Primal/Within: Showdown at the Castle of the Overmind, Part 2
See part 1 here.
These last 2 sessions were marked with strong, not so positive emotions on my part. At the end of session one, I couldn’t believe that we played so little (we started at 7h00-7h30 and ended at around 9h45). At the end of session two, I was downright angry (and vocally so) that we spent 4 hours doing only half of the fight that I had originally planned.
Today’s post will describe the GMing highlights of session one.
The Vault of the Drow
When the PCs entered the Drow castle (actually an ancient cathedral dedicated to an albino form of Lolth), I wanted to convey, to the more Story-oriented players, a sense of what happened when their PCs from our last D&D 3.5 campaign kicked Lolth out of this world 1000 years ago.
Homebrewed setting aside: Recent readers should know that we’re playing in the same game world since I created it when I was 13 for AD&D 1e and that we covered about 1100 years in 26 years of gaming, including a 1000 year jump last year when I nuked the world to make way to 4e’s new assumptions.
I also wanted to give the PCs the equivalent of an extended rest without borking the momentum of the story. So when the PCs examined the vault, I had Usul (Mike’s Invoker) tap into a large store of divine energy that apparently wasn’t tied to any divinity (it was cut off from Lolth). I explained that he could do wondrous things with the energy for the rest of the adventure (he had a stock of ‘energy points’), including granting everyone an extended rest, provided he rolled a successful religion check.
Of course, he missed that roll… but failure wasn’t an option (a very important question all DMs should ask themselves whenever they ask for a die roll) so I played my next card and Mouseguarded it…
Chatty: You succeed in channeling the energy but you open up a conduit to another plane.
Usul: Uh Oh…
Chatty: In your mind’s eye you see a scantily clad female elf sprawled on a spider-shaped throne. She looks up at you, saying ‘Now… What have we here?” You feel her will trying to grab onto you. You succeed in your task but you’ve opened up the world to the attention of Lolth once again.
Usul: Ah Great!
Terminology Aside: What did I mean by ‘Mouseguarded it”? In Luke Crane’s Mouseguard (based on the Burning Wheel game), a failed skill check doesn’t lead to a dead end but instead adds a complication or a condition to the PC attempting it. My friend Dave and I have started calling doing that in D&D “Mouseguarding”. I really need to write a post on that.
Head troubles and the Council of 3
I then asked where the players wanted to go in the Castle (I had a few “improvised” encounters planned) and they chose to go to the throne room. My game plan for this scene was to achieve 2 objectives:
- Have the PCs realize that the Mind Flayer was more of a victim of the Dungeon/Castle than a tyrant.
- Meet the Master and negotiate a 3 part Cease Fire/Alliance to destroy the dungeon
At the last minute I had an inspiration and, since this adventure was supposed to be improvisation friendly, I went with it.
I decided that the Mind Flayer’s head would be plugged into a Huge ‘Girl Genius‘ machine that would give the Overmind full control of the Flayer’s psychic abilities, turning the combination into some kind of Solo monster. Then as the PCs moved in the room and engaged in some Belligerent Pre-Martial Foreplay ™ I described how a portal opened letting a Shifter Lich in the throne room.
This was one of the campaign’s big reveals, way back when, my friend Eric made a Shifter Warden without ever creating a backstory, saying he was found in the Dungeon, stricken with amnesia. Since Eric has a strong psychodramatist streak, I created this mysterious link to a chessmaster villain called ‘The Master” who had developed ways to teleport at will within the dungeon. Combined with several weird deaths, the mystery of Fangs origin was an entertaining story.
The reveal was that Fangs was a clone (albeit a very powerful one) of the Master himself.
I ret-conned the Master’s arrival in my last post by saying that the portal originated within Fangs, killing him on the spot. This was because Eric, Fangs’ player, missed the last game, and the running joke is that his PC always dies when he’s not there.
Anyway, the party engaged the wired flayer while the Master went to fight the ‘add-ons’. The PCs alternatively attacked the body or the machinery. I decided to give the machinery the stats for a lvl 12 Solo monster, but I balked at the 750 hp the thing was supposed to have, fearing that it would make the fight way too long. As an attack, I had the thing blast all PCs on the map, every turn, with the flayer’s Mind Blast.
This rapidly drained the party HPs and forced them to become creative fast… except there wasn’t much to be creative about. This is often a problem with improvised games, the number of interactive elements in a combat are limited. As I sensed frustration/fear rising, I searched for a way out.
I started describing how the machine had all kinds of tubes and wires sticking out of it. When players started calling shots to the tubes and hit, I told them that some sections of the map could no longer be hit by the blast, giving wounded PCs a place to retreat to.
Then my buddy Math solved my ‘too many HP problem’ by using a Sorcerer power on the Flayer that teleported it away from the Throne… I ruled that this unplugged it from the machine, thus ending the fight.
A short roleplaying session followed where the players, acting as representatives of the City Within, brokered a peace agreement and even a military alliance to take out the Dungeon at it’s core as described in the last report.
The Players were then ready to walk to the Dungeon focus deep in the Castle/temple and face the Dungeon’s avatar awaiting them. Problem is, it was an epic fight… and it was 9h45. We had to stop because the fight would have lasted at least 2 hours (it actually lasted 4).
We had started really late (like 7h30 after eating dinner) so I was a bit miffed, but that’s how the dice roll when we’re adult gamers.
Up next: The 4 hour epic finale…
