I picked up the PDF for Fate Accelerated Edition a while back, and wrote a "first impressions" review of it. As I said in the review I couldn't see myself running the game in the near future, largely because I've got so many other things I want to run. But one of the players in my group was intrigued by it, bought it, and decided to run a three session mini campaign to test drive it.
The setting was a modern day alternate universe where the Cold War never ended, and recently Russian terrorists launched nuclear warheads at many major cities across the globe. The twist is that it was combined with a bio-weapon, and the resulting disease (called RadPox) wiped out most of the global population. The PCs began in Missoula, Montana. We had an interesting array of characters, which is perhaps to be expected from a modern game without a tight thematic focus (i.e. spies, or dungeon delvers, or fringers trying to get by under the radar of the Empire/Alliance, etc.). My own character was an old man (under description I wrote "current Harrison Ford") with the aspects Retired Border Patrol Ranger - Canadian Border (high concept), I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit (trouble), Sucker For a Pretty Face, Bruce Collins Is My Oldest Friend (refers to an NPC), and My Dead Brother's Shotgun. The other PCs were a large animal veterinarian and a quirky accordion player (part of a duo with an NPC mandolin player; like I said, quirky). The premise was that we were leaving Montana because of the imminent onset of winter, headed south to pursue rumors of a "holy land."
Approaches
Approaches are a great narrative "shortcut," but they definitely have their limitations. While it's easy to liken them to ability scores in D&D, they feel a bit more like watered down backgrounds in 13th Age. That is to say, they represent a philosophy or broad thematic archetype much more than a physical trait (and I say "watered down" in that it lacks the specificity and detail of a good 13th Age background, which isn't to say that it's "worse"). So having a high Sneaky approach doesn't just make you the stealthy (Dex) guy, but you're good at tricking people or lying to them in social situations as well. One big strength is right there in the name: it encourages players to think about different ways to approach a situation. Different GMs will draw the line differently insofar as how much they'll allow a PC to justify a shaky or borderline approach; it seems like too much leniency can lead to approach-spamming, whereas strict adherence to the GMs vision can stifle creativity.
There are two big issues that I have with approaches in play. The first is that sometimes (at least once per session) a PC will try something that doesn't neatly fit one of the approaches. It might not even kind of fit one of them. At that point you just have to try to shoehorn it into a category, which can feel like fitting a square peg into a round hole. It's awkward. It also means that certain approaches (Clever, Careful, and perhaps Forceful) tend to be more useful because it's easier to justify "off" actions as being one of those. Sneaky and Flashy seemed to be noticeably more limited than the others. It's worth mentioning that my character's highest approach was Sneaky, and the accordion player's was Flashy, and we both ended up using them less frequently than we would have expected. In contrast, the vet had Clever at the top and probably used it about half the time.
My second issue is unavoidable given the abstracted, streamlined nature of approaches, and it's simply that sometimes suspension of disbelief can be strained. Skill systems imply previous experience at a given task, but with approaches your potency with the same task will vary depending on which angle you're coming from. For example, I ended up using no less than 4 different approaches at different times to shoot a shotgun. Charging in guns blazing was Forceful, an ambush was Sneaky, a "quick draw" type situation was Quick, and most of the time it was assumed shots were aimed, and so Careful seemed most appropriate. Now I don't know about you, but I tend to be more accurate when I actually aim. Problem was, my PC's Careful was only rated at +1, and so I ran into this strange situation where I was more effective making more reckless shots. Fortunately the GM awarded us a milestone after session 2, and so I boosted Careful to +2.
Aspects and The Fate Point Meta-game
At its heart this game is all about the Fate Point economy. Oftentimes it would be necessary to invoke multiple Aspects in order to succeed at a roll, and so having more Aspects is useful, even if they're redundant. Indeed, redundancy can be really useful if the Aspects apply to common situations! I think more ideally though is that PCs should make judicious use of the Create Advantage action to get more Aspects into play, and while we didn't do that as much as we probably should have it probably becomes habitual the more you play.
The extent of the meta-game, and how players and their characters might have very different goals, really clicked for me in session 3 last night. The climactic final battle was an EPIC firefight, and I honestly thought it would end up being a TPK. Anyways, at one point I got shot at and hit for 1 shift, and decided to compel an Aspect against myself to turn it into a 3 shift hit so I could get a Fate Point out of the deal that would help me out with offense later. Yep, that's right, me as a player wanted my character to get more hurt, and the game actually rewarded me for it.
While a +2 bonus might not seem like much, especially if you come from a d20 background, Aspects (and sometimes Stunts) will determine whether you succeed or fail more often than what you roll on the dice. The results for a pool of Fate dice ends up being between -2 and 2 most of the time. We calculated a result of +4 on the dice as happening 1.25% of the time, which is sobering considering a natural 20 on a d20 happens 5% of the time. Exciting rolls are the exception (such as when I rolled +4 on my attack when the enemy's defense roll was -3), and so you really have to embrace Aspects as your primary "success currency."
What hit home in that third session, when I tried to get my character hurt to give him more Fate Points, is that the player's job is to orchestrate the tempo of their character's story as much as it is to roleplay them. The player can contribute to deciding when the character gets beat down, all so that they can come back swinging later, when the stakes are higher. It's an interesting twist, for better or worse, that can really only occur in a game with Fate Points (or Plot Points; hopefully I'll get to play Cortex+ Firefly soon!) as the game's major currency.
Stunts
I wrote up my first Stunt using the guidelines in Fate Accelerated Edition, but I found that implementation really dull. Yes, a +2 bonus is a pretty big deal in Fate, but when everything of consequence boils down to "another +2!", my interest starts to wane. Sure, the game is more about how you use the elements that give you the bonus, but there's already plenty of that with Aspects. If something is called a "Stunt," I want it to feel cool. Besides that, I find the "fill in the blank" statements of the FAE stunts to be pretty clunky. And the +2 modifier makes it feel like part of a skill system tacked onto the more abstract approach-based system.
The easy solution is to port in some of the ideas from Fate Core and the Fate System Toolkit when you're making your Stunts. Some of these also boil down to a situational +2 bonuses, but at least the wording is more free-form and so the stunts feel more organic. In addition to the modifier, Fate Core also outlines examples for creating rules exceptions, using balancing mechanisms like "once per session I can..." and for creating Stunt "trees" with effects that build off of each other. The Fate System Toolkit really goes into detail with Stunt costs, broader Stunts with smaller bonuses, triggered Stunts, combined Stunts, and tying Stunts to Aspects. Essentially as long as you keep in mind the refresh equivalency you have more flexibility in creating balanced Stunts. While some of these options might be considered to crunchy for FAE by some, others are just as simple (if not moreso) than the default FAE Stunts.
Final Thoughts
I can see why Fate is so popular, but it definitely requires a different mindset to play than most traditional games (even traditional/narrative hybrids like 13th Age and Edge of the Empire). We had a bit of a rocky transition period that made me really glad that my GM went with a 3-session arc; the first session was a messy disaster where we struggled to fully use the system (half the group are new to RPGs, having just played one campaign of Edge of the Empire that lasted a few months), the second went fairly smoothly, and in the third session things really started to click.
I don't see Fate becoming my go-to system (I prefer medium crunch, hybrid narrative/traditional games), but it was definitely an interesting change of pace and it makes me excited to try out Firefly (Cortex+ seems very similar to Fate). This also wasn't the last time I'll play it, though. In fact, I'll GM the next mini-campaign for this group, and at some point we'll probably have the main group try it out.
Showing posts with label play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label play. Show all posts
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Icons in Action (3)
My group recently started up a new 13th Age campaign, but this one's a bit unusual in that we're alternating GMing duties with each GM running a 3ish session adventure and then passing the baton over to someone else. I've done this in the past with a different group in D&D 4E (and I posted actual plays on that, using the Red Frogs tag). The concept is similar, with all of the PCs belonging to an adventurer's guild (which we haven't thought of a good name for yet), and each player having the option of making multiple PCs so that they can choose one from their roster at the beginning of each adventure. All characters level up at a consistent rate (otherwise the GMs would fall behind!). These elements strongly encourage a more episodic campaign structure, which will be an interesting departure from my last campaign which was more like one long arc. The advantage of this is that I think it will be well-suited to improvisational Icon driven play.
Oracles
As the first GM in the lineup, that's definitely the route I'm going. A while back there was a random adventure design tool posted in See Page XX (the Pelgrane Press webzine) called 13 Oracles. Each Icon is given a list of 6 associated places, objects, people, and circumstances and by rolling randomly you can combine those elements to create a random adventure. I decided to test this premise, and so after my players finished writing up their characters during our world-building session I had everyone roll Icon dice early. Luckily I had 4 results (one for each category), but with more I could have easily doubled up on one or more categories. Rolling on the Oracles list in the order that I wrote everyone's results in, I ended up with the following:
Place - 5 with the Archmage: an enchanted lake
Object - 5 with the Dwarf King: gold, gold, gold
People - 6 with the Elf Queen: a bard whose songs come true
Circumstance - 5 with the Elf Queen: under strange stars
To plan the adventure I simply spent 15 minutes or so using these results to come up with a basic plot outline. The summary version goes like this:
Maulnar, a dwarven vaultkeeper, hires the PCs because the contents of one of his vaults (a big pile of gold owned by the Dwarf King) has gone missing. This happened the same night that a wandering bard, Quentin Kroft, passed through Forge and sang a comic song at a local tavern about the Dwarf King losing his gold. The PC's first lead is Quentin's traveling companion, a gladiator in Axis, which was his last known location. They learn from the gladiator that Quentin was headed to Lake Everfrost, which was the last place he visited before going to Forge and where his songs started coming true. The land around Lake Everfrost is forever under winter's grip, and as soon as the PCs step onto the frozen lake the day sky goes dark and the sky over the lake is a clear, starlit night, but the stars look unfamiliar. They see Quentin kicking a rock in the center of the lake, and soon figure out that the lake is a window into another plane called the Land of the Unseelie. They learn that a drow sorceress (Lithariel) in that realm cursed Quentin when he first ventured onto the lake, using mishaps from his songs for profit (when the gold disappeared from the vault, it went directly to her tower!).
That actually sounds doable for a single-session adventure, but instead I decided to stretch it over 3 sessions. I had some ideas for a few adversaries, locales and some set-piece encounters which I weaved into this basic plot outline to flesh it out a little more and fill in the details.
Additional Icon Examples
A few days later (but before running the first session) I decided that some of the connections to the icons weren't terribly obvious. I also wanted more practice using Icons in-play, so I decided that the rolls for the first session would do double-duty. How would I have used these results in my previous campaign if I hadn't "counted" using them for the plot outline?
Session 1
Dwarf King 5 - Deldrak (the High Elf Wizard with the Forge prison escapee background) recognized Maulnar as an employee of the Dwarf King; a connection that the vaultkeeper originally kept secret to prevent this mishap from going public (twist - the Dwarf King doesn't even know his gold is missing!). This was planned before the session.
Elf Queen 5 - Farrah, the Drow Bard, noticed an obviously-stolen bracelet on the wrist of a thieves' guild leader. Unfortunately, the party couldn't (or wasn't motivated enough) to overcome the complication, and after abandoning a chase never got ahold of the bracelet. The thief will most likely make a future cameo. The general idea behind this was planned before the session, but the details were improvised on the spot (crazy PCs didn't do what I expected of them).
Elf Queen 6 - Kalder, the High Elf Sorcerer with the traveling merchant background, passed a colleague on the way to Lake Everfrost. This colleague happened to owe him some money, and paid back the debt with two healing potions and a +1 rune. This was planned before the session.
Archmage 5 - I kept this as a "floating" Icon roll, and I ended up invoking it when the PCs were in the pit barracks talking with the gladiators after being pursued by a squadron of town guards. Deldrak used Hold Portal to keep the guards off the party long enough for the conversation to take place. Unfortunately, that door was the only way out of the room (except for a sewer drain that the sorcerer opted to escape through, but nobody else did). Deldrak's One Unique Thing is that ever since his testing at the School of Imperial Wizardry, he's had to cast a spell every single round (usually he's constantly casting light as a quick action; each footstep he takes lights up the ground) or some random magical effect occurs. When the Hold Portal spell ended, he simply said he stopped casting light. I had sparks erupt from the ceiling, creating a lot of smoke that blinded everyone in the room and the incoming guards, allowing Deldrak to escape through the door (unfortunately, everyone else had to talk their way out of the situation once the smoke cleared, which they did just fine).
Session 2
These Icon rolls were made at the beginning of the session, so none were planned ahead of time.
Archmage 5 - After looting the bodies of some redcaps, Kalder (the sorcerer) found a bundle of mushrooms and a pouch of yellow powder. I initially wasn't sure what use they'd be, but after trading a minor secret to Ungol (see The Three, below) he learned that the powder is a spider repellent. I also used the mushrooms as part of another one of Deldrak's random magical effects from his OUT, which actually ended up being a nice complication.
Emperor 5 - This is an unused roll that will carry over to the next session.
The Three 2 - This was from the cursed dice of Balladeer. The party found themselves in the lair of Ungol, an ettercap who trades in secrets. Their goal was to learn the secret of who cursed Quentin, but such information doesn't come cheap. The PCs had to tell Ungol secrets of their own first. I wasn't sure what to do with this cursed die result until the players were at somewhat of a loss when asked to divulge their secrets (eventually they came up with some juicy stuff). So I told Seamus Stonystones, the Dwarf Bard who made the Balladeer check, to come up with a secret that would anger followers of The Three. He established that he was the writer of a limerick that had gone viral throughout the land, "Three Heads; Might as Well Be One."
Session 3
Emperor 5 (from last session) & Archmage 6 - The Emperor had sent Jeras, a former schoolmate of Deldrak, to aid the group after learning of their mission (he didn't want to compromise his alliance with the Dwarf King). Unfortunately, he got captured by redcaps and used as bait to lure the party into another battle, this time as revenge for their previous victory against redcaps (this was the complication). Point of interest, the "bad word" was literally a bad word that the group can't help but unconsciously utter when things go wrong, so even when they figured it out it still got triggered several more times. I love redcaps. In the first fight, the "bad word" was "attack," and the players never figured it out. Jeras gave the party several +1 Runes, a couple of potions, and some practical advice on the defenses of Lithariel's tower. Specifically, he told them not to touch the water in the stream that effectively acted as a moat from the side they approached. Note: I planned this general idea before the session using the Emperor 5 result, and decided to simply increase the magnitude of the benefit by combining the Archmage 6 result with Jeras (in short, he had more stuff for the party).
Dwarf King 6 - The haunted bagpipes of Seamus the Dwarven Bard warn him to steer clear of the disturbed earth around Lithariel's tower. The ghosts can sense other undead - zombies! - and the party avoids a trap/fight. While everyone loves a good zombie horde, I'm not sure how long it would take my party to realize that the zombies were effectively infinite (it was the site of a mass grave from a battle). Thus, this would have really been quite dangerous.
Great Gold Wyrm 5 - carried over to next session (see notes below).
Emperor 6 - carried over to next session but never used.
Session 4
Bonus session! This was a short session, and just a quick wrap-up since things ran longer than anticipated. The party fought Lithariel, "killed" her (she dissipated into smoke, and a successful knowledge check revealed that she'd regenerate later since the kill shot wasn't from a cold iron weapon). I used the Great Gold Wyrm roll from Seamus' Balladeer to have the toll-collected dragon brood be off chasing some merchants who were singing his anti-Three limerick ("Three Heads; Might As Well Be One"). The complication being that they'll probably kill those merchants, but perhaps not before learning who wrote the song (wink, wink).
Oracles
As the first GM in the lineup, that's definitely the route I'm going. A while back there was a random adventure design tool posted in See Page XX (the Pelgrane Press webzine) called 13 Oracles. Each Icon is given a list of 6 associated places, objects, people, and circumstances and by rolling randomly you can combine those elements to create a random adventure. I decided to test this premise, and so after my players finished writing up their characters during our world-building session I had everyone roll Icon dice early. Luckily I had 4 results (one for each category), but with more I could have easily doubled up on one or more categories. Rolling on the Oracles list in the order that I wrote everyone's results in, I ended up with the following:
Place - 5 with the Archmage: an enchanted lake
Object - 5 with the Dwarf King: gold, gold, gold
People - 6 with the Elf Queen: a bard whose songs come true
Circumstance - 5 with the Elf Queen: under strange stars
To plan the adventure I simply spent 15 minutes or so using these results to come up with a basic plot outline. The summary version goes like this:
Maulnar, a dwarven vaultkeeper, hires the PCs because the contents of one of his vaults (a big pile of gold owned by the Dwarf King) has gone missing. This happened the same night that a wandering bard, Quentin Kroft, passed through Forge and sang a comic song at a local tavern about the Dwarf King losing his gold. The PC's first lead is Quentin's traveling companion, a gladiator in Axis, which was his last known location. They learn from the gladiator that Quentin was headed to Lake Everfrost, which was the last place he visited before going to Forge and where his songs started coming true. The land around Lake Everfrost is forever under winter's grip, and as soon as the PCs step onto the frozen lake the day sky goes dark and the sky over the lake is a clear, starlit night, but the stars look unfamiliar. They see Quentin kicking a rock in the center of the lake, and soon figure out that the lake is a window into another plane called the Land of the Unseelie. They learn that a drow sorceress (Lithariel) in that realm cursed Quentin when he first ventured onto the lake, using mishaps from his songs for profit (when the gold disappeared from the vault, it went directly to her tower!).
That actually sounds doable for a single-session adventure, but instead I decided to stretch it over 3 sessions. I had some ideas for a few adversaries, locales and some set-piece encounters which I weaved into this basic plot outline to flesh it out a little more and fill in the details.
Additional Icon Examples
A few days later (but before running the first session) I decided that some of the connections to the icons weren't terribly obvious. I also wanted more practice using Icons in-play, so I decided that the rolls for the first session would do double-duty. How would I have used these results in my previous campaign if I hadn't "counted" using them for the plot outline?
Session 1
Dwarf King 5 - Deldrak (the High Elf Wizard with the Forge prison escapee background) recognized Maulnar as an employee of the Dwarf King; a connection that the vaultkeeper originally kept secret to prevent this mishap from going public (twist - the Dwarf King doesn't even know his gold is missing!). This was planned before the session.
Elf Queen 5 - Farrah, the Drow Bard, noticed an obviously-stolen bracelet on the wrist of a thieves' guild leader. Unfortunately, the party couldn't (or wasn't motivated enough) to overcome the complication, and after abandoning a chase never got ahold of the bracelet. The thief will most likely make a future cameo. The general idea behind this was planned before the session, but the details were improvised on the spot (crazy PCs didn't do what I expected of them).
Elf Queen 6 - Kalder, the High Elf Sorcerer with the traveling merchant background, passed a colleague on the way to Lake Everfrost. This colleague happened to owe him some money, and paid back the debt with two healing potions and a +1 rune. This was planned before the session.
Archmage 5 - I kept this as a "floating" Icon roll, and I ended up invoking it when the PCs were in the pit barracks talking with the gladiators after being pursued by a squadron of town guards. Deldrak used Hold Portal to keep the guards off the party long enough for the conversation to take place. Unfortunately, that door was the only way out of the room (except for a sewer drain that the sorcerer opted to escape through, but nobody else did). Deldrak's One Unique Thing is that ever since his testing at the School of Imperial Wizardry, he's had to cast a spell every single round (usually he's constantly casting light as a quick action; each footstep he takes lights up the ground) or some random magical effect occurs. When the Hold Portal spell ended, he simply said he stopped casting light. I had sparks erupt from the ceiling, creating a lot of smoke that blinded everyone in the room and the incoming guards, allowing Deldrak to escape through the door (unfortunately, everyone else had to talk their way out of the situation once the smoke cleared, which they did just fine).
Session 2
These Icon rolls were made at the beginning of the session, so none were planned ahead of time.
Archmage 5 - After looting the bodies of some redcaps, Kalder (the sorcerer) found a bundle of mushrooms and a pouch of yellow powder. I initially wasn't sure what use they'd be, but after trading a minor secret to Ungol (see The Three, below) he learned that the powder is a spider repellent. I also used the mushrooms as part of another one of Deldrak's random magical effects from his OUT, which actually ended up being a nice complication.
Emperor 5 - This is an unused roll that will carry over to the next session.
The Three 2 - This was from the cursed dice of Balladeer. The party found themselves in the lair of Ungol, an ettercap who trades in secrets. Their goal was to learn the secret of who cursed Quentin, but such information doesn't come cheap. The PCs had to tell Ungol secrets of their own first. I wasn't sure what to do with this cursed die result until the players were at somewhat of a loss when asked to divulge their secrets (eventually they came up with some juicy stuff). So I told Seamus Stonystones, the Dwarf Bard who made the Balladeer check, to come up with a secret that would anger followers of The Three. He established that he was the writer of a limerick that had gone viral throughout the land, "Three Heads; Might as Well Be One."
Session 3
Emperor 5 (from last session) & Archmage 6 - The Emperor had sent Jeras, a former schoolmate of Deldrak, to aid the group after learning of their mission (he didn't want to compromise his alliance with the Dwarf King). Unfortunately, he got captured by redcaps and used as bait to lure the party into another battle, this time as revenge for their previous victory against redcaps (this was the complication). Point of interest, the "bad word" was literally a bad word that the group can't help but unconsciously utter when things go wrong, so even when they figured it out it still got triggered several more times. I love redcaps. In the first fight, the "bad word" was "attack," and the players never figured it out. Jeras gave the party several +1 Runes, a couple of potions, and some practical advice on the defenses of Lithariel's tower. Specifically, he told them not to touch the water in the stream that effectively acted as a moat from the side they approached. Note: I planned this general idea before the session using the Emperor 5 result, and decided to simply increase the magnitude of the benefit by combining the Archmage 6 result with Jeras (in short, he had more stuff for the party).
Dwarf King 6 - The haunted bagpipes of Seamus the Dwarven Bard warn him to steer clear of the disturbed earth around Lithariel's tower. The ghosts can sense other undead - zombies! - and the party avoids a trap/fight. While everyone loves a good zombie horde, I'm not sure how long it would take my party to realize that the zombies were effectively infinite (it was the site of a mass grave from a battle). Thus, this would have really been quite dangerous.
Great Gold Wyrm 5 - carried over to next session (see notes below).
Emperor 6 - carried over to next session but never used.
Session 4
Bonus session! This was a short session, and just a quick wrap-up since things ran longer than anticipated. The party fought Lithariel, "killed" her (she dissipated into smoke, and a successful knowledge check revealed that she'd regenerate later since the kill shot wasn't from a cold iron weapon). I used the Great Gold Wyrm roll from Seamus' Balladeer to have the toll-collected dragon brood be off chasing some merchants who were singing his anti-Three limerick ("Three Heads; Might As Well Be One"). The complication being that they'll probably kill those merchants, but perhaps not before learning who wrote the song (wink, wink).
Saturday, August 24, 2013
The End of the Axtalrath Campaign
I started my 13th Age campaign back in January, as a way to introduce the group to the game. Eight months later, I found myself surprised how long it actually lasted. I had intended to run a shorter campaign just to get people used to the system, but the ideas just kept flowing and it took on a life of its own. With everyone wanting to actually play Edge of the Empire, it seemed like a good time to draw 13th Age to a close, despite the fact that I still had plenty of material floating around in my head.
Finale Summary
We covered a lot of ground throughout this campaign, but the quick and dirty backstory is that there was a recently colonized island in the Midland Sea, where the PCs were residing at the start of the campaign, and about a week (game time) earlier a great red dragon named Axtalrath had taken up residence there. Somewhere in the middle of the campaign the wood elf Cleric had also freed an imprisoned Dracolich, meaning that there were TWO dragons loose now. After escaping the island via a portal at the end of a living dungeon, hanging around in Drakkenhall, and getting some magical aid from Arden, the Great Gold Wyrm's silver dragon counterpart (known as the Sea Dragon, she left the empire when the Midland Sea was tamed, and now guards the Sea Wall from the creatures of the Iron Sea), it was time to return to the island and put a stop to Axtalrath.
Now, Axtalrath was a Huge Red Dragon (the level 13 one from the core book), and the party had just hit level 5. The Dracolich was a Huge 8th level custom creation based on the dragons from the book. Clearly a face-to-face fight was out of the question. Fortunately, the magic that Arden gifted the PCs with would allow them to reverse the polarity of the island's sky-metal monolith (which has been drawing magical energy from the ley lines underneath), forcing it to siphon nearby elemental fire instead. If Axtalrath were nearby, it would destroy her.
With that plan in mind, the PCs began the session in an old cave system where the Dracolich's phylactery was hidden. The kobold guards were toast (all 30+ of them) after the last battle of the previous session, so after recovering the phylactery the party sought out the Dracolich and threatened to destroy it unless he challenged Axtalrath in single combat, drawing her to the monolith. After some negotiation which left the Cleric with cursed hands (think Dumbledore's) and cursed eyes (a self-inflicted complication from an Icon roll), the Dracolich grudgingly agreed.
Cue the big epic battle. The Monk's OUT was that he can climb impossible surfaces, so once Axtalrath was in sight he activated Arden's magic at the top of the monolith while the Fighter did the same at the base. It took a few rounds to charge up, during which the Dracolich occupied most of Axtalrath's attention, while Axtalrath sent some allies (courtesy of The Blue) after the PCs (a hill giant and several Hobgoblin warcasters). Just when things were looking dire for the Dracolich, the energy began arcing from the monolith to Axtalrath. It was then that she knew what was going on, so for 2 rounds before her death she focused her attention on the PCs. One breath weapon killed the Cleric outright in a single shot, and grievously wounded the others. The Fighter was unconscious, so I randomly rolled to see whether she would target her death throes on the Paladin or Monk. Paladin got the unlucky roll, and in a surprising bout of heroism the Monk intercepted, and I let him use Improbably Stunt to use a finishing move as part of the intercept. After 3 attacks from the dragon (2 of which hit; I think I fumbled the other one) the Monk was outright killed, too. Axtalrath swallowed him whole, and as the player noted that he'd had 2 vials of poison on his person, the dragon experienced some mild gastric distress before being immolated and siphoned into the monolith.
The Paladin used a magic axe with item-destroying powers to betray the Dracolich by destroying the phylactery anyways. This axe caused images from the destroyed item's past to be reflected in its blade, and destroying the phylactery therefore replaced the images from the last item the axe destroyed - images that would have implicated the Paladin's political rival and ended his exile, restoring his status in Dwarven society. A noble sacrifice, to be sure, but not so final as the one that the Cleric and Monk made. Of course, being inside of Axtalrath when she was consumed allowed the Monk's essence to be sucked into the island's ley lines through the monolith, so he IS the island now. And the Cleric got to meet the voice behind a mysterious amulet that talked to him - the voice of God. And the Fighter, well, he made the Great Gold Wyrm proud by defeated two rivals.
Icons
This session was interesting because I hadn't planned on having the PCs roll their Relationship Dice until the last minute. The final confrontation was pretty much set without much wiggle room if we were to finish in one session, and I'd had a 6 with the Emperor and a 5 and 6 with the Orc Lord banked from last session. But I figured I'd let them roll one last time, and got more results than usual. Three more 6's and three more 5's, to be precise. Even more surprising was that all of them got used except one of the 5's (for the Emperor).
So how'd I pull it off? Well, I decided to burn the Orc Lord relationship by making the Dracolich's phylactery a shrunken head - that happened to be an orc. No shame in having an Icon roll result in some interesting aesthetic detail. Were it not the last session, something like that could have taken on greater significance later. A 5 with The Three meant that a pair of kobold scouts happened to be discovering the massacre of their fellow guards just as the PCs exited the cave, and they were able to capture one of them and force him to take them to the Dracolich's camp. A 5 for the Priestess let the Cleric (by his suggestion) discover the ritual to destroy the phylactery by studying the various runes carved into the scarified face, but at the expense of getting cursed eyes (a negative background; too bad he didn't live long enough for it to come into play). The Fighter used a 6 with the Great Gold Wyrm (by his suggestion) to convince the Dracolich during negotiations that Arden had provided them with the means to destroy his phylactery (this was before the Cleric discovered its secrets), and the name-dropping also leant much weight to the plan to destroy Axtalrath. The Dracolich was, after all, very much outmatched in that fight. A 6 for the Emperor revealed that an old ally (Lord Taramos) was in residence at the Wizard tower beside the monolith, and being the most powerful wizard on the island he was able to aid them by animating the crystalline walls surrounding the compound during the fight. Rolls for the Dwarf King and Orc Lord determined the allies sent by The Blue through the portal (this is one that I'd actually planned on using BEFORE the session, even jotting down a list of possible allies associated with each Icon in the party).
And that about covered it. It turned out to be perhaps the most Icon-heavy session in the campaign, despite the fact that the plot was pretty much "set." I guess the moral of the story here is GMs shouldn't be afraid to stack the odds against the PCs, and let Icon rolls determine whatever little advantages they can eke out to level the playing field a little bit. It's usually pretty easy to come up with story-guidance results as a GM, but until that sub-plot resolves itself sometimes it's tough to interpret Icon rolls. But that's cool, because if you just increase the pressure on the PCs they might just come up with clever ways to leverage their connections with the Icons. In some ways I don't think that the player-input facet of the Icons hit its stride until later in the campaign, which makes me really excited for the next campaign now that the players know the ropes!
Finale Summary
We covered a lot of ground throughout this campaign, but the quick and dirty backstory is that there was a recently colonized island in the Midland Sea, where the PCs were residing at the start of the campaign, and about a week (game time) earlier a great red dragon named Axtalrath had taken up residence there. Somewhere in the middle of the campaign the wood elf Cleric had also freed an imprisoned Dracolich, meaning that there were TWO dragons loose now. After escaping the island via a portal at the end of a living dungeon, hanging around in Drakkenhall, and getting some magical aid from Arden, the Great Gold Wyrm's silver dragon counterpart (known as the Sea Dragon, she left the empire when the Midland Sea was tamed, and now guards the Sea Wall from the creatures of the Iron Sea), it was time to return to the island and put a stop to Axtalrath.
Now, Axtalrath was a Huge Red Dragon (the level 13 one from the core book), and the party had just hit level 5. The Dracolich was a Huge 8th level custom creation based on the dragons from the book. Clearly a face-to-face fight was out of the question. Fortunately, the magic that Arden gifted the PCs with would allow them to reverse the polarity of the island's sky-metal monolith (which has been drawing magical energy from the ley lines underneath), forcing it to siphon nearby elemental fire instead. If Axtalrath were nearby, it would destroy her.
With that plan in mind, the PCs began the session in an old cave system where the Dracolich's phylactery was hidden. The kobold guards were toast (all 30+ of them) after the last battle of the previous session, so after recovering the phylactery the party sought out the Dracolich and threatened to destroy it unless he challenged Axtalrath in single combat, drawing her to the monolith. After some negotiation which left the Cleric with cursed hands (think Dumbledore's) and cursed eyes (a self-inflicted complication from an Icon roll), the Dracolich grudgingly agreed.
Cue the big epic battle. The Monk's OUT was that he can climb impossible surfaces, so once Axtalrath was in sight he activated Arden's magic at the top of the monolith while the Fighter did the same at the base. It took a few rounds to charge up, during which the Dracolich occupied most of Axtalrath's attention, while Axtalrath sent some allies (courtesy of The Blue) after the PCs (a hill giant and several Hobgoblin warcasters). Just when things were looking dire for the Dracolich, the energy began arcing from the monolith to Axtalrath. It was then that she knew what was going on, so for 2 rounds before her death she focused her attention on the PCs. One breath weapon killed the Cleric outright in a single shot, and grievously wounded the others. The Fighter was unconscious, so I randomly rolled to see whether she would target her death throes on the Paladin or Monk. Paladin got the unlucky roll, and in a surprising bout of heroism the Monk intercepted, and I let him use Improbably Stunt to use a finishing move as part of the intercept. After 3 attacks from the dragon (2 of which hit; I think I fumbled the other one) the Monk was outright killed, too. Axtalrath swallowed him whole, and as the player noted that he'd had 2 vials of poison on his person, the dragon experienced some mild gastric distress before being immolated and siphoned into the monolith.
The Paladin used a magic axe with item-destroying powers to betray the Dracolich by destroying the phylactery anyways. This axe caused images from the destroyed item's past to be reflected in its blade, and destroying the phylactery therefore replaced the images from the last item the axe destroyed - images that would have implicated the Paladin's political rival and ended his exile, restoring his status in Dwarven society. A noble sacrifice, to be sure, but not so final as the one that the Cleric and Monk made. Of course, being inside of Axtalrath when she was consumed allowed the Monk's essence to be sucked into the island's ley lines through the monolith, so he IS the island now. And the Cleric got to meet the voice behind a mysterious amulet that talked to him - the voice of God. And the Fighter, well, he made the Great Gold Wyrm proud by defeated two rivals.
Icons
This session was interesting because I hadn't planned on having the PCs roll their Relationship Dice until the last minute. The final confrontation was pretty much set without much wiggle room if we were to finish in one session, and I'd had a 6 with the Emperor and a 5 and 6 with the Orc Lord banked from last session. But I figured I'd let them roll one last time, and got more results than usual. Three more 6's and three more 5's, to be precise. Even more surprising was that all of them got used except one of the 5's (for the Emperor).
So how'd I pull it off? Well, I decided to burn the Orc Lord relationship by making the Dracolich's phylactery a shrunken head - that happened to be an orc. No shame in having an Icon roll result in some interesting aesthetic detail. Were it not the last session, something like that could have taken on greater significance later. A 5 with The Three meant that a pair of kobold scouts happened to be discovering the massacre of their fellow guards just as the PCs exited the cave, and they were able to capture one of them and force him to take them to the Dracolich's camp. A 5 for the Priestess let the Cleric (by his suggestion) discover the ritual to destroy the phylactery by studying the various runes carved into the scarified face, but at the expense of getting cursed eyes (a negative background; too bad he didn't live long enough for it to come into play). The Fighter used a 6 with the Great Gold Wyrm (by his suggestion) to convince the Dracolich during negotiations that Arden had provided them with the means to destroy his phylactery (this was before the Cleric discovered its secrets), and the name-dropping also leant much weight to the plan to destroy Axtalrath. The Dracolich was, after all, very much outmatched in that fight. A 6 for the Emperor revealed that an old ally (Lord Taramos) was in residence at the Wizard tower beside the monolith, and being the most powerful wizard on the island he was able to aid them by animating the crystalline walls surrounding the compound during the fight. Rolls for the Dwarf King and Orc Lord determined the allies sent by The Blue through the portal (this is one that I'd actually planned on using BEFORE the session, even jotting down a list of possible allies associated with each Icon in the party).
And that about covered it. It turned out to be perhaps the most Icon-heavy session in the campaign, despite the fact that the plot was pretty much "set." I guess the moral of the story here is GMs shouldn't be afraid to stack the odds against the PCs, and let Icon rolls determine whatever little advantages they can eke out to level the playing field a little bit. It's usually pretty easy to come up with story-guidance results as a GM, but until that sub-plot resolves itself sometimes it's tough to interpret Icon rolls. But that's cool, because if you just increase the pressure on the PCs they might just come up with clever ways to leverage their connections with the Icons. In some ways I don't think that the player-input facet of the Icons hit its stride until later in the campaign, which makes me really excited for the next campaign now that the players know the ropes!
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Icons in Action (2)
Overall tonight's session was pretty light on Icon usage. I guess that just happens sometimes; it was a short session, and somewhat combat-heavy. Each player rolled one 5 for Relationships at the start of the session, and there was an outstanding 5 and 6 from last session that hadn't been spent as well. Complications are awesome and make perfect sense in some situations, but in others I find I struggle to come up with a good disadvantage. Results of 5 can be, quite simply, more work to utilize in play (unless you're endowed with more improvisational creativity than I am).
Icon Rolls/OUTs
Argus, our party's Fighter, wanted to copy down some ancient writing from a tapestry onto paper for later research. The player simply asked if the standard adventurer's gear included paper. Thinking it unlikely for any but a studious Wizard type, a Bard who likes to compose on the road, or a PC of any class that has an established personality/backstory that would justify carrying paper, I said probably not. "But what happened to 'Always say Yes,'" you might ask? Well, I happened to be struggling with coming up with any applications for these relationship rolls (as were my players), so I offered the player the following bargain: if he spent a 5 for the Emperor that was still in play, he can be carrying around imperial stationary with an appropriate writing implement.
The beauty of this suggestion is that it's so minor at the present time that I didn't feel the need to tack on a complication. Easy on me, right? Results of 5 could involve a complication, OR they could simply provide a lesser benefit than a 6 would. But it's still open-ended. How did Argus come by this imperial stationary? His Relationship with the Emperor is conflicted, and his OUT is that he's the only person known to have insulted the Emperor to his face and lived to tell the tale. Is it left over from a former position that he once held in the imperial military? Or did he come by it later through illicit means? Will it be possible to forge an official document later on, now that it's established that he carries imperial stationary? Maybe a more significant benefit will come up later, and the possibility for future conflict is certainly there as well. Point being, just because you need to come up with something on the spot for a relationship roll doesn't mean you have to come up with EVERYTHING on the spot. And everyone knows sometimes minor details can end up having a big narrative impact later on.
Backgrounds
Turns out the best example of a surprising (and yet obvious, in hindsight) background application came from Argus as well. After repeatedly breaking down several doors with axes (because when will a party consisting of a Cleric, Paladin, and Fighter decide to pick a lock?) and subsequently alerting those in the room, Argus decided to finally try to pick the final door in their path. "Can I use Blacksmith?" he asked. Lightbulb moment. Hey, we have someone whose halfway decent at skulduggery! A blacksmith just might know enough about the internal workings of locks to be able to have an advantage while picking them. And an otherwise under-utilized background gets some screen time.
Icon Rolls/OUTs
Argus, our party's Fighter, wanted to copy down some ancient writing from a tapestry onto paper for later research. The player simply asked if the standard adventurer's gear included paper. Thinking it unlikely for any but a studious Wizard type, a Bard who likes to compose on the road, or a PC of any class that has an established personality/backstory that would justify carrying paper, I said probably not. "But what happened to 'Always say Yes,'" you might ask? Well, I happened to be struggling with coming up with any applications for these relationship rolls (as were my players), so I offered the player the following bargain: if he spent a 5 for the Emperor that was still in play, he can be carrying around imperial stationary with an appropriate writing implement.
The beauty of this suggestion is that it's so minor at the present time that I didn't feel the need to tack on a complication. Easy on me, right? Results of 5 could involve a complication, OR they could simply provide a lesser benefit than a 6 would. But it's still open-ended. How did Argus come by this imperial stationary? His Relationship with the Emperor is conflicted, and his OUT is that he's the only person known to have insulted the Emperor to his face and lived to tell the tale. Is it left over from a former position that he once held in the imperial military? Or did he come by it later through illicit means? Will it be possible to forge an official document later on, now that it's established that he carries imperial stationary? Maybe a more significant benefit will come up later, and the possibility for future conflict is certainly there as well. Point being, just because you need to come up with something on the spot for a relationship roll doesn't mean you have to come up with EVERYTHING on the spot. And everyone knows sometimes minor details can end up having a big narrative impact later on.
Backgrounds
Turns out the best example of a surprising (and yet obvious, in hindsight) background application came from Argus as well. After repeatedly breaking down several doors with axes (because when will a party consisting of a Cleric, Paladin, and Fighter decide to pick a lock?) and subsequently alerting those in the room, Argus decided to finally try to pick the final door in their path. "Can I use Blacksmith?" he asked. Lightbulb moment. Hey, we have someone whose halfway decent at skulduggery! A blacksmith just might know enough about the internal workings of locks to be able to have an advantage while picking them. And an otherwise under-utilized background gets some screen time.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Icons in Action (1)
My 13th Age campaign based on the Dungeon World Front "The Great Wyrm Axtalrath" is still going strong. I believe we're something like 4 sessions in; I just haven't been in the mood to write session summaries. Instead of doing so, I think I'd rather use my own play experience to highlight the narrative mechanics of 13th Age. Hopefully this will be a regular series (hence the parenthetical "1" in the title) which explores not only how Icon rolls are being used in my games, but One Unique Things (OUTs), and potentially Backgrounds as well.
Icon Rolls
I've admittedly struggled the most with how to best implement Icon Rolls, to the point where for the first session I didn't use them much at all, and didn't even really think about them. They occasionally even stressed me out a little bit, but after last session they finally "clicked."
I won't go into every example I've had so far, but I will go over many to get started. First of all, until tonight I've exclusively been using the "roll all of your Relationships at the beginning of the session" method. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that while I was using the rolls as plot element generators, I wasn't being at all transparent with my players about what their rolls were doing. So I sent them a message via our campaign's group on Facebook explaining how I'd used each roll for that session.
Each player got a magic item, and each one was the result of an icon roll. None of these items were loot; they were gifted to the PCs by NPCs. The Paladin was gathering information on the Dragon Cultists in town, and instead of having him roll a "Streetwise" type skill check I simply spent a result of 5 that had been rolled for The Three. After publicly expressing interest in the Cult, I later had some undercover cultists pass him a coin later on the street. The complication was that the etchings on the coin needed to be interpreted, and a correct interpretation revealed the location and time of their next meeting. Well, the players didn't readily interpret it, but the Fighter took it to an acquaintance at the temple to see if the head priest had any insight. I spent a roll of 6 for the Priestess and had him guess the exact right answer they needed, explaining his thoughts on the different marks.
When I needed a random quest for the PCs to go on, I used a roll of 5 to have Derro show up in the mining town of Rockbreak (soon to be under siege by the fire-elemental-esque Magmin) hoping to find someone to retrieve a drill for them (which the Magmin could use to wreak havoc on the town). Cool, this drill ended up driving tonight's session and veering the campaign in a new direction.
The PCs ended up using the drill to get back to the surface of a sea-cave dungeon, unfortunately in an area where a small army of Magmin were camped out. The clearly-magical drill melted rock that it touched, but it still made a lot of noise when it surfaced. Fortunately, I had a result of 6 for the Emperor that I needed spent, so I had the Magmin be out on their pumice rafts to destroy an Imperial yacht that appeared offshore. Perfect time for a clean escape (I had vague plans for if the PCs decided to search for survivors, but they headed directly north with the drill instead).
At this point I should mention that after my initial Facebook message explaining my Icon Roll decisions to the group, I added that they too were encouraged to "spend" rolls to gain narrative advantages of their choosing. In tonight's session the Fighter lamented that he didn't have an active result for the Great Gold Wyrm to aid him in pursuing a problematic assassin who has been harassing the party, so I let him roll (unfortunately he rolled a 4, but I'm sure that just means the inevitable is delayed).
Finally, what I was most pleased with was that the party decided to cut through the Lizardfolk occupied swamps to shortcut their journey, and the Paladin (with the "Ambassador" background) asked how the game handled languages and what the Lizardfolk might speak. I told him "I'll tell you what, if you want to spend that result of 6 for The Three, I'll say that your character can speak the language of the Lizardfolk." He accepted, and I'm sure that little fact will have an impact for sessions to come.
I said earlier that Icon Rolls finally "clicked" for me recently. I think this was largely a combination of reminding my players that they could spend results, and me mentally comparing the mechanic to Destiny Points in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. I had a player make an awesome use of a Destiny Point to introduce a narrative fact in our last session, and it hit me that Relationship Dice were 13 Age's version of that. I think that's the strength of pre-rolling each relationship at the beginning of the session, actually. It's great if the players know their narrative currency, and can simply say "this works" because of a prior roll. It's less awkward than rolling RD on the spot and possibly (most likely) not rolling a 5 or 6. I find the idea very empowering from both a player perspective as well as the GM's, and it's not often that a mechanic can pull that off.
OUTs
So far I've really only made use of this once, in tonight's session. The Cleric has a mish-mash suit of armor containing random metals because metal sometimes speaks to him (when that happens he usually incorporates it into his gear). I had the drill say to him "I have a mission, and it's not with the Derro." Cool stuff! The PCs have successfully completed their mission, and now they needed to decide whether to make good on their assignment or to comply with the drill's wishes. It's always fun when party members disagree with what the best course of action is, but then compromise.
Backgrounds
It's no secret that I LOVE the Background system. It's so intuitive that I don't anticipate there being much to say about it most of the time. I am finding the Cleric's "wanderer" Background a little awkward, though. It's so easy to justify most any skill check with "I've done/seen/learned about this on my travels" and I'm finding it tough to draw the line regarding what's acceptable or not. It's not that the player is arguing its applicability with me; most of this is on my part! I think in the future I might have players refine very generic backgrounds like that quite a bit more.
Bonus Section: Rituals!
Our group saw its first use of Ritual Magic today! In transporting the drill across the swamps the Cleric decided to enhance its wheels with the Shield of Faith spell. This was to effectively turn it into an "all terrain" drill to speed up travel, but when an unlucky D% roll determined the Cleric (who was pushing the drill) as the target of a kobold trap (two trees were blasted and felled his way), I got the idea that while the Cleric deftly dodged out of the way but the trees landed on the drill. It sank in the mud a bit, but was unharmed thanks to the protection of the Ritual (normally its wooden wheels would have shattered).
Icon Rolls
I've admittedly struggled the most with how to best implement Icon Rolls, to the point where for the first session I didn't use them much at all, and didn't even really think about them. They occasionally even stressed me out a little bit, but after last session they finally "clicked."
I won't go into every example I've had so far, but I will go over many to get started. First of all, until tonight I've exclusively been using the "roll all of your Relationships at the beginning of the session" method. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that while I was using the rolls as plot element generators, I wasn't being at all transparent with my players about what their rolls were doing. So I sent them a message via our campaign's group on Facebook explaining how I'd used each roll for that session.
Each player got a magic item, and each one was the result of an icon roll. None of these items were loot; they were gifted to the PCs by NPCs. The Paladin was gathering information on the Dragon Cultists in town, and instead of having him roll a "Streetwise" type skill check I simply spent a result of 5 that had been rolled for The Three. After publicly expressing interest in the Cult, I later had some undercover cultists pass him a coin later on the street. The complication was that the etchings on the coin needed to be interpreted, and a correct interpretation revealed the location and time of their next meeting. Well, the players didn't readily interpret it, but the Fighter took it to an acquaintance at the temple to see if the head priest had any insight. I spent a roll of 6 for the Priestess and had him guess the exact right answer they needed, explaining his thoughts on the different marks.
When I needed a random quest for the PCs to go on, I used a roll of 5 to have Derro show up in the mining town of Rockbreak (soon to be under siege by the fire-elemental-esque Magmin) hoping to find someone to retrieve a drill for them (which the Magmin could use to wreak havoc on the town). Cool, this drill ended up driving tonight's session and veering the campaign in a new direction.
The PCs ended up using the drill to get back to the surface of a sea-cave dungeon, unfortunately in an area where a small army of Magmin were camped out. The clearly-magical drill melted rock that it touched, but it still made a lot of noise when it surfaced. Fortunately, I had a result of 6 for the Emperor that I needed spent, so I had the Magmin be out on their pumice rafts to destroy an Imperial yacht that appeared offshore. Perfect time for a clean escape (I had vague plans for if the PCs decided to search for survivors, but they headed directly north with the drill instead).
At this point I should mention that after my initial Facebook message explaining my Icon Roll decisions to the group, I added that they too were encouraged to "spend" rolls to gain narrative advantages of their choosing. In tonight's session the Fighter lamented that he didn't have an active result for the Great Gold Wyrm to aid him in pursuing a problematic assassin who has been harassing the party, so I let him roll (unfortunately he rolled a 4, but I'm sure that just means the inevitable is delayed).
Finally, what I was most pleased with was that the party decided to cut through the Lizardfolk occupied swamps to shortcut their journey, and the Paladin (with the "Ambassador" background) asked how the game handled languages and what the Lizardfolk might speak. I told him "I'll tell you what, if you want to spend that result of 6 for The Three, I'll say that your character can speak the language of the Lizardfolk." He accepted, and I'm sure that little fact will have an impact for sessions to come.
I said earlier that Icon Rolls finally "clicked" for me recently. I think this was largely a combination of reminding my players that they could spend results, and me mentally comparing the mechanic to Destiny Points in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. I had a player make an awesome use of a Destiny Point to introduce a narrative fact in our last session, and it hit me that Relationship Dice were 13 Age's version of that. I think that's the strength of pre-rolling each relationship at the beginning of the session, actually. It's great if the players know their narrative currency, and can simply say "this works" because of a prior roll. It's less awkward than rolling RD on the spot and possibly (most likely) not rolling a 5 or 6. I find the idea very empowering from both a player perspective as well as the GM's, and it's not often that a mechanic can pull that off.
OUTs
So far I've really only made use of this once, in tonight's session. The Cleric has a mish-mash suit of armor containing random metals because metal sometimes speaks to him (when that happens he usually incorporates it into his gear). I had the drill say to him "I have a mission, and it's not with the Derro." Cool stuff! The PCs have successfully completed their mission, and now they needed to decide whether to make good on their assignment or to comply with the drill's wishes. It's always fun when party members disagree with what the best course of action is, but then compromise.
Backgrounds
It's no secret that I LOVE the Background system. It's so intuitive that I don't anticipate there being much to say about it most of the time. I am finding the Cleric's "wanderer" Background a little awkward, though. It's so easy to justify most any skill check with "I've done/seen/learned about this on my travels" and I'm finding it tough to draw the line regarding what's acceptable or not. It's not that the player is arguing its applicability with me; most of this is on my part! I think in the future I might have players refine very generic backgrounds like that quite a bit more.
Bonus Section: Rituals!
Our group saw its first use of Ritual Magic today! In transporting the drill across the swamps the Cleric decided to enhance its wheels with the Shield of Faith spell. This was to effectively turn it into an "all terrain" drill to speed up travel, but when an unlucky D% roll determined the Cleric (who was pushing the drill) as the target of a kobold trap (two trees were blasted and felled his way), I got the idea that while the Cleric deftly dodged out of the way but the trees landed on the drill. It sank in the mud a bit, but was unharmed thanks to the protection of the Ritual (normally its wooden wheels would have shattered).
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Long Arm of the Hutt (part 1)
Several weeks back (when I still had an appendix, the loss of which delayed my face-to-face gaming), I ran the Edge of the Empire Beginner's Box. We played through the entire adventure from the box, and then the first part of Long Arm of the Hutt (ending just before the Krayt Fang lands on Ryloth).
Fair warning, MINOR SPOILERS ahead.
I began the session with a recap, and quite a lot of exposition. The player who originally controlled Pash was absent, so I said that he was very sick after eating what Trex had left them in the galley. This meant that Oskara was the new pilot extraordinaire (the other characters being Lowhhrick and Mathus), and she drove the landspeeder at full throttle even through the dangerous, rocky passes on the way to New Meen. Everyone failed their Perception rolls before the bounty hunter fight, which turned out to be very brutal.
Now, I thought I'd go easy on the players and have the two humans use their Stun Setting. But not wanting to go too easy I had the Gand hang back at long range to take advantage of his superior weapon. Well, the players insisted on doing the straight-up firefight thing (at least they made judicious use of cover!). I thought they'd be captured when Oskara was the only one left standing on Team PC while all 3 bounty hunters were fine (ok, so the two humans were each pretty high on wounds, but whatever). She pulled a risky maneuver by running up to the cave entrance, firing (with a Destiny Point) at the (now Medium range) Gand, then spending two strain to duck back behind cover. A very solid hit! And luckily, one using the last PC initiative slot. With both of her companions down, she then took her turn at the top of the order to do essentially the same thing and bring down the Gand. The bounty hunters retreated after the tide of battle was turned (though one of the humans revived the Gand with a stimpack). They returned later while Mathus was repairing the landspeeder, and after having their own speeder shot down were basically forced to then fight to the death. The danger of using a crashed vehicle as cover: advantage can be spent to have the attacker hit the fuel tank. Good thing it was one of the bounty hunters that got blown up this way!
Like I said last time, I don't like published adventurers and the more I try to run them, the more frustrated I get by them. So after last session I simply summarized each Act of LAotH using bullet pointed notes on a single page. I used detail and specific mechanics where necessary, but it was largely a matter of "reminding" myself of what I pictured in my head when I read through the adventure. Reference points that I could expand upon later, freeing me up to improvise more. It worked wonders! Especially considering the crazy plan the PCs pulled when they got to New Meen.
They managed to get on "friendly" terms with Angu's thugs, basically just hoping to get access to his compound. Which is all well and good, except the players suffered from some pretty severe option paralysis once they were in. Nobody really had any great plans, and when a plan was suggested the other players generally thought it wouldn't work and/or was too risky. Granted, some were downright absurd (after trying to gain access into Angu's fairly well-fortified residence undetected, Oskara's player asked "can Wookies dig like dogs?"). Good old-fashioned snooping around to see what happened ended up being the order of the day, and I got to exercise my DungeonWorld-inspired "play to see what happens" muscles here. You know, for a game I haven't played yet I sure have incorporated a lot of its elements into my other games.
Some of the other players in my group who take turns at GMing usually have a lot of trouble with the idea of improvising. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not super comfortable with at much of the time either, but I'm getting better. I think going into the session with the expectation that I'd have to improvise helps quite a lot. All I knew going in was that Angu Dromb would have a fenced-in compound atop a bluff. I didn't even re-read the adventure for its suggestions about what was up there, aside from the fact that I remembered there was a cantina. I wasn't sure if the PCs would ever see the place, so I didn't even really picture it in my own mind until they were at the front gate with their speeder, attempting to schmooze their way in via the intercom. I provided details as the PCs saw them, almost seeing the story unfold myself as if through their eyes. Granted I don't think my players are all that comfortable with sandbox-style games, but I plan to break them of that. I'm sick of running games with a railroad planned out, regardless of whether or not I can disguise the rails. Planning improvisation into the game makes GMing feel a little more like being a player. Which works for me, at least, because the player type I most associate myself with is Explorer (to use D&D 4E DMG terminology). If I can still "explore," even while GMing, I'll be all the happier.
To return back to the session's narrative, toward the end of the evening the PCs decided to try to break into the two warehouses where they suspected the stash of glitterstim lived. Oh yeah, Angu's thugs were all partaking in that spice while in the cantina. Anyways, after breaking into the warehouse Mathus goes snooping around inside (in the dark), but Oskara and Lowhhrick never really specified what their characters were doing. Aside from the fact that they did not want to go inside. So some thugs spot them standing their with the highest-security door in the whole place opened. They call in reinforcements (did I mention that the PCs weren't allowed to bring their weapons in, except for the holdout blaster that Mathus was able to conceal and later give to Oskara?). Four thugs enter the building, and Mathus makes a brilliant DP-empowered Coerce roll. He took some parts from his Repair Kit and bluffed that he was holding a Thermal Detonator. It was quite a good roll, and the thugs dropped their weapons (as they were told) and ran out of the building screaming. Which freaked out the other thugs. But not as much as when Mathus threw his "thermal detonator" out the door while Oskara and Lowhhrick dove inside. Those terrified thugs took off as well. The distraction didn't last too long, but it didn't need to. The PCs spent their last light side Destiny Point to have some lockers contain more guns and grenades (which they'd been wishing they had since the bounty hunter fight), so I gave them some frag grenades. They blow up the crates of glitterstim, jump into their speeder, blow up the front gate, and then hightail it back to Nabat (with some evidence against Angu, even if it wasn't quite all that they could have gotten).
That last bit made up for the fact that the whole middle of the session was slow. Moral of the story: every RPG player needs to express a little bit of the Instigator player type (going back to 4E terminology). I've been guilty of playing cautious, pragmatic characters myself, and played to "realistic" extent it bogs the game down. Nobody remembers the session where you slowly, painstakingly do everything right with the smallest amount of risk. The payoff is cool, but it's all pretend money. The fun part is the crazy stunts you pull along the way, assuming you were crazy enough to try them in the first place. You don't have to be a hyper reckless kick-in-the-door style player, but don't be too quick to dismiss the plan where lots of stuff gets blown up...
Fair warning, MINOR SPOILERS ahead.
I began the session with a recap, and quite a lot of exposition. The player who originally controlled Pash was absent, so I said that he was very sick after eating what Trex had left them in the galley. This meant that Oskara was the new pilot extraordinaire (the other characters being Lowhhrick and Mathus), and she drove the landspeeder at full throttle even through the dangerous, rocky passes on the way to New Meen. Everyone failed their Perception rolls before the bounty hunter fight, which turned out to be very brutal.
Now, I thought I'd go easy on the players and have the two humans use their Stun Setting. But not wanting to go too easy I had the Gand hang back at long range to take advantage of his superior weapon. Well, the players insisted on doing the straight-up firefight thing (at least they made judicious use of cover!). I thought they'd be captured when Oskara was the only one left standing on Team PC while all 3 bounty hunters were fine (ok, so the two humans were each pretty high on wounds, but whatever). She pulled a risky maneuver by running up to the cave entrance, firing (with a Destiny Point) at the (now Medium range) Gand, then spending two strain to duck back behind cover. A very solid hit! And luckily, one using the last PC initiative slot. With both of her companions down, she then took her turn at the top of the order to do essentially the same thing and bring down the Gand. The bounty hunters retreated after the tide of battle was turned (though one of the humans revived the Gand with a stimpack). They returned later while Mathus was repairing the landspeeder, and after having their own speeder shot down were basically forced to then fight to the death. The danger of using a crashed vehicle as cover: advantage can be spent to have the attacker hit the fuel tank. Good thing it was one of the bounty hunters that got blown up this way!
Like I said last time, I don't like published adventurers and the more I try to run them, the more frustrated I get by them. So after last session I simply summarized each Act of LAotH using bullet pointed notes on a single page. I used detail and specific mechanics where necessary, but it was largely a matter of "reminding" myself of what I pictured in my head when I read through the adventure. Reference points that I could expand upon later, freeing me up to improvise more. It worked wonders! Especially considering the crazy plan the PCs pulled when they got to New Meen.
They managed to get on "friendly" terms with Angu's thugs, basically just hoping to get access to his compound. Which is all well and good, except the players suffered from some pretty severe option paralysis once they were in. Nobody really had any great plans, and when a plan was suggested the other players generally thought it wouldn't work and/or was too risky. Granted, some were downright absurd (after trying to gain access into Angu's fairly well-fortified residence undetected, Oskara's player asked "can Wookies dig like dogs?"). Good old-fashioned snooping around to see what happened ended up being the order of the day, and I got to exercise my DungeonWorld-inspired "play to see what happens" muscles here. You know, for a game I haven't played yet I sure have incorporated a lot of its elements into my other games.
Some of the other players in my group who take turns at GMing usually have a lot of trouble with the idea of improvising. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not super comfortable with at much of the time either, but I'm getting better. I think going into the session with the expectation that I'd have to improvise helps quite a lot. All I knew going in was that Angu Dromb would have a fenced-in compound atop a bluff. I didn't even re-read the adventure for its suggestions about what was up there, aside from the fact that I remembered there was a cantina. I wasn't sure if the PCs would ever see the place, so I didn't even really picture it in my own mind until they were at the front gate with their speeder, attempting to schmooze their way in via the intercom. I provided details as the PCs saw them, almost seeing the story unfold myself as if through their eyes. Granted I don't think my players are all that comfortable with sandbox-style games, but I plan to break them of that. I'm sick of running games with a railroad planned out, regardless of whether or not I can disguise the rails. Planning improvisation into the game makes GMing feel a little more like being a player. Which works for me, at least, because the player type I most associate myself with is Explorer (to use D&D 4E DMG terminology). If I can still "explore," even while GMing, I'll be all the happier.
To return back to the session's narrative, toward the end of the evening the PCs decided to try to break into the two warehouses where they suspected the stash of glitterstim lived. Oh yeah, Angu's thugs were all partaking in that spice while in the cantina. Anyways, after breaking into the warehouse Mathus goes snooping around inside (in the dark), but Oskara and Lowhhrick never really specified what their characters were doing. Aside from the fact that they did not want to go inside. So some thugs spot them standing their with the highest-security door in the whole place opened. They call in reinforcements (did I mention that the PCs weren't allowed to bring their weapons in, except for the holdout blaster that Mathus was able to conceal and later give to Oskara?). Four thugs enter the building, and Mathus makes a brilliant DP-empowered Coerce roll. He took some parts from his Repair Kit and bluffed that he was holding a Thermal Detonator. It was quite a good roll, and the thugs dropped their weapons (as they were told) and ran out of the building screaming. Which freaked out the other thugs. But not as much as when Mathus threw his "thermal detonator" out the door while Oskara and Lowhhrick dove inside. Those terrified thugs took off as well. The distraction didn't last too long, but it didn't need to. The PCs spent their last light side Destiny Point to have some lockers contain more guns and grenades (which they'd been wishing they had since the bounty hunter fight), so I gave them some frag grenades. They blow up the crates of glitterstim, jump into their speeder, blow up the front gate, and then hightail it back to Nabat (with some evidence against Angu, even if it wasn't quite all that they could have gotten).
That last bit made up for the fact that the whole middle of the session was slow. Moral of the story: every RPG player needs to express a little bit of the Instigator player type (going back to 4E terminology). I've been guilty of playing cautious, pragmatic characters myself, and played to "realistic" extent it bogs the game down. Nobody remembers the session where you slowly, painstakingly do everything right with the smallest amount of risk. The payoff is cool, but it's all pretend money. The fun part is the crazy stunts you pull along the way, assuming you were crazy enough to try them in the first place. You don't have to be a hyper reckless kick-in-the-door style player, but don't be too quick to dismiss the plan where lots of stuff gets blown up...
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Group 2 Plays 13th Age
Last night I started my second 13th Age campaign, with a different group. Like my other group, I'm running through the Dungeon World front The Great Wyrm Axtalrath. I'm interested to find out how much the two campaigns diverge given the exact same open-ended, sandbox-y scenario. While I'll comment on mechanical bits in future posts, I probably won't delve too deep into the narrative with proper session summaries. Partially due to time constraints, partially because it could potentially get confusing, and partially because I'm likely to reuse stuff which would spoil things if my players from either group read them.
That said, so far the two groups are taking things in very different directions, which I'm happy to see.
I guess one of the first orders of business should be to introduce the new group:
Iltisine
Wood Elf Cleric
Icons: 1 (neg) The Three, 1 (conf) High Druid, 1 (pos) Priestess
Backgrounds: +4 Linguist, +4 Wanderer
OUT: Pieces of metal sometimes speak to him, and he either destroys them or incorporates them into his mish-mash equipment.
Lowthesis
Dwarf Paladin
Icons: 2 (conf) Dwarf King, 1 (neg) The Three
Backgrounds: +4 Bodyguard, +4 Diplomat
OUT: He's a noble in exile; he abandoned his clan because he couldn't stand the dirty politics.
Argus
Human Fighter
Icons: 2 (pos) Great Gold Wyrm, 1 (conf) Emperor
Backgrounds: +4 Soldier, +4 Blacksmith
OUT: He's the only person known to have insulted the Emperor and survive to tell the tale.
Interesting Observations:
Iltisine was built as a melee Str Cleric, but the player purposefully gave him an 8 Con. Yes, this is an experience D&D player who knew what he was getting into. He also intentionally passed over most healing resources, having only his class feature and its associated feat. Lowthesis grudgingly took Lay on Hands because of this. Truth be told, I was interested in seeing how such a party would fare, but after the first session the player has asked to re-spec his Cleric into more of a spellcaster, and with more of a healing focus. I'm allowing it, so I'll have to wait for another time to see a 13th Age party with no Cleric (or a non-healer Cleric) in action.
While we're on the subject of Iltisine, Elven Grace is an extremely powerful racial feature. In our first (short) fight he managed to get 1 extra standard action, and in the second he got 3, one on the d12. I know that it's balanced around the fact that poor rolls could mean you don't get any extra standard actions in some combats, but given that most of the fights that I've run have seen the Escalation Die reach 6, the odds favor getting extra actions. I might re-evaluate the power after we're a few sessions in, because as it stands it's hands-down the best race.
Both battles were against kobolds, and Evasive is a surprisingly nasty trait. Granted, this group is used to the d4 HD kobolds of 3.x/Pathfinder, but these battles still ran a bit tougher than I'd expected based on my experience with the system. But perhaps that also has something to do with the exploding clay pots that I gave them. Still, the Paladin wasn't too happy when his Smite Evil, which normally does half damage on a miss, was essentially wasted because the shifty little buggers just refused to get pinned down.
The highlight of the session (or lowlight, depending how you look at it) was a display of bad luck during the second battle that was worse than anything I'd seen in an RPG before. It ran 9 rounds (I believe), and both Lowthesis and Argus both hit exactly twice. It was pathetic, and made more pathetic by the lack of miss damage (kobolds). Argus was getting to-hit buffs from Iltisine, and essentially got a permanent +2 bonus thanks to Two Weapon Pressure (that's not a maneuver you want to trigger almost every turn, lol). His 2 hits both occurred in one round; he rolled a 19 which crit (thanks to Carve an Opening) and dropped his foe, and then he followed up with Cleave. His one shining moment that battle. At least Lowthesis was soaking up TONS of damage so his misses weren't quite as frustrating (Paladins being much more about tanking than dealing damage anyways).
Iltisine ended up killing all but two of the kobolds (re: 3 extra standards thanks to Elven Grace). He also demonstrated that even as a Standard Action, Hammer of the Gods isn't a bad spell (especially if you cast it when you have 2 standards that turn anyways!). Another high point in the battle was when he took out 3 mooks with one attack (I think it was a crit with that sweet, sweet d12). He was engaged with two of them, and I think it blew his mind when I moved the mini over to the third and said he took that one out as well. Being used to gridded Pathfinder combat he was a bit incredulous at first, but when I explained what happened cinematically (he ran past the first two, sliced them clean through while on-the-run, and then stabbed the third) I think it made more sense to him.
This is what I LOVE about the mook rules - it helps free you from the restrictions of the Move/Standard/Quick turn structure. Fourth Edition D&D had powers that allowed you to move and attack with one standard action, but the 13th Age rules go beyond even that. It's a rule that instead of limiting what you can do, gives you even more flexibility. The rule says "you kill an extra mook," and you do whatever you can with your character to make that mook die in a believable way, even if that means moving between two attacks.
That said, so far the two groups are taking things in very different directions, which I'm happy to see.
I guess one of the first orders of business should be to introduce the new group:
Iltisine
Wood Elf Cleric
Icons: 1 (neg) The Three, 1 (conf) High Druid, 1 (pos) Priestess
Backgrounds: +4 Linguist, +4 Wanderer
OUT: Pieces of metal sometimes speak to him, and he either destroys them or incorporates them into his mish-mash equipment.
Lowthesis
Dwarf Paladin
Icons: 2 (conf) Dwarf King, 1 (neg) The Three
Backgrounds: +4 Bodyguard, +4 Diplomat
OUT: He's a noble in exile; he abandoned his clan because he couldn't stand the dirty politics.
Argus
Human Fighter
Icons: 2 (pos) Great Gold Wyrm, 1 (conf) Emperor
Backgrounds: +4 Soldier, +4 Blacksmith
OUT: He's the only person known to have insulted the Emperor and survive to tell the tale.
Interesting Observations:
Iltisine was built as a melee Str Cleric, but the player purposefully gave him an 8 Con. Yes, this is an experience D&D player who knew what he was getting into. He also intentionally passed over most healing resources, having only his class feature and its associated feat. Lowthesis grudgingly took Lay on Hands because of this. Truth be told, I was interested in seeing how such a party would fare, but after the first session the player has asked to re-spec his Cleric into more of a spellcaster, and with more of a healing focus. I'm allowing it, so I'll have to wait for another time to see a 13th Age party with no Cleric (or a non-healer Cleric) in action.
While we're on the subject of Iltisine, Elven Grace is an extremely powerful racial feature. In our first (short) fight he managed to get 1 extra standard action, and in the second he got 3, one on the d12. I know that it's balanced around the fact that poor rolls could mean you don't get any extra standard actions in some combats, but given that most of the fights that I've run have seen the Escalation Die reach 6, the odds favor getting extra actions. I might re-evaluate the power after we're a few sessions in, because as it stands it's hands-down the best race.
Both battles were against kobolds, and Evasive is a surprisingly nasty trait. Granted, this group is used to the d4 HD kobolds of 3.x/Pathfinder, but these battles still ran a bit tougher than I'd expected based on my experience with the system. But perhaps that also has something to do with the exploding clay pots that I gave them. Still, the Paladin wasn't too happy when his Smite Evil, which normally does half damage on a miss, was essentially wasted because the shifty little buggers just refused to get pinned down.
The highlight of the session (or lowlight, depending how you look at it) was a display of bad luck during the second battle that was worse than anything I'd seen in an RPG before. It ran 9 rounds (I believe), and both Lowthesis and Argus both hit exactly twice. It was pathetic, and made more pathetic by the lack of miss damage (kobolds). Argus was getting to-hit buffs from Iltisine, and essentially got a permanent +2 bonus thanks to Two Weapon Pressure (that's not a maneuver you want to trigger almost every turn, lol). His 2 hits both occurred in one round; he rolled a 19 which crit (thanks to Carve an Opening) and dropped his foe, and then he followed up with Cleave. His one shining moment that battle. At least Lowthesis was soaking up TONS of damage so his misses weren't quite as frustrating (Paladins being much more about tanking than dealing damage anyways).
Iltisine ended up killing all but two of the kobolds (re: 3 extra standards thanks to Elven Grace). He also demonstrated that even as a Standard Action, Hammer of the Gods isn't a bad spell (especially if you cast it when you have 2 standards that turn anyways!). Another high point in the battle was when he took out 3 mooks with one attack (I think it was a crit with that sweet, sweet d12). He was engaged with two of them, and I think it blew his mind when I moved the mini over to the third and said he took that one out as well. Being used to gridded Pathfinder combat he was a bit incredulous at first, but when I explained what happened cinematically (he ran past the first two, sliced them clean through while on-the-run, and then stabbed the third) I think it made more sense to him.
This is what I LOVE about the mook rules - it helps free you from the restrictions of the Move/Standard/Quick turn structure. Fourth Edition D&D had powers that allowed you to move and attack with one standard action, but the 13th Age rules go beyond even that. It's a rule that instead of limiting what you can do, gives you even more flexibility. The rule says "you kill an extra mook," and you do whatever you can with your character to make that mook die in a believable way, even if that means moving between two attacks.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Edge of the Empire Beginner Game Play-through
I finally got to play Edge of the Empire! I ran Escape from Mos Shuuta from the beginner game for a group of 4 players. Oskara, Pash, and Lowhhrick were chosen, and the last player opted to play Mathus over 41-VEX. This post will contain MINOR SPOILERS!!!!
By the end of the encounter in the cantina all of the players were comfortable with building dice pools and interpreting the results. Coming up with narrative descriptions for threat and advantage was difficult in that encounter, but by the time we got to the stormtroopers that was starting to get easier. I think it will take a few sessions before I can slip into that frame of mind relatively seamlessly, but at worst there's several seconds (and a few "ums") as I try to think of something. Because players are called upon to spend advantage regularly, I anticipate that if I'm ever really stuck someone can probably throw a suggestion my way.
Everyone was pretty good at trying to find creative ways to avoid combat. There was no need for fighting at spaceport control so that was one combat completely avoided, and the encounter with Trex ended up being just with Trex, aboard the ship. They successfully convinced him that Mathus was there to install the HMRI, and got around the Trandoshan-Wookie animosity by having Lowhhrick posed as his slave. They blew their own cover when Lowhhrick grabbed Trex, with Pash dashing for the cockpit to take off as soon as possible. The party actually never fought a single security droid the whole time.
Interestingly, the party stuck it out in the fight with the stormtroopers. They took some nasty shots but they worked together really effectively and made ample use of cover. Part of the reason for their success was also that I forgot to have the stormtroopers take cover. This being only the second combat that I was running with the system I guess I was too wrapped up in making sure everyone was getting everything. It was also the first encounter where maneuvers really came into play, as the cantina fight ended up being so easy that the enemies were all dropped before any tactics could come into play. Besides, at that point the players were mostly concerned with interpreting and rolling the new custom dice, so they weren't all that worried about the other mechanics yet. Tactically-adept stormtroopers would have been scarier, for sure, but there's plenty of time for that in future games.
I was a little unsure of how space combat would fare with the group, and it definitely took me a minute or two to get my bearings as we switched to it (I told them that I had to skim over a few of the rules and maneuvers once more, and I think that short in-game review made the encounter run smoother than it otherwise would have). Sometimes that's what a GM needs, and knowing when to admit that is a great skill. I think the biggest surprise regarding space combat was that everyone was really impressed with all of the options that Mathus had back in the engine room. In addition to repairing system strain, I allowed the players to use the options from page 8 of the final Beta update. Boost Shields was a popular option, but they were salivating as I was reading off the other options as well. It's also worth noting that the players arguably made best use of the initiative system in space combat. Pash timed it so that his turn came after the TIEs, at which point he'd Stay On Target with 3 PC initiative slots following his action. The plan was for Lowhhrick and Oskara to take out as many TIEs with the boost dice as possible, giving fewer enemies those same boost dice against the Krayt Fang. Finally, I'd like to mention the fact that those linked laser cannons on the TIEs are nasty! One advantage is a really cheap price to activate that trait, ANNNNNND as I was typing that I checked the Beta updates and realized that it now cost two, so that's better. A few solid shots from a TIE could definitely bring down the YT-1300, adding tension to starship combat. I think they pretty much nailed the Hull Trauma and Armor values for TIEs, and was very impressed with how these values supported the source material. One shot from the Krayt Fang's turrets always took out a TIE in our game, and the only way that it could survive more than one hit would be for a gunner to succeed with only one uncancelled Success. This perfectly matches the frailty of the TIE fighter, but still allows for the occasional glancing blow that doesn't quite cut it. It's a tough line to walk, and it's hard to say whether that'll be modeled as well with other ships, but if they're going to get anything perfectly right it might as well be something as iconic as a TIE fighter.
We still had some time left after completing the beginner game adventure. It took us around 4 hours, including a break for lunch, which is pretty fast. Part of that is undoubtedly because the party was able to outright avoid 1.5 potential combats, though. In any case, I continued with the first part of Long Arm of the Hutt. Basically the part where they need to figure out everything that's wrong with the ship, find the Twi'lek prisoner, etc. Trex was actually still on the ship at this point, but unconscious. When Lowhhrick found the Wookie pelts, he jettisoned the Trandoshan's helpless body out of the airlock along with the pelts, so he won't be bothering them again. We ended after they jumped out of hyperspace and were ambushed by Thwheek's ship (they shot him down).
Between running this and my last session of The One Ring, I'm really cultivating my aversion to running pre-made, published adventures. They sound great in theory, but the session always feels more "stop and go" as I reference specifics from the adventure. Occasionally I'll forget to apply some detail that becomes important later, and it's happened just enough times that I've gotten mildly paranoid about it. This results in me double-checking stuff in-game even more frequently, and the session just doesn't go as smoothly. Worse is the fact that it becomes less fun to run the game because I know it's not running as smoothly as it could. I'd rather create my own stuff, a lot of that on-the-fly. Games like this and 13th Age are helping me develop more improvisational skill as a GM, which is challenging but rewarding. It's fun when I don't necessarily know what's coming up next. Of the player types described in the D&D 4E DMG, I consider myself mostly an Explorer, so it's nice to have an element of discovery when I run games as well. More and more I'm finding myself drawn to general plot points, locations of interest, and important NPCs and then throwing these elements together and filling in the details in-game. I'll probably distill the rest of The Long Arm of the Hutt into these broad elements and run the whole thing more free-form, and hopefully the game steers itself away from that party on Geonosis because the intricacy of that scenario might not be compatible with that GMing style.
Anyways, I think my players want to get another session or two under their belts, and then they all seemed very interested in creating their own characters. One of my players has already expressed interest in GMing, so maybe I'll even get to play a character sooner than I thought! Running 3 simultaneous games (two 13th Age games and now one EotE game) is started to wear me down!
By the end of the encounter in the cantina all of the players were comfortable with building dice pools and interpreting the results. Coming up with narrative descriptions for threat and advantage was difficult in that encounter, but by the time we got to the stormtroopers that was starting to get easier. I think it will take a few sessions before I can slip into that frame of mind relatively seamlessly, but at worst there's several seconds (and a few "ums") as I try to think of something. Because players are called upon to spend advantage regularly, I anticipate that if I'm ever really stuck someone can probably throw a suggestion my way.
Everyone was pretty good at trying to find creative ways to avoid combat. There was no need for fighting at spaceport control so that was one combat completely avoided, and the encounter with Trex ended up being just with Trex, aboard the ship. They successfully convinced him that Mathus was there to install the HMRI, and got around the Trandoshan-Wookie animosity by having Lowhhrick posed as his slave. They blew their own cover when Lowhhrick grabbed Trex, with Pash dashing for the cockpit to take off as soon as possible. The party actually never fought a single security droid the whole time.
Interestingly, the party stuck it out in the fight with the stormtroopers. They took some nasty shots but they worked together really effectively and made ample use of cover. Part of the reason for their success was also that I forgot to have the stormtroopers take cover. This being only the second combat that I was running with the system I guess I was too wrapped up in making sure everyone was getting everything. It was also the first encounter where maneuvers really came into play, as the cantina fight ended up being so easy that the enemies were all dropped before any tactics could come into play. Besides, at that point the players were mostly concerned with interpreting and rolling the new custom dice, so they weren't all that worried about the other mechanics yet. Tactically-adept stormtroopers would have been scarier, for sure, but there's plenty of time for that in future games.
I was a little unsure of how space combat would fare with the group, and it definitely took me a minute or two to get my bearings as we switched to it (I told them that I had to skim over a few of the rules and maneuvers once more, and I think that short in-game review made the encounter run smoother than it otherwise would have). Sometimes that's what a GM needs, and knowing when to admit that is a great skill. I think the biggest surprise regarding space combat was that everyone was really impressed with all of the options that Mathus had back in the engine room. In addition to repairing system strain, I allowed the players to use the options from page 8 of the final Beta update. Boost Shields was a popular option, but they were salivating as I was reading off the other options as well. It's also worth noting that the players arguably made best use of the initiative system in space combat. Pash timed it so that his turn came after the TIEs, at which point he'd Stay On Target with 3 PC initiative slots following his action. The plan was for Lowhhrick and Oskara to take out as many TIEs with the boost dice as possible, giving fewer enemies those same boost dice against the Krayt Fang. Finally, I'd like to mention the fact that those linked laser cannons on the TIEs are nasty! One advantage is a really cheap price to activate that trait, ANNNNNND as I was typing that I checked the Beta updates and realized that it now cost two, so that's better. A few solid shots from a TIE could definitely bring down the YT-1300, adding tension to starship combat. I think they pretty much nailed the Hull Trauma and Armor values for TIEs, and was very impressed with how these values supported the source material. One shot from the Krayt Fang's turrets always took out a TIE in our game, and the only way that it could survive more than one hit would be for a gunner to succeed with only one uncancelled Success. This perfectly matches the frailty of the TIE fighter, but still allows for the occasional glancing blow that doesn't quite cut it. It's a tough line to walk, and it's hard to say whether that'll be modeled as well with other ships, but if they're going to get anything perfectly right it might as well be something as iconic as a TIE fighter.
We still had some time left after completing the beginner game adventure. It took us around 4 hours, including a break for lunch, which is pretty fast. Part of that is undoubtedly because the party was able to outright avoid 1.5 potential combats, though. In any case, I continued with the first part of Long Arm of the Hutt. Basically the part where they need to figure out everything that's wrong with the ship, find the Twi'lek prisoner, etc. Trex was actually still on the ship at this point, but unconscious. When Lowhhrick found the Wookie pelts, he jettisoned the Trandoshan's helpless body out of the airlock along with the pelts, so he won't be bothering them again. We ended after they jumped out of hyperspace and were ambushed by Thwheek's ship (they shot him down).
Between running this and my last session of The One Ring, I'm really cultivating my aversion to running pre-made, published adventures. They sound great in theory, but the session always feels more "stop and go" as I reference specifics from the adventure. Occasionally I'll forget to apply some detail that becomes important later, and it's happened just enough times that I've gotten mildly paranoid about it. This results in me double-checking stuff in-game even more frequently, and the session just doesn't go as smoothly. Worse is the fact that it becomes less fun to run the game because I know it's not running as smoothly as it could. I'd rather create my own stuff, a lot of that on-the-fly. Games like this and 13th Age are helping me develop more improvisational skill as a GM, which is challenging but rewarding. It's fun when I don't necessarily know what's coming up next. Of the player types described in the D&D 4E DMG, I consider myself mostly an Explorer, so it's nice to have an element of discovery when I run games as well. More and more I'm finding myself drawn to general plot points, locations of interest, and important NPCs and then throwing these elements together and filling in the details in-game. I'll probably distill the rest of The Long Arm of the Hutt into these broad elements and run the whole thing more free-form, and hopefully the game steers itself away from that party on Geonosis because the intricacy of that scenario might not be compatible with that GMing style.
Anyways, I think my players want to get another session or two under their belts, and then they all seemed very interested in creating their own characters. One of my players has already expressed interest in GMing, so maybe I'll even get to play a character sooner than I thought! Running 3 simultaneous games (two 13th Age games and now one EotE game) is started to wear me down!
Friday, January 18, 2013
So 13th Age and Dungeon World walk into a bar...
Recap - Last Session
The last time I posted about my 13th Age campaign the party was still in the middle of a living dungeon. During our session after that they continued onward, at a somewhat slower pace than I'd anticipated. Two encounters away from a full heal up, the party was beat down pretty good. The Barbarian had only a single recovery left, and was right around Staggered. I let the player rebuild him because he was noticeably underpowered (lesson the first - don't use a shield as a Barbarian!), but it was impossible to tell how much that really helped given the disadvantage the character was already at.
Their next fight was really tough; a trap-filled room that could be somewhat circumvented by climbing up 20 foot tall mushrooms and jumping from one cap to the next in order to reach the door out. Unfortunately, an earth elemental fell from the roof onto one of the mushrooms, blocking their way forward. I used a slightly modified re-skinned ogre, which is a tougher opponent than I'd realized for a 1st level party of mostly weapon users (go figure). The environment was against them, multiple people were dropping every round, and the Cleric was funneling his own recoveries into the Barbarian thanks to the Healing Domain feat that he'd snagged for an incremental advance after the last session. Eventually I finally hinted that the players don't necessarily need to kill the elemental to progress, and that they should probably just go for the door. So they did, and survived - barely.
After traveling through some eery tunnels filled with purple tentacles they finally reached the "heart" of the dungeon, but not before their enemy had gotten there first! A dark cleric was "plugged into" the dungeon, connected to tentacles which allowed him to "drive" it. A mage guarded by two knights proclaimed that they were driving the dungeon straight to hell, and then ordered the attack. The Ranger managed to hit the mage with two ranged attacks early on, one of which was a crit, and also applied Cruel. In one round he nearly one-shotted him (but not before the mage got an Acid Arrow off), and the ongoing damage then finished him off two rounds later without anyone else having to attack him. This made the fight significantly easier, and the Barbarian very happy. After killing all of the enemies, the Barbarian stabbed the "heart" of the dungeon, killing it but sending it flying through the earth at breakneck speeds. It shot them out on top of a mountain (the psychic, rune-inscribed door appeared on a cliff on that mountain), along with the Derro that had lived there and the Gnome, Nilku.
Enter Dungeon World
Sort of. No, we didn't play it, but I decided I would test the Fronts mechanic from Dungeon World in my 13th Age game. I used the sample front in the infamous Dungeon World Guide, The Great Wyrm Axtalrath. For such a short write up (6 pages of fairly large print, with half of one page consisting of new races specifically for Dungeon World) there is a LOT of useable information packed in here! I'll probably use Fronts, or a modified version of them, as my GM organizational tool for pretty much every game I run now. Granted, a Front doesn't provide the same level of detail as a pre-made adventure; it doesn't have stat blocks, dungeon maps, etc. But I suck at running published adventures. They're usually a lot of reading relative to the amount of game time I'll get out of them. A Dungeon World Front is minimal reading (with text that's organized VERY well for reference), and you can get many sessions worth of game time out of them. Dozens, in this case, I think.
On overall background summary sets up the premise. A list of points of interest, accompanied by a map, provides enough inspiration for getting a picture of each place in your head, without overwhelming you with details. Fill them in as needed, and leave room for expansion (the Dungeon World mantra "play to find out what happens" fits very well with 13th Age's narrative, icon and background based design). The Dangers provide the main players that might oppose the party. Simple description, short motivation, and some "Grim Portents" which are events that will transpire without any PC intervention. They're basically well-organized plot points that give you some options for where to "go next" when your players are stuck or you've played out a different option. These, of course, can be altered or change depending on what the players do so the whole structure of the narrative is affected by PC actions. Which is how a roleplaying game SHOULD work. The Front is rounded out with some Stakes (miscellaneous questions and handy reminders; I like to think of these as things unrelated to the Dangers that could become major plot points) and a short cast of NPCs. I quite simply assigned each cast member an associated Icon, and then created more NPCs for Icons that didn't yet have any associated with them. I detailed those that PCs had a relationship with more heavily, but given random Icon influence it's helpful to have at least an idea for who might act on behalf of other Icons.
Ultimately, I think Fronts are going to help me improve my improvisational skills by providing just enough of a safety net. There's plenty of room to build upon each and every short description in the front, and there's always a few things going on "in the background" (or just "waiting" to be incorporated later) so that the narrative won't ever really grind to a standstill.
Session Summary
So how did all of this work out in play? Beware that there are SPOILERS for the Great Wyrm Axtalrath in this section, though because of the flexible, sandbox-y nature of the Fronts you can probably play through the whole thing and have an entirely different experience.
Well, the first major issue was the Derro. The PCs destroyed their home, and even though they convinced the Derro that this was better than plunging into hell, they still demanded reparations. The party led them down the mountain, left them under the canopy of the trees (since it was daylight, which they hate), and went into the town of Rockbreak. Being midday, most of the citizens were either working in the mine or logging, but the Cleric found the local temple and they had a nice chat with the priest there. He gave them all of the background info that they'd need to know (dragon destroyed all the roads, all the boats, but left the townspeople alive, Monolith glows every quarter moon, etc.), and seemed concerned about the prospect of a whole village of Derro refugees looking for a new place to settle.
In pure reckless fashion, the potionless PCs didn't bother to look for any shops or anything, but returned to the Derro, who demanded the PCs scout out some possible caves (they'd do the same after nightfall). Their first lead was a bust, but they noticed fires approaching from the coast. They investigated, and I invoked the Grim Portent "Magmin appear on the western coasts," thanks to a roll of 5 for the Diabolist last session. The party didn't attempt to ambush them and didn't make use of any good tactics whatsoever. My homebrew Magmin beat the snot out of them (to be fair, auto-damaging fire auras were more powerful than I'd anticipated). They only attacks that they landed were on minions (they destroyed 2 of 4), and the Cleric went down early removing the party's only source of healing. PCs were dropping and hoping for death saves to bring them back up. Nobody ever rallied, though the Barbarian used his Dwarf racial power. I advised them to use the Retreat rule several times but they didn't. Eventually after being VERY generous with the results of the Ranger's Terrain Stunt power I had the Magmin simply move on after everyone in the party was knocked out. The Fighter rolled high on his death save just before the Barbarian was about to fail his last one, and he was able to stabilize him. The party then fled toward Port Taramos, and I had no choice but to advance to the next Grim Portent under the Magmin danger (to be fair I would have given the PCs one last chance to beat back the Magmin, since they had a river to cross before reaching Rockbreak).
A botched direction-finding roll from the Ranger (a fumble) led the party right into the swamps. They were ambushed by Lizardmen, but got very lucky (in that I couldn't seem to roll higher than a 9, and Lizardmen get really nasty if you have a string of good rolls in a row). After 2 of the 5 were killed, one of them told his allies to stand down, and demanded to know why the party broke the truce (here the party learned about the truce, obviously). The Lizardman had his allies back away slowly, and eventually they swam off, and the leader asked the party to leave him gold and leave the swamp immediately. Otherwise, they wouldn't leave the swamp alive. The party cheaped out (left 1 gp each), which may come back to bite them in the ass later.
They arrived in Port Taramos, learned of the Dragon Cultists, and bought some potions. The Fighter (who had pocketed some gems back in the dungeon which melted - around all of his coins!) sought out an alchemist to help free his coins from the block of gem-glue (attempts to smash it earlier were met with the realization that the glue had seeped into the gold, making it impure and brittle). And with that, the session ended.
On Sandboxes
Most of my attempts at running more sandbox-style games with this group have failed in the past. The players just don't seem to want to take the initiative to go out and explore on their own; they simply wait for my next obvious hook. When they've taken turns at the GM seat, they've very much resisted any attempts by me (as a player) to "go off the rails." Well, this Front kind of forces them to do stuff, especially with the added pressure of the Derro refugees at the beginning. They all want to get off of the island, but they recognize that there's no way they're facing down that dragon. They're very interested in the Monolith, and they need some cash really badly, so there's two possible directions that they can take things next time. I'll also need to remember to throw some fights their way that they're likely to win, to boost morale a bit and give them a shot at some loot. I think they learned their lesson about dismissing basic tactics, so hopefully I see some smart playing in the future.
In other news, I'm starting up a game of 13th Age with my other gaming group as well. And I'm starting a game of Edge of the Empire with this current 13th Age group, starting with the Beginner Box. So stay tuned for developments on those fronts!
The last time I posted about my 13th Age campaign the party was still in the middle of a living dungeon. During our session after that they continued onward, at a somewhat slower pace than I'd anticipated. Two encounters away from a full heal up, the party was beat down pretty good. The Barbarian had only a single recovery left, and was right around Staggered. I let the player rebuild him because he was noticeably underpowered (lesson the first - don't use a shield as a Barbarian!), but it was impossible to tell how much that really helped given the disadvantage the character was already at.
Their next fight was really tough; a trap-filled room that could be somewhat circumvented by climbing up 20 foot tall mushrooms and jumping from one cap to the next in order to reach the door out. Unfortunately, an earth elemental fell from the roof onto one of the mushrooms, blocking their way forward. I used a slightly modified re-skinned ogre, which is a tougher opponent than I'd realized for a 1st level party of mostly weapon users (go figure). The environment was against them, multiple people were dropping every round, and the Cleric was funneling his own recoveries into the Barbarian thanks to the Healing Domain feat that he'd snagged for an incremental advance after the last session. Eventually I finally hinted that the players don't necessarily need to kill the elemental to progress, and that they should probably just go for the door. So they did, and survived - barely.
After traveling through some eery tunnels filled with purple tentacles they finally reached the "heart" of the dungeon, but not before their enemy had gotten there first! A dark cleric was "plugged into" the dungeon, connected to tentacles which allowed him to "drive" it. A mage guarded by two knights proclaimed that they were driving the dungeon straight to hell, and then ordered the attack. The Ranger managed to hit the mage with two ranged attacks early on, one of which was a crit, and also applied Cruel. In one round he nearly one-shotted him (but not before the mage got an Acid Arrow off), and the ongoing damage then finished him off two rounds later without anyone else having to attack him. This made the fight significantly easier, and the Barbarian very happy. After killing all of the enemies, the Barbarian stabbed the "heart" of the dungeon, killing it but sending it flying through the earth at breakneck speeds. It shot them out on top of a mountain (the psychic, rune-inscribed door appeared on a cliff on that mountain), along with the Derro that had lived there and the Gnome, Nilku.
Enter Dungeon World
Sort of. No, we didn't play it, but I decided I would test the Fronts mechanic from Dungeon World in my 13th Age game. I used the sample front in the infamous Dungeon World Guide, The Great Wyrm Axtalrath. For such a short write up (6 pages of fairly large print, with half of one page consisting of new races specifically for Dungeon World) there is a LOT of useable information packed in here! I'll probably use Fronts, or a modified version of them, as my GM organizational tool for pretty much every game I run now. Granted, a Front doesn't provide the same level of detail as a pre-made adventure; it doesn't have stat blocks, dungeon maps, etc. But I suck at running published adventures. They're usually a lot of reading relative to the amount of game time I'll get out of them. A Dungeon World Front is minimal reading (with text that's organized VERY well for reference), and you can get many sessions worth of game time out of them. Dozens, in this case, I think.
On overall background summary sets up the premise. A list of points of interest, accompanied by a map, provides enough inspiration for getting a picture of each place in your head, without overwhelming you with details. Fill them in as needed, and leave room for expansion (the Dungeon World mantra "play to find out what happens" fits very well with 13th Age's narrative, icon and background based design). The Dangers provide the main players that might oppose the party. Simple description, short motivation, and some "Grim Portents" which are events that will transpire without any PC intervention. They're basically well-organized plot points that give you some options for where to "go next" when your players are stuck or you've played out a different option. These, of course, can be altered or change depending on what the players do so the whole structure of the narrative is affected by PC actions. Which is how a roleplaying game SHOULD work. The Front is rounded out with some Stakes (miscellaneous questions and handy reminders; I like to think of these as things unrelated to the Dangers that could become major plot points) and a short cast of NPCs. I quite simply assigned each cast member an associated Icon, and then created more NPCs for Icons that didn't yet have any associated with them. I detailed those that PCs had a relationship with more heavily, but given random Icon influence it's helpful to have at least an idea for who might act on behalf of other Icons.
Ultimately, I think Fronts are going to help me improve my improvisational skills by providing just enough of a safety net. There's plenty of room to build upon each and every short description in the front, and there's always a few things going on "in the background" (or just "waiting" to be incorporated later) so that the narrative won't ever really grind to a standstill.
Session Summary
So how did all of this work out in play? Beware that there are SPOILERS for the Great Wyrm Axtalrath in this section, though because of the flexible, sandbox-y nature of the Fronts you can probably play through the whole thing and have an entirely different experience.
Well, the first major issue was the Derro. The PCs destroyed their home, and even though they convinced the Derro that this was better than plunging into hell, they still demanded reparations. The party led them down the mountain, left them under the canopy of the trees (since it was daylight, which they hate), and went into the town of Rockbreak. Being midday, most of the citizens were either working in the mine or logging, but the Cleric found the local temple and they had a nice chat with the priest there. He gave them all of the background info that they'd need to know (dragon destroyed all the roads, all the boats, but left the townspeople alive, Monolith glows every quarter moon, etc.), and seemed concerned about the prospect of a whole village of Derro refugees looking for a new place to settle.
In pure reckless fashion, the potionless PCs didn't bother to look for any shops or anything, but returned to the Derro, who demanded the PCs scout out some possible caves (they'd do the same after nightfall). Their first lead was a bust, but they noticed fires approaching from the coast. They investigated, and I invoked the Grim Portent "Magmin appear on the western coasts," thanks to a roll of 5 for the Diabolist last session. The party didn't attempt to ambush them and didn't make use of any good tactics whatsoever. My homebrew Magmin beat the snot out of them (to be fair, auto-damaging fire auras were more powerful than I'd anticipated). They only attacks that they landed were on minions (they destroyed 2 of 4), and the Cleric went down early removing the party's only source of healing. PCs were dropping and hoping for death saves to bring them back up. Nobody ever rallied, though the Barbarian used his Dwarf racial power. I advised them to use the Retreat rule several times but they didn't. Eventually after being VERY generous with the results of the Ranger's Terrain Stunt power I had the Magmin simply move on after everyone in the party was knocked out. The Fighter rolled high on his death save just before the Barbarian was about to fail his last one, and he was able to stabilize him. The party then fled toward Port Taramos, and I had no choice but to advance to the next Grim Portent under the Magmin danger (to be fair I would have given the PCs one last chance to beat back the Magmin, since they had a river to cross before reaching Rockbreak).
A botched direction-finding roll from the Ranger (a fumble) led the party right into the swamps. They were ambushed by Lizardmen, but got very lucky (in that I couldn't seem to roll higher than a 9, and Lizardmen get really nasty if you have a string of good rolls in a row). After 2 of the 5 were killed, one of them told his allies to stand down, and demanded to know why the party broke the truce (here the party learned about the truce, obviously). The Lizardman had his allies back away slowly, and eventually they swam off, and the leader asked the party to leave him gold and leave the swamp immediately. Otherwise, they wouldn't leave the swamp alive. The party cheaped out (left 1 gp each), which may come back to bite them in the ass later.
They arrived in Port Taramos, learned of the Dragon Cultists, and bought some potions. The Fighter (who had pocketed some gems back in the dungeon which melted - around all of his coins!) sought out an alchemist to help free his coins from the block of gem-glue (attempts to smash it earlier were met with the realization that the glue had seeped into the gold, making it impure and brittle). And with that, the session ended.
On Sandboxes
Most of my attempts at running more sandbox-style games with this group have failed in the past. The players just don't seem to want to take the initiative to go out and explore on their own; they simply wait for my next obvious hook. When they've taken turns at the GM seat, they've very much resisted any attempts by me (as a player) to "go off the rails." Well, this Front kind of forces them to do stuff, especially with the added pressure of the Derro refugees at the beginning. They all want to get off of the island, but they recognize that there's no way they're facing down that dragon. They're very interested in the Monolith, and they need some cash really badly, so there's two possible directions that they can take things next time. I'll also need to remember to throw some fights their way that they're likely to win, to boost morale a bit and give them a shot at some loot. I think they learned their lesson about dismissing basic tactics, so hopefully I see some smart playing in the future.
In other news, I'm starting up a game of 13th Age with my other gaming group as well. And I'm starting a game of Edge of the Empire with this current 13th Age group, starting with the Beginner Box. So stay tuned for developments on those fronts!
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
End of a "Campaign"
So I've spent most of this year out-of-state, and therefore haven't gotten much time to run my (very intermittent) game of The One Ring. Well, one of my three players is moving to CA, so tonight was our last session. Pity, really, as I had planned on starting up Tales From Wilderland.
I spent as little time as possible tying everything in and getting the players to the Easterly Inn (since I'd already borrowed a lot of stuff from Don't Leave the Path, the idea was to start with Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbit). Unfortunately, getting through the entire adventure in one night was a futile endeavor. Finished up the battle at the Ringfort, but with about a half hour left to play I decided to just cut it off there. One of the players wanted the group to go out in one big fight, another wanted to survive, but because this was going to be our last session for the forseeable future I had a Mountain-Troll stumble upon their camp and it killed them all. Keep in mind that the Dwarf had previously rolled 4 Eyes in a row and I hadn't made good on a single Hazard, so this wasn't even completely outside the realm of fairness.
In any case, I ended the campaign with a feeling of frustration more than anything. The guys in this group aren't really huge Tolkien fans, and they weren't playing to theme all that well. The Dwarf's Treasure Hunter calling was played as a very one-dimensional "all I care about is getting gold!" as if he'd had 4 flaws already. Not ideal in a system where gold is de-emphasized to the extent that it's counted in abstract "treasure points." The Beorning was constantly making un-heroic comments and decisions to the point where I eventually just started throwing Shadow points at him for misdeeds. While I LOVE the system, I don't think I'd recommend playing it with the "wrong" group.
Some end-of-session discussion of the system as a whole occurred afterwards, and while the players enjoyed the game I got the sense that they were ready to move on. They were starting to get up-in-arms about the way that skills were sometimes used; for example, when I told them that they needed to use Stealth to squeeze their way through the tunnel in the Ringfort I got a lot of backlash. They were taking the skill names more literally than the system intends. Stealth is at the intersection of Movement and Wits, and so "moving carefully" can cover maneuvering through a tight space just as much as it can cover moving without being detected. Finally one player said he'd probably be fine with it if they just labeled it differently.
They also mentioned that combat was a little overly simplified for them, but they understood when I reiterated that the system assumes more narrative engagement then they were giving me. I felt the same with skills as well; at one point the Barding said "I'm using Courtesy." I asked "what exactly are you saying?" to which he replied "I don't know, I'm introducing myself in an appropriate way." Perhaps I'm just being spoiled by my Play-by-Post game (which I think the system is really well-suited for).
The biggest complement about the system was the way that Hope worked. Oddly enough, they weren't as keen on Shadow, and I think it's largely because Shadow is dependent on roleplaying the internal struggle of the character which they just weren't interested in doing.
Next week I'm starting up a 13th Age game with this group (so I'll be running 2). I'm think that this group might actually benefit from a few sessions of Dungeon World, but then again that might end up being a disaster.
I spent as little time as possible tying everything in and getting the players to the Easterly Inn (since I'd already borrowed a lot of stuff from Don't Leave the Path, the idea was to start with Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbit). Unfortunately, getting through the entire adventure in one night was a futile endeavor. Finished up the battle at the Ringfort, but with about a half hour left to play I decided to just cut it off there. One of the players wanted the group to go out in one big fight, another wanted to survive, but because this was going to be our last session for the forseeable future I had a Mountain-Troll stumble upon their camp and it killed them all. Keep in mind that the Dwarf had previously rolled 4 Eyes in a row and I hadn't made good on a single Hazard, so this wasn't even completely outside the realm of fairness.
In any case, I ended the campaign with a feeling of frustration more than anything. The guys in this group aren't really huge Tolkien fans, and they weren't playing to theme all that well. The Dwarf's Treasure Hunter calling was played as a very one-dimensional "all I care about is getting gold!" as if he'd had 4 flaws already. Not ideal in a system where gold is de-emphasized to the extent that it's counted in abstract "treasure points." The Beorning was constantly making un-heroic comments and decisions to the point where I eventually just started throwing Shadow points at him for misdeeds. While I LOVE the system, I don't think I'd recommend playing it with the "wrong" group.
Some end-of-session discussion of the system as a whole occurred afterwards, and while the players enjoyed the game I got the sense that they were ready to move on. They were starting to get up-in-arms about the way that skills were sometimes used; for example, when I told them that they needed to use Stealth to squeeze their way through the tunnel in the Ringfort I got a lot of backlash. They were taking the skill names more literally than the system intends. Stealth is at the intersection of Movement and Wits, and so "moving carefully" can cover maneuvering through a tight space just as much as it can cover moving without being detected. Finally one player said he'd probably be fine with it if they just labeled it differently.
They also mentioned that combat was a little overly simplified for them, but they understood when I reiterated that the system assumes more narrative engagement then they were giving me. I felt the same with skills as well; at one point the Barding said "I'm using Courtesy." I asked "what exactly are you saying?" to which he replied "I don't know, I'm introducing myself in an appropriate way." Perhaps I'm just being spoiled by my Play-by-Post game (which I think the system is really well-suited for).
The biggest complement about the system was the way that Hope worked. Oddly enough, they weren't as keen on Shadow, and I think it's largely because Shadow is dependent on roleplaying the internal struggle of the character which they just weren't interested in doing.
Next week I'm starting up a 13th Age game with this group (so I'll be running 2). I'm think that this group might actually benefit from a few sessions of Dungeon World, but then again that might end up being a disaster.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Second Game of 13th Age
A few days ago I played 13th Age for the first time, and everyone liked it so much that they asked me to run it again the next day. I decided not to rely so fully on improvisation this time, because I think that was really throwing me off in the first session. That said, I didn't do nearly as much prep as I would have for D&D. I brainstormed a bit, thinking of a half dozen or so features or events that I wanted to include in the session, and I weaved them in as I deemed appropriate.
Narrative Summary
The first session started out with character creation, and then based on the icon rolls I determined that the party's mission was to travel north to the edge of the Dragon Wood to close a hellhole that was opening there. They would first need to secure passage through the Undermarch, because they were sort of racing the clock; agents of the Crusader were also looking for this infant hellhole. By the end of the first session they were in the general vicinity, finding large patches of charred forest.
At the start of this session (I should note that Whisp, the melee Ranger, was absent) the party stumbled upon a Gnome hermit named Nilku. He asked what they were doing in his home, and when they told him they were informed that the hellhole has moved. He showed them to its current location, where they battled some knights and a mage. I had Lan roll his relationship dice with the Crusader (got a 6); he knew that these guys were called the Knights of Night (corny, eh?), and are an extremist branch of the Crusader's forces. They're the guys he sends on suicide missions, and they gladly take them due to the strength of their convictions. Always a dangerous mindset. Anyways, the party killed the "guards" and descended down (though the opening wasn't hot, and didn't quite look like one would imagine a hellhole would).
This dungeon was geologically odd, the floor covered in fresh dirt and the walls an odd mixture of rocks. Some of the passages "breathed," and some even rotated. One room had a throne beside a worked stone wall, one of the arm rests containing a "handprint" pattern of gems with the gem for the center "palm" missing. A room nearby had a row of pillars on either long end, and a solid black wall on the far side that was inscribed with runes. When the Barbarian tried to approach the far wall he was hit by an "attack" and took a bunch of psychic damage and found it impossible to approach the rune wall. Later on they found a village of Derro in a large, phosphorescent fungi-lined chamber, and they learned that the Derro monks go to the wall to have visions. Upon visiting them the party saw that the monks had dried scabs coming from their ears and were so insane that they were unintelligible. Such is the long term effect of the wall, apparently.
The party battled another group of knights, this time with a mage and a dark cleric for support (THAT was a tough fight!), and later on fought two knights (and an indiscriminately attacking ochre jelly) in a rotating passage. Just before this fight I had the Drow Ranger roll his relationship dice with the Prince of Shadows, and he rolled a 5 and a 6. I had his Unique activate (if you remember from the last post, he has been in the middle of enemy encampments without being caught). He became engulfed in black, misty shadow, and then turned invisible. He didn't look invisible to himself. Helped him ambush the knights, though. It was after this fight that I called it quits since it had gotten pretty late.
Note on Planning
Prepping for this session was a breeze. I reskinned some monsters and created a few from scratch. Even creating spellcasters from scratch (using the Wizard and Cleric spell lists) took just a few minutes. Then I took a 4x6 index card and made a bullet-point list of things I wanted to include. Some examples from this list: "insane Derro live there," and "mushroom-choked passage that spins; ochre jelly, duel with knights." Some of the more detailed areas had a couple of sub-points. The key here is that I had a clear picture of what I was envisioning in my head, and 13th Age being gridless I simply had to describe it in-game from memory (making some embellishments on the fly) instead of mapping everything out. For example, the whole Derro monk thing wasn't planned at all; I simply got the idea from what flowed naturally in-play and went with it. It was very satisfying to see the players becoming just as immersed in this dungeon, if not moreso, than dungeons that I'd created for D&D and actually mapped out. This just affirmed my growing preference for more rules-light systems.
The Barbarian
The other significant observation was that the Barbarian is a very underwhelming class. His AC, even while using a shield, is lower than the Ranger's. His damage output was also significantly lower. The player was always very reluctant to use Whirlwind Attack, and no wonder! The defensive penalty involved is too severe a drawback. Every time he engaged with 2 opponents to attack them both he ended up on the ground shortly thereafter.
Rage doesn't compare favorably to Double Melee (or Ranged) attack, either. It needs looser restrictions. Critting roughly 25% of the time sounds nice on paper, sure, but a crit is simply double damage; a Ranger gets the same damage output by landing 2 attacks, and on top of that each of those attacks have their own chance at critting (given the crit-enhancing Ranger talents this will happen pretty frequently). Yeah, even without a crit Barbarians have a better chance at hitting than a Ranger, but seeing as a natural even roll gives that Ranger an extra swing anyways it might be close to a wash. The mechanics are close enough, anyways, that I don't think it would be all that unbalanced for a Barbarian to have constant access to Rage. As it stands they're squishy, deal mediocre damage, and don't offer any tactical utility to make up for those shortcomings.
Yeah, their defenses look better than a Rogue's on paper, but the Rogue gets all kinds of defensive powers and can disengage really easily. The Rogue has tricks up his sleeve to compensate for numerical disadvantages. The Barbarian is just disadvantaged, and it doesn't seem like there's much he can do about it.
Anyone else finding this to be the case? As it stand I simply cannot recommend a Barbarian.
Narrative Summary
The first session started out with character creation, and then based on the icon rolls I determined that the party's mission was to travel north to the edge of the Dragon Wood to close a hellhole that was opening there. They would first need to secure passage through the Undermarch, because they were sort of racing the clock; agents of the Crusader were also looking for this infant hellhole. By the end of the first session they were in the general vicinity, finding large patches of charred forest.
At the start of this session (I should note that Whisp, the melee Ranger, was absent) the party stumbled upon a Gnome hermit named Nilku. He asked what they were doing in his home, and when they told him they were informed that the hellhole has moved. He showed them to its current location, where they battled some knights and a mage. I had Lan roll his relationship dice with the Crusader (got a 6); he knew that these guys were called the Knights of Night (corny, eh?), and are an extremist branch of the Crusader's forces. They're the guys he sends on suicide missions, and they gladly take them due to the strength of their convictions. Always a dangerous mindset. Anyways, the party killed the "guards" and descended down (though the opening wasn't hot, and didn't quite look like one would imagine a hellhole would).
This dungeon was geologically odd, the floor covered in fresh dirt and the walls an odd mixture of rocks. Some of the passages "breathed," and some even rotated. One room had a throne beside a worked stone wall, one of the arm rests containing a "handprint" pattern of gems with the gem for the center "palm" missing. A room nearby had a row of pillars on either long end, and a solid black wall on the far side that was inscribed with runes. When the Barbarian tried to approach the far wall he was hit by an "attack" and took a bunch of psychic damage and found it impossible to approach the rune wall. Later on they found a village of Derro in a large, phosphorescent fungi-lined chamber, and they learned that the Derro monks go to the wall to have visions. Upon visiting them the party saw that the monks had dried scabs coming from their ears and were so insane that they were unintelligible. Such is the long term effect of the wall, apparently.
The party battled another group of knights, this time with a mage and a dark cleric for support (THAT was a tough fight!), and later on fought two knights (and an indiscriminately attacking ochre jelly) in a rotating passage. Just before this fight I had the Drow Ranger roll his relationship dice with the Prince of Shadows, and he rolled a 5 and a 6. I had his Unique activate (if you remember from the last post, he has been in the middle of enemy encampments without being caught). He became engulfed in black, misty shadow, and then turned invisible. He didn't look invisible to himself. Helped him ambush the knights, though. It was after this fight that I called it quits since it had gotten pretty late.
Note on Planning
Prepping for this session was a breeze. I reskinned some monsters and created a few from scratch. Even creating spellcasters from scratch (using the Wizard and Cleric spell lists) took just a few minutes. Then I took a 4x6 index card and made a bullet-point list of things I wanted to include. Some examples from this list: "insane Derro live there," and "mushroom-choked passage that spins; ochre jelly, duel with knights." Some of the more detailed areas had a couple of sub-points. The key here is that I had a clear picture of what I was envisioning in my head, and 13th Age being gridless I simply had to describe it in-game from memory (making some embellishments on the fly) instead of mapping everything out. For example, the whole Derro monk thing wasn't planned at all; I simply got the idea from what flowed naturally in-play and went with it. It was very satisfying to see the players becoming just as immersed in this dungeon, if not moreso, than dungeons that I'd created for D&D and actually mapped out. This just affirmed my growing preference for more rules-light systems.
The Barbarian
The other significant observation was that the Barbarian is a very underwhelming class. His AC, even while using a shield, is lower than the Ranger's. His damage output was also significantly lower. The player was always very reluctant to use Whirlwind Attack, and no wonder! The defensive penalty involved is too severe a drawback. Every time he engaged with 2 opponents to attack them both he ended up on the ground shortly thereafter.
Rage doesn't compare favorably to Double Melee (or Ranged) attack, either. It needs looser restrictions. Critting roughly 25% of the time sounds nice on paper, sure, but a crit is simply double damage; a Ranger gets the same damage output by landing 2 attacks, and on top of that each of those attacks have their own chance at critting (given the crit-enhancing Ranger talents this will happen pretty frequently). Yeah, even without a crit Barbarians have a better chance at hitting than a Ranger, but seeing as a natural even roll gives that Ranger an extra swing anyways it might be close to a wash. The mechanics are close enough, anyways, that I don't think it would be all that unbalanced for a Barbarian to have constant access to Rage. As it stands they're squishy, deal mediocre damage, and don't offer any tactical utility to make up for those shortcomings.
Yeah, their defenses look better than a Rogue's on paper, but the Rogue gets all kinds of defensive powers and can disengage really easily. The Rogue has tricks up his sleeve to compensate for numerical disadvantages. The Barbarian is just disadvantaged, and it doesn't seem like there's much he can do about it.
Anyone else finding this to be the case? As it stand I simply cannot recommend a Barbarian.
Friday, December 21, 2012
First Game of 13th Age!!!!
Yep, you heard right, after MONTHS of being excited about this game I've finally gotten a chance to play it! Character creation took around 2 hours with everyone sharing the screen with the PDF and with a lot of the story elements needing to be explained. It was longer that I'd expected, but there was a lot of side conversation and people waiting around so I guess it wasn't totally unexpected. We ended up with 2 Rangers (melee and ranged), a Barbarian, and a Cleric. A Fighter joined the party about halfway through. In hindsight I probably should have made some pregens, and just had players fill in Backgrounds, Icon Relationships, and One Unique Thing. Oh well, hopefully they understand the game better now.
I guess the first thing I'll say is that everyone LOVED the system. So much, in fact, that they asked me to run another session later today (we played yesterday evening). Which is cool. I actually felt like my GMing was pretty sub-par last night, through a combination of not having done it for several months and being kind of new to the whole improvisational plot points thing. I didn't plan a single thing, I just went off of the characters' backstories and icon rolls. Speaking of icon rolls, the start of session rolls resulted in FIVE icons getting a result of at least 5 or 6 (Crusader got both). Note to self; when that happens, don't worry too much about fitting everything in. I feel like my High Druid, Dwarf King, and Orc Lord stuff was just filler. So yeah, gotta work on improvisation. I imagine that'll just take a whole lot of practice.
Combats are short and sweet. Well, I think I under-challenged the players (though the melee Ranger might disagree with that!). I used all level 1 enemies and built "fair" fights. I'll definitely up the stakes a bit next session, since everyone has a better sense of the rules now. Twenty minutes for a balanced fight with 5 players and a healthy dose of side conversation is awesome, though. Combat isn't as dynamic as 4th Edition D&D but moreso than 3rd, and much shorter than either. We used minis but not a grid, and I think that's key. When I've run Theater of the Mind without minis (for The One Ring), sometimes describing the surroundings and positioning can take time that is saved by simply plopping a mini down. I like this middle ground.
Here's an overview of the characters we ended up with (note that I gave everyone 8 background points):
Lan (can't remember his own last name) - Human Cleric
-2 Relationship with Crusader, -1 with Diabolist
OUT: Sent to hell because his family broke an oath with the Crusader, and he managed to escape (minus his memories from before hell).
Backgrounds: Abyssal survivor +4, Ex-priest +4.
Gorthar - Drow Ranger (ranged)
+2 Relationship with Prince of Shadows, +1 with High Druid
OUT: Has been in enemy encampments without being seen or caught, and he can't necessarily explain why.
Backgrounds: Tracker (via Talent) +5, Assassin +4, Linguist +4
Mertle McTurtle - Dwarf Barbarian
1 (Conflicted) Relationship with Dwarf King, -2 with Orc Lord
OUT: Can make beer out of ANYTHING. Exiled from his clan for accidentally poisoning them with turtle beer (he doesn't always know how it'll turn out!)
Backgrounds: Chef +4, Miner +2, Cartographer +2
Whisp - Human Ranger (melee)
+3 relationship with Prince of Shadows
OUT: Has a perfectly round wooden ball that his father told him was from an ancient treasure horde (he doesn't know what it is or does).
Backgrounds: Orphan +2, Treasure Hunter +2, Member of The Silence (a secret society) +4
McKeff - Human Fighter
No icons since he joined mid-session and had zero interest in them (whatever).
OUT: Has a talking dog.
Backgrounds: a list of 4 overlapping ones, I remember two were Street Thug +2 and Gladiator +2.
Not bad, especially considering none of these players really have any story-game experience, mostly having played D&D (4E and 3E).
I guess the first thing I'll say is that everyone LOVED the system. So much, in fact, that they asked me to run another session later today (we played yesterday evening). Which is cool. I actually felt like my GMing was pretty sub-par last night, through a combination of not having done it for several months and being kind of new to the whole improvisational plot points thing. I didn't plan a single thing, I just went off of the characters' backstories and icon rolls. Speaking of icon rolls, the start of session rolls resulted in FIVE icons getting a result of at least 5 or 6 (Crusader got both). Note to self; when that happens, don't worry too much about fitting everything in. I feel like my High Druid, Dwarf King, and Orc Lord stuff was just filler. So yeah, gotta work on improvisation. I imagine that'll just take a whole lot of practice.
Combats are short and sweet. Well, I think I under-challenged the players (though the melee Ranger might disagree with that!). I used all level 1 enemies and built "fair" fights. I'll definitely up the stakes a bit next session, since everyone has a better sense of the rules now. Twenty minutes for a balanced fight with 5 players and a healthy dose of side conversation is awesome, though. Combat isn't as dynamic as 4th Edition D&D but moreso than 3rd, and much shorter than either. We used minis but not a grid, and I think that's key. When I've run Theater of the Mind without minis (for The One Ring), sometimes describing the surroundings and positioning can take time that is saved by simply plopping a mini down. I like this middle ground.
Here's an overview of the characters we ended up with (note that I gave everyone 8 background points):
Lan (can't remember his own last name) - Human Cleric
-2 Relationship with Crusader, -1 with Diabolist
OUT: Sent to hell because his family broke an oath with the Crusader, and he managed to escape (minus his memories from before hell).
Backgrounds: Abyssal survivor +4, Ex-priest +4.
Gorthar - Drow Ranger (ranged)
+2 Relationship with Prince of Shadows, +1 with High Druid
OUT: Has been in enemy encampments without being seen or caught, and he can't necessarily explain why.
Backgrounds: Tracker (via Talent) +5, Assassin +4, Linguist +4
Mertle McTurtle - Dwarf Barbarian
1 (Conflicted) Relationship with Dwarf King, -2 with Orc Lord
OUT: Can make beer out of ANYTHING. Exiled from his clan for accidentally poisoning them with turtle beer (he doesn't always know how it'll turn out!)
Backgrounds: Chef +4, Miner +2, Cartographer +2
Whisp - Human Ranger (melee)
+3 relationship with Prince of Shadows
OUT: Has a perfectly round wooden ball that his father told him was from an ancient treasure horde (he doesn't know what it is or does).
Backgrounds: Orphan +2, Treasure Hunter +2, Member of The Silence (a secret society) +4
McKeff - Human Fighter
No icons since he joined mid-session and had zero interest in them (whatever).
OUT: Has a talking dog.
Backgrounds: a list of 4 overlapping ones, I remember two were Street Thug +2 and Gladiator +2.
Not bad, especially considering none of these players really have any story-game experience, mostly having played D&D (4E and 3E).
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Out of Mirkwood
It's been a while, but thanks to a brief respite between out-of-state jobs I was able to run another session of my TOR campaign. Here's a recap of what happened last time. The Fellowship has just gotten through the worst part of their journey, the Mountains of Mirkwood. But the dangers of the forest are still very real, and the remainder of the journey was through lands heavily tainted by the Shadow.
Note that this post contains some minor SPOILERS from Tales from Wilderland. While the adventures are of my own creation, I've lifted some elements from that book.
The Forest Maze
After a day and a half of steadily decreasing elevation, the trees start to become very thick again. All 3 PCs are miserable after the Mountains, and I call for an Awareness test. Lowthesis fails with an Eye of Sauron, gaining his second flaw. Mirkwood is proving to be a very dangerous place for fairly inexperienced characters. Thinking he can hear the clanking of coins behind him, the dwarf turns around to see a chest of gold in a thicket of undergrowth. Ranulf, the only PC to pass his Awareness test, notices that the trees are starting to hem in Grimwine ahead of him, and Lowthesis (now dashing for the treasure) behind (bout of madness). Lowthesis lands with a thud as the illusory treasure wisps away, realizing that the vegetation is moving to hem him in, a shadow hanging among its branches. By now everyone knows what's going on, and rolls a Corruption test. Grimwine fails with an Eye. Yeah. The orc-slayer hears the sound of his hated foes marching ahead (away from his companions), and he hacks his way through the vegetation toward them. Ranulf, meanwhile, is the only one left to desperately try to keep the dwarves together (to no avail, with just a small dagger to slash through vegetation with). Lowthesis tries to Search for gaps in the writhing branches, roots, and vines, but always notices them too late, when they're already closing up. The clearing he's in is constantly moving, as if the trees are corralling him somewhere. The separated companions can soon hear a humming and whistling in amongst the leaves, which weaves itself into a melody. Lowthesis and Grimwine use Riddle to decipher the eerie song's meaning, Grimwine failing and Lowthesis realizing that the melody predicts the movement of the plants (allowing him to predict gaps and force his way out). Ranulf sings along with the song, trying to understand it, realizing that he can pick up on the emotions that the trees are communicating to each other.
Grimwine simply muscles his way forward toward the orcs, eventually breaking out into a narrow stone path that leads to a clearing with a well in the center. I used the well from Don't Leave the Path (Tales from Wilderland) for this scene, so SPOILERS will follow. He can hear what sounds like an orc lair in the well, and after suffering some taunts from them he jumps in after them. Meanwhile Lowthesis makes it out of the maze, using Explore to orient himself. While walking back roughly toward the path, his mind grows increasingly occupied by the thought of treasure which he's sure is nearby. He too comes upon a well, with a glint of gold shining from within. He jumps in.
Ranulf begins singing in opposition to the trees, a counter song which neutralizes their attempts to enclose him, and also gives him insight into the malevolent spirit in the center of the maze. He senses that it's claimed two of his companions, and rushes toward it. When Lowthesis and Grimwine enter the well, Ranulf is hit with a flash of the spirit's triumph and knows which direction to head. When he reaches the well he sees Grimwine and Lowthesis both approaching it, apparently completely unaware of each other, and then both of his companions jumps in. The sight is following by a sick squelching noise coming from within the well, as of mud being sucked through a vacuum. Ranulf rushes forward. Upon hitting the bottom of the well Grimwine and Lowthesis break free of their madness and realize what's going on. The well's tentacles attack all 3 companions, seizing Grimwine and later strangling him with a massive amount of force (if I remember correctly, I rolled an extraordinary success here). Ranulf aims at a tentacle with his bow, and then fails with an Eye of Sauron. Yes, the entire fellowship suffered a bout of madness already, and Ranulf's caused him to simply walk away from the battle with disinterest, finally succumbing to the creature's spell. Lowthesis landed a rare hit on the tentacle that was gripping Grimwine (extraordinary success for massive damage), severing the tentacle and freeing the Beorning. As the two fought bravely in the well, Ranulf heard footsteps running toward him out of the forest. Balin and Dwalin had found him, and hearing Grimwine's scream asked what was going on. Dwalin slapped Ranulf out of his stupor, and the Barding and Dwarves helped finish the monster off.
The fellowship spent a day searching for and locating Ori and Oin, and then the rest of the journey through Mirkwood proved uneventful. They met up with Gimli in the Long Marshes, and then headed north toward Esgaroth.
Fellowship Phase
Each companion spent theirs in a different city: Grimwine in Esgaroth, Lowthesis in Erebor, and Ranulf in Dale. The PCs each independently pursued the Meet Patron undertaking. Lowthesis spent a lot of time in Erebor's Chamber of Mazarbul looking for leads on where to find treasure. He came to know the expert scholar in that field, a dwarf by the name of Regin, very well. Grimwine searched for a sparring partner in Esgaroth, and ended up meeting the Beorning mercenary Gerold (from Tales from Wilderland). The two trained together extensively during the ensuing months (justification for Grimwine buying another rank in Axes with his experience). Ranulf hung out around the Merchant's Quarter of Dale, just looking for excuses to travel afield to new lands. He spent a lot of time at the tavern with Keilbrun, a retired merchant who still worked the streets of Dale but was too old to travel far enough to acquire any valuable items.
The players were all upset with how expensive it was to gain new ranks with attribute points, but it's starting to make sense to me. Experience cost tends to be cheaper because everyone needs Valour, Wisdom, and Weapon skills. Moreover, Rewards and Virtues represent interesting choices for characters to make. These things are the primary measure of a character's power level. If Common Skills increased at this rate, it would be too easy for characters to just be good across the board at everything. Making advancement points work more slowly maintains the level of specialization within the fellowship. The side effect of this is that I'm less thrilled about so many of a character's skill ranks being determined by culture.
The Gathering of Five Armies
The month of November saw the city of Dale preparing for the upcoming festivities. With lodging being increasingly harder to come up, Grimwine took up residence at Ranulf's home. The fields around the city became a tent suburbia, and Gandalf showed up again, always in too big a hurry to provide any details of his adventures dealing with the Nazgul.
Gerold was training for the upcoming Contests, and filled Grimwine in on the details (minor SPOILERS from The Crossings of Celduin follow). The PCs were all eager to enter the Contests themselves, with Ranulf being eliminated in the second qualification round for both Archery and Horseback Riding, and Lowthesis losing in the first round of both Strength and Horseback Riding (the latter was entered just out of spite, and he ended up embarrassing himself spectacularly for the second time that day). Grimwine just entered the Strength contest, but made it all the way to the Final Round where he lost to Gerold. I ruled that it was good enough to get into the Grand Melee, and he lasted through the first 2 waves of enemies quite handily. Finally it was down to just a few warriors, with the group of dwarves being too distant to engage, and a choice between facing down Gerold or Elstan. Grimwine charged toward Gerold while Elstan, seeing this, lead his troupe toward the dwarves. Once again, Gerold whooped him good. His Terrible Strength ability gives him a pretty big advantage, though Grimwine did beat him earlier when we played out their initial sparring match during the Fellowship Phase. Elstan ended up victorious, and Ranulf lead the crowd with a spectacular Song roll celebrating his victory.
With Grimwine unconscious (and Lowthesis moping in his room back in the Lonely Mountain after the previous day's failures), Ranulf was the only PC to see Gandalf approach the crowd, frantically looking for someone. When Gandalf spotted Ranulf, he sent him to gather Lowthesis while he grabbed the fatigued Grimwine; he had a mission for them. Ranulf and Lowthesis soon met Gandalf, Grimwine, and Elstan in front of the fountain of Smaug's Fall outside the Royal Palace.
It was here that we ended this session. Unfortunately, we won't be able to resume the campaign until December, but I'm still glad that we got this one session in.
Note that this post contains some minor SPOILERS from Tales from Wilderland. While the adventures are of my own creation, I've lifted some elements from that book.
The Forest Maze
After a day and a half of steadily decreasing elevation, the trees start to become very thick again. All 3 PCs are miserable after the Mountains, and I call for an Awareness test. Lowthesis fails with an Eye of Sauron, gaining his second flaw. Mirkwood is proving to be a very dangerous place for fairly inexperienced characters. Thinking he can hear the clanking of coins behind him, the dwarf turns around to see a chest of gold in a thicket of undergrowth. Ranulf, the only PC to pass his Awareness test, notices that the trees are starting to hem in Grimwine ahead of him, and Lowthesis (now dashing for the treasure) behind (bout of madness). Lowthesis lands with a thud as the illusory treasure wisps away, realizing that the vegetation is moving to hem him in, a shadow hanging among its branches. By now everyone knows what's going on, and rolls a Corruption test. Grimwine fails with an Eye. Yeah. The orc-slayer hears the sound of his hated foes marching ahead (away from his companions), and he hacks his way through the vegetation toward them. Ranulf, meanwhile, is the only one left to desperately try to keep the dwarves together (to no avail, with just a small dagger to slash through vegetation with). Lowthesis tries to Search for gaps in the writhing branches, roots, and vines, but always notices them too late, when they're already closing up. The clearing he's in is constantly moving, as if the trees are corralling him somewhere. The separated companions can soon hear a humming and whistling in amongst the leaves, which weaves itself into a melody. Lowthesis and Grimwine use Riddle to decipher the eerie song's meaning, Grimwine failing and Lowthesis realizing that the melody predicts the movement of the plants (allowing him to predict gaps and force his way out). Ranulf sings along with the song, trying to understand it, realizing that he can pick up on the emotions that the trees are communicating to each other.
Grimwine simply muscles his way forward toward the orcs, eventually breaking out into a narrow stone path that leads to a clearing with a well in the center. I used the well from Don't Leave the Path (Tales from Wilderland) for this scene, so SPOILERS will follow. He can hear what sounds like an orc lair in the well, and after suffering some taunts from them he jumps in after them. Meanwhile Lowthesis makes it out of the maze, using Explore to orient himself. While walking back roughly toward the path, his mind grows increasingly occupied by the thought of treasure which he's sure is nearby. He too comes upon a well, with a glint of gold shining from within. He jumps in.
Ranulf begins singing in opposition to the trees, a counter song which neutralizes their attempts to enclose him, and also gives him insight into the malevolent spirit in the center of the maze. He senses that it's claimed two of his companions, and rushes toward it. When Lowthesis and Grimwine enter the well, Ranulf is hit with a flash of the spirit's triumph and knows which direction to head. When he reaches the well he sees Grimwine and Lowthesis both approaching it, apparently completely unaware of each other, and then both of his companions jumps in. The sight is following by a sick squelching noise coming from within the well, as of mud being sucked through a vacuum. Ranulf rushes forward. Upon hitting the bottom of the well Grimwine and Lowthesis break free of their madness and realize what's going on. The well's tentacles attack all 3 companions, seizing Grimwine and later strangling him with a massive amount of force (if I remember correctly, I rolled an extraordinary success here). Ranulf aims at a tentacle with his bow, and then fails with an Eye of Sauron. Yes, the entire fellowship suffered a bout of madness already, and Ranulf's caused him to simply walk away from the battle with disinterest, finally succumbing to the creature's spell. Lowthesis landed a rare hit on the tentacle that was gripping Grimwine (extraordinary success for massive damage), severing the tentacle and freeing the Beorning. As the two fought bravely in the well, Ranulf heard footsteps running toward him out of the forest. Balin and Dwalin had found him, and hearing Grimwine's scream asked what was going on. Dwalin slapped Ranulf out of his stupor, and the Barding and Dwarves helped finish the monster off.
The fellowship spent a day searching for and locating Ori and Oin, and then the rest of the journey through Mirkwood proved uneventful. They met up with Gimli in the Long Marshes, and then headed north toward Esgaroth.
Fellowship Phase
Each companion spent theirs in a different city: Grimwine in Esgaroth, Lowthesis in Erebor, and Ranulf in Dale. The PCs each independently pursued the Meet Patron undertaking. Lowthesis spent a lot of time in Erebor's Chamber of Mazarbul looking for leads on where to find treasure. He came to know the expert scholar in that field, a dwarf by the name of Regin, very well. Grimwine searched for a sparring partner in Esgaroth, and ended up meeting the Beorning mercenary Gerold (from Tales from Wilderland). The two trained together extensively during the ensuing months (justification for Grimwine buying another rank in Axes with his experience). Ranulf hung out around the Merchant's Quarter of Dale, just looking for excuses to travel afield to new lands. He spent a lot of time at the tavern with Keilbrun, a retired merchant who still worked the streets of Dale but was too old to travel far enough to acquire any valuable items.
The players were all upset with how expensive it was to gain new ranks with attribute points, but it's starting to make sense to me. Experience cost tends to be cheaper because everyone needs Valour, Wisdom, and Weapon skills. Moreover, Rewards and Virtues represent interesting choices for characters to make. These things are the primary measure of a character's power level. If Common Skills increased at this rate, it would be too easy for characters to just be good across the board at everything. Making advancement points work more slowly maintains the level of specialization within the fellowship. The side effect of this is that I'm less thrilled about so many of a character's skill ranks being determined by culture.
The Gathering of Five Armies
The month of November saw the city of Dale preparing for the upcoming festivities. With lodging being increasingly harder to come up, Grimwine took up residence at Ranulf's home. The fields around the city became a tent suburbia, and Gandalf showed up again, always in too big a hurry to provide any details of his adventures dealing with the Nazgul.
Gerold was training for the upcoming Contests, and filled Grimwine in on the details (minor SPOILERS from The Crossings of Celduin follow). The PCs were all eager to enter the Contests themselves, with Ranulf being eliminated in the second qualification round for both Archery and Horseback Riding, and Lowthesis losing in the first round of both Strength and Horseback Riding (the latter was entered just out of spite, and he ended up embarrassing himself spectacularly for the second time that day). Grimwine just entered the Strength contest, but made it all the way to the Final Round where he lost to Gerold. I ruled that it was good enough to get into the Grand Melee, and he lasted through the first 2 waves of enemies quite handily. Finally it was down to just a few warriors, with the group of dwarves being too distant to engage, and a choice between facing down Gerold or Elstan. Grimwine charged toward Gerold while Elstan, seeing this, lead his troupe toward the dwarves. Once again, Gerold whooped him good. His Terrible Strength ability gives him a pretty big advantage, though Grimwine did beat him earlier when we played out their initial sparring match during the Fellowship Phase. Elstan ended up victorious, and Ranulf lead the crowd with a spectacular Song roll celebrating his victory.
With Grimwine unconscious (and Lowthesis moping in his room back in the Lonely Mountain after the previous day's failures), Ranulf was the only PC to see Gandalf approach the crowd, frantically looking for someone. When Gandalf spotted Ranulf, he sent him to gather Lowthesis while he grabbed the fatigued Grimwine; he had a mission for them. Ranulf and Lowthesis soon met Gandalf, Grimwine, and Elstan in front of the fountain of Smaug's Fall outside the Royal Palace.
It was here that we ended this session. Unfortunately, we won't be able to resume the campaign until December, but I'm still glad that we got this one session in.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Session Summary: The Old Forest Road
We finally got to play again two weeks after our big cliffhanger (sort of) during the last session. I should note that this summary will contain some spoilers from Tales From Wilderland, so if your group is planning on playing through the adventures in that book then avoid reading the sections marked as spoilers. Essentially what I've done is taken some elements from the first adventure, which is a journey down the Elf-path, and transplanted them onto the Old Forest Road. Again, such spoilers will be clearly marked.
The Nazgul has been chased off, but the party is now on their own, without the talents of a Wizard to fall back on. Lowthesis being the only member of the company to resist falling into a swoon from the Black Breath, he watched over everyone else around a small campfire until they recovered. Even after regaining consciousness they were quite drained, and so decided to remain at this camp to recuperate a bit. Two lookouts were now posted while the others rested.
Dreams
The company was plagued by nightmares while they slept. The details are as follows:
Lowthesis decides to join the other Dwarves, not bothering to wake his human companions. This sounds like Dwarven business, after all. As he approaches he learns that Balin is eager to press on and search for the pony. They still have a mission to accomplish, after all, and he doesn't want to return to his king as a coward. Dwalin and Oin are both less sure of the wisdom of continuing onward, as they'd planned on having Gandalf's assistance and they've already encountered a Nazgul; who knows what other evil creatures lurk amongst these trees? Ori is quiet, and seemingly undecided. Lowthesis is eager to press on as well, not being one to back out of a challenge (Bold), and tries to Inspire the others. He convinces Ori that Balin's is the better course of action, and while Dwalin and Oin still have their doubts, they will accept the majority vote and follow their leader.
Mirkwood's Western Eaves
The argument resumes in the morning when Ranulf and Grimwine wake up. Grimwine is ready to go, but Ranulf voices his doubts and advocates strongly that they turn back. Lowthesis ends the discussion by reminding him that this has already been decided last night, and that he can go back by himself if he so desires. Ranulf grudgingly follows.
Ori and Grimwine scout out ahead to look for the pony. After following his tracks to a point where the stop, with signs of a scuffle, Grimwine determines that the pony was eaten and that they should turn back and tell the others. [LM note: the pony was captured, yes, but was still alive wrapped up in a web nearby. I never described any blood splatters or anything, and honestly I expected Grimwine to try a little harder. Oh well, that's just fewer supplies that they have now, and they're suffering more Fatigue because of it]. The remaining week in the western eaves of Mirkwood are relatively uneventful, though several ruins are discovered and explored. Low on water, the party is quite thrilled to discover and old well, though after lowering down a bucket it's obvious that something metallic is down there. Ranulf lowers himself down to investigate, and finds an old skeleton covered in spider webs. An elven dagger lies on the corpse's lap, with no webs around the dagger's perimeter. Ranulf finds that the dagger cuts webs like butter, and cuts off a broach with an unfamiliar family crest from the tattered remains of clothing. [LM note: There were some other goodies in this area, but nobody found them]. A larger ruin of a small village was discovered a few days later, and it appeared to be some kind of trade center based on the numbers of different coins present. Some representatives included old Elven and Dwarven coins, as well as unfamiliar old coins with Dalish runes, and coins with horses on them. More treasure points were acquired. The first treasure found was a chest located by Ranulf, though he couldn't unlock it and called Lowthesis in to assist him. Lowthesis easily opened the chest, but claimed all of the treasure inside for himself (earning a Shadow point since a cut of that loot was rightfully Ranulf's; he's definitely living up to his "Grasping" flaw). The final ruins encountered was the wall of a large waystation, and atop it was a large boulder carved in the likeness of the Eye of Sauron. Lowthesis and Grimwine devised a lever that they used to topple the abominable carving (incurring Shadow points for approaching it), and by doing so allowed everyone else to pass by without making Corruption tests. Lowthesis may be greedy, but that doesn't mean he can't also be heroic.
The Mountains of Mirkwood
The players seemed to go out of their way to surprise me here. As the elevation increased and the terrain became more rocky, the forest soon became dominated by dark, twisted fir trees. Early on this leg of the journey a gorge was encountered with a 40 foot span, and a raging river 200 ft. below. A ruined bridge crossed over the gorge along the road, but about halfway across a large chunk had fallen off so that by the far end it narrowed to only 3 feet wide. [LM note: I fully intended for the party to head upstream to find a way around this gorge]. Lowthesis wanted to make a rope bridge across the chasm, but it meant that someone had to cross on the bridge first (at least to test its stability). The Adventurous Ranulf volunteered, and roped off though he was it was obvious that the bridge was unstable, and an unsuccessful Stealth roll made it obvious that he wasn't able to cross it. Thinking he could do better, Grimwine roped himself up and got an extraordinary success on his Stealth roll (easily an AP thanks to his Bold trait). I had him get nearly to the end, and then said that the only way further was to attempt a jump to the other side; I was quite clear that this was a one-shot deal, that a great roll was needed, and that a failure would most likely result in death. [LM note: this is usually a good way of telling your players "I'm not going to stop you, but this isn't a very good idea.] I think he had to blow a point of hope, but he ended up passing the daunting difficulty and made it safely to the other side, collapsing the ruined section of the bridge in the process.
Two days after this a torrential thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere, and Ranulf after heading out to find shelter encountered a hollowed-out tree with a plume of smoke coming from it. He called everyone else there, and after squeezing inside it became obvious that someone was living in here. Grimwine took some pheasant meat (he'd bagged them the previous day) and started cooking it on the fire, and soon they heard a scratching outside and a head poked in. The hermit was extremely surprised, and couldn't be quelled by Ranulf's botched attempt to courteously calm him down (too bad the Tolerance was only 1 here). Refusing to listen to reason and shouting about how he wouldn't be taken back he started stabbing his spear at Grimwine. Grimwine was starting to grow extremely angry, but a lucky hit (coupled with Grimwine's extremely low Endurance) knocked him out. Lowthesis was the next target of the Hermit's ire, having previously tried to wrench the spear from his grasp, but it was ultimately Ranulf who was able to restrain him. The hermit flung insults at Lowthesis, betraying his contempt for Dwarves by comparing them with orcs (though my personal favorite improvised insult was "may your beard become infested with insects!"). Lowthesis tried to offer him some treasure in exchange for letting them stay here, but he shouted about how the Shadow lives in things and would consume them all. Finally the hermit was placated by a promise to leave his "house" if he didn't attack them when they untied him. Grimwine's player admitted that if he'd been conscious he would have killed the hermit, Shadow be damned.
END OF SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
The rain continued on for several days, and soon the company came upon a roaring stream, flooded by the recent downpours. Ranulf constructed a boat (Boating and Woodright), but as he came close to the water he began to feel drowsy as the spray hit his skin. The Dwarves warned the company to avoid the water, because they didn't want to carry anyone around like they had to for Bombur! After plans to swing Tarzan-style across with rope didn't pan out (partially due to the extreme reluctance of Lowthesis to attempt such an insane maneuver), Grimwine concentrated on felling trees to make a bridge across. He got some high enough to avoid the spray, but when Ranulf attempt the crossing he failed (despite help from a rope handrail), falling into the stream (as well as a deep, deep sleep). Ultimately Grimwine conceded to go along with the plan that Lowthesis had advocated all along; to simply wait until the water levels went down. After 4 days (2D6) they were able to boat across, and Ranulf woke up shortly afterwards.
The next few days were some of the worst of their entire journey. I didn't go into specific detail, instead simply reading this short description:
Nobody triggered any hazards so I simply left it at that, except for the 2 Fatigue tests at TN 20 and the 6 Corruption tests (only Ranulf passed some of these, and only 2). So now everyone is good and miserable (as they should be after trekking across the Mountains of Mirkwood). The players objected strongly to this many corruption tests, so I revealed that I was going easy on them, and that by the original (un-clarified) version of RAW (rules as written), a journey across Mirkwood would take 40 or 50 something corruption tests. The Shadow's been banished (for now), so while there are still some strongly blighted places in the forest I figured the Road is as safe as it'll ever be until after the end of the War of the Ring.
And this is where we left off for now. The company has made it through the worst of what Mirkwood has to offer, but the northeastern edge of the Heart of Mirkwood still remains, as well as the Long Marshes (where they're scheduled to meet Oin's nephew, Gimli).
The Nazgul has been chased off, but the party is now on their own, without the talents of a Wizard to fall back on. Lowthesis being the only member of the company to resist falling into a swoon from the Black Breath, he watched over everyone else around a small campfire until they recovered. Even after regaining consciousness they were quite drained, and so decided to remain at this camp to recuperate a bit. Two lookouts were now posted while the others rested.
Dreams
The company was plagued by nightmares while they slept. The details are as follows:
Grimwine:
Two
bears, one of average size and one extremely large walk along the
bank of a swiftly-flowing river under a clear night sky. A light
frost crunches underfoot. At a fork in the path ahead the smaller
bear without thinking about it heads down the path ahead toward a
towering mountain. Upset, the larger bear cuffs him and turns down
the other fork, to the left. When the smaller bear doesn't follow,
the larger runs back and fights more violently with the smaller bear.
Before the conflict is resolved the scene fades to darker thoughts
of trees and spiders, and one nightmare after another bleeds into the
next.
Ranulf:
King
Bard sits alone on his throne, a look of despair on his face. You
call out his name but he doesn't answer. Hearing a clamor of angry
voices outside you slowly walk over to an open window, when all of
the sudden the shaft of sunlight disappears as the day turns
instantly to night. South of the Royal Palace you see that some of
Dale's buildings appear to be on fire, and Elves and Dwarves fight
openly with each other in the streets while Bardings barricade
themselves in the intact buildings. Your remaining dreams are
dominated by frantic searching, though you cannot remember where.
Lowthesis:
You
can feel the oars you hold cut across the still water of Esgaroth,
the Long Lake, and you admire your home, the Lonely Mountain, in the
distance. You soon find your self inexplicably deep in the
Mountain's winding halls, focused intently on the burning forge
before you. This is a joy you've long been deprived of, but it's
soon cut short. Your thoughts turn to a great jewel, skillfully
carved, and you hear muffled shouts, curses, and threats. As the
shouts become clearer your vision of the jewel becomes more and more
blurred. You suddenly find yourself startled awake as the jewel
fades to nothingness. Ranulf and Grimwine twitch uneasily in their
sleep nearby. On the other side of the fire you can hear the four
Dwarves all awake, softly arguing in the Dwarven tongue. The mood is
tense and secretive.
Lowthesis decides to join the other Dwarves, not bothering to wake his human companions. This sounds like Dwarven business, after all. As he approaches he learns that Balin is eager to press on and search for the pony. They still have a mission to accomplish, after all, and he doesn't want to return to his king as a coward. Dwalin and Oin are both less sure of the wisdom of continuing onward, as they'd planned on having Gandalf's assistance and they've already encountered a Nazgul; who knows what other evil creatures lurk amongst these trees? Ori is quiet, and seemingly undecided. Lowthesis is eager to press on as well, not being one to back out of a challenge (Bold), and tries to Inspire the others. He convinces Ori that Balin's is the better course of action, and while Dwalin and Oin still have their doubts, they will accept the majority vote and follow their leader.
Mirkwood's Western Eaves
The argument resumes in the morning when Ranulf and Grimwine wake up. Grimwine is ready to go, but Ranulf voices his doubts and advocates strongly that they turn back. Lowthesis ends the discussion by reminding him that this has already been decided last night, and that he can go back by himself if he so desires. Ranulf grudgingly follows.
Ori and Grimwine scout out ahead to look for the pony. After following his tracks to a point where the stop, with signs of a scuffle, Grimwine determines that the pony was eaten and that they should turn back and tell the others. [LM note: the pony was captured, yes, but was still alive wrapped up in a web nearby. I never described any blood splatters or anything, and honestly I expected Grimwine to try a little harder. Oh well, that's just fewer supplies that they have now, and they're suffering more Fatigue because of it]. The remaining week in the western eaves of Mirkwood are relatively uneventful, though several ruins are discovered and explored. Low on water, the party is quite thrilled to discover and old well, though after lowering down a bucket it's obvious that something metallic is down there. Ranulf lowers himself down to investigate, and finds an old skeleton covered in spider webs. An elven dagger lies on the corpse's lap, with no webs around the dagger's perimeter. Ranulf finds that the dagger cuts webs like butter, and cuts off a broach with an unfamiliar family crest from the tattered remains of clothing. [LM note: There were some other goodies in this area, but nobody found them]. A larger ruin of a small village was discovered a few days later, and it appeared to be some kind of trade center based on the numbers of different coins present. Some representatives included old Elven and Dwarven coins, as well as unfamiliar old coins with Dalish runes, and coins with horses on them. More treasure points were acquired. The first treasure found was a chest located by Ranulf, though he couldn't unlock it and called Lowthesis in to assist him. Lowthesis easily opened the chest, but claimed all of the treasure inside for himself (earning a Shadow point since a cut of that loot was rightfully Ranulf's; he's definitely living up to his "Grasping" flaw). The final ruins encountered was the wall of a large waystation, and atop it was a large boulder carved in the likeness of the Eye of Sauron. Lowthesis and Grimwine devised a lever that they used to topple the abominable carving (incurring Shadow points for approaching it), and by doing so allowed everyone else to pass by without making Corruption tests. Lowthesis may be greedy, but that doesn't mean he can't also be heroic.
The Mountains of Mirkwood
The players seemed to go out of their way to surprise me here. As the elevation increased and the terrain became more rocky, the forest soon became dominated by dark, twisted fir trees. Early on this leg of the journey a gorge was encountered with a 40 foot span, and a raging river 200 ft. below. A ruined bridge crossed over the gorge along the road, but about halfway across a large chunk had fallen off so that by the far end it narrowed to only 3 feet wide. [LM note: I fully intended for the party to head upstream to find a way around this gorge]. Lowthesis wanted to make a rope bridge across the chasm, but it meant that someone had to cross on the bridge first (at least to test its stability). The Adventurous Ranulf volunteered, and roped off though he was it was obvious that the bridge was unstable, and an unsuccessful Stealth roll made it obvious that he wasn't able to cross it. Thinking he could do better, Grimwine roped himself up and got an extraordinary success on his Stealth roll (easily an AP thanks to his Bold trait). I had him get nearly to the end, and then said that the only way further was to attempt a jump to the other side; I was quite clear that this was a one-shot deal, that a great roll was needed, and that a failure would most likely result in death. [LM note: this is usually a good way of telling your players "I'm not going to stop you, but this isn't a very good idea.] I think he had to blow a point of hope, but he ended up passing the daunting difficulty and made it safely to the other side, collapsing the ruined section of the bridge in the process.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR DON'T LEAVE THE PATH!!!!
A few days after the incident at the bridge I had Balin go down to a stream to fetch water as the company was making camp. They all heard a "yelp!" and Ranulf and Grimwine rushed down to see what happened (one of the two, I think Grimwine, noticed that Balin had left his axe at camp). They found muddy Dwarf tracks followed by a set of spider tracks, both of which led to two trees with broken strands of webbing between them. Grimwine shouted for everyone to follow him, and he proceeded to track for several hours in the dark. Finally they came to a moonlit clearing, in the middle of which stood a ruined castle covered with spider webs. The defensive walls and outbuildings had long since crumbled to the ground, but a single tower still stood, as well as two sections of the keep's wall which formed an L-shape, above which was suspended a wriggling mass of webbing (Balin). Ranulf used his dagger to cut some webs off of the wall, noticing that the blade was glowing blue. When he climbed higher to continue cutting webs, he failed his roll and fell to the ground, sustaining some endurance damage and cracking a rib (failed protection test resulted in a wound). Grimwine tried next, but luck was against him and he too fell and was wounded. Ranulf then proceeded to tie a large knot in the end of his rope and toss it up the wall to stick onto the webbing. The impact caused the webs to vibrate, and Ranulf's dagger to glow brighter blue. First one spider jumped down amongst them, though it was easily dispatched by Grimwine in one hit. One of the players asked "do you think there'll be more of them?" to which Oin replied "there's always more." Using the general guidelines in Tales from Wilderland I had an increasing number of spiders appear each round, though in rounds 4 and 5 I substituted an attercop for a great spider. Several companions and Dwarves (I had each player running one of the Dwarves in combat) ended up ensnared by spider webs. My misinterpretation of the poisoning rules almost resulted in an insta-death for Grimwine, until I went back through the rules and realized that a player needs to roll an Eye to trigger a called shot (I had the called shot trigger off of the monster's Eye roll). The stalwart Beorning was still on the ground dying, even if he wasn't dead-dead, and Ori did get poisoned. Again this group demonstrated its reluctance to back down from a fight, so after both great spiders were killed (even despite Holding Spells on Grimwine, which was moot now, and Lowthesis) I had the remaining attercops flee. By the end of the fight 11 attercops and the 2 great spiders were dead, so I just had one of the survivors hiss "dinner isn't worth this!" Aside from opening volleys Ranulf didn't really get a single attack in, spending all of his actions to either cut allies loose from the webbing with his spiffy new dagger, or singing his battle chants to restore their endurance. The company quickly rescued Balin (and Ori, who had been dragged up the wall after succumbing to the poison's paralysis), constructed a quick stretcher for Grimwine, and then booked it out of there.
Two days after this a torrential thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere, and Ranulf after heading out to find shelter encountered a hollowed-out tree with a plume of smoke coming from it. He called everyone else there, and after squeezing inside it became obvious that someone was living in here. Grimwine took some pheasant meat (he'd bagged them the previous day) and started cooking it on the fire, and soon they heard a scratching outside and a head poked in. The hermit was extremely surprised, and couldn't be quelled by Ranulf's botched attempt to courteously calm him down (too bad the Tolerance was only 1 here). Refusing to listen to reason and shouting about how he wouldn't be taken back he started stabbing his spear at Grimwine. Grimwine was starting to grow extremely angry, but a lucky hit (coupled with Grimwine's extremely low Endurance) knocked him out. Lowthesis was the next target of the Hermit's ire, having previously tried to wrench the spear from his grasp, but it was ultimately Ranulf who was able to restrain him. The hermit flung insults at Lowthesis, betraying his contempt for Dwarves by comparing them with orcs (though my personal favorite improvised insult was "may your beard become infested with insects!"). Lowthesis tried to offer him some treasure in exchange for letting them stay here, but he shouted about how the Shadow lives in things and would consume them all. Finally the hermit was placated by a promise to leave his "house" if he didn't attack them when they untied him. Grimwine's player admitted that if he'd been conscious he would have killed the hermit, Shadow be damned.
The rain continued on for several days, and soon the company came upon a roaring stream, flooded by the recent downpours. Ranulf constructed a boat (Boating and Woodright), but as he came close to the water he began to feel drowsy as the spray hit his skin. The Dwarves warned the company to avoid the water, because they didn't want to carry anyone around like they had to for Bombur! After plans to swing Tarzan-style across with rope didn't pan out (partially due to the extreme reluctance of Lowthesis to attempt such an insane maneuver), Grimwine concentrated on felling trees to make a bridge across. He got some high enough to avoid the spray, but when Ranulf attempt the crossing he failed (despite help from a rope handrail), falling into the stream (as well as a deep, deep sleep). Ultimately Grimwine conceded to go along with the plan that Lowthesis had advocated all along; to simply wait until the water levels went down. After 4 days (2D6) they were able to boat across, and Ranulf woke up shortly afterwards.
The next few days were some of the worst of their entire journey. I didn't go into specific detail, instead simply reading this short description:
It's a dark section of the
wood surrounded by knife-edged rocky ridges. The talus from these
cliffs has carpeted the ground in razor-edged shards and gravel, and
a slight thinning of the tree canopy has encouraged the growth of
stiff shrubs covered in 3-inch thorns. The howling of wargs has
become a regular occurrence, and the occasional giant spiderweb or
troll track across the path has you on edge. Though you see no signs
of orcs, their refuse is everywhere. Everything from grotesque stone
carvings, to vast burnings and garbage piles, to the skeletons that
betray their propensity for conflict. From the rare trickle of a
stream you detect a faint tang of oil in the air. If the Forest Road
is ever to be re-claimed, it will take a great cleansing to restore
this section.
Nobody triggered any hazards so I simply left it at that, except for the 2 Fatigue tests at TN 20 and the 6 Corruption tests (only Ranulf passed some of these, and only 2). So now everyone is good and miserable (as they should be after trekking across the Mountains of Mirkwood). The players objected strongly to this many corruption tests, so I revealed that I was going easy on them, and that by the original (un-clarified) version of RAW (rules as written), a journey across Mirkwood would take 40 or 50 something corruption tests. The Shadow's been banished (for now), so while there are still some strongly blighted places in the forest I figured the Road is as safe as it'll ever be until after the end of the War of the Ring.
And this is where we left off for now. The company has made it through the worst of what Mirkwood has to offer, but the northeastern edge of the Heart of Mirkwood still remains, as well as the Long Marshes (where they're scheduled to meet Oin's nephew, Gimli).
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