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.

And baby makes three

2008-08-05T20:08:00.001-07:00

There is a third (third!) recap of the events of Saturday night. Find out more about that one half-hour in the asylum than was written about the death of Caesar.

Go forth and read.

Game Report: The Asylum of Exel

2008-08-03T12:56:00.000-07:00

(Note: T, the Wizard also did a recap of the adventure from his perspective. Check it out.)

The party woke up in the copse of trees with Mute and Mars and the kids. They spoke with Mute for a while to finagle some new armor, and the bard suggested a possible route onto the moving fortress, an entity called Murc the Drunk, who happened to live to the south, in the same direction that the vault was. They then decided that the best course of action was to get the kids to the vault they were talking about, and they were off.

They traveled for an uneventful day and a half and found themselves in the Glass Forest. They eventually came across a sign in a common dialect, that led to a fork in the road, one leading to an asylum, the other reading to Exel. Figuring that the asylum was what they were looking for, they headed towards it, to find the building surrounded by orcs.

Well, there were some orcs there at least, trying to break through the door. They were unsuccessful and just now ready to leave. The wizard dropped a ghost sound to distract them, then they charged into combat. They burned down the leader quickly, after being hit by a chaos hammer, and one of the orcs buried his greataxe into the cleric twice, but they eventually destroyed all of them. The cleric, in a fit of justice, took the greataxe that he got crit with as his new weapon.

They walked up the asylum and knocked on the door, causing it to open immediately. They stepped inside to find nothing of interest and a stairway leading down. Down the stairs was a poorly lit room and a pile of corpses. Something on the edge of the corpses started moving; it was a few writhing piles of flesh and brains. Swarms, specifically. The fight went slowly, the space constricting some of the area effects, but they survived.

Apparently some sort of massacre happened here, so they told Mars and the kids to stay back. They stepped into the next room, to find exactly two zombies and some creepy bone swarms. The cleric stepped forward is critically hit a zombie, which apparently makes them explode, and a few scorching bursts towards the back of the room cleared out the bone swarms. They find papers describing the place, an old asylum that the Kingdom of Ar abandoned, allowing the inmates to starve to death. It was also magically sealed to prevent anyone from leaving without using a special ritual...meaning that the party was now locked in. They figured they would handle that later.

Moving into the next hallway, they come across the cell block, a long narrow hallway with multiple doors on both sides. They take a pick into each cell until they see an animated skeleton, and the doors burst open, revealing five more. These were the ex-inmates, and eventually they all fell. They move on to investigate, noticing that the last door on the right had been blown open from the inside.

The next hallway had a small sidedoor and a large set of doors at the end. They peek into the side door to find an undead humanoid with only one arm, pale with long, scraggly hair, with holes in his torso revealing a creeping ooze inside. In his right hand, the creature was holding his missing arm, filed down to a point. He was scratching the arm against the wall, apparently making “notes.” A religion check from the cleric confirmed that this was a man infected by a soulcreep, an undead creature that took over his human host and drove him insane. Figuring reasoning was out of the question, the fighter charged, getting hit by a opportunity attack on his way over. There was a full set of swarms in here as well; flesh, brain, and marrow.

The fight was in full swing. The creeps centered in on the fighter, taking him to bloodied real quick. A few area effects bloodied many enemies, although the boss proved hard to hit. Everyone filed in, staying well clear on the swarms to avoid repurcussions. The cleric helped by turning undead and getting some swarms out of range. When the enemies acted again, the creeps piled on the penalties to the fighter, and in a mighty unholy explosion, the boss infected the fighter, knocking him unconscious and causing another creep to spawn. The party paled; they had trouble. A few more close bursts cut the creeps down, and a holy infusion from the cleric allowed the fighter to jump from unconscious to no longer bloodied. They only now had to concentrate on the boss.

A turn passed, with some good hits against the boss. The boss moved to act again, deciding to get the warlord out of his face. But, the fighter had marked the boss, so he got a free hit on the boss first. This lead to a five minute rules discussion, determining what the hit meant, when it happened, and whether or not it the boss’s hit actually connected. As it turned out, it didn’t. The fighter had a feat that allowed him to push an enemy it hits with his combat challenge freebie, which sent the boss against the wall, moving the warlord out of range. With the boss and one of his creeps pinned against the wall, the wizard moved to cast burning hands on the lot, only to fire it over their heads, and on the next action, the two centered their attacks on him, hitting him with the infection and barely missing a KO, avoiding another creep spawn. With luck and tactics visibly on the party’s side, they took the boss down, and only had to clean up the creeps, which they easily did.

They then stepped over the big double doors, putting their hand against it to reveal...a group of refugees. Their leader, Erim, was an older wizard with scars around his mouth, who apparently couldn’t speak. His assistant stepped forward and told the story. The refugees have been living here for a couple of years, able to avoid the Wanderlust by using the magically-enchanted cells of the asylum. Only a couple of weeks ago, the door to an untouched and sealed cell burst open, and the soulcreep-infected came out and cut out Erim’s tongue, preventing him from casting spells. It then went on a rampage, killing about half of the refugees before they managed to seal themselves in the lower parts of the asylum. They had been waiting here until then, not strong enough to fight the soulcreep and its brood without Erim.

Grateful to the PCs, they offered some of their resources, including a +2 amulet of protection, as well as told them that Murc the Drunk was apparently in the next town over, only a short trek from the asylum. They took in Mars and the kids, and were preparing to cast a divination on Yan’s Ring.

They were one or two encounters from level 4 at this point, and wanted to press on to get their ding. It was nearing midnight, however, and it would take at least two hours to get their reward, and I didn’t want them stomping over the next planned adventure area while tired, so they broke, sure they would have their level next session.

Lessons learned: Know what your PCs can do. It’s been a while since I’d been bowled over by the shenanigans of a player, and this time it was a mutual misunderstanding of the rules that caused it. I was willing to give it to him because he had planned for this kind of stunt, and that was in fact how it worked, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. Also, know that PCs love leveling and loot, and want both to appear a lot. I drew a line this time because I had “given” them a level only two weeks ago, and they all can’t come easy. I can also need to increase the flavor text; a little more atmosphere and energy can be added now that everyone’s familiar with the rules, plus it helps more convey some of the cooler ideas I’m coming up with. Also, pre-build assumptions about story structure can be a useful tool; it apparently tricked two players into thinking there was another bigger, scarier boss behind the double doors. Heh, suckers.

Game Report: Dylan and Mars

2008-07-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

The party reconvenes after the great kobold adventure, newly geared and skilled and still heading west towards the Salt City. They spend an undetermined amount of time walking, following a treaded road when they come across a human paladin and rogue fighting a half-dozen panthers. Hiding behind a nearby crumbled wall is about six children, bunched together and scared.

The heroes jump into the action, rushing to the rescue of this unlikely group of travelers. The panthers spread out, one heading straight for the kids. The warlord and fighter answer the call, the former moving to defend the chil’ins, the latter moving to save the outnumbered paladin. (Well, since the same player was controlling both characters, I guess only J answered the call.) The rest responded in kind, dividing efforts to burn down the panthers.

It took a long time, mainly due to some missed rolls, the NPCs being a bit underequipped, and the panthers running all over the damn place. Luckily, while they seemed to hit often, they didn’t hit very hard, and only the warlock felt threatened, running through some bramble bushes to avoid combat. The children also ping-ponged around the battlefield, running to hide under various PCs’ feet and generally limiting actions. The panthers were eventually thinned and the PCs asked what was going on.

It appears the paladin, Dylan, and his wife Mars, the rogue, had split off from their caravan with their children, 15 and 9, to head to a rumored vault in the Glass Forest, which had been enchanted to prevent the Wanderlust. (The Wanderlust being a trait all former citizens of Atia are cursed with, that provokes them to pull up roots every six months and prevents civilization from returning to normal.) They had picked up a few orphans on their way, however, and are now a bit unwieldy. The PCs, both enticed by the prospect of a permanent home and overcome by a need to do good, decide to join them.

They travel for maybe half-a-day, getting to a hill by some trees. Mars was scouting over the hill and notes there’s an anomaly ahead. It appears part of the Elemental Chaos had just transposed itself onto the material plane, and some magma creatures were sulking about. They figure going around would put them behind, and the paladin, confident that his new travel companions can easily clean up, suggests they just barrel through.

Mars and the kids stay back, and the team + Dylan charge down the cliff. They quickly prove their competence in the easiest battle yet. Some good rolls, some easy manipulation, and a cloud of ice here and there dissipates the magma creatures. They stand around congratulating each other when they hear a noisy rumbling over the hill…

They climb back up the hill to see in the distance what appears to be a house on wheels. More accurately, various wagons strapped together with boards that eventually grown to such absurd proportions that it now takes four bulettes to pull it. When they see this bizarre moving fortress, a horn sounds, and a piece of the house detaches and flies towards them.

There’s a moment of confusion, then some conflicting plans of action. A couple of PCs, in their weakened state, decided that running is the best option, and head for the trees, but as they get moving, the paladin shouts that they aren’t leading whoever this is back to the children. The PCs curse, but oblige, realizing that yes, that can’t be allowed to happen, so they’ll just have to stand their ground. Once this is established, they get a good sight of just what kind of problem they have…

The floating chunk of house holds four devils, tall and ruddy orange. Their limbs are long and spindly, and there appears to be a natural hole through the left side of their chests. Their faces are blank except for a pair of blue eyes, and their hair, black with red highlights, were done up in braids, woven around their horns. These were bloodletters, monsters known for silent but unspeakable torture.

They dismounted their platform and ran straight at the party, and the warlock falls in approximately three seconds. To his (her?) utter dismay, after going down, he (she?) is teleported onto the platform itself. Naturally, there was panic. The cleric quickly used his healing word to get the warlock up, and she (he?) hopped off of there as quickly as possible.

The battle continued like this for a few turns. The players would go gung-ho, using their most powerful abilities and action points only to become frustrated when they missed, the leaders would try as hard as they could to keep everyone up, and when the bloodletters’ turn was up, everybody crossed their fingers. They did surround the rogue-like bloodletter and got him bloodied, but it was a hollow victory. A well-placed axe took out Dylan, the paladin, and having collected what they came for (a body), they made their exit. The players gave chase, but couldn’t keep up with the platform, and were getting too close to the moving house itself.

A little sullen, they hid until the house was out of vision, then went back to find Mars and the kids. They found her in the trees, along with a warforged bard merchant. They deliver the bad news, which she takes in relative stride, and after finding out that they just encountered the Blood Caravan, they decide that they’ve got a rescue mission on their hands. The bard, whose name is Mute, asserts that they will need supplies, and a lot of help. The scene closes with everyone trying to get a good night’s sleep.

Lessons learned: I was fully prepared to allow them to royally screw up this time around, but still found myself doing some prodding to make sure they would be a-ok; a bit burned, but fine. I’m not sure if I should be offering friendly advice or let them live with their decisions, no matter how deadly. Also, need to prepare NPC friendlies better. Either that or stop using friendly NPCs. I’m sure the player’s XP bars would appreciate it.

Game Report: "Your pocket's on fire"

2008-07-22T22:22:00.000-07:00

The Team begins right where they left off, standing underground in the middle of a kobold excavation site. They readjusted, took a short breath, and then charged forward into the next room. There they discovered the creatures in their native home, standing around and being unimpressive. They easily wiped out the kobolds, not falling for the obvious combat tricks and burning the infantry down quickly.

After finding nothing of import on the kobold corpses, they went to the other side of the crater to take on the leaders...and were greeted with one of the longest and most challenging encounters I’ve probably ever run. They walked up a steep incline to find a larger-than-usual kobold growl at them and then push a button. Figuring a trap is afoot, they cautiously move forward to attack him, slinging ranged attacks and watching for danger. Danger was found when a whirling blade whisked across the fighter’s face, and an as-yet-unseen wild mage shifted him into the center of the hallway, surrounded by whirling blades. Still, there were only a couple of kobolds in the narrow hallway, and the chieftain was already bloodied. They were surely capable of handling this...until the dragonborn wizard tagging along shouted, “Um, we’ve got a problem.”

About twelve minions and the shadar-kai were outside and ready to move in, and there was a slyblade hiding in a side passage. All together, they were stuck in a tunnel completely surrounded by enemies, all non-minions at least two levels higher than them. This was going to be fun.

Their biggest concern was increasing what limited mobility they had by turning off the trap. The cleric manages, after an awkward rounds standing around waiting for an unfortunately long cloud of daggers. Soon the kobold all crowd around the fighter, stuck at a three-way intersection. The wizard and warlord doubled back down to the crater floor to quickly clear out the minions, or at least hold them back.

The fighter may have been surrounded, but the slyblade’s special ability allowed for quick dispersal of the mini-mobs, as the rogue could deflect hits on him onto his lesser allies. In addition, the fighter managed to stand in the one place the trap wouldn’t trigger, and the chieftain found himself a bloody death by his own innovations, which he would have found ironic if he wasn’t a stupid kobold.

The battle soon swung to the players’ favor, with only two enemies still standing. The shadar-kai was looking for the hilt, and stated as much, but attempts to get him to turn his back in pursuit of it failed. The wizard, having just stood up and not in the mood to be the only target, ran back to assist his friends in the tunnel, leaving the shadar-kai and the dragonborn standing alone in the crater. A hint to PCs: never take your eyes off the NPCs. Both of them were gone when the players once again looked for them.

Somewhere along the way, the slyblade fell the fighter before dying the cleric’s hand. Their resources completely tapped, they decided to clear the hallway and do a manual heal check to help the fighter. Problem? The fighter was completely out of healing surges. Thankfully, the cleric has cure light wounds, the only skill in lower-levels that gives hit points without the use of a surge. When the cleric raised him, he immediately ran in pursuit of the last opponent, the wild mage who had the obnoxious ability to teleport whenever it took damage. Using this to its advantage, it lead the entire party through every single room in the dungeon, until it ended up at the edge of a ladder leading back into the crater. The wizard fired off his ice bolt, hitting the wild mage and triggering his teleportation. The kobold teleports alright, straight out over the crater. He falls, takes lethal damage, and explodes. A sigh of relief rang out, and the fighter immediately grabbed his bedroll and took a nap.

There was a definite pause over the table, a sense that they survived an extremely difficult encounter and everyone was thankful. So, I turn to the warlock and say, “Your pocket’s on fire.” Not one to be surprised, he grabbed whatever it was in his pocket and threw it on the ground, it was the hilt, which had suddenly gained a personality, and it was pissed. It quickly inscribed the warlock on the quest to get the blade back, by any means necessary. Of course, it was willing to lend its power...

The shout went out that they were only 150 points away from leveling up to level 3. Therefore, a band of hobgoblins mysteriously appeared the next morning to provide them with some coffee and XP. A couple clever applications of ghost sound made the encounter damn easy, and they quickly mopped up and took the step to the next level, if you will, ready to take on the next challenge.

The Devil's Hand

2008-07-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Devil’s Hand

Part of the broken Traitor’s Lot, it seeks to reunite with its other part, to become the dangerous artifact once more. It seeks to kill and destroy those responsible for its misfortune. It’s very specific though, it’ll only align itself with warlocks of the infernal pact, finding all other classes and varieties beneath him.

The Devil’s Hand Heroic Level
This rod resembles a face of a devil, horns elongated and sharp, eyes inset with a subtle glow, and a mouth opened wide, with only pointed teeth and abyss within. The rod is made of a red ore, and a small indentation is found at its top.

The Devil’s Hand is a +2 rod.

Enhancement: Attack and damage rolls.
Critical: +2d6 damage
Property: When your pact boon is triggered, all creatures under your Warlock’s Curse take 1 fire damage.
Power (at-will): Free action. The Devil’s Hand automatically puts the Warlock’s Curse on those he deems responsible for the breaking. The owner has +2 to attack roll against those marked such.
Power (encounter): Fiery Grasp - Close burst 1, minor action. All cursed enemies within burst receive vulnerability 2 fire until the end of your next turn.
Power (daily): Soul Burn - Minor action. Lose all temporary hit points. For each temporary hit point lost, target enemy under your Warlock’s Curse takes 1 fire damage.

Goals of the Devil’s Hand
- To reunite with the blade.
- To destroy all those responsible for the Traitor’s Lot’s fissure
- To destroy agents of the usurper

Concordance

Starting score	5
Owner gains a level	+1d10
Owner is a tiefling	+2
Owner defeats someone responsible	+2
Owner defeats an immortal (1/day)	+1
Owner allows one responsible to get away	-2
Owner breaks an allegiance	-1
A creature cursed by warlock fails to die (1/enc)	-1

Roleplaying the Devil’s Hand
The Devil’s Hand is filled with rage at being divided from the blade. It writhes in anger, but also understands that there’s little he can do, and therefore keeps his anger in check with his owner, only allowing itself to be overcome during battle.

Pleased (16-20)
“The moment of reunion is at hand.”
The Devil’s Hand is confident that the wielder will eventually reunite him with the blade. He lets his anger consume him and his owner.

Property: When your pact boon is triggered, all creatures under your Warlock’s Curse take 5 fire damage.
Property: Whenever you gain temporary hit points, the amount you gain is 3 higher.
Power (encounter): Fiery Grasp - Close burst 3, minor action. All cursed enemies with burst gain vulnerability fire 5 until the end of your next turn. This replaces previous versions of Fiery Grasp.

Satisfied (12-15)
“We’re getting closer to our goal.”
The Devil’s Hand finds his wielder worthy, but is still cautious, and only shows its fury in tense moments.

Property: When your pact boon is triggered, all creatures under your Warlock’s Curse take 3 fire damage.
Power (encounter): Fiery Grasp - Close burst 2, minor action. All cursed enemies with burst gain vulnerability fire 3 until the end of your next turn. This replaces previous versions of Fiery Grasp.
Power (daily): Soul Burn - Minor action. Lose all temporary hit points. For each temporary hit point lost, target enemy under your Warlock’s Curse takes 2 fire damage. This replaces previous versions of Soul Burn.

Normal (5-11)
“We have to find this blade.”
The Devil’s Hand is angry, but knows it cannot act on its own. It remains reserved, fuming below the surface.

Unsatisfied (1-4)
“I thinks it’s upset.”
The Devil’s Hand is mad, but his anger is finding purchase in the fool who controls him.

Special: If someone the Hand deems responsible is in this encounter, the wielder takes -2 to attack rolls and damage rolls against any other enemy.
Special: When the wielder gains temporary hit points, he takes 3 damage.

Angered (0 or below)
“It wants that blade. Now.”
The Devil’s Hand no longer trusts in the competence of its wielder, and plans to leave soon, but his ferocity will find its mark in his owner first.

Special: The wielder takes -2 to attach rolls and damage rolls against any enemy the Hand does not deem responsible.
Special: The wielder cannot gain temporary hit points.
Property: Whenever the owner uses a spell with the Fire keyword, he takes 2 fire damage.

Moving On
“The Blade will be one.”

The Devil’s Hand is one step closer to becoming the Traitor’s Lot. The Hand reunites with the blade to become the Traitor’s Lot or transfers to someone who can continue to the quest in earnest.

If the Hand reunites with the blade, the Devil’s Hand transforms into the Traitor’s Lot, a paragon-level artifact. The Lot decides to stay with the original wielder if it would be appropriate, or finds its way into the hands of someone better equipped for the job.

If the Hand leaves the owner but does not give him access to the Traitor’s Lot, whether because the blade is out of reach or it or the Lot would be too powerful, it instead grants the former wielder additional power. He gains the Toughness feat (even if he already has the feat), and will become a preferred wielder for the Traitor’s Lot when the object becomes available.

If the Hand leave the owner because he’s dissatisfied, he permanently loses 5 hit points, and the Hand will now deem the previous owner responsible if it ever encounters him again.

Game Report - Stupid tents

2008-07-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

Our heroes, after leaving their encampment, head west, continually walking towards the Salt City. While traveling down a beaten road, they notice a figure running towards them from the south. It’s a dragonborn wizard, who politely asks for their assistance with some kobolds that he conveniently lead their way.

It’s a mounted troop of kobolds, three slingers atop three dire rats. They quickly are attempt to surround the players, only to be thwarted with some well-placed tactics. After all kobolds have been killed, Riley, the dragonborn, goes around stabbing the kobolds, making sure they are extra-dead. Seems our NPC has a bit of a vendetta against kobolds, and had recently raided the kobold excavation camp to the south. He asks the PCs if they were interested in killing some kobolds. They agree, and head south, with the dragonborn handing off a sword hilt shaped like a devil’s face to the warlock as payment for their help.

They come across a primitive camp around what appears to be an impact crater, with a small tarp over an indent in the ground, a few tents, and a couple of kobolds standing around. The dragonborn fills them in to their surroundings, saying the tarp appears to protect their pets, a festering mass of rats and beetles. Upon hearing this, the wizard decides that he’s going to fricassee whatever is under there, and casts burning hands under the tarp. The rest of the party head towards the mass of tents.

Once the players are in motion, a kobold standing near the impact crater panics and unintentionally flings itself over the crater, dying in a mess on the ground 70 feet below. The other kobold who was standing around runs into the nearest tent to hide. They discover that the tents mainly cover holes leading into a dungeon, and in the crater, there was a small cadre of kobolds hanging out with a shadar-kai. (The shadar-kai are a ‘dark’ race of humanoids from the shadow plane who listen to too much Marilyn Manson.) After making these discoveries and knocking all the tents over...just in case...a kobold surrounded by rats and a kobold with bugs in a cage showed up. The kobold with bugs threw his cage at the fighter, who was noticably bothered, and the rat master sent his minions against the party. Despite these annoyances, the PCs managed pretty well.

They went down the hole and defeated a couple of kobolds, pigeon fodder, and entered a cavern to chase down a cowardly kobold. They come across a room full of fire beetles, and, not considering them a threat, all clumped together in a 3x3 space. Once they did this, the fire beetles all breathed fire on them, knocking out Riley and a PC. Another player also took a nap from a dark one snooping about stabbing people in the back. Eventually a well-placed acid arrow cleared out the room and they finally took a minute to reflect. They decided that they wanted to see this to the end, but not that night, so they merely took a short rest. They will pick up in the same place next week.

Lessons learned: There is not a lot of room at that little table. I was constantly struggling to find space; on the other hand, it was good to be right where the board was and be able to tell what was happening at all times. It’s a give and take. Also, having a cool location helps the experience a lot. It feels a lot better than a big empty room with monsters in it.

Game Report: The Tunnel Inspection Team

2008-07-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

The group, after leveling up in a rat-infested hole, is ready for more action, and tries to figure out if they should once more dive into the thick of it and try to get past that insect queen, or just hightail it out of there. After a long argument and discussion of just how ghost sound would work, they head towards the kruthik lair only to find that the kruthiks don’t really want to play, and have blocked off the tunnel while they slept. Jerks.

So, it’s back to the surface, past all the interesting corpses they’ve created, only to find a couple of lizardfolk are trying to box them in from the other direction as well. After approaching the situation carefully, they decide to bluff their way to the surface. So, they step forward, claim they are the tunnel inspection team, and the lizardfolk, a bit confused but not particularly smart, let them through. A move that wasn’t exactly advantageous for them, because when they try to tell the same lie at the top of the stairs, they find themselves squeezed between a rock and a hard place.

Apparently a lot has happened in the little temple while they were underground. In addition to the lizardfolk downstairs, a tiefling and a dwarf have moved the horrible statue and replaced it with a dias, as well as taken a human hostage. These events incise the party, and they charge forward, prepared to handle this situation. Only problem being, there’s a dwarf in the way, and the five of them are trapped in a 3x2 room.

The spellcasters each have a teleport ability, so they blink outside, allowing a bit more room to maneuver, but the dwarf, fat as he was and with an absurd AC, managed to keep the doorway blocked for our martial and divine characters, who were pretty much trapped as the lizardfolk made their way up the stairs. That along with an imp bampfing around the room led to a real potsticker of a fight.

Amazingly, it didn’t turn out that bad. The tiefling ended up being absolutely useless; his every ranged attack missed and he teleported away the second things got rough. The dwarf held off really well, until the players shifted gears and managed to burn him down. The lizardfolk didn’t stand a chance, their attacks unimpressive and their armor minimal, and the imp got caught by the wizard’s newly acquired burning hands. The only real surprise was the crocodile, who came storming up the stairs at the same time that the dias was activated by the tiefling, which lead to a few players expressing concern that they now had a demon to deal with. The crocodile got stupid, however, getting himself squeezed into a doorway and beaten to death by our intrepid adventurers.

In the aftermath of this level 4.5 encounter, the fighter goes a bit catatonic (the activation of the dias involved coup de gracing the human hostage, and the fighter blames himself for the death), and the rest search around trying to figure how these guys got up here. They find a crate with a magic amulet of health, which the fighter claims, an ivory statue of Erathis, which resembles a man-tower, and a crapload of gold. They also find a small chalkboard that reads “Found temple. Set up dias. Ready for transfer.” As they read this, the words disappear. The wizard finds some chalk and writes something, only for the words “Who is this?” to appear. The wizard bluffs “Ars,” the supposed name of the leader of the bad guys. The board responded, “Bullshit, Ars is here,” then immediately breaks. They realize that this dias must act as a teleportation pad, and then decide it is definitely time to leave. They bury the human body and quickly get out of dodge.

They get about ten miles until they come across a ruined tower. As they step forward, a giant spider jumps from the top of the tower onto the fighter, knocking him down. Three more spiders show up and perform the same series of tricks, but a few ray of frosts slowed them down, and some fantastic maneuvering by the fighter allowed for two to go down to opportunity attacks. A real easy fight, made only slightly annoying but the jumping, but really proving that if all goes well, this group of adventurers can really perform. T, N, and M had to be up damn early the next day, so we called it after that.

Lessons learned: The group can handle more than I thought. When they are running on full tilt, remember their action points and abilities, and make decent rolls, they can take on much more difficult opponents. Now that they are comfortable with their characters, I need to start pressuring them more. I’m also getting a sense of our new player’s motivations, and need to adjust to keep him interested. I also did a little too much railroading, which I regret, and will watch that in the future.

Game Report: “Why are we even down here?”

2008-06-30T19:57:00.001-07:00

Everyone showed up this time. More than everyone. A showed up, bringing along his female friend, K, who has played with us before, so we could start right away. With very little ado, we got started, the ranger, played by K, suddenly appearing and adding a little extra oomph to the group.

The group was ready to continue into the cave to kick some insect hiney. They traveled down the tunnel they found, only for poisonous spikes to launch out of the darkness and hit the fighter in the chest. Apparently, the insects have a memory. They charge forward to engage the horrible those bad bugs, only to have a crapload more burst out of the walls, prompting what will likely be the warlock’s catchphrase, “Why are we even down here?”

The battle is unnecessarily intense, mainly because the bugs’ ability to deal damage consistently with both poison and a death of a thousand cuts aura. The adult bugs wouldn’t go down quietly, and about two or three characters fell down, although they finally got the hang of how to keep healing up, as well as how to use action points, so there was no real danger.

They found themselves at a crossroads, one sloping downward, another seeming to stay on the same level and veer left. They decide to stay on the same level, and go some ways before seeing anothing bug looking intently off a cliff. The fighter decided that it would be hilarious to push the bug off the cliff, and everyone agreed. The bug grabbed the edge, and then it was found there was a small pit below with a few more bugs inside.

This battle went a lot better, with many direct hits by the PCs, many misses by the enemies, and some hardcore strategy. High on adrenaline, they leap up the wall into another tunnel to see a T in the road. They suddenly stopped and decided to take a six-hour nap. A decent plan, sure, although a little bizarre. The rest passed without incident, and they decided to take the right tunnel in their second forking path of the night.

This led to a small cave with a skeleton inside. The group’s first skill challenge is initiated! They decide to look around a bit and figure out why the hell a corpse is under a church. Through a series of stilted skill checks, they discover that this is Yan Walter, former Constable of Tarsis, who should have been killed when the End happened, but is instead in the buried in the basement of a temple of Avandra. Odd. They take his ring with them and hope to one day figure out why.

Then, it’s back down the other tunnel, to come across the nest of all those horrible bugs they’ve been fighting. They’ve gotten used to fighting these creatures by now, and use their powers to great effect to keep themselves out of harm’s way...until the queen showed up. A failed daily power unnecessarily provoked it, and a few poison breaths (and my very loud hinting) was enough to convince them to run away.

They ran. When they got back to the T in the tunnel, someone finally made a Perception check and noticed the hidden door to their right, which happens to be home to a wererat and his kin. They weren’t terribly happy to be there, it being late at night and their susceptibility to combat being a little low. They quickly beat up the rats, dropping the wererat in a hole not once but twice, and the warlock just asked her catchphrase again. Legitimate at this point, because this is so far afield from the original plan. After a successful combat, they proclaimed they were done and left my house.

Lessons learned: Be even more prepared. This can’t be seemed to be stressed enough. There was still a great number of missteps and periods of mild confusion. Running with six pretty well, although it can be better. And although it makes a lot of sense to have all the creatures in a particular area be the same thing...it’s not exciting. ‘Til next week, sports fans.

Game Report - Back in the Groove

2008-06-24T21:40:00.001-07:00

That’s more like it. Nearly everyone is back, excepting A, who apparently is very busy, and we are able to make it through an evening without having to panic constantly. Exploration is in full effect, everyone is getting exciting about +1 weaponry, and some awesome ass power use is going down.

The gang goes to sleep in the temple that they found, only to be interrupted twice by two new players, J and M. They all showed up under some pretense (constructing an adventuring party is all pretense) and they were off to explore the temple.

They spend a few moments considering leaving, when there is a sudden earthquake, which reminds them that there’s probably a reason to stick around. 8 good reasons, in fact. They climb upstairs to find it infested by skeletons and zombies. How the hell they missed that when they went to bed is beyond me.

The battle sorted itself out well; the leaders and defenders rushed to the front, while the warlock and wizard hung back. Turn Undead was used, which happens to be a lot cooler than it’s ever been before, turning into a straight utility spell that offers a nice advantage rather than an encounter breaking skill. After having a ghost kick the hell out of the fighter for eight straight rounds, they discover an ancient map of the continent (included) and a fancy orb for the wizard.

Determining the upstairs was lootless, they head on down to the basement. There they find a conspicuous chest at the far side of a room, and for reasons unknown, crowd around it. It was, of course, trapped, and some spears popped out of the floor, as well as some flying clay homunculi. They get back in the groove, and the wizard gets in his head that he’s using his daily power, damnit. He puts the flying robots into a freezing cloud, making sure everyone was away first, and they eventually fell to pieces.

The loot was good, including this *snicker* rod for the warlock, that may be my first big mistake if I’m not too careful. It deals a point of damage whenever the warlock curses something. A point of damage being about all that a minion can take. So, I gave him a gatling gun, that will kill any cannon fodder without an attack roll and as a minor action. Must make sure I don’t use minions too, too often.

They then went on to kick some holy insect ass. A room full of baby underground chitinous things that, I believe, didn’t do a single point of damage to the heroic adventurers. Now this is D&D, innocent slaughter of underground creatures. It really helped morale though, now they were sure they could handle an encounter if need be.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to once again break their spirit, as they were a bit tired and it was time to break up the party. They headed back upstairs to sleep among the dead drakes, and will likely continue the trek through the caves on Saturday. Giving me plenty of time to prepare for more overarching stuff since I already have the next bit planned out.

Things I Learned: Once everyone knows how to play, it goes a bit faster, and a bit less dangerously. There are still plenty of ways to surprise them, however. I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever used a trap inside a combat, and I liked how it went. New and interesting encounters seems to be the name of the game, and I wholeheartedly accept it.

Game Report - A quiet evening

2008-06-16T16:16:00.000-07:00

Apparently everybody was busy this weekend, because only two people showed up for D&D this week. Which is fine, considering the circumstances that hit those who could not attend and the fact that time still is needed to learn how to play. Still, there isn’t a hell of a lot two people can do, so there was a great amount of winging it going on.

N and T were the players. After a few minutes talking about video games, it was decided that they should both play two characters, so that a decent-sized party was assembled. T played both the rogue he rolled last weekend, and the wizard he rolled during the week, to see which he liked better. N played his warlock, and also took up A’s warlord mantle, so they had some kind of healing if needed.

Let me rephrase: because it was desperately needed.

They got themselves comfortable in the horrible post-apocalyptic world I’ve set for them, and decided the best option would be to head towards Alreta. Even it was full of liars and cheats, at least it was much more hospitable than near the Impact. They decided to skirt against the edge of the Black Plains and the Glass Forest before heading straight north at the Salt City, the rationale being that’s a likely trading route. They begin to track that way, and I set up the board.

One of these days I’m going to set up the board and have them mill about it aimlessly for an hour and a half without an encounter in site. That will be a boring day, however, which is why I’m putting it off. Still, setting up the board is pretty much an instant indication that they will be rolling initiative in the very near future. Suspense doesn’t work with such elaborate set-up time required.

It appears that the goblins they met earlier weren’t done yet, and since they all failed their “see the damn goblins in the trees” check, they were ambushed, which severely hampered the group because I couldn’t seem to roll under a 10. For the whole damn night. They manage well enough, although every PC fell down at least once, and the goblin archers turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. Eventually, after the defeat of the goblins, they decided to get away from the obscuring woods before something scarier popped out.

They marched across the field to a black temple, and come across a robot with a guitar on its back. The robot, upon seeing them, takes out a rolled up blanket and unrolls it, then immediately sits down. Bizarre, sure. Specifically, it was a warforged bard named Teman, once a minstrel for the Court of Ar, who is able to wander the land relatively unharmed due to his unique appearance and has decided to become a merchant. They bought a couple of potions from him, positive that they’d see him again, and were off to the temple.

The temple, once home of Avandra, was now a temple dedicated to some snakelady, and now home to some cute little drakes. Cute, little, deadly drakes. I’ve found my first gorilla bear (a gorilla bear is defined as a monster that seems reasonable but actually a bit too powerful for its level) in the guard drake and the needledrake swarm, who, although supposedly handleable by some level 1’s, synergize too well and end up kicking so much player ass. The guard drake is a bitch because if it’s within two spaces of an ally, its damage spikes quickly without any recourse if you don’t know the source, and the needledrake swarm are given a self-contained one-two punch that not only doubles the damage of its attacks, but also keeps the PCs grounded, unable to get away from the cat-sized lizards. Considering the flavor of the creature, it’s reasonable, but not Lv. 2 reasonable. These two gorilla bears combined with poor maneuverability and little planning led to the deaths of both of Todd’s characters (which will not stick, because all PC deaths need at least four witnesses) and left everyone involved with a sick feeling. I duex-exed some reason why everyone didn’t die and we called it a night, hoping everyone will see fit to show up next weekend.

Things I learned: Despite their assurances to the contrary, this new edition is not as well-tested as it needs to be. I don’t know why I assumed it would be; I’ve found a fair number of misspellings and design errors already, but I’m going to have to give it a gentler touch. For example: 2d10+4 damage is probably a bad idea for a basic attack, and I’m going to have to reel that in a bit when I see it. Also, despite being tagged patently awesome by 3rd edition standards, 4E characters are still weak against 4E monsters. It’ll take a level or two before these guys break in their sealegs.

Also, a plot would help. Gotta get me one of those; walk myself down to the Plot Emporium.

The Continent of Atia

2008-06-11T21:24:00.000-07:00

It has been 20 years since the End. The embodiment of chaos descended upon the city of Tarsis, and all of the continent of Atia was plunged into torment. The landscape was violently changed, the denizens uprooted, and the environment made dangerous beyond reason.

The Impact - The former location of the city of Tarsis, now a impossibly deep crater. The area seems to be a breeding ground for forces of evil, the walls around the crater lined with caves and lairs of a number of constantly feuding creatures, the ground around the area lines with tunnels and filled with darkness. There have been speculation as to what is in the crater, but all those left to wander feel themselves draw to the Impact, as if it had a sinister gravity.

The Black Plains - The entire north of the continent is a solid plain of black grass. Once home to Atia’s agriculture industry, the ground is now fallow and packs of hunters roam the plain. The forces of chaos were less consistent with the plains; with all the villages and settlements affected in unusual ways. Those left to wander have to show extreme caution when wondering the plain.

The Glass Forest - The forest southwest of Tarsis was directly hit by the blast. All the natural life of the forest was instantly transformed to glass and mineral.

The Canopy - Meanwhile, the mountain range to the southeast was made vegetable, as the mountain peaks turned into giant trees. Branches covered with huge brown and red leaves extend from 1000-foot trees, and deep under the trees creatures unknown stalk the branches.

The Sandsea - When the End happened, the strait between Atia and its neighbor Alreta was turned to blue sand. The boats and ports and “oil derricks” sunk into the sand, and now nomads walk the sea to deal trade with Alreta.

The Arid Ocean - Meanwhile, the desert south of the former Canok Mountains turned to water, and the ancient ruins of the once-proud Athians sunk into the golden waters. As the only real source of water on ravaged Atia, small but doomed colonies have cropped up around the edges of the unusually-colored sea.

The Salt City - The Kingdom of Ar was a prosperous empire that crippled instantly in the end, their fine-worked buildings and civilization turned to limestone, salt, and dust.

The Junkheap - Meanwhile, the blasted and tapped lands south of the Kingdom of Ar, which were devastated in the building of the Kingdom of Ar, were transformed as well. Gears, pipes and worked metal littered the ground, every inch with the semblance of civilization, but not the means.

Edge of Insanity - On the border of the devastation, a storm always rages, keeping those unfortunate enough to live in the chaos trapped within the hellish environment.

Alreta - Amazingly, the small kingdom of Alreta was completely unaffected by the End. The people, however, weren’t as lucky. Each underwent a very obvious psychological change; cheats became noble, saints became sinners, the apathetic cared, and nobody knew each other anymore. Trade with Alreta is both necessary and dangerous.

Like shooting centipedes in a rock quarry

2008-06-10T14:11:00.001-07:00

Something that becomes pretty obvious in 4E is the increased importance of the battlemap, to the point where the game is now virtually impossible to play without a tactical board. Nearly every class has one or two powers (if not over half) that deal with either positioning themselves where they need to be or positioning the enemies in the worse possible place. While this allows for more interesting interactions, it also means more work, because putting them in a big old room isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Of course, I know this already; I learned that lesson the hard way a few years ago. With my first true campaign slowing picking up steam, we drafted S, who’s now on his way to become a lawyer or some such and thus doesn’t have time to play anymore. The moment we drafted S to play with us, Complete Adventurer came out, with its three amazing standard classes. One I perma-banned, because there’s no way in hell I’m letting one of my players be a ninja. Just no. The other two were fair game, however, and they have been used to great effect in both 3E campaigns I’ve run. Especially the scout.

S rolled up a souped-up scout to join the party on its quest to kill the Minotaur King. Starting at a higher level, he was granted a couple of magic items to get him off the ground. Now, the scout has the skirmish ability (which some enemies now possess to deadly effect), which increases damage if he moved more than 4 squares that turn. An ability that is powerful but pretty well negated in tight quarters...unless you, as a DM, decide to let him cheat and gives him spiderclimb boots from the get-go.

Luckily, S’s ability to constantly boost damage was counterbalanced against his inability to actually hit anything, so he stayed in check most of the time. Still, there were a number of battles where his fleet feet were a liability. Most notably, when they came against a giant centipede in a rock quarry.

The fight ended without a single party member taking a point of damage or using a single expendable item. (I do not require archers to keep track of ammo, as that’s just extremely boring.) The scout and the ranger spent the entire combat running around the edge of the quarry, firing down into it, while the rest of the party sat back and watched. After all, it would take them too much time to get down to the monster, and since the monster couldn’t come up to the surface...

Since then, I’ve done my best to avoid such obvious layouts that can be easily broken, although I do tend to gravitate towards rectangles, mainly because they are so easy to draw. However, I make sure to avoid giant empty rooms unless I’m actually trying to make the fight ridiculously simple or dramatic. With 4E, it looks like more obstacles are going to be required, however, if only to provide more interesting cover/mobility circumstances. After all, there’ll be a lot of pushing and pulling going on from the look of things.

Game Report 3 – Nobody died

2008-06-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears that it’s only those blasted premades who were cursed, because once my players took the reins, they were able to handle an encounter or two. Mind, the encounters were written specifically for this group by me, and there were an appropriate number of monsters to players, and there were only two encounters, and everyone was in their right minds, and they still were worrying their little heads off about dying...

Ahem, so, after having a nice dinner at IHOP Saturday, T and N (because their roles are in flux right now, I’ll refer to all members by their first initials, since it works out everyone has a different enough name) came over and started rolling characters. Streamlined system or no, the process still takes just as long. It took them the hour-and-a-half before A and “friend” showed up to just get the ball rolling. Playing proper didn’t start until after 11, a good three or four hours after we started.

After getting together a small group consisting of a rogue, a ranger, a warlock (spellcaster who enters into a pact with dark forces), and a warlord (martial fighter who inspires and bosses around), I throw them all into a jail cell. I know, unfair, and I was asked a number of times how exactly they were captured. Short answer, they were sleeping, and when one member pointed out that the race she chose doesn’t sleep, I handwaved it away. Still, I needed them to fight goblins and make friendly, and it was the only thing I could think of in the limited time I had.

I had the goblins conveniently forget to relieve T’s rogue of two daggers, and an escape plan was quickly hatched. They busted down the door and took out the minions quickly and effectively, all the while being well aware that they were unarmed (almost obnoxiously so, avoiding all combat until they could get their hands on a weapon they knew how to use. Have to mind what I tell them, or they’ll stick by that rule for longer than needed). After a few moments spent being peppered by arrows, they ended their fight and got geared up, then snuck down the hallway for more carnage.

The next encounter was a little tougher, with a leader goblin and no one-hit kills. A’s friend dropped from the first attack, until we realized we forgot to tell her how to heal, so a freebie was granted, only to have her fall to the second attack. After a slight bit of panic, the rules finally clarified that any healing ability will revive a fallen ally (as long as it gave real hit points, not temporary), so a single “inspiring word” from the warlord got her standing again. I cannot stress enough how good this is. The number of times I’ve let healing potions be poured unceremoniously down someone’s throat just so everyone didn’t die is too high to count, and often the action ate a whole turn, allowing the baddie to make another deadly move, so putting in a method to get people moving without breaking tempo is greatly appreciated.

Anyway, they fought against two javelin chuckers, a badass fighter, and a support mage in an o-shaped room. The mobility of the javelin men with boosted attacks if they take four or more steps made those two deadly in the arena, helped greatly by the support caster’s “don’t move” ability. The badass fighter went down before getting a frenzied axe blow in, and then it became a game of chasing the ranged fighters around the room while trying to keep their hit points level. The ranger fell down again to those bloody javeliners, but they eventually burned down all involved, and decided that it was time to go home for the night.

Being nice, I let them escape their imprisonment to find themselves at the edge of the Impact, and they ran to the forest for safety and rest. What the Impact is, exactly, I haven’t told them, and what the forest looks like, they’ll be surprised to discover. Still, a good start, especially since they all left with limbs attached. Let’s hope we can make it another month or so before another TPK.

Fourth Edition Day

2008-06-07T00:34:00.000-07:00

Yes!

Dungeons and Dragons 4E has hit today. I think that it is awesome. For one, it is the crunchiest system ever created. You could not possibly get any crunchier without making your character a random strings of ASCII characters running through a computer fighting other random strings of ASCII characters. As a DM, crunchy games should be my enemy, but as a gamer with a primarily system-based focus, crunchy systems are really far more attractive to me.

I am not here, however, to take about the game or crunchiness thereof. I instead plan on discussing my events of acquiring the game. I had been waiting all week, patiently working each day and spending my evenings whittling away my video game list, waiting for the big drop. After a long day completely two projects solo because my boss had the kidney stones, I stepped out early to board the eastbound train and walked home, all the while reading some book about punctuation.

After a short break, I jumped in the car and drove down to my local game shop, all the while suffering the Wrath of the Pharoah. (Um, I always seem to have to sit at every intersection for over 30 seconds; my rationale is I pissed off a mummy at one point and am forever cursed to hit every red light. In terms of curses, it’s really not that bad.) After a bunch of cursing, I pull into the usual location...at the exact same time Friday Night Magic was starting up.

I had no idea how busy Black Diamond got Friday night. It was virtually packed, over a dozen people showing up for the tournament, including some younger kids who loved to ask questions and really wanted to get their hands on an Oona. Another eight people were just milling about, checking things out and completely missing the giant D&D display. It took me thirty minutes to check out, mainly because I was too polite. Of course, the package that was set aside for me ended up on the counter somehow, and every single FNM player was constantly touching it. I felt compelled to ask for another one...just because.

Still, even though the crowd inconvenienced me, I was glad to see that there were so many people playing games, that things were good for the hobby industry. It gave me a little hope that the things I cared about are still relevant. I left with a spring in my step...then immediately came back because I realized I needed another PH. Needless, it was an expensive day, and I couldn’t’ve cared less.

After that, I went to get a pizza. I went to Domino’s, because they are cheap, and I took a Player’s Handbook inside to give it a first glance. First, the design is outstanding. The art is big and exciting and the rules are laid-out calmly and deliberately. It’s not nearly as good as it could be, sure, but it never has been.

Anyway, I read for a bit, and when it came time to retrieve my pizza, the chick behind the counter (who couldn’t have been above 16) asked me if I roleplayed often. I responded legitimately, and we had a small conversation. She told me that the drama room was often overcrowded with Magic players (good news indeed) and asked if I LARPed (oh no, oh no no no no). Eventually the conversation broke up, and I drove home, glad that I met a confidant, even for a few minutes. Sure, she wasn’t “into it,” but the conversation imparted on me that what I did was actually a legitimate thing, something someone actually recognized on the street.

It was refreshing, and the entire experience really legitimized my hobby, my craft, for me. People, a lot of people, do enjoy the things I like, and I’m going to keep talking about it. I’m definitely not alone.

It's the economy, stupid

2008-06-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the guys at Magic: The Gathering gave us a “heads-up” about the number of changes one can expect come September, when the new block Shards of Alara comes out. Seems that the block is going to be the lightest block they’ve had since the early days, with about 100 cards less in the entire block, but it’s only going to feature “super rares,” with one in every eight packs in place of a regular rare.

It’s a cost-cutting effort, there’s no mistake about it. They need to make less somehow, while also tricking people into buying more. No matter how much Mark Rosewater talks about the state of the game and making it easier for new people to join (read: get a bigger audience), it still seems like an attempt to save some cash.

Which, frankly, is perfectly fine. In case you haven’t heard; shit sucks right now. A lot of people are at risk of going under just because things cost a lot more, and it takes a lot of more work just to get to the same place. Anything they need to do to get by right now to stay afloat is allowed, because frankly, I’d be really disappointed if Wizards tanked because of forces beyond their control. Luckily they have 4th Edition hitting soon (damn lucky for my hobby shopist too), but who knows how long this’ll last.

And we should be thankful that they’re only cutting 100 cards and start pulling some of those damn tricks that Yu-Gi-Oh pulls. They are still producing quality products, they are still grabbing the best artists in the business, they are still making sure everything falls in place, and things remain interesting. Also, these changes have killed the crappy-ass novel line in favor of novels centered around planeswalkers and fancy artbooks, which is a good thing. I’ll buy an artbook, but they’ll never get me to even touch another one of their horrible place-setting novels. The Lorwyn novel killed all the characters I’d met through the legend cards for me, making them as retarded and irrational as possible.

So sure, go for it. Do what you need to, guys. While I’m a little peeved that my favorite kinds of cards are being made even more rare (thanks a lot, jackasses), if this change will get them where they need to be to stay around, let them. If it sucks, they’ll reverse it in two years. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The Shuffle Game: Part 2

2008-05-31T17:52:00.000-07:00

Part 2: Objective, Card Types, and Turn Order

Welcome back to this experiment in creation. I’ve been chewing on the Shuffle Game, and am going to tackle some of the up-front fundamentals, what you need to know when you sit down to play a game of Shuffle Game.

Up-front fundamentals, by the way, differ from background fundamentals. Up-front fundamentals are all things you need to know in order to play the game, while background fundamentals are all things you need to know to understand the game. It’s a distinct line; knowing the first allows you to participate in the game, knowing the latter allows you to win. Needless to say, one must go before the other.

A game is really only two things: components and metaphysical rules to interact with said components. In a card game, which Shuffle Game obviously is, the primary component is almost always a deck of cards, each of which usually has a separate function. I’m going to stick with the primary four types that crop up a lot among card games based on an IP; characters, locations, equipment, and tactics. These are extremely common because they are easily associable, so much so that their functions can practically be assumed. Characters fight, locations provide, equipment enhances, and tactics surprise. I’m going to stick with these four for now, just because it’s easy, solid, and has a lot of room to move around in. No need to get abstract right away.

The game’s objective, since its tone is about land grab and control, is based around collecting a certain number of locations, let’s say about half the locations that’ll be available in a two-player game. I’m arbitrarily going to set this at five, figuring a 30-card packet will contain more or less five locations. A fair assumption, although having this rule so firm also makes deviation impossible...making a deck with only four locations could create an unwinnable game state, while making a deck with seven or more makes the game too quick. Still, it’s a risk that must be taken if we don’t want to get points or tokens unnecessarily involved, so five locations it is.

Set-up and turn order come next. The following is extremely likely to change, just because I’m making assumptions that may not be accurate. It’s still relatively unknown what’s needed, but a basic guideline allows you to place mechanics, and if any part of it doesn't work...well just change things.

Set-up: Choose one location from your deck and set it aside. Take the deck of each player and shuffle them together. Put each location set aside near the deck. Each player takes three cards, looks at them, then sets them face down in front of them.

Each turn - The active player performs actions in the following order:
1. Check for any start-of-turn conditions and apply them.
2. Take a card from the top of the shared deck, then place it somewhere in your field.
3. Perform any number of actions allowed you by cards currently in play.
4. Choose a location you do not control and lay claim to it, and resolve the claim if able.
5. Check for any end-of-turn conditions and apply them.
6. Transfer control to the player to your left.

In what manner you can put down cards during step 2, what actions you can perform during step 3, how resolving a claim exactly works, and just what conditions will need to be check at the beginning and end of turn are still as yet unresolved. There are some ideas, which I’ll tackle shortly, but for now that’s the basic turn layout. For sure, checking for victory happens at the beginning of your turn, just so that when you have five locations, your opponent(s) has a chance to react before the game ends.

There is the basic framework of the game...the rest of the up-front fundamentals will come into place once a card anatomy and other considerations have been made.

Oh this is ridiculous

2008-05-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

I’m beginning to think I’ve got a black mark on me. Two sessions, two parties being torn apart by rampant kobolds. Well, technically, the goblin was the undoing of group number two...among other considerations.

The group assembled was the usual gang, minus one because apparently he disappears into the hills on his birthday, with another old friend who has tried to play with us in the past and a female friend who brought about the major distraction. The premade characters were distributed with only a couple of complaints, and we were on our way.

They were much more methodical in the destruction of enemies. They were equally shocked when the kobolds could take a hit or two, and were equally upset when one of their own fell to these little bastards. They were determined, however, and moved on past the second encounter to upset the main kobold camp.

At about this time in real time, the effects of that evening’s “special treat” started kicking in for about four of the six people involved...including myself. Valuable lesson: running a campaign and mind-altering drugs do not mix, and from this point on I demand all involved keep their wits about them at the gaming table. I apologize profusely to those involved for making what should have been a night of bloodshed into a night of fuzzy annoyance.

Anyway, they came across the kobold encampment, and managed to shock and murder all those outside with ease, only to come up across a dangerous wall of kobolds just inside the waterfall cave. These kobolds managed to corner them and started taking out the heroes one by one (mainly because I was rolling really well, and they weren’t) and with three heroes down, the goblin showed up and started keeping the heroes down after every attempt to get them back up. The fact it became more powerful while bloodied and slowly regained hit points definitely made it overly difficult to kill him.

Eventually, they remembered action points...which helped a great deal. Being able to add an extra attack on your turn is significant, allowing for a desperate situation to reverse quickly...if you roll well, which they didn’t. One thing that also would have saved them is the cleric’s daily ability, which would have gave each ally 5 hit points, which would have saved their ass with nearly everyone but her down. But by that time, two players were asleep, one was off his balls, one hadn’t played in any real capacity, and the last was noticeably frustrated. The night ended with the cleric running away and the rest dying on the ground like animals.

The lesson here is that purchased adventures are a lot more intense than the adventures I run, probably more so thanks to the change in healing and power efficiency of every player. With all characters now able to do something...the combat is going to be a lot tougher, which we aren’t used to. Hopefully after a few trips around the block we’ll be more used to the new heat. If not...I hope they don’t get too invested in their characters, because I’m getting good at killing me some adventurers.

The Shuffle Game: Part 1

2008-05-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

Part 1: Conceit

Some years ago, I was out with a friend who was know for being obtrusively lazy. Getting him to leave his house was an ordeal, and it was always a good day when he decided to leave his comfort zone and get out. In discussing this fact with him, he always said that's how he was, and it was a weakness. "I mean, it's like I have a card called 'My House' and it basically takes me out of the action," he said in the common parlance of game design that we often engaged in. "And it would be in my deck."

On these words, my mind clicked, and I realized that there was a great idea there. After some time quietly chewing on it, I threw together a prototype, based on a completely forgettable anime "Airmaster." The game essentially took the starting decks of the involved characters, about 20 cards or so, shuffling them together, and then both players drawing from the deck, using the cards to perform attacks, play resources, screw the opponent, etc. The game was clunky, however, using a couple of stand-in mechanics that I'm officially over, including character cards for players (multiple ones, in this case) and accuracy checks, and frankly, the IP is retarded, so it got filed in my Hall of Doomed Ideas.

Recently, however, I keep on thinking on how the idea leads itself so well to the current game market, and is a clever idea, it's just a matter of choosing the setting and mechanics to work around the basic concept. So I'm officially reopening this can of fish, hopefully creating a decent pick-up card game that's highly expandable.

The first step I always take is the conceit: the game's gimmick and premise. Why are you playing this game? Why does the game work as it does? What does it represent? What separates it from everything on the market? Mainly, this step gives you two things: standard gameplay elements, and setting. Both can change further down the line, but it's a good place to start.

The standard gameplay elements have already been answered: it's a card game where you shuffle together two or more set decks to use as a common resource, and players use these cards to win. Win what is the question. What's the scenario? In what situation where you be forced to share your resources with an opponent, and use their own 'attacks' against them?

My first thought is a situation where the pretext is those involved are playing a game, a game where characters constantly change sides and all tactics are really open to anyone involved. Something like dodgeball. Dodgeball doesn’t translate well, the rules far too rigid and simple to translate to cards, so something like paintball might be more appropriate. It still stumbles disturbingly close to rules of dodgeball, being only slightly cooler, and frankly, it’s hard to have interesting characters when they all wear masks.

Following the school games theme, nowhere are the barriers more viscous that high school. A game based around some competition, where you draft the members and techniques of each cliche has its allure. It also, however, feels a little shallow, as there’s only so much harping about high school and the archetypes involved before it starts feeling a little too ‘author on board.’
Mercenaries often switch sides, and provide more options in terms of characters, locations, and weapons, but I would like to dodge the ‘war for the sake of war’ trope that inflicts most games, some unceasing conflict that gets played out time and time again, without any real explanation as to the hows and whys, just a bunch of shooting and cursing and blatant destruction. Which is fine, I guess, but it’s always hard to make it interesting, as there’s only so many motives. Not to mention soldiers are boring, and there are only so many funny hats you can put them in.

Still, a conflict needs to occur, and while I would prefer it not to be a war, a battle would be fine. A skirmish or two, a scuffle for territory, small time, where any side can use whatever sources they can get and hope for the best. Which made me think of street gangs, who pull their resources from the neighborhoods they invade and often are at constant battle, but never to the extreme scales as governments. It’s a good fit for the mechanic, with each deck representing an area (presumably adjacent to the others) and the characters, items, locations, and tactics therein. Each player would be a gang leader, trying to claim control of all regions and push their opponent out.

Of course, the setting wouldn’t be the hard and gritty world of real-life gangs, but a more iconic collaboration, with drastically different residents and abilities. If you’re aware of M:TG’s Ravnica block, similar to the world laid out there, with more of a modern tinge to it, as well as looser allegiances (after all, the world is open to all involved).

That’s all for now. With a general sense of setting and tone in place, it’s down to getting my hands dirty and fooling around with some core mechanics and gameplay issues. Later.

TPK

2008-05-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

That was quick. My first full party wipe in 4th Edition, only 24 hours after the material was available. I’m going to consider that a win.

After inspected the adventure further (let’s just say the plot is as thick as Tampico sauce), I called up a friend I wanted to see; let’s call him Bill, because that’s his name. I mentioned in conversation that the new D&D was “out,” in the imperative sense, and he suggested that we play. With no disrespect to “the group,” I was eager to give it a try, and knowing the adventure wouldn’t mean much, I agreed.

We managed to wrangle Bill, a veteran that’s played under me for years, a WoW player with some experience but more spunk than anything, and a newbie who was expectantly hesitant. After a pathetic half-hour trying to get a fourth player, unsuccessfully, I finally caved and agreed to play the fourth man so the challenge wouldn’t be impossible.

They took the first encounter in stride, knocking down minions like matchsticks and the veteran marveling at how...robust...the kobolds seemed to be. For the game’s resident pushovers, they managed to prove fairly resilient when beefed up with classes and skills. As luck would have it, the newbie, playing the wizard, landed the killing blow on almost every opponent, which really helped dispel his hesitance. Kicking ass will do that.

The new combat, by the way, is fast. Damn fast. Having your options laid out in front of you helps, but the new class structure also does a lot more damage, nearly evenly distributed among each player, which is refreshing, which is good, because even some level 2 opponents have over 100 hit points. I feel safe saying that a competent and dedicated group can plow through a full-fleshed encounter in under 15 minutes, which was, well, unheard of in 3.5, because there was just too much to look up and process. More observation need be done, of course.

The party, now a bit loopy from a successful combat, made a fatal mistake by rushing through the non-combat session, forgetting to rest and collecting not nearly enough information. They walked straight into an ambush, this time featuring five beefy kobolds, who used their surprise round to take out the fighter, and it fell apart shortly after. My attempts to draw the flack with the NPC rogue failed when the rogue, well, fell, and the ranged attack of the shaman combined with overbearing warriors spelled certain doom.

Disappointing, sure, but a lesson for me. Being able to heal in combat isn’t a free pass to charge forward; the healing surges, while awesome, only provide a fourth of the hit points, meaning it provides at best mild support. Also, making sure the players know all the options is important. I realize, just now, the prodigious use of action points could have saved the day, allowing another much needed attack. (Players can spend an action point to gain an additional action in a given round.) But the players weren’t aware of them (and I spaced it), so they instead died on the road to a bunch of filthy kobolds. Not the noblest of deaths, but they weren’t invested anyway, so it was fun, and gave me another notch on the rifle.

Keep of the Shadowfell - First Impressions

2008-05-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

I was lucky; I had decided at the last minute to preorder the new hot so I was assured it on the first available day. Turned out there was already a run on the store before I got there, and my copy had been set aside. My immediate thought: “Lot smaller than I thought.”

Turns out the adventure was more of a adventure packet, something you might receive at a six-hour training session if said session happened to be about D&D and they had a relatively good budget. Damn fancy for free, damn disconcerting for $30. Still, it was an adventure, and it technically has a smaller in price than the books proper when they arrive, and, well, I’ve already purchased it...so it was time to crack this open.

The adventure comes with a sixteen page player guide with five pre-generated characters which teach you a whole bunch of things one probably knows already if they are picking it up the day it comes out. Basically, the rules are the same, roll a d20, deal damage, but it’s a lot more streamlined. There are now 15 skills instead of 35, critical hits get nerfed...hard, a whole bunch of the 3rd-edition combat tricks are either no longer available or not being told to use (yah no grappling!), saving throws are a lot...easier, and dying is a lot less likely. These are all good things...it allows for a less spastic gameplay that can’t be easily derailed by some jerk who read too much into the rules.

All of this is, of course, quickplay rules, so there is probably a deeper level of strategy and options that they aren’t telling us yet. We’ll see just what we’re messing as soon as they release the corebooks (another good point: all books available at once. No stupid staggered release that screws you hard for two months.)

The adventure proper starts off normal, with some kobolds, a town in the middle of nowhere populated by very boring people, and a leveling of balancing that is, again, as opaque as hell until we can get our hands on some meat. It also includes three two-sided maps that provide a setting for pretty much every encounter, which is awesome...if only they included the figurines for the heroes. Hell, I’d even pay $5 extra for that, since it would have been pretty simple to plan for.

There’s still a bunch of damn words to read, most of it probably full of the usual plot twists and encounters that can be seen from a mile away, but it’s a starter adventure, geared towards attracting a new crowd more than pleasing the base, so its cookie-cutter plot can probably be excused, because it allows us to play three weeks early. Expect more kavitching later.

Burning Ptolus

2008-05-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

The stakes were high, although not nearly as high as they should have been. The party, newly and unusually powered up, stomped into the basement of a former friend, and burned their way past ice giants and huge six-armed ghost ratmen. Some old but relatively unknown friends were there to help, or hurt, and in the end, the lovable loser turned up to be just as badass as they hoped he was, and the entire city was inexplicably destroyed by a Cthulhu clone.

This was the end of a campaign, a campaign that suffered the loss of three members to entropy, three characters to unfortunate instant death, and many nights arguing over just how overpowered the warmage class is. It created many memes, many inside jokes involving ratmen, spiders, and the above mentioned bookcase. The campaign managed to implode after three weeks of unsuccessful jumpstarts some year and a half in, but after everyone’s schedule cleared a bit, it was decided to “kill” it.

The set-up was essential. I know that one of my constant downfalls while running a D&D campaign is lack of preparation. While it has really improved my improvisational skills, it tends to be frustrating for the players, especially when every other person in town is named Jerry and they are fighting something with wings just because I couldn’t think of anything. So, I knew that I had to be prepared, decent story, decent encounters, something for everyone. I leveled up all their characters to level 20, the big 2-0, gave them some shiny goods, and placed them in a horrible situation.

The key to a epilogue, in my opinion, is to create at once a situation that implies something big happened, that nothing would ever be the same, and that it’s a good thing we are reaching a climax. That way, it wouldn’t matter if all plot problems are resolved or not, because there’s really no going back. My mix of closing the book involved involving the campaign’s hometown in a disastrous war with demons that leaves the economy crippled and life hell for most of the residents, especially as an evil spirit used the war as a chance to take command of the city. (Another issue I have when writing campaigns is being an author on board, but that’s an issue for another post.) So, it’s not a place they want to be, seeing as all their friends are dead or dying, and the town is in the crapper. They’d be more willing to either leave it behind or fix it if they could.

Turns out they could. A former player character who turned into a god (long story) gave them a lowdown on why the commissar was acting strange, and sent them to dispose of the leader at any cost. Another legendary character, in this case an NPC whose McGuffins they had been chasing before the campaign crashed, granted the monk with the power to destroy the Big Bad. After a few “intense” encounters, the monk performs his Five-Finger Punch and destroys the evil spirit, only for everyone to find out they were being distracted all along.

A dark ritual somewhere in the city raised a most ancient evil, who went about destroying everything. Luckily, a “light” ritual raised an Ur-Dragon at the exact same time, and the PCs fought off demon spawn at the foot of the epic battle in the sky. I gave them ten rounds or so to be as badass as possible, all the while the group’s protégé kept casting useless spell after useless spell for comedic effect. Then their taxi arrived, grabbing them and flying them out of the city to watch the destruction of a mountain falling on the city from afar. A massive magic shield soon surrounded the city, trapping all inside and returning the Earth to normal, further driving home that there is no going back.

The consensus was good. They enjoyed it, seeing it as appropriate and sad. While there was a bit of a copout ending, they were glad that I didn’t unceremoniously beat them to death, and it was something that needed done, both considering the poor campaign stall and the ever approaching 4th edition D&D. (First impressions of Keep of the Shadowfell tomorrow)

I enjoy the epilogue adventure, mainly because it allows me to combine two of my favorite storytelling tricks; off-stage adventuring and fatalist events. Off-stage adventuring allows you to have your player characters do things without the hassle of having to make them do it. It allows you to hand out XP for the hell of it, and allows the fun literary trick of starting the adventure already-in-progress, which is disorienting and interesting. Fatalist events allow you to prove that the good guys can get hurt too, which can really hammer some drama home if your group isn’t expecting it. Not to mention, you usually get to have something explode. That’s always exciting.

Who: The Last of Energ

2008-03-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

The Energ once heralds themselves as immortals, who have rid themselves the worries of the flesh through the application and use of bizarre magics that effectively replaced their organs with bizarre kinetic chaos fields. While the process did make the Energ immune from disease and general weardown, the slightly injury destabilized the fields, causing them to eat the affected whole from the inside. The majority of those who undertook the ungodly ritual were killed in simple skirmishes or menial accidents, and the “powerful” mortals were unheard of twenty years after they first made claim of their brilliance.

One Energ did manage to escape death for a few hundred years, but at severe penalty to his quality of life. Already a over-cautious hypochondriac before the procedure, Tilig Swiy took great care to preserve himself, avoiding contact with everyone and spending his time merely reading books and collecting secrets. His residence is padded, his motions slow, and he rarely leaves his home. He lives purely on invested wealth (which has accumulated greatly) and he hires someone to purchase new material for him to study and digest.

The years in solitude has broken his spirit, and made Tilig irritable and irrational. While he knows more than any other person in the city, he meets no one and few know of his existence. If approached, he would lash out and grouse, but also take great care to keep people away from him, in case his flesh, taunt and hallow, should tear. Earning his trust is an extremely difficult task, but if someone manages (by magic or legendary charisma), he would be an invaluable historical resource, although an extremely fragile one.

What the?

2008-03-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

Seems like all my old posts disappeared somehow...somehow. Well, looks like I'll just have to start over from scratch. I mean, wouldn't want to keep people from my writings about roleplaying and tabletop games. Especially after being published in Pyramid. That would just be rude.

Welcome back, or welcome period. New material starts in earnest Monday.