See part 1, here.
City Interlude
After having beaten the undead prisoner-guardians of the Font of Sorrows and subduing ‘Spurt’ the enchanted Bulette, our heroes returned to town to complete their rest and return Spurt to its owner.
The mad Wizard was relieved to recover his prized pet, although bitterly disappointed to see all the years he spent enchanting it gone down the drain. In a little burst of inspiration, I had the wizard plead to the PCs for them to avoid selling him out to the local authorities, offering a good quantity of magical components (used to create Magic Items) in return for their silence.
The PCs accepted, after seriously lambasting the wizard for being so grossly negligent and endangering the City like he did. I marked the wizard as holding a grudge against the PCs for humiliating him and disenchanting Spurt. We now have a potentially returning villain in our campaign. While I don’t envision the wizard as being a direct threat to the PCs, his crazy inventions sure could be.
We’ll see what I do with that in the near future.
At that time, Jaiel decided to quietly inform fellow members of the Foundation to keep an eye on the wizard. She also noted that The Builders (the faction building the City) could be really interested in acquiring the means to tame a bulette and used them in construction work.
So we now have a possible hook for a future adventure.
Not bad for a 10 minutes mini-scene.
The PCs then focused on the book of rituals they had obtained from the Temple. In it they found that the undead prisoner-guardians they vanquished used to be enemies of the Temple cursed into near-eternal servitude. The rituals explained in gruesome details how such guardians were created.
The book also explained how to access something called the Crypt of the High Priest. According to the layout the PCs had worked out while exploring the temple, it seemed that the tainted water poisoning Riceburg was coming from that crypt.
Late Boss fight
Armed with that knowledge, the PCs returned to the Font and activated the proper mechanisms while intoning the ritualistic phrases found in the book. The Font emptied itself and the drain opened to reveal a hidden passage.
The PCs entered the passage and made their way into a great chamber featuring a large pool, some 10′ wide criss-crossing walkways, 2 great waterfalls apparently pouring from 2 glowing holes in the ceiling and a large tree-like creature who seemed to have grown from the remnants of a stone sarcophagus. I described that the remains of a skeleton were entrapped in the creature’s extensive root-like appendages.
Now, as I described the room, I noted that it was already a quarter to 10 PM, a bit late to start a fight, especially one featuring a Solo, several minions and 2 surprises in the pool. I asked what the players wanted and everyone wanted to forge ahead.
The big tree-priest was a Horrid Timber, taken from a Dungeon magazine adventure. It is a level 10 Solo Soldier creature I had adapted to level 7 with some minor tweaks of my own.
Wary of the big Treant-like monster, the PCs slowly advanced, Jaiel on the frontline. As she moved forward, she got attacked by 2 shark shaped elemental monsters, seemingly made of acid, that jumped out of the pool, bit her on the way and dove back in on the opposite side of the walkway.
Yay!, I finally got to use Acid Sharks! Thank you Rich Burlew (he wrote about them in Dungeonscape).
And no, my campaign hasn’t jumped the shark it only just started!
After the Shark attack, the Tree-priest sent a glob of spores flying, hitting Jaiel and making little vines grow through her skin. Then a bunch of twig blight (acid dripping plant humanoid minions) sprang out of the roots surrounding the Big Boss and attacked.
The visuals got particularly gross when I described that one such twig blight was growing out of Jaiel as the spores continued growing out of her.
Once again the issue of the fight never was in much doubt. The PCs got rid of the minions and bloodied both sharks before the tree-priest got close enough to do significant damage. It had 4 strong lashing attacks that pushed a character 3 squares if 2 of them hit. The idea was to send the PCs into the acidic water to have fun with the sharks.
However, that was not to be as the PCs used one of their recent magical acquisition, a bag of crystals that could freeze up to 20 squares worth of water. Thus,the PCs had enough “leg space” to avoid being thrown into the water. They even managed to use it when one of the sharks was near the surface. I ruled that the item (a level 7 item) would make a +10 attack vs Reflex to immobilize the shark until it saved.
I like doing things like that.
After 30 minutes of fighting, the tree-creature still had 3/4 of its HP so I made possibly the best DM call of the night and I cut its HP in half, making it bloodied. As its HP slowly dropped, I went for broke and used up the creatures 2 action points to dish out 12 branch lashes. Most, if not all of them connected on the PCs, sending them flying all over the place and dropping Dworkin the Shaman into the acid water while having only one HP left.
Thankfully, the Tree-priest was slain in the same round and the Shaman was saved from the water before dissolving into some sort of Dwarven Primal broth.
It was nearly passed 10h30 PM, we managed three fights and a short story session. The fights might all have been a tad too easy, a result of my overcompensating from the last session, but I’m cool with that. I was quite happy with how things went and we didn’t finish at an ungodly hour.
Lessons Learned
- Monitoring fights to keep them at one hour or less is good practice.
- I need to make my encounters more ‘airy’ like making walkways at least 3 squares wide to allow more dynamic fights.
- When a player surprises you, try to roll with it and make it into something cool, regardless of what your notes tell you.
Up Next
I’ll end this game report with a bit of pre-prep discussions. After having hosted many, many back to back sessions of dungeon crawling, Yan and I agreed that it was time to create a little city-based adventure. Having the PCs stay in the city and interact with some NPCs will likely help players forge ties between their characters and the city.
The setting of the City Within is already rich enough to allow many, many different types of adventures. So what I need to do until Friday of next week is find a plot idea (maybe a few), create NPCs and obstacles, and work on various outcomes based on PC choices.
You have any ideas for a city based adventure that would last one evening or two? Feel free to share!
Have a great week.
While I can’t offer any adventure ideas off the top of my head, I can offer one complication. In the 3.5 homebrew setting I’m currently playing, most civilizations require weapons to be magically bound, or restrained.
A blue ‘ribbon’ wrapped around them, cast for free by the City Watch, signifies that you have not pulled your weapon from your sheathe since you entered the city, and thus have not caused any problems. Anyone caught within or leaving the city with an unbound weapon is subject to interrogation, imprisonment, etcetera.
As a player, the decision to fight means a lot now. There are times when we need to fight, but a few interesting battles have turned into roleplaying or skill-based challenges. I don’t know if it would work in the City Within, but it’s an idea to keep around nonetheless.
Hey Chatty!
A couple of urban encounters that I have run in the past that were fun was a murder mystery. I’ve ran two different ones. One where they PCs all happen upon a body and as they investigate the city watch shows up and starts a fuss, it is up to the PC’s to role-play out that it wasn’t them, and then there is a plot hook to get them interested. What if the victim was a shop keeper they have recently traded with, or a bartender they were fond of, etc.. Then why were they murdered?
The second one was a woman came up to the player that this would most likely work on, in my party it was a ghoul. And asked him to meet her at her house to discuss a business proposition.. When he arrived there, the house was quite, and empty.. As he looked around he found her dead in the kitchen, with a knife in her chest… As he sees this the guard shows up and says they got a tip that people saw him enter heard screaming.. And now she’s dead. The PC’s were able to pull in a few favors and get him out of jail.. but they needed to find out what went on.. after asking around and going to the funeral and causing a scene and etc, they basically in the end figured out that she was killed by her lover a cleric of (insert diety here) and wanted to be thought dead to be able to take control of her family’s power from the shadows.. She was controlling her brother through various spells and powers (she was a warlock or sorcerer, your pick for flavor), but didn’t want to draw attention to herself by being in the forefront..
It was a good adventure that let the characters stretch their investigative muscles and I didn’t have any combat that session so it was a nice change of pace from the mold.. Though you could easily have combat preped for her household guard, etc.
Sorry for the ramble.. But there are just a few ideas off the top o’ my head.
Hey there Mike and Mike.
Thanks for the ideas. I haven’t yet thought out what the city’s stance is on weapons. In my mind, since the City is of dwarven origins (and influence) and found inside a very hostile environment, I imagine that all citizens and visitors are allowed to bear arms.
However, this does give me an idea for a group lobbying to get peace bonding of weapons and I could conceivably tie a plot around that.
As for murder/mysteries, this truly is the standard city adventure plot. We’ve played one a few years ago that worked rather well, yet it’s not usually my go to concept for an adventure. At the very least I would likely try to subvert the ‘frame the PC’ trope in doing such an adventure, like how about the PCs actually commit the murder by accident… and what if the dead citizen was actually really evil and was plotting something so gruesome and vile that the accident was actually a blessing.
We do have a Sorcerer of Chaos in our group so that could easily be arranged.
Yeah, maybe an inverted murder mystery. It’s not a whodunnit, it’s a youdunnit-but-now-try-to-avoid-punishment.
Fairl enough.. Another one you can do… Is something like Cloverfield.. Have a Tarquese (spelling…) appear through your city and ravage it.. Your players are too low level to fight it, but they can save people that are in danger. The falling buildings, fireballs that are going off from other wizards, arrows flying everywhere become encounters and enemies…. You could even have enemies that are riding along with the Tarquese drop off (yes like in Cloverfield) and be minions, skirmishers, and lurkers.. Don’t have it destroy your whole city.. but ravage it a bit, and then it moves on… Now the group could have more urban enounters/adventures in rebuilding the city.. Suppose the leader/mayor of the village and most of the guard was killed in the attack.. What now? Who is trying to seize power? Is it a brave member of the watch who people respect? A local crime family vying for power? A cleric or paladin using the calamity as an excuse to say that if the city was a theocracy the diety would have protected them? Or all three at once, plus trying to get the players and other heroes to back them up.. Makes for interesting interactions and powerplays.
It is a city in a living dungeon, right? One of its organs – or a cancer?
What happens when it gets sick? Or how does the dungeon instinctively fight the “disease”?
You can dig on the metaphor and come up with something intriguing.
Cases from the “House” TV show can be great inspiration – sickness, indirect symptoms, causes and effects…
Eric Maziades last blog post..Meet Eldak "Grissom" Serpenthelm
@Eric Maziade You jsut gave me Inspirtation for something. Thank you!
Chatty, will you at any point consider relaesing imformation on the setting in a more solid form? My group would love to play in it!
One Man Hordes last blog post..Creature Creations!: Cat Lord
We’re defining things as we go… There is more stuff then what as been shown but not that much (8 defined faction have not been presented yet, and 2 other are still with there placeholder names). Certainly not enough to make a publication out of it yet.
Note that you can easily take the concept and move on from there adapting it to your own style and creating (or taking from Phil’s posts) the stuff you need as you go.
Obviously that depends on your GMing style. I personally hate modules and a general concept with some factions is usually all the preparation I need and want…. 😉
@Eric: I think Cancer is a good metaphor for what the City is to the Dungeon. Or at the very least, some kind of cyst growing.
I’m halfway thinking of some sort of knee jerk reaction of the dungeon to try to take out the city. Maybe on a more or less regular basis, the Dungeon marshals a huge quantity of monsters and sends them to the City Zergling-rush style (pardon my Starcraft) and both the City and the Dungeon need a period of time to recover.
I could possibly stage the next game in such a rush, creating lots of chaos and maybe having players choose where to make a stand. Either stay in the City and defend it or go after the nearest ‘nexus’ point and try to kill the rush before it gets too organized.
@One Man Horde: I’m looking in getting this published, but before I want to have more games set in this world to see how much we can build around the concept. The more we play, the richer the game setting will become. If I’m not mistaken, that’s a bit how Jonathan Tweet created the Over the Edge RPG.
Just based on the NPCs you’ve created it seems to me that a good adventure could revolve around an Election, possibly for Burgomaster of Riceburg. Or maybe another area if you want to leave Riceburg as it is.
The core of the adventure would be introducing a few political figures who are running for office and the PCs through their actions influence who wins.
The influence for this idea comes from a Hawk & Fisher story (author: simon r. greene) and the thrust of the story itself was that Hawk/Fisher had to protect this candidate as he ran for office.
One of the candidates would of course be Kelian Dawnchaser (introduced in a prior blog). Another minor candidate could be someone who takes an anti-expansionist platform – don’t grow the City anymore. Cutting back on the growth of the city means less taxes are required. This minor candidate has quite a following; (s)he’s quite charismatic. As an additional wrinkle the minor candidate could in fact be supported by the Dungeon by giving the candidate mystical powers to help him win the election. The Dungeon has tried monster invasions in the past, with minimal success. So its evolving and changing its strategy by trying to corrput the city (make it stop expanding) from within.
So at its core the adventure could simply be “protect the candidate”. They could also investigate other candidates and find out their secrets. Also if there was a monster invasion during Election Day the PCs could be called on to stop it, to the credit of one of the candidates (or detriment, if they failed).
@BradG: One of our yet to be revealed faction is so close to what your suggesting… It’s uncanny… I like it. 😉
@BradG: My man, you make writing this so worthwhile!!! I really like your election idea and I am already awash with plot, candidate ideas and NPCs.
Consider this idea borrowed