Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 4
See part 3 here.
Oh noes! Failure!
After recovering the key part from the Merchant “Prince” the players consulted the Map.
Math: All right, the next closest thing is the Vats, let’s go!
Eric: No, let’s do the Vats last, we’ll be able to bust them after and then go do Rocco, Franky and Mike’s goals while the whole place burns down.
Yan: Whoa, When did you become a Brilliant Planner?
This game session went from surprise to discovery for me. Players were obviously ‘in the zone’ to a point I hadn’t seen in a long time. Of course, they had near full control of their PC’s destinies and could make significant choices that drove the game. All doubts I had about the Mouse Guard method evaporated at that point.
Once the players arrived near the entrance of the Re-Education camps, I described how it was enclosed behind stonewalls with only one apparent access point, heavily guarded by Foulspawns. The players discussed for a few minutes and agreed to the following plan: The PCs would investigate the surrounding neighborhood to try to find the best possible way of entering the compound undetected.
Chatty: All right then, I’ll call this a Streetwise check DC 30, representing you gathering the intel and trying to infiltrate the compound the best way you can.
The party failed the roll by a few points (finally!). Looking at the time (it was about 9h30 PM) and gauging the energy level (still high), I decided on the following.
“Okay, based on the best tip you could get, you decide to infiltrate the sewers. Unfortunately, you entered at the wrong time and were caught by a patrol of the Overmind’s Amphibious thrall: a pair of Chuuls! Now here’s a battlemap of the sewers. You start here (pointing), the monsters are here and here (putting minis on map). Your objective is NOT to fight the monsters, but to exit the map here (point opposite exit), although killing the monsters is fine too.
The PCs made their way toward the exit but were unable to dodge the patrol and eventually killed them off. During the combat, one player pointed at an enclosed space near the edge of the map, asking what it was and jesting that I was probably hiding monsters in there.
Say Yes? Sure!..
Since the PCs were nearing the last stretch of the fight, I fished out a bag filled with my little ‘zombies’ (from the Zombies board game, awful game, great minis) and I dropped 6 of them on the map.
Chatty: You see corpses rise out of the Sewage or ‘unstick’ themselves from the walls
Franky: Oh, like in Pirates of the Carabean scene on the boat!
Chatty: Exactly! Also, like Davey Jones, you notice that the heads on the corpses are kinda squidy, like a Mind-Flayers’ They all shuffle toward you.
Group: WTF?
The party engaged them too. Then Nanoc the barbarian killed one with one hit (Yay, minions!)
Chatty: As the zombie-like creature falls down, the squid-like head detaches itself, showing a long, phlegmy proboscis being retracted from the corpse’s mouth.
Yan: Ewww
Chatty: But that’s not all… the squid-thing launches toward your face (clatter clatter) and hits you, giving you the full Alien Spa treatment.
Yan: Wah?
Chatty (Noticing a joke that my assistant DM John had written in the stats): But after probing your brain for a few short seconds, it snorts in frustration, falls off your face and starts running away. It seems your wisdom and Intelligence scores are too low to properly feed it.
Yan: Hey, I’m actually insulted by that!
Har har har!
The fight was eventually won by the PCs (thanks to a great maneuver from the Invoker, who fried all Squids whenever they attacked). Fangs, whose brain was tastier than Nanoc’s, even got some private face sucking time with the squid-things (modeled after Half-Life’s Headcrabs), failing a save and getting close to complete domination.
The party then made their way deeper in the sewer, ready to enter the Re-education camps.
Roll credits to an awesome session.
Lessons Learned
- This session was the culmination of my efforts to develop into a better improv DM. Having Encounters and battlemap ready helped a lot. I’ll do this again for sure.
- When a crazy idea seem like it may work, go for it and try it… just prepare the floor first.
- It’s not a lesson anymore, but more of a mantra: Always find a way to Say Yes.
- Giving players control of the goals of an adventure, within the frame of the DM’s Main Quest allows players to more easily achieve setting immersion.
Post Script: Two-hit minions? Tell me more!
(Bonus feature!)
A few weeks ago, while playing a Barbarian in Yan’s game (which I never got to write about, sorry man, great game!) he introduced us to a new type of monster he called ‘two-hits minions’.
Basically, it’s a monster that gets bloodied on the first hit and dies on the second (or dies when hit by a critical hit) regardless of the amount of damage done. This allowed Yan to mobilize monsters that were credible threats (they still rolled for damage) but that didn’t need any special book keeping except tracking their bloodied status.
It worked real well.
So well in fact that I ended up adapting his concept and serving it back to him. So here’s the creation that my assistant DM Johenius and I came up with. It worked brilliantly!
Presenting the 2-stage minion:
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| HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion. | ||||||
| AC 25; Fortitude 26, Reflex 22, Will 22 | ||||||
| Resist Psychic 10 | ||||||
| Speed 8, Climb 4 | ||||||
| M Slam (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| +16 vs. AC; 7 damage. | ||||||
| R Launch Debris (Standard; recharge 56) | ||||||
| Ranged 10/20; +16 vs. AC; 5 damage | ||||||
| Time for a new Host | ||||||
| When the HeadSquid Zombie is reduced to 0 hp, replace it with a HeadSquid. It acts immediately. | ||||||
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| Skills Endurance +15 | ||||||
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and
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| HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion. | ||||||
| AC 25; Fortitude 20, Reflex 26, Will 22 | ||||||
| Resist Psychic 10 | ||||||
| Speed 4 | ||||||
| M Shin Slam (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| +13 vs. AC; 5 damage | ||||||
| m A Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong (Standard; at-will) | ||||||
| The HeadSquid shifts up to 5 squares and makes an attack: +15 vs Reflex; 7 damage, target is dazed and blind (Save ends both)
First Failed save: Target is immobilized and blind (Save ends both) Second failed save: Target is dominated (until headsquid is killed), at the end of the Encounter if target is still dominated, it turns into a HeadSquid Zombie Special: Any damage done to the target is also dealt to the HeadSquid. |
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Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 2
See part 1 here.
Burning Dungeon & Wheel Dragons
As Wednesday night was ticking by, a dangerous new idea about the way to run a D&D adventure came up…
You see, like many gamers unused to indie RPG designs, I read Mouse Guard with voracity but finished it with the feeling that while I had likely touched game design genius, I had absolutely no idea how to run the damn thing. (I’m exaggerating… somewhat).
The one part about Mouse Guard that really blew my mind was the way adventures were designed (I assume that this also applies, by extension, to Burning Wheel, which is the engine MG is based on). A 4 hour Mouse Guard adventure fits on 1 sheet of paper. The trick to that is that each adventure has a mission and the players are required to come up with personal goals that will, at least tangentially, move the story toward achieving the mission.
Play is achieved by setting out a simple scene where some sort of skill/ability roll is called for to allow PCs to achieve their goals. On a success, the scene moves to the next one but on a failure, the GM is free to add a complication to make the scene ‘more interesting’ or give the PCs a success but impose a negative condition on one or more PCs (Tired, Sick, Injured, Angry, etc).
There’s more to Mouse Guard than that, but these ‘Goal driven scenes’ and ‘Failure = complication’ concepts lit up a fire in my usually dormant Game Designer boiler…
There’s a method to my madness, behold!
What if… I was to replace minor quests with PC-specific goals that are chosen by the players at the start of an adventure?
Thus, each player would chose a goal that is related to the major quest (the game’s mission), either to help achieving it, to explore the adventure’s story in more detail or to help develop a character’s backstory more?
Now instead of having City of the Overmind be a site-based or event-based adventure (both requiring me to create scenes), why not have a goals-driven adventure based on a mission and the city’s map I drew?
I would asks players what goals they wish to work on first, then I would assign a complexity for attaining these goals. Each goal would set the basis for a freeform skill challenge. Each success that need to be rolled becomes a mini-scene to play out with the PCs, including player and DM narratives.
In other words, in a scene, players would describe what they do to progress toward their goals and I would do my usual job of bringing the scene to life. Then a skill check would be rolled based on what feels most natural for all. On a success: we describe the success and move forward to next sub-scene (or attain the goal).
But here is where it gets real interesting. On a failure, I would introduce a complication. For example, I could say that the PCs were spotted by the Overmind’s goons and I could either create a Chase skill challenge, or chose from my Depth of Madness encounters that are already prepped and make a fight.
In that sense, I would stop using the 3 strikes mechanic of skill challenges. If players fail their rolls, they get more/harder challenges to deal with. If they overcome the complication/challenge, they get to move to the next scene, regardless of the number of failed skill rolls.
Of course, I would award treasures based on the completion of goals…
It worked wonderfully on paper. I could sense deep in my guts that I was on the verge of a breakthrough in terms of adventure design, minor quests and skill challenge mechanics.
I just needed to validate this feeling in the arena of Actual Play…
Info dump Warning! The Warden Priest’s Tower
I knew I could not send my players blind into such a new way of playing. I needed to immerse them rapidly in the setting and give them all the info they needed so they could take the reins of the adventure from my hands and go.
Not being one to let much to chance, I had prepared the floor and built in some contingencies. First, I told Yan about my plan for the game. Not the content, but the whole Goal-to-Skill-Challenge to Failure to Complication thing. I wanted to know if he “got” what I wanted to do or if the whole thing was just my creative madness drowning common sense.
After wrapping his mind around the concept, he got it all right. I knew that I could trust him to act as a ‘change agent’ in the group later when I made the pitch. Just in case, I also had a contingency should players feel too uncomfortable with the change or were too tired to understand all my excited gibberish.
The first scene had several goals:
- Introduce the new setting through vivid descriptions
- Give the PCs a nearby ally and a home base so they could anchor themselves in an otherwise hostile environment.
- Share the city’s map with the players to help them plan
- Give them the adventure’s 2 missions
- Find a way to enter the Overmind’s Castle
- (Optional) Recover the 4 parts of the Overmind’s key and find out what it can be used for.
I described the city (imagine a ruined Erelhei-Cinlu, plus add a huge portal to the Far Realm and a dozen of floating, insubstantial Lovecraftian horrors ‘haunting’ the city’s roof) , the story of their Warden Cleric ally, his cult infiltrating the whole city and the political situation of the city. Once I was done, I explained my new approach to the game and asked them for the goals.
With gentle nudges from Yan and myself, they eventually formed a set of 6 goals that were… just plain awesome:
- Math (Corwin Sorceror of Chaos): I’m going to go and get the 4 parts of the key. It’s too crazy, it just might work!
- Yan (Nanoc, Barbarian): I’m going to investigate the city to find the probable locations of the key parts.
- Stef (Rocco, Rogue): I’m going to break the Overmind’s hold on the city’s citizen and end this fascist regime!
- Eric (Fangs, Shifter): I will destroy the city’s Vats and put a stop to the Overmind’s mutations of hapless monsters
- Franky (Dworkin, Shaman): I will bind a nature Spirit near the destroyed Vats to prevent the Overmind from reclaiming them and help protect the citizens.
- Mike (Usul, Invoker): I will bring the Gods’ influences (and Kord’s in particular) back to this city after the Overmind’s control is broken.
Chatty: So Mike, what you’re saying is that you want the citizen to be freed of the control of the Overmind… so they can become followers of the Gods?
Mike (showing a pained look): Essentially…. yes (smirking).
Chatty: Excellent!
I really didn’t expect as much. What I absolutely loved about those goals was that they came from the players, they weren’t scenes that I implanted in their minds, the train track had ended some time ago and this was all virgin territory for everyone at the table.
Those goals were beacons telling me what each player wanted to do in the game! All I did was connect a few goals (thanks to the 5X5 method) by putting a few coincidences here and there. For example, I put one key part in the Vats.
What was really funny is that Yan noticed me doing that and mimicked someone knotting some ropes together, but I think that this is a crucial part of the model as it allows goals to be tackled together and creates a more cohesive adventure.
So we set out to play this game out… I really was curious to see how it would play out.
Up next: So Chatty, are you ever going to tell us if your method works or not?
Image Credit: Archaia Studios
Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 1
After a few months of rest our heroes are called to save citizens of the City Within from the monstrous tentacles of a clutch of aberrant creatures. Following clues left behind by the monsters and the ever elusive ‘Master’, the party prepares to use thier recently acquired teleportation lore to follow the monsters to their source deep in the Dungeon and destroy one of the it’s most critical Nexus.
This series of game report will be different. I usually tell you the story of the game, peppered with my DMing calls and challenges. This time, I ended up using such a radically different structure for the adventure that I will summarize the whole story first and then tell you how I built/ran the session.
The City of the Overmind, Session 1 Redux
The PCs teleported on top of as ruined tower overlooking an eerie ruined city of the underdark. Far from being deserted, the whole city was under the control of a totalitarian and extremely insane Mind Flayer known as The Overmind. The PCs found an ally from the City Within and learned that the Dungeon’s nearest Nexus was likely found in the Castle of the Overmind. In its craziness, the mindflayer distributed 4 pieces of a magical key that could supposedly open the way to the castle and the Nexus. The party’s ally had one such key.
After some planning, the party decided upon an elaborate plan to retrieve the keys, disrupt the influence of the Overmind over the city, establish new Divine and Spirit foci to ‘convert’ the City, and sabotage some installations to create a diversion to facilitate entry into the Castle.
The heroes initiated the plan and obtained the likely locations of the other 3 keys from an ally hiding out in the city’s Slave Pens. They tracked one in the Market Quarter and forcefully obtained it from a reclusive and germophobe Cambion merchant.
They then set out to get the second key from the Overmind’s Re-education camps by infiltrating them from the Sewers. However our heroes got caught by a patrol of Overmind servants in the sewers. They dispatched the patrol but met with strange parasitic critters that tried to eat their brains trough their faces!
That’s the session’s story in a nutshell. Of particular interest is the ‘Elaborate Plan’ part of the story because this whole thing up there was driven by the players themselves… I didn’t prepare any of those scenes except the first one.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me rewind to the week before the game…
When Necessity and Creativity Collide
As I started planning for the game, I knew that I wanted to have the players invade the Primal Dungeon and dispatch one of the Nexus. In fact, I told the players that our next ‘Season’ of D&D would be about busting 5 or 6 of the Dungeon’s most important points of control in order to cut off all the denizens from their master and plan the obliteration of the imprisoned Primordial when they reached Epic levels.
I wanted the next adventure to have a theme about the Far Realm (D&D’s equivalent of Lovecraft’s R’yleh) and aberrant creatures. As I brainstormed, I had the idea of a monstrous city, built on the ruins of an abandoned Drow city (the Drow were severely shafted when I destroyed my campaign world at the end of my 2007-2008 season in order to reboot it for 4e).
I also doodled the city and placed various elements in it. I had an old temple to Lolth taken over by the City’s leader, a Mind-Flayer. Then I imagined that the city would be ruled like a fascist state, banners everywhere (using a symbol the PCs would recognize), crowds listening to speeches, Foulspawns acting like Secret Police, thugs and enforcers, monsters being kidnapped to be conscripted into the Dungeon’s armies, forced into slavery, brainwashed into joining the street enforcers….. or worse… Sent to the Vats for reconstruction…
I rapidly realized that I didn’t have an adventure in front of me, but a whole other chapter of the Primal/Within campaign setting.
Of course, time was slipping by, it was Wednesday night and I had no story yet. I quickly created an entry scene for the adventure. The PCs would teleport at the top of a ruined tower overlooking the city (setting my players up for description of the city in all it’s glory and the opened portal to the Far Realm sitting on top of the Overmind’s castle). The tower would be held by a City Within knight who lost all his comrades in a disastrous raid. The knight converted to a Warden and Cleric of both the Great Kodiak Spirit (to link him to Franky’s PC) and the trapped goddess of Civilization.
I then imagined that the Knight had created a secret society of converted monsters that spread out in the city, trying to subvert the Overmind’s influence…
Then I stopped myself. I now had a novel, not a game, there was nothing for the PCs to do other than ‘Go in Castle and bust the Mind Flayer’s face’.
I was getting desperate, I needed a plot and I wanted to avoid the ‘first idea syndrome’!
First Idea Syndrome: When you need to come up with a solution to a problem and you are pressed for time, the first idea that’s proposed will be taken as the best idea, regardless of its actual worth. I’ll write about this more in a future post.
I already had a Dungeon magazine adventure called ‘Depth of Madness’ that featured a full dungeon filled with aberrant. My first idea had been to take it as is. but there was way too many fights and not enough story for me. Yet, with game day coming fast, it was getting more and more tempting to run it as is.
Then my eyes fell on my copy of the Mouse Guard RPG and a second, far more dangerous idea formed:
What if I took Mouse Guard’s task resolution structure where failures lead to Plot twists or complication and transplanted it to my D&D game to drive the plot?
What if I let my players create the scenes through thier play?
Up next: From crazy idea to actual play.
Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 4
This series has been a play by play report of my first Sword and Wizardry (A retroclone of the 1st, 1974 version of D&D) game. I used Chgowiz’s Quick Start rules and starting adventure that you can find here.
You can find part 3 here.
You Dum Dum! Me Stony!
Hired by the cowardly goblin tribe to investigate the nearby Hall of Statues, the PCs arrived at the entrance of a large chamber filled with statues of humans and other humanoids. All were sculpted as being armed and armored like adventurers. As the party surveyed the room, something a bit like what follows occurred:
Statue # 3: Avast adventurers, be forewarned that trespassing this holy sanctuary will spell your DOOM!
Statue # 5: Good one Pete! Your best performance yet!
Statue #3: You think so? I really felt it!
Party: Wha?
DM Aside: I’ve a silly streak a mile long and when I can’t divine the reason of an encounter, I go for entertainment over internal consistency. From my readings about the way Gary Gygax DMed, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t above doing stuff like that either.
From the way the statues interacted with each other and with the PCs, it seemed that they were ex-adventurers, cursed into talking statues.
Orvat (Fighter) predictably used his grappling hook to try to grab a statue.
Chatty: Huh, sure roll an attack roll vs AC 15.
Franky: (Clatter clatter) Yes!
Chatty: The hook grabs statue #3. It goes ‘Hey!’
Franky: I try to pull it down from it’s pedestal.
Chatty: Sure, gimme a STR check (Roll less than your STR on a d20)
Franky: Yes! I make it!
Chatty: The statue falls down flat on it’s face, protesting vehemently!
Franky: Can I drag it toward us? (Other PCs join him to help)
Chatty: Sure! Roll… (They make it)
Statue #3 : Why you… garble… garble… (sound drowned by statue’s face scrapping the floor, to general hilarity).
This was one of the high points of the day. Having all the players explode in laughter while I described the scene was pure DM motivational gold.
Interacting with the statue some more revealed that they were enchanted to emulate ancient adventurers and that there was no actual curse in the room (I made all this up, like many other things in the adventure so far).
At this point, the room’s description mentioned that one statue had a hidden panel, without saying which one. In classic D&D fashion, I rolled for it… and came up with the Statue that was dragged out.
Chatty: Checking the statue, you find a panel on its lower back.
Statue #3: Hey! Lay off my posterior you Caitiff!!
Franky: For real? Awesome!
Treasure! (A few gems)
Plus,behind the statue’s original position was a door leading southwards.
Ewwww, pass!
The room behind the displaced statue lead to a ruined room filled with trash and whose walls were cribbed with holes. As soon as the PCs opened the door, a large number of Giant Rats lifted their heads from the refuse and ran away into the holes of the wall, evil red eyes peering out from the darkness.
The room’s only other exit was chewed and clawed extensively.
Vince: I say we back off!
The PCs wisely closed the door and moved on.
My! What big antennas you got there!
What followed was the explorations of a series of rooms in the area near the goblins (who, behind the scenes, were working up their courage to ambush the now significantly richer PCs).
In one room, some roots had pushed out of the ceiling, collapsing some of the masonry. When a Orvat announced that his PC chopped one, I described how bright red blood gushed onto the rooms’ floor (again, all made up).
The look of revulsion on the players as their PCs quickly exited the room was priceless.
Another room opened up on a car-sized Warrior Ant looking for food.
Initiative was rolled, the party won…
…and the door was closed and barred real quick!
I love that about classic D&D. Players gauging threats based on looks and potential gains. This is so cool… and since making dungeon rooms is so fast, the DM can enjoy seeing PCs dodge an encounter… it’s not like 3 hours were invested in it’s preparation.
End Game
Chatty: What the hell? Have we been playing this for four hours already? Whoa!
At this point in the evening, the PCs had scored a few hundred gold pieces worth of treasure. Some had taken a few points of damage but nothing serious. While the energy level was still really high (an excellent sign) , I wanted to point out something to the player.
Chatty: You know, you can return to the village with the loot you already have and return later.
Franky (or PM, I forget): We’re good, let’s do one last area, the one near the portcullis to the south of the entrance.
Dun Dun Duuuun.
Foreshadowing anyone?
So the PCs discovered the mechanism activating the portcullis. As they played with it, they started noticing goblins, armed with bows now, skulking near them. The players could feel that something was building up all around them.
Still they forged on…
They found their first locked door.
Vince: It’s locked, so I guess there’s a keyhole (I hesitated, but I said ‘yes’). Okay, then Ubvid looks through it.
Chatty (An evil idea light turning on): You see… a goblin’s face leering back! It jabs a 15 inch needle through the lock trying to pop your eyeball! (Say yes and stick it to them once in a while!)
Vince: What?! I dodge!
Chatty:We’ll see (rolls dice, hits by a few points only). It hits you, but you dodged away some to save your eye, you take 2 poins of damage and you’ll get a cool looking scar!
Vince: Arghhhh, I get out of there!
So the PCs tackled the door down and entered some sort of shrine to the Frog God and occupied by some skeleton, a pair of goblins and a female cleric. Before they could do anything in the room, a pit trap opened underneath the last 2 PCs: Ubvid (Elf fighter) and Aniamo (Dwarf Fighter), stranding Mufti (cleric) and Orvat. On top of the damage from falling, a sleep gas knocked them out, making them look like dead.
Faced with so many foes, some very existential questioning was being done by the remaining Cleric and Figther.
Initiative was rolled and the players won it. Mufti the cleric turned the skeletons…
Chatty: Hey PM, what gods do you revere?
PM: Hmmmm. Given my actions so far, I’d say the Frog God.
Chatty: Splendid! The other cleric offers to ally with you, provided that your companion forfeits all his belongings and that you burn the hearts of your other two comrades to old Frogface.
PM: Hmmmm (thinks long and hard).
Anne: Now I get why you offered us to leave the dungeon before!
Franky: Screw that! I’m running! How large is the pit?
Chatty: It’s 10′ by 10′, not easy to jump. I’d say 1 in 6 chances.
Franky (used to 4e’s feats of athletics and, more importantly, fearing for the life of his PC) : Come on man!
Chatty (channeling his past classic D&D skills): Look man, 10′ is basically from here in the dining room to the Fridge in the kitchen over there. It’s your call.
Franky: Let’s do this. (Rolls a one!) YES!
Chatty: Ortec sprints, jumps toward the middle point of the right wall and Jackie Chans it by using it to rebound to the other side of the pit! You make it!
Franky: I get the hell out of here!!!
Chatty: I’ll be right back with you. PM what does Mufti do?
PM: I accept.
So the cleric readied her sacrificial gear. PM told me that Mufti was watching her intently. Spotting that PM was planning a double cross, I rolled a 2 in 6 chance of her spotting it. She did! So she immediately instructed him to climb down the pit to retrieve the sleeping PCs for the sacrifices.
Chatty: So?
PM: I climb down the pit and start rummaging through their gear.
Chatty: You hear a click, a hiss and you feel sleepy. The last sound you hear is the laughter of the other Cleric.
PM: Ah crap!
Escape!
What followed was a 10 minute scene where Franky ran, backtracked and dodged the whole goblin tribe who were tracking him to kill him (Franky’s PC had most, if not all of the group’s treasure).
Franky is a brilliant player, especially when he’s under pressure. At one point, he was chased by 2 goblins and he used the teleporter to lose them. He jumped over the teleporter tile and ducked in a side corridor. The gobbos hit the tile and appeared 30 feet away… still giving chase to a non-existant Orvat.
In each room entered, I rolled to how many goblins there were (1d6-2 iirc) and Franky was able to make it out alive, with a few nicks and scratches.
As he ran away, I described how each of his former mates were being sacrificed to the Frog God… Such is the fate of foolhardy adventurers.
That’s how you do it. Old School!
The players loved their session, and so did I. We agreed to try it again sometime. I’ll order the S&W book from Lulu and I’m considering starting a monthly campaign to see if the game will remain fun over a longer period of time, once the (re)discovery phase passes.
Lessons Learned
- While the ‘Say Yes’ philosophy applies to all RPGs, it is an absolute necessity to make S&W a fun game. In the absence of rules, skills and formal task resolution mechanics, saying Yes and giving a fair chance of success to players is a must for them to enjoy the true potential of S&W.
- S&W caters to a different sets of player/DM motivation than D&D 4e. To an instigator/Explorer/Butt Kicking/Storytelling (placed in order of preference) DM like I am, I find that I can enjoy both S&W and 4e and I will continue to do so. (Take that Edition War!)
- You can generate a LOT of fun with very little written description and ‘props’. Letting the players do the heavy lifting is really easy with classic D&D. Grappling hook FTW!
- It’s refreshing to play lightning fast combat. Especially to resolve the old Guardian vs Invader combat scenario.
So yes, Chatty DM, the mono-gamist New School blogger has gone full circle and reconnected with what brought him into the hobby the first place. 4e and S&W are the 2 best Role Playing Games I’ve played to date (with 3e a close 3rd and BESM 4th).
I hope you enjoyed these posts, I sure had a blast writing them.
Enjoy your long weekend. Up next is my 4e game report, which just might bring a revolution to the way I used to play D&D.
Image Copyrights: Wizards of the Coast 2009.
Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 3
This is part 3 of my retelling of last weekend’s Sword and Wizardry Quick-Start game we played at our monthly Geekout. Part 2 can be found here.
Skellies!
After jamming open the portcullis in the room to the north, the PCs advanced to another room filled with 6 animated (and armed) skeletons! As soon as the PCs approached the room, the skellies charged!
Now without a battlemap, we started using sheets of paper to represent both rooms and the passage between. PCs moved in a 3X1 formation, blocking the entry of skellies in their room. Once again, a classic Old School moment occurred when Orvat (Fighter) realized that you could hit monsters from the behind the cover of a dwarf!
The Skeletons were dispatched in less than 5 minutes (both real time and game time). The room had a strange shape so the PCs started exploring the nooks and crannies. Thanks to the sharp eyes of the Elf and the Dwarf, a secret door was found!
DM aside: For those saying there is no skill system in Classic D&D, there is an embryonic one: almost everything can be accomplished if you roll at least a 1 on a d6, some races have bonuses for specific conditions. So everyone has at least a base chance of 1/6 of performing anything, I call this a skill system 
Bamf! Hey what happened?
So the secret door opened on a looooong corridor leading eastwards. It turned northwards into a teleporter trap. Nothing big, the teleporter shifted the party about 40-50 feet further down the corridor, messing with mapping a bit. I had fun describing the layout of the area toVince, only to tell him he must have gotten my instructions wrong and telling him to redraw.
That was enough for the party to investigate and they discovered the teleporter trick and managed to step in between both teleporter spaces… only to find nothing of interest.
That knwoledge became real important in the end game later…
DM Aside: Had I read the adventure before, I would have shifted the PCs further away, missing the next room in the corridor immediately, giving the PCs a little exploration reward for finding the teleporter’s trick.
Hey who broke wind?
The next room they visited was a tricked room. It appeared to contain a vast treasure but entering in it triggered a magical wind that shut the door and sent PCs with low strength scores flying on the room’s walls. Fortunately, Orvat was the one to open the door and he resisted the wind’s effect. While all light sources of the party were once again snuffed out, Orvat managed to fight the wind and make it to the middle of the room. The hoard had disappeared but a chest filled with Lycantrophe fighting treasures (Silver jewelry, Silver Weapons, Wolfsbane, etc) was found.
I guess that being at the right place at the right time is all part of the S&W experience.
Gobbos!
The party made it’s way westward and discovered an empty room with a descending staircase.
Chatty: In the classic game, each level had an average difficulty. The deeper one went, the harder the challenges in them were.
Anne: Then I say we stay on this level!
Chatty (Seeing that there was no level 2 in the adventure): Good call!
The PCs took a south exit, working their way back toward the exit. They opened a door to a roomful of goblins (8) who all drew their sword. The party won initiative and the PCs rapidly spread lantern oil (D&D’s Napalm since 1974) on the spaces in front of them.
Rolling ‘intelligence roll from each goblins, 2 managed to run on the oil. One fell and skidded into a wall. The other stayed steady on the oil and attacked. On the next round, the PCs lit the puddles of oil and the goblin was gently roasted. Then Orvat used the Grappling hook trick (again!) and dragged a goblin into the fire, cooking it too.
That was enough, all remaining goblins grabbed their bags of gold and fled westward, leaving an easy to follow trail of spilled gold pieces.
That was a cool fight. Like PM said in his post, the lack of skills in classic D&D is made up by the MacGuyver-esque hardware that dungeon Crawling PCs have. This is giving me ideas for other games!
So the PCs gave pursuit.
Dr Shaman!
The PCs chased the goblins up to another room filled with more goblins and a shaman, the tribes’ leader. Faced with 12 angry and scared goblins, the party opted for a time honored, and somewhat lost art of D&D.
Parley!
Aniamo (Dwarven Fighter), the party’s only goblish speaker discussed with the shaman. The Goblin tribe was in the dungeon to raid it for gold and were all scared of the nearby western room filled with evil talking magical statues. The Shaman was ready to not attack if PCs could investigate room for them. The party seemed willing but I (and therefore the Goblin) could see that they were scheming for some sort of large payment.
That’s when the Shaman cast Charm Person on the dwarf, and she missed her saving through.
Goblin: I give you 40 gp, good price!
Aniamo: Of course my good friend, consider it done. (To party:) Okay guys we’re going to help these goblins, let’s go!
Rest of party: We’re what now?
Aniamo: No time to talk! Go!
Ahhhhh, good old Charm Person.
And so our heroes approached the hall of talking statues…
Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 2
This is a retelling of my recent Sword & Wizardry during a day of gaming with my friends. See part 1 here.
Descent into the Depths of Level 1
As we set up for the game, we took a bunch of Hero Clix minis to act as our miniatures to represent marching order and determine relative position of PCs during combat.
I also opened a brand new Graph paper notebook I bought at the local supermarket and gave it to Vince.
Vince: What’s that for? I need to keep a diary or something?
Chatty: No, you are now the group’s cartographer. Try not to fall in a pit of flame. Now you start climbing down a 20×20 circular staircase that opens into….
Boy is describing a room’s dimension hard when you lost the touch. It’s an exercise in clear communication to get the cartographer to represent semi-faithfully the dungeon room the party is in. I also had to refrain from grabbing the map and do it myself many times.
The first room was shaped like a pillared chapel hall. Where the altar would be, stood a gigantic bestial statue holding a large Bronze bowl instead. The bowl was filled with fire burning without any noticeable fuel. The room had 3 exits.
Being visceral D&D players, they started sifting through the rooms looking for traps. Orvat (Franky’s Fighter) used his grappling hook to check the floor for traps (He would throw his hook forward and real it in repeatedly).
Classic!The game was already a success in my mind.
After rapidly rolling a bunch of dice for nothing and telling them there were no traps on the pillars, a few PCs started investigating the bowl. At a certain point, they attempted to shift the massive bowl in the statue’s hands (Rolling Str checks, d20, play under ability).
Of course, the gaming notes had nothing to say about this, but in my perception of classic D&D, PC effort must be answered with a proper reaction from the DM. (That’s actually the core lesson I got from Reading Tracy and Curtis Hickman’s XDM book)
ChattyDM: Okay, so as you shift the bowl a few degrees counter clockwise. Suddenly the flame goes out! And so does all your torches and lanterns!
Ah yes! Harmless but unnerving… had the adventure come with a random encounter table, I’d have played one right there!
After light was restored, the PCs shifted the Bowl back, re-lighting it, and walked to the eastern door.
One up? No, one down!
Always remembering what light source was used around the map maker (something I had to get used to doing again after 20 years) the players checked the door for traps. When satisfied (or convinced that spending more time on it was useless), Orvat opened the door. The room was filled with cobwebs and featured a crumpled skeleton and a dessicated corpse.
Using is trustworthy grappling hook shtick, Orvat managed to grab both bodies and drag them out without disturbing the Giant Spider resting over the door (I ruled that it would pounce on a 1-2 on a d6, the core mechanic of S&W). In fact, with that technique, Orvat scored the room’s only treasure, a measly 6 gp from a leather pouch.
Great fishing Franky!
After that Orvat stepped in the room, only to be surprised by the pouncing spider. After missing him (because of his Ring Mail), the Spider kept the initiative and made a beeline for the second player in the marching order…
Anne: Guys, I think it wasn’t wise to place the 1 hp Elf in second place.
Vince: No S#17!
The spider bit, dealt exactly 1 hp and injected it’s weak poison, which promptly killed poor Ortec.
Woot, 1st PC death within 30 minutes of playing, I’m good at this old school D&D!
The Spider was rapidly dispatched with a good swipe of an axe. Mufti, great charitable cleric soul that he was, promptly took all of Ortec’s possessions under the cover of his religious duties to the dead.
DM Note: I have it on pretty good authority that the #1 source of loot for level 1 PCs is what they can grab when a fellow PC bites the dust. This is so classically cool.
Length of combat? 5 minutes, number of deaths? 2.
Upon further exploration of the room, I described a moving cocoon stuck near the ceiling. Once the players took it down, nearly skewering it first for safety, the players opened it to reveal a groggy Elf (Fighter mode) named Ubvid.
Chatty: That’s Vince’s new character by the way.
Party: That was fast…
Yup, Vince was back in the game with a new PC before they were ready to leave the room. That counts for a lot in a fast and furious RPG like S&W seems to support.
Spiky Portcullis
So the PCs then ventured South, where they entered a room whose only other exit was blocked by a portcullis.
DM note: As I mentioned before, I was running this adventure blind, reading each room as the PCs entered them. I even made jokes that the room was loading whenever I stopped the adventure to catch up. Fortunately every description was short. In this particular case, I described the Map’s feature before reading the text. In the room, the portcullis is a trap sprung when the PCs went deeper in the dungeon. Instead of doing a retcon, I went with it, assuming that another dungeon denizen triggered the trap before.
The PCs pooled their resources together and 3 of them lifted the portcullis (40 STR points needed) while the 4th one Spiked it open.
Ahhh! Iron Spikes, what can’t they do?
The PCs continued southwards…
(Sorry to keep those short and sweet, I’m prepping my Friday game at the same time, I hope you enjoy them!)
Image Credits: Wizard of the Coast
Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 1
I started playing D&D with the 1st edition of AD&D way back in the first half of the 80s. I didn’t read English very well (and neither did my friends), so we ended up doing what pretty much everyone else were doing with the game: use the rules we understood and ignored/made up the rest.
I eventually grew dissatisfied with D&D as a whole and I moved on to a certain Generic RPG during the 90s, only to return enthusiastically to D&D 3e in 2001. The rest is known history. However, during my 3e period, I got my hands on a copy of the original ‘White Box’ D&D game circa 1974. Excited, and feeling nostalgic, I wanted to have a one shot game with my gaming group so I set out to read the rules…
…only to quit in disgust 10 minutes later, reminding myself that old stuff is often not as good as nostalgia paints it.
I’ve then abandoned my idea of playing Original D&D. When the Retro-Clones came out, I was happy that the Open Game License could bring this to be, but I didn’t explore, remembering my bad experience and focusing on my game of choice.
Fast forward to last spring. While getting ready for Gen Con, Chgowiz said, in half-jest, that he’ll play in one of my 4e games and if I played in his Sword & Wizardy game. S&W is a retroclone of the 1974 D&D rules. As you may know, I loved that game session! I downloaded the game since and found that having re-written everything based on the OGL clears up many of the warts that bothered me about the game.
So when my friend PM organized one of our Geekouts (an all-day, game, food, movie fest) last Saturday, I decided to bring both the Dominion board game and the Quick Start rules of S&W. I hadn’t read the rules much (a quick skim) and I noticed that there was a started adventure, so I thought we might play it if the opportunity presented itself.
Over lunch after our Dominion game, I pitched my friends PM, Vince, Franky and Anne (Franky’s gf) to give S&W a try. Interestingly enough, everyone but PM had played older editions of the game before, so they were all willing to give the game a try. They all agreed!
Roll up the Rim to Win! (Canadian readers get that reference)
Once back at PM’s, I gave each player a set of polyhedral dice and a Character Sheet and they all rolled up PCs the old way, 3d6 in order. With bonus and penalties being, at worst, +/- 1, the numbers really didn’t mean much in that version of the game… until AD&D came and changed all that.
So here’s what everyone rolled:
- PM rolled Mufki, a Human Cleric (Undisclosed deity)
- Vince rolled Ortec, an Elf and he picked Magic User as his class for the adventure, oh and he had only 1 hp.
- Franky rolled Orvat, a Human Fighter
- Anne rolled Aniamo, a Dwarf (Fighter)
Everyone picked gear, including lots of torches, lanterns, 10-foot poles and a grappling hook attached to 50′ of rope.
30 minutes, and we were ready to go!
Onwards to the Old School!
There was no way I wanted to start the adventure with a tavern scene. So after reading the 3 proposed hooks I went into DM mode.
“You are all adventurers, not by trade for there’s no such thing. Rather you are adventurers by default because you have needs, pressing needs that can’t be met rapidly enough with a craft or trade. You like money and you don’t like to work or risk getting imprisoned for it. So exploring ruins for long lost treasure (and relieving your falling comrades of their un-needed worldly possessions) is your chosen path.”
“You all made your way to the town of Akban. The town is not known for anything but rumours talk of treasures to be found in a recently uncovered entrance to the Underworld near the town. There may have been rumours of increased Goblin raids but you are uninterested in heroics, at least not unless there’s fame and fortune to become one.”
“You noticed each other in town, shopping for adventuring supplies and drinking in the same watering holes. so you decided to band up to increase your chances to survive, you’ll work out how split the loot when, and if, you come out…”
And so the adventure started…
Notebook Campaing: Super Nico vs the 3 Hungry Goblins
Earlier this year, I went to the movie theater with my son and we ended up playing a little of D&D with made up rules. You can see the game here, including the now legendary Troll who can’t build a bridge encounter.
When I came back from Gen Con a few days ago, I told my children that a lot of people who made the games daddy played knew about the story games we played over the last year.
Rory: Do they know about Carthain’s powers of multiplying herself?
Nico: And that you shoot fire from your fingers!
Chatty: Yes, and they really know about your adventures Nico, especially the story where you helped a Troll who had to build a bridge.
Nico: Hey! I remember that game, it’s the one in your blue notebook! Can we play again soon so you can start telling stories about us again?
Chatty: I’d like that…
Last weekend, Nico and I set out to go and watch the latest Robert Rodriguez movie: “Shorts”. The Movie theater has quite a few arcade games and Nico likes to play a few of them before or after the movie. So I asked him: “Do you want to go early and play with the arcade games or do we go a bit later and continue our story game in my Notebook?”
Nico: Story game!
So we made it to the cinema, got our popcorn and bucket-sized drinks and sat in the mostly empty theater. I reopened my notebook and recapped the situation.
Chatty: So you’re Super Nico, adventurer extraordinaire. You live in the village drawn here, you purchased all your things in the shop here (review of Inventory) and you entered the Dungeon here.
Nico (pointing the map): That’s where the Troll is. He lets me pass now!
Yes. Here was a fork in the corridor and you used your metal detector to find where there was more treasure and you chose left, where you came to a barred corridor filled with doors on each side and ending with a wall.
Oh, that’s here that I’ve fought a Goblin and I used my crossbow to bounce the door and have it push the keys to me!
Wow, you have a great memory! That’s exactly it. And now you have 2 choices. First, you found that the last door to your right opens up into a corridor that goes deeper in the mountain (drawn by Nico after the last game). Secondly, you discover that the goblins have dug a small tunnel underneath the bed of the room where the goblin who attacked you burst out of. What do you do?
I follow the goblin tunnel.
It’s very tight, you’ll have to crawl. And it’s very dark.
Okay, then I keep my axe and my lantern in each hands and I crawl through the space.
You make it into a large mostly empty cave. The first thing you see is a large Cauldron sitting on a fire and 3 goblins arguing around it. When they see you, the one on your right takes out a shortsword, the one on your left takes out a spear and the last one, across the Cauldron from you, readies a bow. What do you do?
Hmmm. Can I take my magic axe to throw it at the Sword goblin, rebound it off the wall and hit the bow goblin?
Sure, let’s play it Rock-Paper-Scissors (Nico lost), awww, well the goblins capture you! Your stuff is piled nearby but you have your arms and legs attached to a spear and you are lying on the floor. The goblins are slicing vegetables into the cauldron and adding more wood to make the fire hotter.
Hmmm… if only I had a knife hidden on me.
Sorry, your inventory says that you had no knife. However, a spear is actually like a knife attached to a long pole and the blade is just over your head.
Ohhhh… can I slice the ropes on it?
You betcha!
I do it!
Okay, so you silently slice the ropes around your wrists and free them. Your legs are still attached to the spear though.
Okay, so I slowly crawl to my pile of equipment and recover my shield.
Okay, you got it, what now, they haven’t noticed you yet.
I want to throw the spear to hit 2 goblins and I want to throw my shield on another one to cut his head off.
Ohhh, your shield is not quite like Captain America, but close enough that you could stun the goblin. Let’s play for it…
(Breaking narrative) At that point I realized that the yes/no approach to rock/paper/scissors didn’t serve the purpose of the story at all. So taking a page out of Mouse Guard, I decided that a failure would rather make things more interesting instead of leading to downright failure.
Chatty (After Nico lost another contest): You throw your spear and it catches both goblins by their cloaks and sticks them on the wall. However you don’t get the time to throw your shield as you trip because of your bound legs. The other goblin has drawn his sword and charges you!
Nico: I protect myself with my shield and I get my axe out.
The sword gobling tackles you but your shield saves you! The other two goblins are freeing themselves, you gotta act fast!
I cut legs free and I attack sword goblin with my magic Axe! (He wins the contest)
The sword goblin falls dead, the other two are freed!
I throw my axe at one and I charge into the second one with my shield! (Wins contest, twice)
Great, one goblin falls dead with an axe protruding from his forehead and another has had his faced smashed in by a large piece of flat metal.
Yay! I take their stuff!
(He learns fast) Okay so you get 21 pieces of silver from their pockets, a sword, a bow and a spear.
I go back in town, sell everything except the sword (that he kept)!
Okay, well you make 6 pieces of gold all in all, a good first day in the dungeon if you ask me…
And then the movie started.
Nico really likes this type of game, but I see in him a tendency to want more complexities in his games, so I’m thinking of upgrading the game to something like Sword&Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. While he’s old enough to tackle D&D 4e, I want to focus the game on exploration more than fighting, and I don’t want Nico to focus his attention on 4e’s combat crunch quite yet.
Yes, I could play 4e with little or no combat, but I want to explore how he perceives the games I played when I was near his age.
Knowing my son, he’ll ask you if you enjoyed his stories and will want to play another one soon. As usual, I’ll share your comments with him.
Primal/Within Chronicles: Say it with Tentacles, Part 1
If you are entirely new to my game posts, hi! Thanks for stopping by. Have a look here to retrace what happened up to now.
Scare us Ô Dungeonmaster
It will have been our shortest Summer break ever.
After having skipped one game while I was gone camping with my lovely wife and kids, I told my players that I would be ready to play upon my return from Gen Con 2009. Of course I had absolutely nothing prepared for that game except the campaign plan I had drawn up earlier this summer, which is to send the PCs on a hunt deep within the Primal Dungeon to take out the 5 High Nexus, the virtual sensory organs of the Primordial trapped in the middle of the Dungeon.
However, my players helped out by giving me some ideas.
Math: “I read your last email about what you planned for us in the game and I was totally picturing what happened in the Mines of Moria in the LotRs movie.
Chatty(Thinking of the Diablo III demo): Yeah, I guess I could work something out along those lines.
Math: In fact, I’d like you to scare us, give us a sense of doom that we haven’t had since we started playing 4e.
Chatty (Thinking fast…): Hmmm, yeah, I’ll see what I can cook up by Friday.
Scaring PCs is hard, especially in a game whose default assumption is that PCs are all fearless baddasses who kill level-adequate dragons without staying bloodied more than 6 seconds.
But then I remembered a lesson whose origin I forgot about: “Don’t try to scare the PCs, go for the players!”
A plan was shaping up…
Laying the groundworks for the season
I got to the game and distributed the slew of Gen Con gifts I brought everyone, from autographed novels by Margaret Weis, to Q-workshop dice sets to a set of magnetic area effect templates, I think everyone was happy.
When we got ready to start, we introduced Yan’s new PC. Having found none of the Avenger Paragon path fitting his PC’s story concept, Yan asked me if he could play a Barbarian instead. It bears mentioning that a few weeks ago, I played a Barbarian in Yan’s game and we were both astounded by the damage output of that Primal Striker!
Anyway, we started the game with Franky’s dwarven Shaman Dworkin, initiating a group of young apprentice in front of the Focus of Primal Power the PCs bound to the city a few sessions back. I described how the focus flared when Dworkin and the apprentice were concentrating on it. The Focus exploded in light and flame and a humanoid with bear-like features stepped out, covered in blood and in some form of frenzy.
The newly transported stranger was soon calmed and shifted back into a half-orc. Dworkin then learned that the stranger was called Nanoc (yeah, real original no?) and that he had been, until a few minutes ago, a slave in one of the Drow gladiator pens of the Dungeon. He told Dworkin that after leading a slave revolt that turned sour, he was beckoned by the Great Bear Spirit to follow one of the fabled Spirit Paths… that path led him here.
Franky was of course delighted that Yan and I used setting elements that he created/shaped to create a relationship between Dworkin and Nanoc (I’m going to choke on that name until Yan changes it I swear!) Then again, he also wanted to know what happened to Jaiel…
We said that with the opening of the Foundation’s Inner Sanctum, she rejoined the Dwarven Lich and spends all her time interpreting the Prophecy.
Right after that, I told Eric (Fangs: Shifter Warden) and Math ( Corwin: Halfling Sorcerer) that they had a very similar dream. I explained that both of them were standing in front of a basin and mirror, washing their faces. When they were done drying their faces, both saw something different.
Fangs saw his reflection as a Half-Elven man sneering at him. Slowly that face withered and dried, like it aged and died near instantly. At the end, a shriveled face leered at him, laughing.
When Corwin removed the towel from his face, he heard a wet ripping sound and he saw his own face grinning back at him from the cloth he used to dry his face! When he looked up in the mirror he saw a disgusting rictus of muscle and blood stare back at him…
Knock, Knock, tentacle call!
So with these niceties done with, I explained that shortly after the dreams, the PCs were sought ought by various officers of the Sunless Knights, asking for their help. By that token, we established once and for all that the PCs were by far the most powerful people of the City, with the possible exception of the heads of a few City Factions. In essence, the PCs were now the De-Facto superheroes of the City Within.
The Knights informed the PCs that a group of very powerful creatures had taken attacked a small neighborhood and were killing and eating the surviving residents. The Knights had managed to contain them but could not go in losing all members within seconds.
So the PCs approached the area where the monsters were: various buildings whose rooftops were connected with planks. They say a pair of blind lizards perched on the roofs, throwing bursts of sounds every few seconds, destroying buildings and damaging some of the nearby Sunless Knights barricades.
As they approached, unseen by the aberrant lizards, they heard a sickening tearing sound and blood gushing up over the rooftop.
Chatty: Okay boys, roll initiative…
Tales of the City Within, Session 3: The Final Chapter
Disclamer: I take several narrative liberties in my game reports. While I write what actually happens, I often adapt dialog elements or change some details to make for a better narrative… also, beer tends to fog things up a little.
Keeping up Appearances
This session was to be the last of our gaming ‘season’. This time we had 2 missing players, both Math (Sorcerer) and Stef (Rogue) couldn’t make it so I invited my good friend Eric Maziade. I’ll call him Maze from now on to differentiate him from the other Eric who’s playing the Shifter Warden.
Mike:”Dude, with one of your readers actually with us tonight, we have to perform!”
Franky: “That’s just way too much pressure!”
ChattyDM “You know we could really freak him out if we all sat at the table and started praying in silence before the game starts.”
Mike: “And then you could ask us if there was something particularly painful we wanted to share with the group in order to loosen up our roleplaying muscles!”
Yeah… we chickened out and just made sure that Maze felt welcome in the group. Within minutes he was relaxed, drinking beer and making smartypants comments. By the time we started rolling dice, he was one of the boys.
Dragon-Spirit Curse Challenge!
Maze brought a Gnome Bard named Kellen to the adventure. In order to integrate him to the game as rapidly as possible, we had worked out that one of his cousins was trapped in a ruined temple where a Deathpriest of Orcus had just turned an Adamantine Dragon into a Draconic Zombie.
So our heroes, along with a concerned-looking Gnome from the Oscaliath faction (Entertainers and Artists) charged into an abandoned temple dedicated to Tiamat and Bahamut (I used the Dragon Temple Battlemap from the Second edition of the D&D miniature game).
The PCs were facing a Winged Putrescence, 2 Zombie Myrmidons and a Deathpriest of Orcus. As soon as the fight started, I told Usul (Mike’s elven Invoker) that he felt something trying to get free from within the Dragon. I asked him to roll a religion check as a minor action.
Franky: Ahhh, here’s your Skill Challenge , you know the one you didn’t want to have last game?
Mike: Shut up! I wanna know what it’s about. (Rolls dice, aces the DC)
Usul felt the spirit of the Dragon intertwined with his god’s Curse and when he touched it he understood his god’s ‘youthful mistake’. As Usul touched the Curse, I described to him how Kord had cursed one of the Dragon Generals of the Astral Armies at the end of the wars that opposed the Gods and the Primordials at the dawn of time. “You shall hunger for something that is alien to you. You shall find it near my sister’s prison and will be cursed to hunt it for eternity until you learn your lesson”.
As the Skill Challenge progressed the PCs learned that the Dragon’s had long been dead and the magic of the Curse, combined with the dauntless spirit of the Dragon always brought it back whenever the Nexus departed. Kord’s ‘mistake’ had been to be too obtuse about what the Dragon was hungering for and as it died and kept returning, it stopped trying to work out the riddle and kept eating everything it could find.
When the Skill challenge was won (a simple 4/3 one), the Spirit bound to the last PC who succeeded. Once bound, the Spirit-Curse ‘got’ what Kord wanted it to do: “Fight on behalf of Erathis and the City she had built to guard/fight the Primordial”, thus it offered to help the PC.
On their turn, a PC could use the Spirit as a minor action to obtain a small bonus like a few temp HP, or a +1 to any die-roll. However, if the PC was willing to feed his own life-force (spend a healing surge) to the Spirit-Curse, the PC could re-obtain a spent encounter power or heal by spending another healing surge.
Oh yeahm there was a fight going on at the same time.
What, you’re saying I’m not talking about the fight? You’re right, it was a complete victory for the PCs. Everyone did their thing admirably. The Warden charged the Deathpriest and Zombies and held them there, helped with the Shaman’s Spirit Companion. The Avenger fought the Zombie Dragon, helped with the Invoker who rained radiant death on everyone and the Shaman’s second Spirit Companion.
Oh and the Bard had this disgusting level 9 power that created a sustainable, movable Burst 3 zone of attack! Yikes.
Once players realized that radiant damage dazed the Dragon, it spent the rest of the fight as such…
After the fight the PCs recuperated the Relic (I told the Players that it was only dangerous to them if they became dying near it) and Usul communed with his god for guidance (I hand waived the need for a ritual).
My pal the Storm god
After preying for some moment, Usul found himself walking beside his god.
Kord: “You did good, son!”
Usul Now what?
Kord:You know my answer to such questions
Usul: Fight!
Kord: Yes! Take the souls of the original angels and go give that one-eyed hustler it’s proper “Tribute”.
Usul: Then what?
Kord: The Beholder can open a portal to the elemental Chaos. When it gets scared it will open it. So throw the relic in the portal, you won’t have to worry about it anymore.
So within 5 minutes of finishing a fight, we started another one. I really wanted the adventure to be finished by the end of the evening so we could start afresh in late August.
The Ultimate Battle of Ultim… oh sorry we’re out of time!
The PCs moved to the lowest part of the city and found the beholder waiting. The PCs charged the Eye-tyrant and it’s Emberguard Archons and Helmed Horror guards.To make the situation more fun, 4 mini-volcanoes burst in a regular pattern, sending Lava over a Burst 3 area. The whole fight was set up on the Lava-happy Battlemap that came with the Colossal Red Dragon.
The fight was hard, really hard for the PCs. The Eye of Flame Beholder has an evil combo with it’s Central Eye that gives PCs Vulnerability Fire 10 and causes all fire attack to give ‘ongoing Fire 5″ (read ongoing 15). That with the Ember Guards, the Horrors, the volcanoes and the possibility of falling in Lava (all of it dealing fire damage) made for a very interesting encounter.
Sadly, we never finished that awesome fight. By the time the Horrors were dead, the Emberguards Bloodied and the Beholder hurt a bit, it was already 11h15 PM. While I could see that the energy level was still very good, I called the evening off because we were at least one full hour away from the end and it looked like the PCs would win.
So I described the outcome as Kord had described it and we called it a night.
So that’s why things are taking so long!
This game made me realize something. D&D 4e combat can take a long time for various reasons. Badly designed encounters can lead to grind, distracted players can lose time refocusing whenever their turns come, etc.
I’ve often said that my players are exceedingly efficient in combat, they always win without hardly ever having PCs drop below 0 hp. It’s consistent and they can tackle an encounter several levels above their PCs with relative ease.
However, that efficiency in combat comes with a price, turns take longer to play out as they carefully plan the best possible outcome and carefully gauge the risk:benefit ratio of their moves.
The harder the fight, the slower they play as they know they can’t afford to make a mistake. The Beholder fight was such a fight. Knowing that now, I’ll stop stressing out and try to push players to play faster. While I will maintain a brisk pace, I won’t worry that fights take too long as I could clearly see on everyone’s face that they were having fun planning and seeing their strategy unfold into a thing of tactical beauty.
And it totally did, they managed to completely control all the guards and the Beholder.
A new friendly neighborhood Spirit
After the fight, the Shaman asked the Dragon Spirit, now freed from the curse, if it would accept to become a guardian spirit of the City (that request caught me by surprise). It accepted and it reveal the location of it’s Hoard. The PCs went to find it and they found 19 000 gp’s worth of treasure and a few Magic Items.
That was a sensational D&D season. We learned the game. My friends and tried a few PCs while I tried various things on my side of the screen. We like D&D 4e a lot and we’ll be playing another year for sure.
The Summer Crunch continues!
All right, my most pressing projects are to finish the One Page Dungeon Codex PDF and to write the Drunken D&D adventures. Posting will likely be light over the next few weeks as I focus on those and prepare for Gen Con.
If anyone would like to be a guest poster over the next few weeks, I would be glad to discuss it. Email ma at chattydm@chattydm.net
