Articles by Phil Menard
The Chatty DM is the "nom de plume" of gamer geek Philippe-Antoine Menard. He has been GMing various versions of D&D and other RPGs for nearly 30 years. A renowned RPG blogger, game designer and published author, he squats a corner of Critical Hits he affectionately calls "Musings of the Chatty DM." (Email Phil or follow him on Twitter.)
Random Thoughts Table: Sounds of Free D&D with new Tools!
Here’s a mix and match of some of the things lying here and there on my blogging desk.
Worlds of Sounds
Earlier this year, I got a complimentary set of 3 CDs from reader Giorgio Vezzini. Giorgio runs a studio in Italy called World of Twillights where he produced 4 CDs of sounds to use in your favorite tabletop Roleplaying games.
- World of Creatures: 19 short tracks of monster sounds from the Tarrasque to Giant Ape.
- World of Magic: 19 tracks of magical effects and incantation. The Evocation of Yog-Sothoth is particularly creepy.
- World of Ambiances: 19 tracks of sounds you are likely to hear in the background of a fantasy RPG scene, from city sounds to the nightly noises of the forest.
That last one is my favorite one, mainly because the tracks are long enough (a few minutes each) to be left playing in the background while playing out a scene. The sounds of the taverns and town square are great tracks to create immersion and I’d like to find a way to include this in my game.
The other CDs, being usually shorter tracks, would require more fiddling on my part, potentially creating dead air in the game. In fact, as I muse about using such tracks in a game, I’d likely put them in my iPod and play them as needed in the game. With a playlist of sounds arranged to fit with some of the scenes I plan in a game, that could work while limiting fiddling with a CD player or browsing 16 GB of files to find the right tracks.
Oh and each CD has a 20th track with music composed to fit with the CD’s theme. They are all very good.
So give them a look, Giorgio has a few samples available on his website.
D&D 4e Test Kit
I got an email yesterday informing me that Wizards of the Coast was releasing the Keep on the Shadowfell freely as a PDF along with the Quick Rules booklet that came with it.
Here’s the press release:
Today it’s even easier with the release of the 4E Test Drive, a collection of downloads that contains everything a gaming group needs to try out the D&D game for the first time, for free. The gaming kit, which is available on the Dungeons & Dragons Web site, comes with the following:
- The popular Keep on the Shadowfell adventure, revised with the latest rules and updated, action-packed encounters
- A set of pre-generated characters for quickly jumping into the game (or create your own character using the Character Builder, free for levels 1-3)
- A downloadable set of Quick Start rules
You can check it out for yourself by going to http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/dndtestdrive
All right, I know this news might be taken left or right by the various people debating Wizards recent business decisions or the relative financial health of D&D 4e, but here’s how I like to see it.
With the Quick Start rules, the Character Builder demo going from level 1-3 and Keep on the Shadowfell, D&D 4e now has a complete basic game that includes character generation. If you combine this with the 19$ Starter game, you now have a full roleplaying game that includes many monsters, dice, Tokens, tiles and and extra adventure.
It does imply that someone needs Internet access in order to get all this, but I suspect that Wizards’ target audience is the online 12 year old+ market that are well acquainted with the Web.
So I see this as good news.
An alternative to D&D insider?
My friend Yax of Dungeonmastering.com has been hard at work to create some D&D 4e tools that allow a DM to create monster cards, templates, encounter and trap cards (with Power and Magic Weapon cards in Beta).
It’s completely legal since the tools do not have any 4e information in them when you create an account, you still have to enter all the numbers of your favorite monster/trap etc. However what it does for you is create nice looking cards with the now familiar 4e formatting. You can print out these cards or export the code to either your Obsidian Portal campaign wiki (the Tools were created to be easily integrated in Obsidian’s structure) or any other website.
Of course, this service is not quite free. Yax calls it freemium, an expression I see cropping here and there in web-based businesses. Still, with the basic account, you’re allowed to create unlimited trap and power cards and you are limited to 10 monsters, 3 encounters and 10 magic items cards. That’s enough to decide if its worth the 7$ monthly (57$ yearly) fee.
So give it a try!
All right, tomorrow I’ll be posting the weekly update of the one-page Dungeon contest, in which Chgowiz and I will be answering 4 questions about the template in our own way.
Take care!
Primal/Within: Some Factions, Sectors and (one) Citizen
You might notice that my empty speech bubble in my blog’s header is no longer empty. Thanks to Eric Maziade, I now have a little plug-in that lets me write quotes!
This week is session #2 of my new campaign (if we don’t count the awesome prequel session in the Crypt of the Thief-Prince). My players should finish exploring the Font of Sorrows, so later this week I may post about how I’m revising all remaining encounters to avoid a repeat of last week’s grind.
Today I thought I’d share with you some of our Primal/Withing setting notes. Yan and I started a little Wiki and every so often we write snippets of setting background to add some more fluff on our campaign concept. I’ll give you some details about The City Within’s factions, boroughs and one NPC that have appeared in our game.
The Builders
To those uninterested in the City’s politics, The Builders ARE the City.
They are the main faction behind the city’s power.
Originally an industrious group of stone cutting and masonry clans (Referred to as the Erathians), they developed a strict devotion to Erathis, the Goddess of Civilization, following the realization of several divine prophecies. One such prophecy led the original clans to explore and reclaim large parts of the Primal Dungeon, along with the vast riches found within it.
Using their new found resources and influence in the nearby dwarven freeholds and mines, they set upon the task of bringing civilization to the dungeon by building a city within it.
Since then, The Builders have always pushed, politically and literally, the limits of The City Within.
Although originally a Dwarven clan, it has since integrated all kinds of like-minded individual from all of the natural world’s sentient races.
Design Notes:
I think that Yan wanted to have a faction around which most of the activity of the city (and possibly the campaign) revolved. He’ll likely chime in the comments of this post to expand on this or tell me how full of it I am.
I like this faction’s central role because they provides the campaign with a stable, friendly patron that PCs can always rely on for adventure hooks. I’m already having fun trying to poke holes in their sanctified status!
The Erathians
A grouping of various dwarven clans of crafters such as masons, stone cutters, jewel smiths and miners who were followers of the Erathian Prophecies.
Believed to be the true founders of The City Within, the Erathian are widely believed to be the predecessors of what is currently known as The Builders.
Design Notes:
When I was working on the Crypt of the Thief Prince, I started exploring the past history of the Builders and I wanted to have a proto-faction that predated the City. Tying together the concept of a divinely-inspired city, the prophecies of the Goddess Erathis and dipping in good old David Eddings Mythos, I came up with the Erathis.
The Foundation
Not much is known of The Foundation.
The average citizen of the City believes that The Foundation are remnants of the Erathians who didn’t join The Builders when the city was founded. It is said that they went on to become the secret guardians of the City as willed by Erathis.
That’s why several households have little shrines dedicated to what’s called Foundation Angels to preserve them against the inevitable decay caused by the Dungeon’s proximity.
There are recurrent rumors that the Foundation have complete copies of the Erathian Prophecies including chapters that go beyond the time of the city’s foundation.
Design Notes:
While working on Thief-Prince, I started brainstorming with Yan to find a shadowy but beneficial faction that would work behind the scene to protect the City, away from politics and laws. I suggested that his Deva character, Jaiel, be part of that organization.
As he was warming up to the idea, we started musing about the organization’s name. I started shooting many in a row, faster than Yan could comment back on them, until I stopped on “The Foundation”. The sheer number of meaning that ‘foundation’ could be used in the context of a City-based campaign blew us away and we both agreed to keep the name.
As Math mentioned after reading the Crypt-Prince reports, The Foundation may very well be our campaign’s Men in Black.
Builder’s Terrace
The largest Burg of The City Within, Builders Terrace is a multi-tiered section of the city occupying it’s Main Cavern.
Housing the keeps of many crafter’s clans associated with The Builders, the burg contains access to the City’s main Quarrys and Constructions yards.
Material is transported through Teleporting portals whose secret is jealously guarded by The Builders.
Designer Notes:
We don’t have a map of the city, and we’re not sure we’ll ever need one (except if I publish this thing) yet as I create adventures for the PCs, I get the need to define an area of the city where they meet NPCs. Builder’s terrace occupies, in my mind’s eye, the best real-estate of the City Within. A mix of marble manors, artisan studios and gigantic quarries and construction yards, Builder’s terrace is the City Within’s downtown.
Riceburg
Also known as Delve # 7, Riceburg is a an ancient mine shaft connected to various natural and dug out galleries lit into perpetual daylight by permanent magical globes suspended everywhere. The floor of these caves have been leveled, filled with earth and flooded to grow a various crops, including large quantities of a rice-analog grain which is easier to digest and tastes a lot better than the various fungi found in the underdark.
Riceburg is the wheat basket of the City Within, as Burgomaster Dawnchaser will remind anyone he talks to. The Sector also produces the usual fungi, ferns and fruits that makes up the vegetarian portion of the city’s Diet. A large part of the lower city’s water supply also enters the city in Riceburg and is stored in humongous Cisterns dug under the sector.
Designer Notes: One of the design assumption of our City Within was that the city needed to be believably self-sufficient. When I created the adventure hooks for the Font of Sorrows, I made up this burg to be the one suffering from the tainted water coming out of the Elemental water temple. I’m not sure if it will ever feature again, but I’m going to use the NPC that represents it again…
Kelian Dawnchaser
Human Burgomaster of Delve no.7 (AKA as Riceburg). In charge of overseeing food production and proper water supply for the fields of rice analog crops grown in the irrigated caves surrounding Delve #7. Gruff and always blowing things out of proportion, he never wastes an occasion to remind people how important the ‘Bread Basket of the City’ is to its overall survival.
Fluff quotes
- I tell you If we don’t something about (insert problem of the day), food prices will soar and the city will collapse upon itself!
- Mark my words, the city works only because we keep its belly full!
- I have cousins in the Builders I’ll have you know!
Designer Notes:
Ever since D&D 4e stopped caring about combat stats for non-belligerent NPCs, I’ve rediscovered the joy of creating NPCs. This one came out naturally as I envisioned a typical country mayor, clamoring for more attention and always bemoaning how no one cares about what his burg does for the City. I’m going to reuse this one for sure! I also like how fun it is to make little quotes to help me roleplay them.
There you have it, our first batch of setting material to back our current adventure. I plan use/create some more for our future adventures!
I hope you enjoy these little behind the scene tours of our current D&D campaign!
FLGS Chronicles: My Store's Fauna
What’s this? I’m not sure. I’m flirting with non- fiction. Don’t know what it will turn out into. I think that I’m slowly getting ready to write a novel.
Sometimes, before my Friday night games, I saunter on to my Favorite Local Gaming Store in the north end of Montreal and I sit down with my laptop and soak in all the nerd energy that surrounds this place.
Like many stores in these hard economic time, it is cluttered, dirty and in dire need of paint. It’s filled with obsolete games and spiffy Wizards of the Coast books and boxes on spiffier WotC racks.
Oh, and it contains way too many Games Workshop boxes.
The front half of the store is made up of gaming tables and mismatched chairs in various state of repair. The store’s manager and his employee are usually sitting there, painting Warhammer miniatures
When I’m there, I usually sit at one such table, my laptop open, connected to the store’s Wifi by the good graces of the Manager who enjoys having me around, kinda like a regular veteran sprinkling the endless nerd debates with nuggets of unsolicited wisdom.
Oddly enough, people usually listen to them. It must be my graying temples, I’m easily 10 years older than all other regulars (which brings the question, what the hell are you doing there Phil?).
Yet there’s something morbidly fascinating about the people here. I have many theories about the gamer mind and observing them (and myself) gives me more material to chew on.
The Staff
The manager, Didier is in his late 20s. He used to be the store’s only employee until he got ‘promoted’ when the last manager got fed up and left without saying goodbye. The poor guy is rapidly learning the harsh lessons that all fun vanishes when you get behind the counter of a game store.
Still, he forges on, trying to keep afloat a business whose existence is sadly threatened by web stores and online secondary markets like Ebay and Cardshark.
His only other employee, Marc, was most likely hired because he was willing to work at minimum wage and, more importantly, is the most socially adept of the store’s regulars. Marc’s an arts major and has the dubious honor of hosting the week’s Friday Night Magic the Gathering tournament where people use 100$ decks to win 2$ cards every week.
At least both guys are friendly and laid back. Having been a client of this store since it opened in the middle of the Pokemon craze a few years back, I’ve seen my shares of surly and sometimes downright hostile store managers.
I suspect that the gamers that form the fauna of this store is the same we find all over. Here’s a few of these odd birds.
The Off-Shift gamer
He’s overweight, he’s loud and he works dispatch for some sort of placement agency. He has weird hours so he spends most of his day in game stores, following the different leagues. Here, he plays Blood Bowl, but I’ve seen him playing Magic drafts and D&D minis at other places.
He spends all his money in the latest Collectible Game (right now its World of Warcraft minis) and he always fails to recoup his money, although he says he will someday. He’s a belligerent nerd, always raising his voice when someone takes too long to play or argues rules with him. Oh and he always, always complains. About his job, about his (lack of a) life and, of course, all games!
I tried to be friendly with him, and I actually got him into D&D miniatures a few years ago. He’s an okay guy, but his complete lack of social graces and inability to listen to another voice than his own has made him fade into the background noise of the store.
The One-track mind gamer
One Friday where I was off from work, I came into the store when it opened at 11h00 AM. I stayed there the whole afternoon, planning my evening D&D game and playing some pickup Magic the Gathering. All this time, there was this guy sitting besides the manager, talking about one thing and one thing only: House Rules about the store’s current Warhammer Fantasy campaign.
It was downright scary to see how much energy the guy poured into this. Had I written down all the proposed rules he wanted to implement, the store would have had a 50 page booklet of campaign rules by the time I left.
When I read about prophets in fantasy novels, I think of scribes sitting around such a guy, scribbling all the gibberish spewed by the illuminated soul whose mind is focused like a laser for hours on end.
Yeah, I’m sometimes like that too. Sigh.
History Majors:
I don’t know if it’s a Québec thing or if it’s because they have evening courses, but my gaming store is overflowing with History Majors. When they aren’t part of the staff, they sit around arguing about Hitler’s strategies or how Communism failed because it wasn’t properly implemented.
Always ready to launch into a diatribe about provincial roman governors or the factors leading to the Second World war, these gamers are often penniless and hang around the store instead of working on end of semester assignments. Most of them are great orators and some of the debates, while always overly simplistic to my jaded cynical mid-thirties ears, are great time wasters.
Pity only one out of 5 of them will ever actually land a job teaching history. I used to love history, and I probably would have majored in it if a High School director hadn’t told me to drop my History and Biology electives to pick Chemistry and Physics instead.
Life’s funny like that sometimes.
But you know what really strikes me about all these people lounging the hours away in a Montreal game store on a Friday afternoon?
Most of them aren’t actually gaming while being there!
They argue, they eat, they talk… but unless you take out a pack of Magic, they’ll sit there, more or less expecting someone to start something for them to join.
Is your gamestore like that?
The One-Page Dungeon contest: Update week 1
Last week, fellow blogger Chgowiz and I launched our most ambitious contest yet. We’re asking people from all over the hobby to submit a system-neutral dungeon whose map, key and any additional info fit one a one page-template.
While entering this contest requires a certain effort, the number of prizes we’ve got for it are tremendous. In fact we’ve got so many that we’ve bundled many of them!
Heck, we even got 3 new sponsors added since we launched:
Goblinoid Games – free PDFs of various Goblinoid Game products (makers of Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future)
AvatarArt - free portraits to the ‘Best of’ categories
NeonCon (Las Vegas) – free passes to 2009 Neoncon gaming convention
As of today, we only received 12 entries, which means the field is still wide open for your entry! We have many prize categories to cover the wide range of dungeons that we expect.
We’re not looking for works of art (although they can be). What we want is to see your best ideas for a dungeon adventure. It can be a classic gigantic old-school entry, a smaller 5-room type of dungeon or something completely out there.
As long as it fits on one page, we wanna see it!
You have until May 14th to send us your entry at onepage@chattydm.net.
Don’t wait, send us those dungeons!
Coming up next week, Chgowiz and I will be giving out hints and tips on how to use the template!
Contest Rules:
1. Participants create a one page dungeon using the template found here. For a contest entry example see here.
2. The dungeon must have the following features:
- Name of Dungeon
- Map
- Dungeon Key (in an edition-neutral form: Description of monsters, Treasure, Traps, etc… No game stats)
OPTIONAL (If you can fit them on one page…)
- Wandering Monster or Random Event tables or a list of scripted “events” that can occur over the adventure
- Background
- Additional descriptions that add to the dungeon, such as detailed description of trap or trick or unique feature.
3. Only one entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up till the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry. Entry may win grand prize or one of the runner up prizes, plus any number of alternative prize categories.
4. Participants are allowed to modify the template, provided it remains a one-page entry.
5. Submission must be emailed in PDF, Word or Open Office format at the following address: onepage@chattydm.net
6. Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Share-alike license (US 2008) with credit to the contest participant.
7. Contest closes on May 14th 2009 at Midnight.
The prizes (oh yes, the prizes!)
Grand Prize
- Patron membership of Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design
- Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s Dungeon a Day
- A full Licence for Smitework’s Fantasy Grounds II
- 1 year membership to Obsidian Portal
- 50$ Gift Certificate from One-Bookshelf
- 4 Badges to Neoncon 2009
Grand Prize Runner-Up: Old School Dungeon Design
- Bundle of Goblinoid Games product
- Bundle of Brave Halfling Production products
- Otherworld Miniatures Demon Idol Miniature
- Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues
- Bits of Darkness Bundle from Tabletop Adventures
- 6 month membership Obsidian Portal
- 2 Badges to Neoncon 2009
Grand Prize Runner-Up: New Edition Dungeon Design
- D&D 4e Dungeon Delve & Adventurer’s Vault
- Fantasy Grounds II License
- 6 month membership Obsidian Portal
- 2 Badges to Neoncon 2009
To divide among other Categories
- Open Design’s Kobold’s Guide to Game Design
- Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s Dungeon-a-Day
- Bundle of Necromancer Games products
- Bundle of Brave Halfling Production PDF products
- Bundle of Knockspell and City Encounter PDFs
- Bundle of Fight On Magazine (issues 1-4 PDFs)
- Tabletop Adventure’s Bits of Darkness Bundle
- Tabletop Adventures’ Deck O’Names Set
- A few D&D 4e Adventures and Hardcovers
- Otherworld Miniatures – Pig Faced Orcs (Or Box of Minis)
- Goodman Games – Random Esoteric Creature Generator
- Badges to Neoncon 2009
Our sponsors!
These prizes have been generously donated by our sponsors – they really are excited about this contest and we hope you are just as excited about their support. Please be sure to show them your support as well.
- Avatar Art
- Brave Halfling Publishings
- DungeonADay
- Fight On Magazine
- Goblinoid Games
- Goodman Games
- Mythmere Games
- Necromancer Games
- NeonCon
- Obsidian Portal
- Open Design
- Otherworld Miniatures
- Smiteworks
- Tabletop Adventure
If you have any questions about the contest, please feel free to contact either of us: Phil (Chattydm@chattydm.net) and/or Michael (chgowiz@gmail.com)
A Basic Goal of DMing?
Earlier this week, on his blog, Mike Mealrs posted this conversation starter:
The best thing a DM can do (thinking specifically of D&D here), is to do his best to push the party to absolute, utter defeat*, and then watch them try to wiggle their way out, with the party’s victory determined solely by their choices and abilities.
*With defeat defined by the campaign and the group’s play style. It could be death at the hands of a growling demon in the lowest level of a dungeon, or the evil archduke’s successful ascension to the empire’s throne.
Reading this, I couldn’t help thinking that this might be too much for my natural DMing style. Maybe it’s the way that Mike phrases it and maybe it’s my way of reading it, but pushing the party to absolute, utter defeat makes me think of dark, nearly hopeless causes. I don’t want a campaign to be bleak or have its overall goal being threthened every 2 weeks.
Then again, maybe Mike says that each challenges you throw to the PCs must be designed in such a way that can possibly bring PCs to be defeated unless they do more than just trust lucky dice rolls. That I can get behind of!
In my current model of campaign, given the diffuse threat that the Sentient Dungeon represents to the game world, utter defeat would mean that the whole party gets wiped out inside the Dungeon. So I need to concentrate my threats at the level of the PCs’ lives.
The thing is, I HATE killing PCs, and I know that other GMs feel like I do (except reader D_Luck, he’s ruthless!). So how can I reconcile my willingness to challenge the PCs to their limit while avoiding a high body count?
While thinking about this, I noticed a turn of phrase Mike used. He said ‘Push the party to absolute, utter defeat’ and not “Push the players…” this means that I should probably focus on creating encounters(combat and otherwise) that the party would have a hard time dealing with, without taking into account the skill with which the players will play the party.
That means that if, by good teamwork (i.e choices) and the use of the proper ability at the right time the players manage to systematically beat my encounters, I can say that my work was done.
In that sense, I will plan to focus on creating encounters using monsters of the PCs level (to keep the threat to defense ratio at a manageable level ). I aim to have battles last no more than one hour and will think about possible outs if the PCs have reached the point of inevitable victory or defeat.
That also means that while I will focus less on monsters that cause status effect( because they rob players of choices when abused),I can certainly afford to have monsters cooperate more with the use of flanking and Aiding one another.
For instance, I’ve seen many examples of Skirmishers and Minions setting up Brutes to deliver a powerful strike on PCs. I’ve also seen that I should make use of damaging terrain to chip at PCs (and monster) hit points faster and create a sense of urgency for PCs to finish the fight faster.
So while I agree that “driving the Party to defeat” is a good basic Goal for a DM, I don’t agree with the “utter” part.
Instead, I’d say:
The best thing a DM can do, is to do his best to apply constant pressure on the players to choose wisely, cooperate and use thier PC’s abilities in the most creative ways to overcome threats that could defeat them.
It basically says the same thing, but at least I feel more comfortable the goal when phrased like that.
Any thoughts?
Primal/Within Chronicles: The Font of Sorrow, Part 2
See part 1 here.
A Wet and Freezing Welcome
The PCs traveled through the Dungeon without any trouble and reached the door that the Elementalists had identified as being the way to the Water Temple. Indeed, a triple-wave design stood on the door and a rapid verification of it showed it to be arcane locked…
…which proved to be only a minor nuisance to Rocco the Rogue who unlocked it without breaking a sweat (DC 28 beaten by a 31 thievery roll).
As the door opened, a large quantity of water poured out into the Dungeon’s corridor, soaking everyone’s feet within seconds. Once the initial volume of water behind the door escaped, the debit slowed to a steady flow a few inches over floor level.
The PC entered into a large columned hall (I love columns, I really do, all my dungeons have plenty of them). The hall was decorated with faded mosaics of various water-related calamities (floods, whirlpools, tidal waves, etc). A large hole was dug out of one wall, piles of mud and rocks found near it. Two columns had been smashed and a large door had been busted open. [Read the rest of this article]
Sunday Contests
Just a quick note to tell you that my good friend Zach has a Contest going at RPGBlog2.
You just need to send him a list of your top 25 tabletop RPGs and you may win some very cool prizes. Today’s the last day to enter so have a look here.
Also don’t forget our own One-page Dungeon contest! It’s a little more work but there’s a ton of prizes to be won!
Have a great Sunday!
Primal/Within Chronicles: The Font of Sorrow, Part 1
This is a report of my newest D&D 4e campaign set in the home-brewed Primal Dungeon/City Within campaign.
I could see that my players were anticipating the game as emails about PC backstories multiplied like wildfire! All players showed up (s0me had to spend several brownie points to make it) and we got around to staring playing at around 6h30 PM last Friday night.
Before we get into the gist of things, here’s the party (all level 7 characters)
Dramatis Persona:
Jaiel : Female Deva Avenger. Divine Agent of the Patron goddess of the City, Erathis. Key player in fighting the Dungeon’s growth. Described here. Played by campaign co-designer Yan. (See image for a pretty accurate representation)
Usul: Elven Invoker. The direct instrument of Kord, god of Battle and Storms. Came to the City Within at the behest of the world’s gods. Also described here. Played by Mike.
Korg (name change pending): Dwarven Bear Shaman. Sent by the bear spirit of his Dwarven settlement to help save the World Serpent from being slain by the growth of both the Dungeon and the City. Also described here.
Rocco la Muerte: Halfling Rogue. Hero of the surface world. He was summoned by the Builders faction to help the city with his legendary skills of making problems vanish. Also, half-cousin of Corwin. The only original PC from the last 2 campaigns.
Corwin: Halfling Sorcerer of Chaos. Born in the village of Moon Vale, on the first day of the Year of the Moon. Corwin bears a shifting birthmark and has adventured all over the world. He has a knack to get himself and anyone near him into ‘interesting’ situations (in the Chinese Curse sense of the word). He found himself in the City after a disastrous foray in the dungeon. Jaiel has taken him under his wing, much to his delight… “The tall chick? Yeah, she’s with me.” Played by Math.
Fangs: Longtooth Shifter Warden. Fangs was found unconscious and dying in the Dungeon. He was brought to the City Within, not remembering anything of his past. He teamed up with Jaiel who swore to him that he had an important role to play in saving the World. Played by Eric who was short of ideas for his character. Amnesia is always a useful character trope.
Once again, no humans in the party and almost everyone with a Players Handbook 2 character (showing how ‘early adopters’ or “WotC whales” were are as a gamer demographic).
They call him Mr. Rice.
We kept the intro to the City Within limited. Most of the players had played or read the prequel game and were sufficiently acquainted with the concept to go along with a pair of somewhat raildoady quests.
I explained to the players that a Burgomaster of one of the Lower boroughs of the City had pulled several favours to get a party of Builder-certified adventurers to meet with him and help him with a problem.
Before we played that scene, I told Math that when Corwin was going to met up with Jaiel, he was nearly run over by a panicked wizard who dropped a scroll.
Math “Dude, what the hell’s a land shark?”
Yan : “Something big and mean!”
We then proceeded to the scene with Kelian Dawnchaser, Burgomaster of The City’s Lower Delve #7, more colloquially known as Riceburg. Kelian was this big albino human (most humans in The City Within are Albinos, go figure) who sported a thick mane of long braided hair and beard… dyed jet black!!!
Kelian is that kind of suburban politician that’s harping all the time about how unfair the central powers are and how his borough never gets the attention or resources it requires and Blah, blah, blah…
Long story short, Kelian asked to meet with the PCs because he thinks that someone or something is poisoning the his borough’s water supply (which represents a third of the city’s freshwater). He showed how his rice crop was starting to mutate and mentioned that the number of sick children and elderly was on the rise.
Following some questions and answers, the party learned that a single river came into Riceburg and that 3 Dam-Fortresses were set up further upstream to monitor water quality to prevent dungeon denizens from trying to get to the water supply.
They also learned that several dungeon tunnels opened into either side of the River’s cave, all of them barred with magical gates.
Kelian asked the players to find the source of whatever was mutating the rice crop and making his people sick. He didn’t miss an occasion to remind just how crucial his burg’s food production was to the survival of the whole city.
Up the creek with plenty of paddles
The PCs then set out with a barge and several empty vials and started the journey upriver, taking samples every so often to bring back to the City for magical and analytical analysis. It’s interesting to mention that the players naturally suggested to go check the river, th whole investigation phase of the adventure felt really natural to me, which is usually a good sign.
When they got to the 1st Dam, they met with a lazy, fat functionary that dismissed any claims that the water was tainted. Of course, the PCs became somewhat belligerent and the incompetent monitor sheepishly revealed that the Control Orb, the magical device monitoring the water’s quality, had been non-functioning for some time and he hadn’t gotten around to changing it yet.
The PCs understandably blew a collective gasket and had the imbecile change the device, which promptly started glowing red, indicating some form of taint in the water.
The PCs then continued upriver and soon found a tunnel from which water was spewing into the river. According to the info they had gathered, this waterfall was new and probably the source of the tainted water. They took a sample, returned to the Dam and poured some on the ‘detector’. It glowed red all right!
The returned to the City and gave the sample to Kelian.
The Elementalists
Soon after dropping the samples, I had a group of Wizards (not the adventuring type, more the College of Magic type) come to the PCs, inquiring about the water they brought back. They told the PC that the water was Primal Water, coming straight from the plane of Elemental Chaos. They were sure that the water came from a abandoned Water temple very near where the PCs spotted the waterfall. They had found the temple long ago but none of them were ever able to breach its sealed door.
They asked the PC to try to enter that temple and recover any information about its history and any trace of ancient elemental rituals. Finding the way to stopping the water that was pouring out of it would likely require exploring the temple.
They gave the party a map to reach the temple somewhere in the dungeon.
And so our heroes set fourth for thier second foray into the Dungeon.
Up next: Those damn Mist Wraiths!
Image: Julia Strzyga
Chatty's megadungeon: Meet Spurt and his Wayward Master!
Tonight is the first official session of our Primal/Within campaign.
Set in the Font of Sorrows, our adventurers will have to trace the source of something contaminating part of the City Within’s water supply.
I’ve said it a few times, I enjoy a bit of silliness in my games. So while I was writing the adventures’ quest I got this bit:
The Panicked Wizard:
A Wizard runs up the street and bumps in Corwin (Halfling Chaos Sorcerer PC, the group’s weirdness magnet), all wild eyed and stuttering. He looks the PC over and screams desperately ‘You can’t help me!!!! I’m doomed!” .
He runs away, dropping a badly stained scroll.
The scroll shows repeated attempts to explain how a gentle, inoffensive “experiment” of his broke out of his laboratory in the the lower Delves at the edge of the lower City.
“It’s a completely domesticated Land Shark that responds to the name of Spurt. Last seen in the dungeon about 5 km from Riceburg’s lower Fungus Caverns. Please capture and return to me”
There you have it, insta-quest!
As for Spurt? Here it is in all its glory!
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| HP 408; Bloodied 204 | ||||||
| AC 27; Fortitude 26, Reflex 21, Will 21 | ||||||
| Speed 8, burrow 8 | ||||||
| Action Points 2 | ||||||
| M Bite (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| Before it bites, the silvered bulette can make a standing long jump (as a free action) without provoking opportunity attacks; +14 vs Armor Class; 2d6+7 damage, or 4d6+7 damage against a prone target. | ||||||
| m Frenzied Chomping (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| The Silvered Bulette makes two claw attacks , +13 vs Armor Class; 2d6+7 damage, or 4d6+7 damage against a prone target. | ||||||
| c Rising Burst (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| Close burst 2; the silvered bulette sprays rock and dirt into the air when it rises out of the ground; +13 vs Armor Class; 1d6+7 damage. | ||||||
| c Breath Weapon (Standard; recharge 56) ? Thunder | ||||||
| Close blast 5; +10 vs Reflex; 4d6+6 thunder damage, and the target is dazed (save ends). | ||||||
| m Earth Furrow (Move; at-will) | ||||||
| The silvered bulette moves up to its burrow speed just below the surface of the ground, avoiding opportunity attacks as it passes underneath other creatures squares. As it burrows beneath the space of a Medium or smaller creature on the ground, the silvered bulette makes an attack against the creature: +8 vs. Fortitude; on a hit, the target is knocked prone. | ||||||
| Ground Eruption | ||||||
| The squares into which a silvered bulette surfaces and the squares it leaves when it burrows underground become difficult terrain. | ||||||
| Hasted Second Wind (Minor; encounter) | ||||||
| The Silvered bulette spends a healing surge and regains 70 hit points. The bulette gains a +2 bonus to all defenses until the start of its next turn. | ||||||
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| Skills Athletics +16, Endurance +15 | ||||||
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Spurt is an Arcane enhanced Bulette, covered in silver runes. It was ‘awoken’ by the Dungeon who pushed it to escape and led it to the abandoned Font of Sorrows. There, it “met” some of the guardians and reactivated the Font… the water of the font is what’s tainting the City’s water supply.
And that’s only one of the Surprises I have in store for my players.
Stay tuned for the game report!
Credits : Matt Cavotta (Wizards of the Coast) for image. Dave Chalker for the Silver Bullet pun.
