blacks with streamers and tables. Near the front of the ballroom is a small stage, where a band of a bassist, a keyboardist, a saxophonist and a singer play lazy tunes for the assorted crowd. The crowd itself is an odd bunch, as you appear to some of the few true humanoids. The rest are pale tall vampires, lycanthropes unabashedly in their half-wolf form, a few mummies, some sahuagins, and even a couple of flesh golems, one with a beehive haircut at least two feet tall. Your host escorts you to the snack table, which consists mostly of red punch and bat-shaped cookies. ‘I have some things to do, please mingle and enjoy yourselves. If you're looking for entertainment, there are siderooms set aside for various spooky activities.’”

So, they were attending a Halloween party, specifically a monster party, with all the Universal Monsters in attendance. The party chuckled, realizing that anything that happens here will most likely be harmless, and schmoozed. After a few minutes talking to other captive humans, they decided to check out the siderooms, starting with the pumpkin patch.

Here they found some monsters tykes, small adorable vampire girl, a mummy boy, a young sahuagin, etc. They are asked if they want to carve a pumpkin, and perform various checks to carve the pumpkins and gain the trust of the youngsters. They succeed pretty well (after a couple of miscarves that created some true monstrosities.) The station attendant gave them a trinket as a gift, an amulet to help them in battle.

They then go through the Haunted Hallway, where the station attendant puts on a stereotypical ‘vampire’ accent and explains the concept of the kiddie horror, and then tells them if they rush through the haunted area they would get a prize. So, they step into the first room, a typical Victoria bedroom, and instantly spot the trick, a fake body suspended by a room that would fall from the ceiling. Once they are all in the room, the body falls after the attendant says a lame pun, and then the noose comes to life and begins choking the cleric, while a haunt begins to torment the rest of the party...

The ruse is on, each room features some monster that pop out and harry the party. The next room contains a very fake graveyard with funny tombstones…and about ten zombies ripping through the Astroturf. The next room was a long hallway with swirling walls and a strobe light, and a quickling running through it. There was a mad scientist’s lab, and a stereotypically overflowing beaker produced an azure jelly. The final room was a desert with weird obelisks…which someone provoked a purple worm to appear. They ran like hell from the purple worm, and got out of the haunted hallway with plenty of time to spare, and were rewarded with an orb.

With only one last room to explore, they walked in confidently. It was the Hall of Horrors, with the old gag of having people touch “brains” and “eyeballs” when it was really cold spaghetti in jello and peeled grapes. The savvy wizard was apparently aware of the gag, and even tried to put one of the eyeballs into his mouth, only to find that it didn’t come loose…it was attached to something. Upon removing their blindfold, they saw that the “eyeballs” were in fact gibbering mouthers, and the “brains” was a gelatinous cube filled with cold spaghetti. Beyond a few acid troubles, and a few players being swallowed by the cube, they easily took care of the sudden threat.

They returned to the main hall to see the party rapping up, as the vampires gave out some costume awards, none to the PCs, and then their host came back and asked them if they had fun. They said they did, and that would be great…even though they were all individually expecting a trap. It’s true, there was a trap, but they didn’t see it coming. They were returned to the same room alive, but were accompanied by a number of monsters as well.

The PCs now found a fight with classic monsters on their hand, with a flesh golem, a mummy, a werewolf, and a sahuagin (Creature of the Black Lagoon) at their throats. They quickly took out the sahuagin before it could do anything, but found themselves a bit fearful around the mummy, causing some of their hits to miss. The flesh golem proved troublesome, hardhitting and capable of going on a tear that targeted everyone in the room. After they handled the mummy and the bite-furious werewolf, they still had some trouble crashing through the flesh golem’s hit points, but eventually had a turn of luck and managed to end it.

Exhausted, weary, and still a little giddy from the overly-silly party they had been to, they left the room…only to find the body of Riley, the dragonborn wizard, quartered into three pieces and hung on a rack, his entrails exposed, very dead.

Lessons Learned – The holiday session is always one of my favorite sessions, just because it lets me take a slight plot departure and throw in some tremendously silly things. I think this one was well-received, and I had fun lampshading what I find to be an obnoxious holiday. That said, there were some stutters, mostly caused by a wider range of enemies causing some party-to-enemy mismatches (gelatinous cube not strong enough, flesh golem too strong), and a few spoken flubs on my part. Chief among them is I failed to name the host...a mistake that I wasn’t able to recover. Otherwise, the players are really starting to understand the game and enjoy themselves, and I think this next weekend I’ll put some more plot into their hands, now that the Salt City’s stage is mostly set and they’re quickly approaching the paragon tier.

Game Report: Oh, one more thing

2008-10-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

After defeating the vampire, the party took another look around the room and found a secret compartment that held a couple of reagents, some cool boots, and a stick. The stick turned out to be a battle standard; all they needed was a flag, and they could reap the benefits of the new item.

Convinced they found everything they needed, they marched through the night back to the Order’s headquarters, only to find that their sense of direction was way off, as they ended up at a mostly abandoned building. Curiosity mounting, they stepped inside to find a displacer beast. The martial characters charged, while the spellcasters took to the far corners of the room…out of which appeared hidden cavern chokers. With this two front battle on their hand, the party concentrated their fire on the displacer beast, who fell soon enough, but as the chokers keep appearing in the most inconvenient places, and the fighter stepped right into a glyph trap, they had some trouble mopping up the rest.

Eventually they handled the chokers, but only after more friendly fire as the loathsome beasts used the warlock as a human shield (I’m sensing a pattern here). They stepped lightly to the second floor, to find some crates full of blankets, a cot, and a teleportation pad. That again. They spend a minute staring at it until Selena shows up. She’s shocked to see them, and tells them that the headquarters has a glamer of over it, preventing anyone not being led to find it. She suspiciously rushes them back to the headquarters, where they are thanked for their involvement and given a place to rest.

After resting, Riley the wizard comes to visit the warlock. He tells her that he believes the Monarchy is holding the blade to the artifact the warlock is chasing, and relates a lot else in response to this. The warlock suspects that she’s not getting the full story, but can’t discern exactly what’s being left out. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is discussing just how much they trust the Order, and whether they want to go back to the abandoned house to check out that teleportation pad. They decide against it when Islith calls them up again and sends them on another mission, this time to kill all the people they find in a certain building, who appear to be working for the Monarchy.

The party agrees, and heads westnorth. During the journey, they use their magic bag to get someone to make a standard for them, and decided on a skull and crossbones atop a boat, in dark blue and white, with a tinge of yellow. It appears they were to be the Deathboaters after all. Their new symbol in hand, they come across the building, a vast estate with a small courtyard. Beside the front doors, they found lines of broken statues, giving the room some kind of religious air.

They stomp through the front door, to find five humans standing about. They start a small conversation, only for the fighter to charge into combat after he figured the opponent was sufficiently flustered. The group of humans turned out to be highly skilled, using their weapons to daze the party at every available chance. However, they were little match for the wizard’s fireball, and eventually the party took out the front group.

They chose a door and walked through halls lined with animal symbols, and move towards the back where they hear maniac laughter. They first check the room opposite the room where they heard the weird sounds to find six men playing cards. Feeling charitable, they offer the cardplayers a chance to retreat. Of course, one gets antsy and protests, causing the wizard to set him and everyone around him on fire. After this, the three remaining men merely agree to take the offer, and inform the party that when dealing with the crazy in the next room, they should “duck.”

They step into the next room, to find a bald man in a robe, standing in the middle of the room muttering to himself. Near him are two floating skulls on fire. The party charges in, only to see the violent end to these unusual trio, as the bald man lets loose a spasm of magic missiles that strike all targets and baths the party in acid, while the skulls spit out two massive fireballs. Stumbling, they managed to bear most of the force, and eventually turned around the situation, taking out of the crazy man shortly.

It was late, and so they quickly sprinted to the next room, where they found three people, two archers and a gruff man with a greatsword, as well as what appears to be a robot shaped like a dragon. As they waked in, he quickly said, “So, you've come at last. I now see the enormity of the lizards' egos. Whatever, we achieved our own good. Be cautious that you do not fall from their vision as well. Tomil! Now!” Tomil appeared behind the warlock and put her in a headlock. The greatsword guy charged forward and proved himself a paladin, attempting and failing a smite maneuver on the fighter. The archers took to the back of the room and started dazing all targets.

The wizard put up a wall of fog, forcing the archers out of the corner. After the warlock teleported away, Tomil instead grabbed the cleric and tossed him across the room, taking him out of combat for a round and a half. The archers found themselves in the thick of it, and eventually took a tumble after missing some more, leaving only the two elites. Tomil continued to dash and grab, while the paladin’s counterattack ability made him a difficult target.

Eventually Tomil found his end after all of the party was out of tricks and dependent on at-will effects, and a cornered paladin was taken low by what I’ve dubbed the hydra trick, where the fighter will take advantage of the mark ability when the enemy attacks out of turn. After much struggling, they take him down, and call it a night because everyone is a might tired.

Lessons learned – While it is possible to play the game over the Internet through webcams, the webcams are tricky to manage and it can be dull for the person on the other end of the cam. Also, the bluff/insight dynamic can do a lot to kill intrigue, especially when a not-quite-true can’t be trusted because the player crits an insight check. Also, need more extraneous and unimportant detail…it drives the players crazy.

Game Report: A counteroffer

2008-10-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

The PCs return to the dragonborn’s headquarters to praise, as Islith is impressed with their competence. They are given another task, this time to track a caravan to see what they are delivering and why. After some hesitance (‘caravan’ has become a bit of a black word for the party, can’t imagine why), they agree, and head into the southern part of Ar-Aman to meet the cart. They walk into a square that the caravan is likely to pass through and begin hiding in various buildings. Doing so seems to provoke some hags, who were also hiding out in some buildings. At the least convenient time, the wizard and warlord are attacked by one of the hags.

Everyone rushes to the rescue as the cart pulls up, a fat zombie hauling the cart being guarded by a couple of salt spawn. The second hag goes after the cart, while the hag continues to scream at and fluster the party. A shout causes the caravan to topple over, revealing a crapload of bones and a skeleton that was fire. With the Monarchy’s forces far outpacing the hags, the enemies take out one of them, while the other continued to harry the melee adventurers. She eventually fell, and a well-placed turn undead made short work of the rest of them.

Once the cart’s entourage collapsed, a single runed bone raises out of the bonepile and began floating down the street. The party grab ahold of the bone and conservatively follow it through the city. It eventually tried to enter a two-story building that seems to be pitch black inside, even in the daylight. They open the door, see nothing, and cast light to cautiously step inside. They run into some troglodytes, who have perfect darkvision, and are able to continue to through spears and poison rays out of the darkness.

Undetered, they charged into the room, only to eventually be greeted by wights. Wights are bad news. Seriously bad news. While confronted by two of these, the party lost a huge chuck of healing surges and they luckily were taken down before doing too much damage. They eventually broke the darkswitch in the room and got a clear view of the remaining enemies, only to step into the next room and start the process all over again.

The second round of darkness trog fighting went better, thanks to some helpful charging and the secondary forces not being as damaging as wights. They eventually turned the lights on and cleans up, and then immediately decided it was bedtime before they would even consider moving on.

They woke up in the middle of the night, and went back into the small warehouse, marching up the stairs to find some bramble. It turned out to be some dangerous plantlife, but endless fire attacks made them a moot issue, so I handed out some experience and forced them along. They step into a sideroom to find an eladrin who appears to have been sucked dry, who gets up after a healing spell and vanishes into the night. Aware of what issue lied ahead, the team stepped through a door to find a vampire with his feet up at a desk.

The fighter charges, and runs smack into a wall of air 10 feet away from the vampire. The vampire politely asks them to have a seat. He asks them very matter of factly what they are up to, and why they felt the need to do all this dogoodery. He points out that his team and the dragonborn are merely dueling factions, and neither has a greatly claim to the city, each is merely protecting their own interests. He also revealed a third source of contention, the Margrave, the person that was to receive the shipment of bones.

This conversation led to an even split among the players over whether they should hear the vampire out. The cleric and the warlock were more pragmatic about the situation, seeing the vampire’s point and wondering why they couldn’t leave the vampires be and take care of this Margrave character. The wizard, however, doesn’t want to deal with an evil figure, especially one who was apparently feeding on one of his own (an eladrin), and the fighter was flat lawful good and refused to deal with vampires period. The discussion was lengthy and interesting, but the vampire lost patience, and when it seemed he was about to lose the cleric’s support, the vampire dominated him and caused him to place his axe directly through the warlock’s torso.

The fight was official on, the wall was down, and the PCs soon found themselves in trouble. They couldn’t get a hit on the guy, and his regenerative power was in full force due to it being nighttime when they engaged him. It took a great number of daily abilities and some damn good luck to get him to bloodied. After that, though, the got the creature cornered, his abilities wouldn’t recharge, and he didn’t have the good sense to run when it was getting hairy, and eventually fell to ongoing damage from the fighter and wizard.

That character dealt with, and information sufficiently gathered, they ended the adventure.

Lessons learned: Interesting combats are becoming easier to design, but also more obnoxious to run, and keeping track of all the various effects and statuses just gets more complicated. Also, I feel that the team is getting into a bit of a railroad spike, as if the world itself is incredibly small and they’re being bandied about from room to room inside some warehouse, not able to divert from the path. Which is true in the case that there’s nothing, you know, over there, since I don’t divert enough time to creating a lot of detail. Still, I want to open up the game to more open exploration and interpretation, and it’s going to take some effort to pull that off.

Game Report: The Order of Gold

2008-10-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

The PCs wake up outside of the maze to find that the majority of the other party had departed, with only the dragonborn fighter, named Escil, waiting for them. He informs them that he was only tagging along with the others, and he would guide them into the city. They move towards the city, and hear the following…

“As you approach the Salt City, you feel the aridity and stiffness of the air. The black grass and soil of the plains gives way to long streaks of dirty white salt, and here and there you catch glimpses of a tattered fence or ancient wheelbarrow, bleached white against its surroundings. In the distance you can make out buildings, sickly green against the red horizon, all ringing around a massive limestone fortress. "That's Ar-Aman," Escil says, "it's the Monarchy's now. We're north here." You turn off the beaten path and stalk past a bleached-wood house, with a fence surrounding a field of land that could have been a garden, but now is only barren salt. As you walk through the field, Escil stops and glares at the horizon. "Ambush. Get ready." Looking up, you see five humanoid figures floating toward you, their bodies desperately pale, wearing only rags, their hands stretched into horrible claws.”

These creatures are Salt Spawn, a variant of vampire spawn that thrive in the City, as long as they keep their feet on barren land. They float in and start slashing with the claws, able to cause the players a small bit of panic by shutting down the healing abilities through dazing effects. The spawn are also shocked and awed by various immobilization effects, and eventually the PCs come out without too much trouble.

They continue on to what looks like an abandoned vineyard, and are greeted by a whole clan of dragonborn and other humanoids, known amongst themselves as The Order of Gold. They go to the main ballroom to meet Islith, the leader, and see a familiar face: Riley, the wizard who originally gave the warlock The Devil’s Hand. There is some minor contention, some minced words, until Islith promptly tells them to make themselves useful if they’re going to be here.

They offer their services as killers of things, and Islith reveals that there’s some sensitive information at a former outpost that’s been overrun with “neaderthals,” lizardfolk. They are to go and find or destroy the sensitive information. One of the dragonborn are to accompany them, a ranger named Selena. They sleep for the night, the warlock being promised that she’ll get answers about The Devil’s Hand when they get back.

North they find a fenced-off building with a squat wooden tower, and outside they see a large lizardfolk playing catch with a behemoth. Behemoths are dinosaurs, by the way, their name has been changed in 4E to protect the innocent. The PCs rush forward to meet the challenge, slamming the two big scaled things with daily spells. Three lizardfolk darters provide cover fire from the tower, but they turn out outstandingly useless. Eventually they clean up the group outside and move into the building.

There they find more lizardfolk, a few hunters and a caster, as well as a vine horror. They faced little problem, moving past the front line to take out the artillery units quickly. The party’s troubles with tight quarters seems to be vanishing, as evidenced by the next fight where they encounter another large-sized lizardfolk with a float of crocodiles. The crocodiles charged forward and grabbed half the PCs, only for every single one to teleport away from the danger. The rest of the battle was handled effortlessly after that, and the PCs went up another level.

All the while, the ranger who was assigned to the PCs took a backseat, instead wandering around the building to find and destroy the purported sensitive information, as well as find a trophy case featuring a bunch of screaming flameskulls. Weird. This adventure over, the PCs headed back to the vineyard.

Lessons Learned: Be careful when naming NPCs, in case your made-up fantasy name sounds like a common swear. You’ll never the end of it. Also, I think I’m going to adapt a kind of a DM diet when playing, as I found myself sluggish and impatient while playing, something I attribute to the low amount of sleep I got and the horrible amount of food we ate. Being more alert during the game will require certain sacrifices, I suppose.

Game Report: Some kind of wacky game show

2008-10-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

After the high trauma and dark foreboding that had taken place after the last three or four sessions, it was time for a filler episode, to ease the transition back into Dark Town. After having three weeks to think it over and unable to come up with a solution that wasn’t inherently silly, I decided that I might as well just throw them in a labyrinth and see where they come out.

Don’t do mazes. Mazes are hard.

After walking away from the disaster area that was once the Blood Caravan, the party finds…a bag in the middle of the field. They approach with caution, only to find a letter inside which congratulates them on finding the bag and asking for a small amount of gold to be placed in the bag. They do so, and when they open the bag again, they find a different note, a small chalkboard, and a potion. So, they now have constant access to a store, at least, a store that only provides relatively small items.

They walk a ways only to find a set of obelisks in a square. After determining that there is no noticeable problem, they walk into the obelisks anyway, and suddenly huge blue walls pop up around them. They hear a buzzer, assume that there is an arena fight on their hands, and take positions. Only after three minutes of standing there do they realize that nothing is going to be entering their little room, and so they start touching the walls and find the entrance to the rest of the maze.

The maze routing was…difficult. Each walk through the maze took ten minutes of drawing, moving, redrawing, moving, in a tedious experiment. They eventually wandered into a large room with something in it. In this case, werewolves. Well, werewolves and shifters, which come closer to furries on the scale of furiousity. They decided to take down the werewolves first, and a well placed Icy Rays freeze the shifters out of range. A well-planned, well-executed fight, and they walked away a little weary, but overall fine. After dispatching the werewolves (who disappeared the second they fell), a noise sounded, and one of the obelisks noticeably faded. They came to the conclusion that it was one of the “teams” in this little game they found themselves in.

They wander around some more in the damn maze, and find a room that’s obviously a trap, filled with rot scarab swarms and a poison trap wall. They remain confined to one side of the room, and, in a brilliant move, covered the trap wall with a wall of fog, preventing it from attacking because it lacked line of sight. (I agree that it shouldn’t work that way, but the rules say they do, and I agree with them.) Eventually the grab the key they need from the wall and dispatch the beetles, although the constantly ongoing damage the room presented left them all a little worse for wear.

After more walking around (like I said, no mazes), they come across a third room with a third key, this one being guarded by demons. They approach cautiously, the fighter using his mad metagaming skills to determine that there were in fact five demons that needed to be dealt with despite only seeing two, and they managed to handle the demon monkey and the quartet of “red demon babies,” mainly because of tactical mistakes by the bulgura. Minutes after cleaning up the mess, a second team shows up, this one composed of a dragonborn fighter, an elven ranger, a tiefling wizard, and identical halflings who seem to always be pickpocketing…badly.

After agreeing to combine efforts, they move to the center ring, where a hydra waits for them. The hydra fight went so far as to prove how the fighter class is on a level extremely well equipped against hydras, a problem that I don’t think they considered. While it had a huge swath of hitpoints, it lacked damage, only dealing a pittance against its intended targets each attack. While it could make four attacks, and had threatening reach greatly hindering melee fighters trying to get up to it, the fact is once a fighter is there and has it marked, any attack the hydra makes against any other target provokes an attack from the fighter. When there are ten combatants going against a single target, and the majority of them agree to wildly jump in and out of melee range, provoking opportunity attacks…well, let’s just say that they are no longer afraid of hydras.

After that victory, they were entitled to fabulous prizes, which I wasn’t prepared to give to them, so I just told three members to pick out new cool duds, and they were theirs. The maze faded away, the fourth team was revealed but immediately teleported away, and they chatted with the others for a bit, eventually agreeing to sidetrek into the Salt City to look around. For completely irrational reasons.

Lessons Learned: Filler episodes suck. For one, mazes are hard and unnecessary, especially when they exist just to be a maze and not to have any actual value. So, no labyrinthine areas without a purpose again. Also, the players are way too smart. Every encounter was easily completed due to their own cleverness, which is awesome in one respect, but also it feels like I’m not challenging them hardly enough. I really need to step up my strategic game.

So yes, there is a lot to recover. I’m just glad I didn’t throw in anything I need to retcon.

The Blood Caravan, Part II

2008-09-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

The former prisoners were taken back to the Asylum, which had been cleaned up since the PCs had been there last. The remaining members of the Asylum take in the four easily, mainly because of Uncle Paladin would be useful, Dylan already has an in because of Mars, and the Asylumites are just generally kind-hearted. After a night’s rest, they determine that they will get no physical support, but Uncle Paladin does offer the PCs his magic cloak and wishes them the best of luck.

Back at Merc’s place, they find the green dragon having himself an orc dinner. He informs them that the teleportation pad seemed to have powered down last night. They panic, and then realize that they can just put the key into another hole on the pad and power it up again. This insignificant crisis resolved, they stepped on the pad to take on the remaining forces.

They found themselves in a completely different building. After a moment wondering if they were on the caravan or not, they opened the door to find a narrow hallway with a lot of doors. They open the first door to find a room with the floor covered in ash, many pieces of obsidian furniture, and floating fire lamps. There was also a humanoid elemental, called a genosi in Forgotten Realms, and called a genosi here as well.

The genosi asks who the hell are they, and they just respond that they are here to cash in on a job they had with Malthius some time ago. The genosi responds that Malthius has been dead for years, and the party acts surprised. Okay, they are surprised, mainly because they forgot that Skinlash now runs the caravan and got distracted by the records found in the Architect’s tower. After a moment of pause, they decide it was time to kill the genosi, and attack. The genosi grabs a rod, throws it at the ground, and summons four flamesparks.

The fight was a bit rough, with the explosive abilities of the flamesparks licking the players for a lot of damage, and the encounter power of the genosi knocked down a lot of hit points. Eventually they cornered the genosi, keeping him from using his destructive ranged spells, and they kept their distance from the flamesparks, eventually clearing out the room. They found a rod that would summon a flamespark a day, a handy tool.

They look around the building some more and discover a succubus, just lounging. She feigns interest, gets in a catty argument with the warlock, and eventually offers the party strategy advice when fighting Skinlash, and then says they should come by when they’re done. Realizing the sensitive nature of humanoid/devil relations, they beat feet upstairs to get to the front chambers.

They tromp upstairs to find a ghost string quartet playing for a satyr. The satyr pops up and asks who they are, and they bluff with that same lie about doing a job for a devil some odd years ago. The satyr, not caring either way, falls for it and sits back down. As they move past the satyr, the warlord cracks him in the head with his flail. Oh, that wacky warlord.

The fight gets into swing with the satyr playing his pipes to get the ghosts between him and his enemies, and then running like hell to the other side of the room. The gambit fails when the cleric fires off a turn undead, scattering the ghosts. The warlock’s artifact threw a fit, demanding that the satyr was “responsible” and that the warlock deal with him. So, the satyr collapsed early from the warlord, and it was a matter of cleaning up the obnoxious but nearly harmless ghost musicians.

After the last ghost fell, the warlock got a little dramatic, planning to drive the artifact through the satyr’s skull. In a last-ditch effort, the satyr pulled something out of his pocket and touched it to the artifact while it came towards his head. This caused the artifact to vanish. The satyr quietly died after. It was determined through a number of methods that it was a teleporting stone (adorn with the same symbol they’ve been seeing more often), and that it teleported the artifact towards the blade, which the artifact was happy about. Still, the party was disconcerted…and were less happy when they looked out the window.

The Bloodletters were back, and they were mad. They slammed their floating room thing into the side of the building the party was in, shattering the windows and sending the party for cover. They rolled initiative, ready for vengeance. The axe-wielding bloodletter charged forward, and the sap-wielding one moved around the back to ambush the warlock, while the other two stood in the back flinging bolts and fire spells. The defenses of the players improved significantly, however, and the bloodletters missed more often than they hit. The thief bloodletter was taken down quickly, and when his fighter buddy moved in to attack, he was mainly rebuffed and taken out. It was only the matter of the handling the ranged fighters, who felt content knocking the wizard prone from a distance. An anomaly of the initiative order made it difficult for the wizard bloodletter to use her dangerous AoE ability, and eventually the bloodletters were no more.

With their defeat, their floating fortress could no longer function, and went inert, slipping backwards to slam into the end of the caravan, leaving a huge gash and causing the room to be abandoned in the field. This impressive explosion only set the tone for the final showdown between the party and Skinlash.

They stepped forward into the main hall, a lavishly decorated affair with huge bay windows and a balcony area to find Skinlash, the fat and lazy spined devil, and Horrid, the bloodletter commander. The boss tiredly exclaimed death upon them and the bloodletter stepped to the edge of the stairs down to the main floor, blocking the PCs. They all gather around the top of the stairs, putting themselves in perfect place for the commander’s special ability, the psychic scream. The fighter managed to push him out of range of half the target’s before he could get it off, however. Skinlash stunned the cleric and kept him out of combat for three rounds, but the rest knew to concentrate effort on Horrid, and managed to knock him down before he could do another psychic scream. With this, Skinlash started to panic, and found himself out of range for his more powerful abilities. Nobody moved close to him because of the succubus’s warning, and pushed him away and slammed him with attacks against his abysmal reflex. The leader of the Blood Caravan, out of cronies, ignobly went down, and the horror was disbanded.

They spent a moment congratulating themselves when the arcane spell that bound the bulettes that dragged the Blood Caravan broke, causing them to revolt and dive underground, dragging the caravan with them. The caravan lurched, and the front section broke off and collapsed, while the rest of the caravan was thrown forward by inertia and crashed into it, creating a large ruin. The remaining creatures in the caravan fled, and the party went ahead and ransacked the remains, finding a sizable treasure. They also found that the teleportation pads were non-functional, which means they couldn’t return to their previous location. Still, they were only half a day from the Salt City.

Lessons Learned: Oh, did I learn. I’ve gotten good at describing exactly what each enemy is doing, but there were still moments when the fighter would say ‘that didn’t happen’ and I had to back up because there was an action that they wanted to perform first. I’ve also been throwing in more and more individually made monsters, which are always a lot of fun and interesting, but also a bitch in terms of logistics, so I may have to tone it down if I don’t want to spend 10 hours a week creating the week’s campaign.

Also, distractive activity was pervasive that night, mainly because of where we were playing this time (new location to most), and it took a lot to reel everyone in. It also felt a lot less epic, somehow, mainly because some of the enemies got derailed in their abilities and I designed the final room in an undramatic way. I’ve also been made aware that I do mindscrew stuff a lot; not sure if I want to change that.

Still, now that we are at the halfway point of the heroic tier, I think that it’s gone well so far. People are enjoying the game (I think), and some of the things the world lends itself to are really fun. It’s also been fun to constantly have the players on the move, after a year and a half of having to bring the fight to them.

Now I’ve just got to figure out what the hell they’ll be doing next.

Game Report: The Blood Caravan, Part I

2008-09-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

It was the moment; they had the method, they had the experience, they had the will. It was time to perform their rescue operation on the Blood Caravan. After a short rest and a small visit from Mute, the resident wandering merchant (who always just happened to show up when the party needs him; wonder why), they stepped onto the teleporter pad and found themselves in a sparse round room, with only a set of stairs, two doors, and some iron cobras.

They quickly and effortlessly dispatched the homonculi, after a short discussion on what exactly a homunculus was. Not sure what to do next, they opened a door and found a small bridge connecting to another building, above a 10 foot drop, and they also seemed to be traveling at a considerable speed. Inspection of the second door verified the same. Seeing as they were in an independent building, they decided to take a look around in here before spreading out.

They traveled to the next floor to find a library, in tact but a little messy. Search found that the tower seemed to be the residence of the architect of the Blood Caravan, a necromancer who constructed the Caravan for Maluthis, an ice devil. They also found a general layout of the caravan and how it worked, by pulling blood and torment from humanoid victims on a center platform that was exposed to the rest of the caravan. They also could see who was on the platform through a window on this floor. Dylan was there, the paladin that was captured a week ago. There was another person of note there as well, one of the fighter’s family members, who he wasn’t aware was still alive. The fighter responded with a “well, crap.”

With facts well in hand, they stepped upstairs to find a room full of ghouls...and the toughest fight they would face in a long while. The problem arose from the ghouls’ ability to stun and immobilize, combined with the party being scrunched into the corner by the melee-heavy ghouls and tight spacing. the fighter was repeatedly beat upon and nobody could get in a position to actually help, which lead to an exhaustive fight that finally broke in the party’s favor about ten turns in.

After a short rest, they continued upward to find a stereotypical magic laboratory and some potions, and hear the sound of more ghouls upstairs. A quick peek found only a few of them eating some thing and a wight chilling at the edge of a bed. They decided they weren’t going up there, refusing to do a repeat of the previous fight, and instead made a lot of noise downstairs instead, to draw the undead to them.

They took positions, spellflingers in the back, melee up front, only to have the roof above the warlock swing open, slamming her against the wall, and the wight entered the room through the opening. The fighter quickly turned and charged though, and a few seconds later the wight was only dust, but the shock kept the warlock out of commission for a short while. The ghouls fell shortly after that.

They then took stock and tried to figure out how they would take care of this issue. They conveniently found an Arcane Lock ritual, which meant they could keep people out of this abandoned tower if they needed to. They decided the most important action right now was to get the prisoners out, and they would return alone or with aid to cripple and destroy the caravan. Mapping the best route, they moved towards the center platform.

They stepped into an adjacent building to find bedrooms and supplies. Nothing special, nothing out of place. They go down the stairs to find a hallway, and a few gnolls, torturing an unconscious person. A well-cast Bigby’s Icy Grasp kept their leader tied up movement wise, and the rest of the knolls failed to get a strategic position, shutting down the gnolls in moments. Unfortunately, the noise attracted the attention of some more gnolls downstairs, who came charging down the hallway. These are intercepted easily, although one bolts for the door that leads to the platform where prisoners are held. The fighter gets pushy though, literally, and keeps the gnoll inside the building. Another tried to get away down the stairs and gets blocked by the ice hand. It was a long encounter, but they managed to pull it off with grace and a bit of luck.

Then the most sensitive part of the entire scenario came; getting the prisoners off the platform, that was completely exposed to every other part of the Caravan. The warlord was tagged to unlock and rally all the prisoners to the door, while the rest provided back-up. The warlord charged out, beelining for the farthest chained prisoner, the fighter’s uncle, but a couple of spined devils in an adjacent building took notice, and began to disrupt the players with slowing effects.

The players took the reign of the uncle, a paladin, to provide some support, and got the rest of the prisoners unchained in short order. However, the last prisoner was completely panicked, shouting wildly and getting the devils’ attention, as well as immediately latching onto the nearest player as soon as he was free. They grabbed him quickly and dragged him inside, and a few slowing effects by the wizard keep the devils at pay, including managing to knock a single devil off the caravan. Once they were safely inside, they rushed back to the teleportation room and got out with four former prisoners in tow.

Now it was a matter of taking out the center of power once and for all.

Lessons Learned: I never want the characters to die. It sucks for everybody, and I often want to throw them a little bone to help them out. There were times during this game where I may have thrown them a Clifford-sized bone, however, and I need to realize that I’m also their enemy. I can’t always rout for them. (yes, that’s a big red dog reference. Shut up.)

Also, I often found myself stammering over getting the setpieces and scenery out there, often talking about it way before they would be able to observe it. Since I rarely do a lot of setpieces (a failure I’m trying to make up for), it was a miscalculation about tempo that I need to practice. Also, if you’re going to provide them with maps to the caravan, by all means actually provide them clean maps. I was hesitant to throw my map on the table because it had encounter notes on it, and it ended up being less than helpful.

Last thing: I am officially tired of hallways, doors, and stairs. It makes the game difficult in a very boring way. I'm going to work to both let the monsters let the PCs into the room first, and also to design areas with less strategically uninteresting hooey.

Game Report: Merc the Drunk

2008-09-02T21:38:00.001-07:00

After a month of busy weekends, everybody finally had time to play that one game again, and so, to make up for lost time, we played it all damn day. 10 hours of gaming, with only a small break for someone to go get a haircut (?), and two levels, to set the stage for the most intense thing the players are likely to tackle. Let’s start from the beginning, at about noon.

The characters left the asylum full of uninteresting NPCs to hunt out Merc the Drunk in the town of Exel. They found an abandoned town in the middle of the Glass Forest, and approached cautiously, only to be overcome by hobgoblins. It was a rough fight, mainly because everyone was trying to figure out how to play again, but they eventually got the goblinkin down, even if the spellcaster did sonic boom the entire party. Still, it established that Merc had some minions, in the least.

Then they came to the dry lakebed in the center of the city. I drew the map, adding a dry dock and a beached boat in the middle to add some flavor. A felt the need for some antics and immediately ran to the boat and got in. This zaniness was responded with by two arrows to his chest. I missed A; when J ran his character, the warlord would never have done anything so reckless and outrageously hilarious.

After about five minutes of hysterics, the hobgoblins showed themselves, a commander charging out of the boathouse and three archers hiding out in their barn. Of course, A was out there in the lake all by himself, and looked like he was totally screwed. So, he takes the first logical action; flips the boat over and hides underneath. This was actually his best chance, because it provided him with much needed defense. The rest of the party just kinda stood there and watched him for a while, then charged into battle as well. Of course, everyone ended up under or behind the boat at one point or another, leading to another unsuccessful team naming attempt: “The Death Boaters.”

After a few turns the hobgoblin archers came out of hiding and then were burnt down, and the party was ready to move on. They moved towards the ominously huge building to the south, and as they were coming up to the door, they caught sight of a cart full of booze pulled by some hobgoblins and guarded by deurgar. Deurgar being dwarves’ evil cousins, because every fantasy race needs an evil counterpart.

Anyway, this made sense to them. Of course Merc the Drunk would have carts of booze delivered to him often. And of course this little caravan is going to attack them. And they went immediately for the booze. A flaming orb landed on the kegs, causing them to explode. Unfortunately, deurgar are resistant to fire, and most of the hobgoblins ducked. The poor archer standing on the kegs, however...

Nothing more exiting happened during this fight, just standard fare, with the group keeping a weary eye on the huge doors. Nothing popped out, however, and they knocked very lightly on the door. They stepped in to find a human, sitting on a huge throne, and surrounded by kegs. Obviously toasted, Merc greets them and starts asking questions. They ask questions in turn. It eventually comes out that Merc is a green dragon, and he drinks because he’s depressed that his forest got turned into stone. Cutting straight to the issue, they ask him about the teleportation pad to the Blood Caravan, and he tells him that he sold it to the deurgar for more booze. He lets them leave his sanctuary to go get it if they promise to bring him more alcohol. They agree, because they really didn’t want to piss Merc off.

After a short break, they went south to the brewery that was providing Merc with all his supplies. They stepped in and immediately started bluffing the hell out of those deurgar. They drag the sole human in there around like a ragdoll trying to position him where they wanted him, and eventually managed to track down the location of the teleporter key. It was sold to a woman named Hotlips (I know, they wouldn’t back down from that joke either), and therefore no longer there.

They somehow negotiated the beer out of the evil dwarves, and delivered it to Merc, once again without incident. So, they finally made it to the clearing Hotlips was staying in, to find two bears just lounging outside a shaped crystal tree. They tried to just walk around the bears, but frankly, after an hour and a half of talking, it was time for combat. Very...boring...combat.

The cave bear is a really boring opponent. It only knows two attacks, neither of which is very dangerous, and with their elite status, they take forever to burn down. So, after eight turns spent dancing around practically harmless bears, it was time to move on, and discover a woman inside the hollowed tree staring at a ring. There were burn marks on her lips, wrists, and other regions...which makes clear where she got her now disturbing nickname. After some conversation, with which they made no progress, she flips out and charges the party, turning into her true form; a dryad.

Being joined by two vine horrors, Hotlips kept the party at bay, depending on her aura of thorns to keep the distances between them. There were many immobilization effects about, but due to the tiny room, it didn’t really become an issue. Eventually her minions were dead and she was badly burned, and she curled into a fetal position. The party decided that she was pathetic enough, and left her alone with her ring, stealing the teleportation key.

Their mission achieved, they moved back to Exel to visit Merc, prepared because they knew it wouldn’t be that easy. They were right, as the proprietor of the brewery was outside Merc’s lair looking for a fight. After confirming that the deurgar wanted all or nothing, they fought, managing to take down the boss in a turn and a half, and they continued to watch the door with anticipation, waiting for something really bad to happen.

In fact, the only bad thing that happened was a deurgar becoming dragon chow. It turned out that Merc was off the sauce, and he wants to thank the PCs. He agrees to give them full range on his lair, and even unloads some of his old hoard, figuring he might as well start over. So, the mission complete, there was nothing left to do than teleport to the Blood Caravan and save that paladin!

Or, that would be the plan, if the Blood Caravan wasn’t still loading. So, they instead made a small trek back to the brewery to completely explode it. They fought some specters, and some bats, and found some treasure and caused some generic mayhem, only to realize that they were tired, and they had leveled up for the second time that day, and now it was time to just stop. So stop we did.

Lessons Learned: Occasionally the PCs actually will consider the diplomatic method, and when this happens, you should be prepared. Also, 10 hours is a long time to be playing D&D, and while it was a lot of fun, it can also be exhausting. After the game ended, I was both fatigued and famished. Also, it’s necessary to be cautious when handing out levels; two levels in one session, even if its twice as long, may cause the campaign to go a little quickly.

Break

2008-08-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

People's lives are busy in August! Everyone has had a thing that they had to do, and I've got various locales that I need to inhabit, so D&D has been put off until Labor Day weekend, and hopefully we will actually play then.