Category: recaps

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Elves & Espers: The Broken Spire

The Broken Spire is the Westernmost of the spires that comprise the New (upper) part of New Ark City.  It is called Broken not because the physical structure has been compromised, but because all the systems have failed and cannot be repaired.  When queried, Gax–the Giant Thaumaturgic Brain in charge of the city–always replies that repairs are underway as he has done for at least the past millennium.  No broadcast power reaches the Broken Spire, and all equipment that hasn’t been modified to be self-sustaining, including but not limited to all standard models of air-car and beam weaponry, cease to function well before they get to the edge of any of the Broken Spire’s discs.

Visual inspection with image amplification shows that the discs and tower itself are mostly intact, with some signs of wear, but the Web connecting them is in tatters, and all the cables that ordinarily connect the spires to each other have fallen.  Most of the visible buildings are at least partially ruined, and appear to have been damaged by some combination of fire, weather, weaponry, and neglect.  High levels of thaumaturgic radiation prevents a closer inspection with any scrying gear, though at night the naked eye can see the glimmer of campfires.  The spire is dark and brooding, and most inhabitants of the other spires prefer not to regard it too closely, to the extent that the regions of the discs closest to it (save for the Eastern disc on the far side of the Spire of Ark, and the Spire of Ark itself, which lacks all discs) are the “low-rent” areas of the city.

Adventurers occasionally mount expeditions to the Broken Spire, and those that return tell tales of primitive tribes, cut off for so long from the rest of the city that even the descendants of the Elves have forgotten their common heritage and speak a language unknown to modern ears.  The pervasive thaumaturgic radiation has given rise to horrible mutations, and the primitives of the Spire are barely recognizable as the descendants of the species that inhabit the rest of the city if indeed that they are, and not some other races that once lived in New Ark and have now been forgotten, or invaders from outside the Arcology altogether.  Monsters and abominations abound, again whether the mutant offspring of domesticated creatures such as the beasts of burden that pull the bulette-trains or the various helpful oozes that keep the city clean, or invasive species from elsewhere that have colonized in the absence of the city’s normal security systems, none can say.

Wondrous treasures are said to be found there, relics of an almost forgotten era when New Ark City was in full flower, and all the city’s functions were efficiently carried out by Gax, while the college of the Tower of Ark turned out marvels and miracles of modern thaumatology, the design, construction and operation of which have since been lost, or the parts having been cannibalized to patch the increasingly creaking and overburdened systems of the aging arcology and the vast spires, once teeming with more millions of inhabitants than now seems conceivable, now a shadow of their former glory.

Notes

The Broken Spire is intended to be the “Gamma World” part of the city, and a suitable place for wild-and-woolly mutant-filled adventures without leaving the arcology entirely for adventures in the Badlands.  Stuff powered by the characters Power Points will still function, but ordinary gear (such as laser pistols, communicators, blasters and the like) won’t work unless the characters spend extra money to equip themselves with (bulkier) self-powered gear.

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Bait and Switch

This month, the RPG Blog Carnival topic is “Transitions and Transformations,” so I’d like to talk a little about Baiting and Switching campaign premises in RPGs.  The basic idea, seductive in its simplicity, is that you emulate a common staple of fantastic fiction where the protagonists find themselves in a setting or situation that is a radical change from their everyday lives and for which they are unprepared (as when a group of children find a strange world in the back of the wardrobe in the house they’re staying in, or a dying prospector is astrally transported to Mars) by having the players prepare characters as if they were going to play in a particular setting (e.g. the Old West), and part-way through the first session plop them in a new one (Barsoom).  In one swell foop you short-circuit any temptation to meta-gaming in the character build process, eliminating any difficulty over professors, reporters and nurses curiously well-versed in the handling of shotguns and dynamite in your Call of Cthulhu game, and you present the players with the exact psychological experience that the characters have of being gobsmacked when their plans for their lives are turned upside-down.  That’s a pretty rare thing to be able to accomplish in an RPG, so it’s quite tempting.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking that I’m going to warn you against doing it, because the risks are too great.  The players might not like the new premise that they didn’t buy into; they may have built characters that have rich connections with the original premise and are reduced to hollow shells in the new one or may have an obsessive motivation to return to the original; if the characters aren’t built with the setting in mind they may be ineffective to the point of not being fun to play; if any characters are lost the switch in premise might make it impossible to neatly add new ones, etc.  In essence you’re playing a trick on the players, and what they might have cheerfully agreed to if you’d presented it openly they may end up resenting when it’s forced upon them, ruining a perfectly good campaign for a brief moment of epiphany when they realize what the game is really about.

Let me tell you, though, that when it works, it’s beautiful, and can cause great awe and glee around the table.  To me, that’s worth the risk.

That’s not to say that there aren’t things you can do to minimize the risk.  Take, for example, the Escape From Tartarus game I ran.  You might want to read the recaps of Part 1 and Part 2 before going further.

I knew going into it that the bait and switch I was planning was tricky, so there were some things that I did  specifically to address that:

  • The game was planned as a one-shot, instead of a full campaign.  If things had gone badly the number of sessions ruined would be minimal (it ended up taking two sessions, but it was also apparent by the end of the first session that it was going to work).
  • The players were all given pre-gens.  This reduced their investment in the initial character concept (nobody spent two weeks working on a back-story that would be completely discarded), and allowed me to make sure that everybody had something they could do once the switch occurred.
  • Because I know my players well, I was able to tailor the pre-gens to their preferences, to the extent of having them be reminiscent of characters that they’d already played and enjoyed.
  • It was presented as “Here’s what I’m running this week.”  Slightly high-handed, but again reduced the players investment in the initial premise and eliminated any hint of breaking a promise to deliver them a game based on what had been previously agreed to.
  • The switch granted the characters a step up (in this case a big one) in importance and ability to exert an influence on the course of events.  It’s much better for player buy-in for the alleged madman to find out he’s Corwin, Prince of Amber than for Corwin, Prince of Amber to find out he’s actually a madman hallucinating in the loony-bin.
  • The shift left a goodly amount of continuity between pre and post.  In this case, the literal setting remained the same, while the power-level and style underwent a radical change (from gritty prison drama to super-agent adventure).  I think continuity helps: change the setting, keep the style; change the style, keep the setting; change both, at least keep the themes.  If you change everything, the players may feel that you’ve just switched games in the middle.

The Escape From Tartarus was one of the most succesful games I’ve run, and everybody had a really good time.  In fact, it’s one of the settings my players have indicated an interest in returning to some day.

I’ve run other Bait and Switch games, some wildly successful (The Midnight Special), some failures (The Irvine Effect) and I think the above hits upon the key points to make it work:  Minimize the Bait, by not letting the players get too invested in or put too much work into the initial set-up, and carefully target the switch so that the players can experience some sense of continuity and the switch leaves them in their comfort zone as to the kind of characters and situations they like to play, or places them there if that’s not where they started.  Done right, and it’ll be a game to remember.

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Elves & Espers: G-nomes

G-nomes are the descendants of pre-Apocalypse gnomes, and embrace genetic engineering with the same enthusiasm (and sometimes explosive results) as their ancestors embraced mechanisms and before that alchemy.  They use magical viruses to rewrite their own genetic codes to cosmetically alter their appearances and give themselves interesting and unusual animal parts and abilities. They are the size of gnomes (about the size of a human child) and are always humanoid, with large eyes, but sport a wide variety of fur, scales, feathers, or brightly colored skins, as well as accouterments like horns, claws, fangs, and so forth.

In New Ark City they’re often found as Web Runners, using their rocket-skates to traverse the cables that make up the web delivering messages hither and yon, or in similar professions where regard for one’s personal safety is regarded as a handicap.

G-Nome

Small (-1 Toughness)
Natural Weapons (Str+d6 with one, or Str+d4 with two) – G-Nomes may choose what natural weapons they have, and may choose to shed them and grow different ones, though the process takes a week during which they will have no usable natural weapon.
Attractive +2 CHA. G-Nomes may look bizarre, but they see no reason to be unattractive, and whatever look they adopt will be designed to be aesthetically pleasing
Low Light Vision.  Their large eyes give them low-light vision.

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Elves & Espers: Zombots

Zombots are corpses that have been infested with nanite colonies that grow mechanical linkages to make them lurch around in an unholy resemblance to life.   Zombots are hideous travesties, with wires and rods piercing their flesh, writhing under their skin and snaking around their bloody and decaying bodies, manipulating them like grotesque marionettes.  In settings where the Guts skill is used, encountering a Zombot requires a Guts check.

Zombots have no other drive than to create more Zombots and consume flesh and circuitry to sustain themselves, though forbidden Necrotech can be used to command them.  In its inactive form, the nanites are a grey dust (Zombot Dust) that is harmless unless it comes in contact with a corpse or an open wound.  A corpse will become a functioning zombot in 1d6 rounds; a living being will have to make a Vig roll every hour or suffer a Wound and once it becomes Incapacitated will rise as a zombot.  Zombots require flesh to function (it’s part of the programming of the nanites), so although fire won’t destroy the mechanical parts, if you burn away all the flesh, the Zombot is destroyed.  Zombots require a steady infusion of new flesh and circuitry to sustain their activity, and will always be on the prowl trying to consume; once a Zombot has killed a victim it will spend 1d4 rounds feasting, ignoring what else is going on unless it comes under attack. If it spends more than a day without being able to consume anything, it will go into hibernate mode, remaining motionless and emitting no energy readings until a victim gets within movement range (Pace).

When deciding what to attack, the Zombot will go first for the closest person who attacked it, next for the closest victim (choose randomly for equally distant targets); count all robots, computers, and sophisticated machinery as potential victims. Zombots will only employ ranged attacks (if the form has them) if it is not possible to close to melee.  Zombots will incorporate whatever weapons the victim was carrying into itself and use them.  Zombot infection, however, is only carried by natural weapons, not incorporated ones.

Trafficking in Zombot dust (and all forms of Necrotech) is punishable by death in New Ark City.

Zombots

Zombots have stats as their living counterpart with the following exceptions:

Str: +2d Smt: Unintelligent Pace: -2.

Undead: +2 Toughness, +2 to recover from Shaken, No Called Shots, No Wound Penalties
Infectious: creatures bitten/clawed by Zombots must make a Vig roll every hour or suffer a wound, and will become Zombots after they’ve been Incapacitated
Regeneration none while active, Fast once killed
Weakness Fire, double damage, prevents regeneration

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Pigsies! Why did it have to be Pigsies?!

Session Summary for 11/30/08: Elves & Espers

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a recap around these parts. Let’s fix that.

Sunday night’s session picked up from a previous adventure (undocumented, because Ye Olde Recapper wasn’t present). That session was the first in the Elves & Espers campaign, in which the previously introduced characters banded together and picked up their level-1 quest: Clear out the vermin in the basement. This session opened with our brave exterminators, plan in hand, setting out to accomplish that goal.

Continue reading “Pigsies! Why did it have to be Pigsies?!”

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Welcome to The Haunted Realm…Hope You Survive the Experience!

Sunday we kicked off my new Savage Worlds Sandbox setting with a bang, or at least a whole passle of players: Wendy, Dan, Paul, Elyssa, Russell, Mac, Walter, and Mike M.  Russell and I spent a bunch of the afternoon making a variety of pregens for the people who didn’t already have characters (everybody but Wendy and Dan) to pick from.  After they grabbed a character that sounded appealing and assigned a name and gender, we got started.

The roster ended up being:

  • Loric, the Physician/Mage – male – Wendy
  • Thorvald, the Demonologist – male – Dan
  • Aerys, the Duelist – male – Paul
  • Qwirk, the Brute – male – Elyssa
  • Tyrok, the Dwarven Architect and Priest of Fess – male – Russell
  • Dorakyra, the Priestess of Kyr – female – Mac
  • Angelina, the Tomb Raider – female – Walter
  • Ranth, the Scout – female – Mike M

Because it was the first game, and there were so many players, including ones who only show up once in a great while, I gave them a mission to start out instead of going for the full-on sandbox.  That is, I gave Dorakyra and Tyrok a mission, and left it to them to recruit the others.

Dorakyra has been charged by the senior priestesses of her Goddess, Kyr, the Collector of the Dead, to travel to the village of Brightfalls, approximately one day’s journey to the north of Losian and find the church that records indicate should be there, clear it, and consecrate it to the Gods.  Tyrok was assigned to go with her and aid her.  The pair had been given 500 gold to get supplies and perhaps aid in recruiting (not a lot of money in the economy of the Haunted Realm, since as yet almost all necessities need to be imported from the New Kingdoms).

After some by-play where Dorakyra bet Tyrok that she could find three women to go with them before he could find three men (the stakes were she would let him braid dwarven ornaments in her queue vs. he would let her tattoo “My Heart Belongs to Kyr, But My Soul Belongs to Fess” in henna on his chest), they managed to recruit the rest of the part.  Tyrok weaseled out of the bet by getting the women he found (Ranth and Angelina) to stay out of sight until he managed to convince Dorakyra (who had only found men, in the form of Qwirk, Loric, and Thorvald) to call the bet a draw.  After the parameters of the task were described to them and remuneration discussed, they all agreed to go, though Tyrok once again had to fib…this time telling Loric, who was a bit cautious and reluctant to venture into the wilderness, that the church at Brightfalls was a famous repository of death records that would certainly aid him in his research into the Soul Plague.

The party decided that they would set out at mid-day, so they’d camp well away from Brightfalls and whatever was currently inhabiting it, and arrive the next day with plenty of sunlight left.  They began hiking to the north, passing the newly established farms and tiny villages around Losian, and gradually leaving civilization–or what passed for it–behind.

Shortly before dusk, they were set upon by a pack of skeletons that had been lurking behind some trees near the path that’s what’s left of the road to Brightfalls.  To keep things simple, and because it was most of the players’ first introduction to combat in Savage Worlds, there were only 4 Skeletons, and they were all Extras.  They made relativel short work of the skeletons, with only Angelina taking a hit hard enough to cause a Wound, which she spent managed to Soak.

After spending time interring the remains of the skeletons and performing the proper rights of Kyra over them, the party decided to camp there, rather than continue in the deepening gloom.  They set watches for the night, but aside from something large moving past the camp, the night passed uneventfully.

And there we broke for the night.

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Star Trek: “Enemy Mine”

Cast

Kirk (Wendy)

Sulu (Elyssa)

Chekov (Paul)

Scott (Doug)

Act I

While travelling through an ion storm to take readings, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal.  The signal is from a colony ship crewed by a race the Federation has had only the briefest of prior contact with: the Cornuvians.  The Cornuvians are red-skinned, with small vestigial horns, giving them a devilish appearance. Their ship, the Paluk-Ta, suffered a direct hit from an asteroid, destroying its warp nacelle and killing the bridge crew; they have impulse engines, but the chief engineer was badly wounded and the colonists don’t know how to run the ship.

Because the ion storm requires them to keep the shields up, preventing them from using the transporters, Kirk decides to take the shuttle Galileo over to the Paluk-Ta with an away team consisting of Sulu, to helm the colony ship, Scotty, to repair the impulse engines, and Chekov, to speak in a funny accent.  As they approach the Paluk-Ta, a near miss from a fast asteroid causes the shuttle to crash in the Paluk-Ta’s landing bay.  Nobody is injured, but the Galileo can’t take off again, nor can another shuttle from the Enterprise land; for better or worse their fates are now entwined with the colonists aboard the Paluk-Ta.

They contact Spock, and are informed that the Enterprise’s sensors are detecting multiple energy sources in the asteroid belt, and there was a flare of energy not caused by the ion storm shortly before the near collision of the rogue asteroid with the Galileo.

Kirk meets the head of the colonists, a striking Cornuvian woman named Aman-Te.  The Enterprise crew notice that all the officers they meet are women, though there seem to be male crewmembers and file away the information under “suspicious.”  Aman Te attempts to negotiate the price of their rescue with Kirk, but he waves it away, citing Star Fleet policy helping ships in distress.  Aman-Te is at first upset, but then aquiesces.

Meanwhile Scotty has figured out the controls in the auxiliary bridge of the Paluk-Ta, and brought the impulse engines online.  At this point Chekov, manning the scanners, notices increased activity in the asteroid belt, and several asteroids start accelerating towards the Paluk-Ta!

(break for commercial)

Act II

Several asteroids begin accelerating towards the Paluk-Ta.  Kirk orders evasive maneuvers, and Sulu wrestles with the controls.  The bridge crew are flung about, but they manage to avoid any hits.  Kirk orders the Enterprise to approach, to fend off the asteroids with photon torpedoes, but the Enterprise finds itself the target of several new asteroids, too large to be deflected by torpedoes and Kirk orders them to withdraw to a safe distance.

Chekov reports more energy signatures in the asteroid belt, and scans indicate that there are mechanical devices active, but no life forms.  With further scans and some leaps of intuition, the crew deduce that the mechanical signatures belong to robot factories, probably abandoned mining installations and they are producing more and more robots in response to the new activity in the system.  Scotty realizes that the mining robots are configuring into magnetic accelerators and using them to toss nickel-iron asteroids at the intruders…essentially cobbling together huge rail guns, and as the factories expand they’ll be producing more and more of them.

Kirk orders Sulu to take the Paluk-Ta into the shadow of the one inhabitable planet of the system and hold it in orbit there, where it will provide cover from the enemy rail guns.  Sulu manages to get the great ship in position, but it wasn’t built with that sort of manuevering in mind, and the impulse engines are insufficient to hold it in a geostationary orbit close enough to the planet to provide cover.  In a few minutes they are either going to once again be exposed, or the ship will spiral out of control and crash into the planet below!

(commercial break)

Act III

Faced with the choice of either being raked by fire from the self-assembling rail guns or crashing, Kirk decides that they will have to land the Paluk-Ta on the planet’s surface, even though once it does so it will never be able to take off again.  The colonists will have to live in this system instead of their intended destination.  Informing Aman-Te of his decision, he is surprised when she and her crew offer no objection despite being visibly unhappy with the idea.

Sulu manages to bring the Paluk-Ta down safely, and they are safe from the robots for the time being.  Kirk is in the process of seducing Aman-Te to learn more about their situation when Spock communicates from the Enterprise that the ion storm is abating and they can bring the Enterprise into orbit and beam the away team back.

After returning to the Enterprise, they conceive the notion of beaming aboard one of the robot mining droids for examination.  They prove to be quite primitive modular systems, with each module having very limited programming; in absense of instructions from their creators, they’re following programs to maintain themselves and defend the mining claim from intruders.  Scotty manages to reprogram the droid to go into a maintenance-only, non-guard mode, and seek out other droids reprogram them to go into the same mode then seek out and reprogram other droids.  They re-release the droid and in a few hours the rail guns have disassembled themselves and the mining factories gone quiet.

Kirk contacts Aman-Te and the colonists, and promises them that he will bring their situation to the attention of Star Fleet and their home world as soon as possible, to see if anything can be done.  In the mean time, at least they are safe, and have a habitable planet to colonize…and an entire set of asteroid mining installations ready to serve them!

(closing credits)

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They Ramble Again!

In honor of Brian showing up for the first time in ages, and Dan forgetting his notebooks, the Rambling Bumblers rambled again!  And they didn’t even bumble!

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they were exploring the Ice Caverns of the Moth-People (TM).  They had accidentally destroyed the crystal array that produced the shaft of blue light that powered the whole underground Moth-people city when Jacob (Doug) had killed the guardian dragon, which then crashed into the crystal array at the bottom of the shaft the city was poised above.  Seeking to ameliorate the damage, they were exploring the lower reaches of the shaft, right above the broken crystal array, where they had found a room with three mysterious empty crystal sarcophagi, four doors (behind one of which they could sense unspeakable evil), and a swirly mesmerizing pattern on the floor.  The party was trying to find out how to open the door into the unspeakable evil. That’s where we broke off, three (?) or so years ago.

The intervening years having granted them wisdom, they were now puzzled as to why it seemed so important back then to open the evil doors, and why they had been so reluctant to mess with the blue crystals themselves, other than Merath/Wendy’s paranoia about the blue light being incompatible with her own Pink Light Power(TM).  After messing around with the sarcophagi, including both Merath and Bastriel (Paul) attempting to analyze the magic of them, they concluded that

  • the crystals were controlled by the sarcophagi
  • they sarcophagi were being interfered with by evil spells emanating from behind the evil doors and warding off the two other doors

So they set out to break the bonds between the spells from the Evil Door (an arched double-door composed of greenish marble and swirling iron tracery) and the sarcophagi, and then power up the crystal array.  Since this involved actually climbing into the goo in the crystal sarcophagi and allowing it to bond with them, there was a decent amount of bravery involved.  This they succeeded in doing, though the damage to the crystal array caused it to short-circuit and spew destructive energy around, melting one of the overhead bridges and crispy-frying the dragon’s corpse before they could shut it down.  This prompted a further bout of analysis and brainstorming, during which they ascertained

  • they couldn’t repair the blue crystals, but they might be able to replace them with Pink Light Power (TM)
  • it would be insanely dangerous to the Rose Kingdom to do so unless they completely eliminated the evil influence from beyond the Evil Door

So now that they had an actual reason to explore beyond the Evil Door, they warded Jacob against any form of compulsion (see!  Wisdom!) and he hacked the doors open.  A nauseous miasma of evil puffed out of the room beyond, starting to fill the sarcophagus chamber.  Merath threw up a Pink Light Power(TM) bubble around herself and found it warded off the miasma, so she expanded it to encompass the rest of the party.

Just then, a huge shadowy figure shambled out of the Evil Room.  Despite heavy flavor text from the GM, they held off attacking it until it was revealed that this was, as the players expected, Dan’s new PC…a giant-sized member of The Pack (the wolfman race).  Dan’s character (forget the name at the moment) had been exploring a ruin in a far off area near the Wildlands, and accidentally stepped across a Nephari spiral that took him into the Evil Room, where he was nearly overwhelmed by the evil miasma.

Proceeding into the Evil Room, warding of the miasma with Pink Light Power, they found a network of spell lines coming through the Nephari spiral in the center of the room.  They succeeded mightily in the attempt to break the curse lines and the evil influence was banished.  There was some talk about whether they could destroy the spiral completely, but they were reluctant to mess with it too much (more Wisdom!).

They returned to the other room, and then to the outer bridge over the shaft, where Merath used the Pink Light Power to eliminate the corpse of the dragon…which she managed to do without vaporizing the entirety of the bottom of the shaft, exhibiting more control over the destructive aspects of the Pink Light Power than she had been able to previously.  They still had no way to regrow the blue crystals, so they decided to attempt to replace them with pink…something…to share the power of the Rose Kingdom with the Moth kingdom.  Against all odds, this succeeded without apparent complications, and now the bottom of the shaft is covered with the stylized rose symbol of the Rose Kingdom, worked out in crystal, and a shaft of Pink Light Power springs forth, illuminating the cavern, powering the devices of the Moth city and, incidentally, annexing the Moth Kingdom to the Rose Kingdom.  The new political realities of the situation have yet to be conveyed either to Queen Moth-Ra or to the Rose Princess, but the RB congratulate themselves on a job well done!  And you know, for them it totally was.  They saved the people they intended to save, thwarted evil, and there was no collateral damage this session at all.

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Is that a dagger in your pocket, or are you Happy to see me?

Dear Knights of the Dinner Table,

I’d always read the stories from your readers, but I never thought they would happen to me….

Sunday we returned to the Old Skool stylings of the Basic D&D game, to finish up the adventure of The Haunted Keep, and things took a fairly grim turn.

The party found another room of bandits, these busy racing cockroaches, and managed to dispatch them, losing Obediah the Elf (Dan’s character) in the process. During the fight, Steve the Magic User (played by Mike) Charmed one of the bandits, and after the fight their new best buddy explained the layout of the half of the keep they were in, and how to bypass Sir Reonald and the room with the stirges by going outside and re-entering through a different exterior door.

The party did so, and easily found the merchant’s daughter they’d been searching for, Lemunda the Lovely. Before they could declare victory and go home, she inquired whether they had rescued her maid, Relda, and two man-servants. The maid was merely in the kitchen opposite, but there things took an ugly turn. When the party showed up, she called for help from Reonald, whereupon Happy Brandybuck the Halfling (suspicious that she was being allowed to cook for the bandits) stabbed her, killing her instantly. This caused Lemunda to start screaming, so they grabbed her and ran, abandoning the missing man-servants. Surprisingly to the GM, Happy didn’t bother to loot the body of the maid, who actually was carrying a gem worth 500 gp that she was planning to use to bribe them to let Reonald escape. They returned Lemunda to the town, where she promptly sought refuge with the town authorities and far away from the homicidal rescue party.

Although the end of the adventure was a bit of a downer, there was much hilarity…partially over how the Bumblers lived up to their reputation, partially over the homicidal hobbit’s pre-murder slip of the tongue (something about raking the maid with his “steely Halfling glaze”) and what this might imply about hobbit culture and culinary habits in this setting.

It was interesting, and somewhat bizarre, running an adventure from a module. Believe it or not it’s something that I haven’t really done before; unlike just about everybody I know who played D&D most of my actual D&D experience was before there was even such a thing as a published Module. The module I was using was a free one, created as a cooperative effort by people in the Dragonsfoot.org forums, and I have to say strikes me as an extremely half-baked effort. At least, I have a hard time believing that the people who created the content of the rooms actually looked at the map they were keying, since Leomunda and her maid are separated from the bandit guards by a series of rooms with only one entrance or exit, including one that the bandits have spiked shut because they’re afraid of the stirges in it, while the rooms that these captives are in have no guards and an exterior door. I decided that the door was locked and couldn’t be opened from either side without a key possessed by Reonald (or by a thief), but that still leaves twenty or so bandits guarding essentially nothing.

I don’t really know whether the group is going to want to continue these Basic D&D forays after the latest fiasco; it still has the advantage that it’s really quick to generate characters and eminently suited to days when the players present and the prepared GMs don’t line up, but I think that I might have to pour a bit more effort into prepping a better dungeon.

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“John Carpenter’s Ski Resort” or “The Blob That Came in from the Cold”

Good heavens, it’s another recap! This one happened so long ago that I don’t even remember the date of it. Elyssa had been playing with our group for several sessions now, but the only GM she’d played with was, well, me. And that’s Just Not Right, so Josh put together a one-shot for an evening when we were short a few players.

Continue reading ““John Carpenter’s Ski Resort” or “The Blob That Came in from the Cold””