1958Fury's Campaign Journals

Gamma World: Death By Chocolate

2012-01-29T01:10:00.001-06:00

Game Date: 1/28/2012
DM: Matt

The Party:
Chewy Sweatyhair (Rick): Empath/Entropic
Jerry Fungi (Bryan): Fungoid/Plastic
Pebble Bushyhead (Misty): Plant/Pyrokinetic

The Module:
This was a special session for Halloween. Yeah, yeah, it's January, but we had a hard time getting everyone together. This was a module that I designed. The gimmick (I always have a gimmick) is that instead of using tokens or minis, it uses pieces of candy to represent the monsters. Whatever you kill, you get to eat. I wrote the module using a generic universe, so it was easy to convert it to Gamma World. For those interested in running it themselves, I've posted the generic version of the module in this blog. The Gamma World version of the module can be downloaded here.

The Characters:
Per the suggested rules, I had the players roll their characters randomly, from all three sources (the basic Gamma World set, Famine in Far-Go, and Legion of Gold). Bryan was a Fungoid/Plastic, so he was basically a rubber mushroom. Misty was a Plant/Pyrokinetic, so she was a burning bush (you know, there's a cream for that). And Rick was an Empath/Entropic, so while he could feel your pain, he was also often the cause of it.

I packed a bunch of D&D and Star Wars minis so they'd have a variety to choose from. I had a decent mini for Bryan's Fungoid - a D&D Myconid Guard. For Misty, we used a D&D Blackwoods Dryad (I don't seem to have a mini of a flaming plant, sorry). Since neither of Rick's mutations really affected his appearance much, I told him he could look like whatever he wanted... so he picked Chewbacca.

A typical-looking party... for Gamma World.

The Session:
The first encounter was against a bunch of chocolate-covered zombie minions (Hershey's Kisses) on the factory floor. At the end of the first round, a large chocolate golem (Reeses Cup) burst out of one of the vats and joined the battle. They PCs out the minions pretty quickly, after which defeating the golem wasn't that hard.

The second fight was against four Fruit Imps (Starburst) in the break room. Jerry developed a temporary flight mutation, which he used effectively. Of course, the enemies could fly as well, so it's not like he could just hang back and blast them from safety, but it still turned out to be a useful ability.

I ran the third encounter a little different than in the original module. The storage/shipping room now contained only one monster, a large golem (Reeses Cup). When he was defeated, he split into three smaller golems (Reeses Minis). During the battle, Chewy used an Omega Tech item which put all three Lesser Choclans to sleep... and put himself to sleep as well. This made wrapping up the battle fairly easy, even if it did backfire on Chewy a bit.

In the final battle, I used a large plastic Hershey's Kiss to represent the Demon Boss. He was joined in battle by two more chocolate zombies and two more lesser golems. Pebble had acquired an Alpha Mutation which allowed her to fly, and a successful overcharge even let her hover. So she stayed above the enemies' heads firing ranged attacks at them. Early in the battle, Chewy tried to overcharge a power and ended up stunning himself. It was save ends, but he failed to save about seven times in a row, making him miss most of the encounter. But the boss had problems of his own. His only ranged attack was an encounter power, and the PCs managed to stay where he couldn't reach them in melee.

Afterthoughts:
The candy gimmick was a big hit with the players. I hadn't DMed in a good while, so it was hard getting back into the swing of it. Sometime around the second encounter it looked like the enemies were doing too much damage against a three-person, level 1 party. So I nerfed a few of the monsters on the fly, mostly by "forgetting" to use certain powers.

This was my first time running a Gamma World session, and it was a lot of fun. However, the Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech cards make it a lot harder to predict how combats are going to turn out. A perfectly balanced encounter can suddenly become a breeze when a player draws the right card, or it can become a nightmare when that same player fails an overcharge attempt. But that's part of what makes it awesome.

Pictures:

When Chocolate-Covered Zombies Attack

Product shot!

Fruit Imps in the break room

Chewy gets put to sleep by his own Omega Tech

The final boss

Unlikely Heroes: Nightmare Carnival

2012-01-29T00:09:00.000-06:00

Game Date: 1/28/2012
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia Lockwood (Matt): Human Ardent
Derp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight
Starr (Star): Eladrin Paladin
Teddi & Sid (Ted): Dwarf Warlock & Homunculus Familiar

The Session:
We continued our enjoyable romp through the carnival. Various members of the party competed in games like the egg toss, a sack race, a pie-eating contest, and even a maze where we had to take rings from gnomes wearing minotaur masks. For every game we won, we were given some creepy-looking kewpie dolls. Sometimes we won them just for participating - they carnival employees seemed quite happy to give these things away. We gave some of the dolls to the various orphans we'd been entertaining, but we also kept some for ourselves. These dolls had eyes that would follow us around the room. We did arcana checks on them, and found that they were magical, but we couldn't discern the full nature of the enchantment.

At one point, Derp entered a tent and met a fortune teller. She predicted that he would have his throat torn out by the end of the night. She offered to sell him a magic collar to protect his neck, but he didn't have enough money on him. He went to get the rest of the party, but they were skeptical. Teddi entered the same tent to get his own reading, but she was gone.

After taking a wrong turn in the maze, Dalia got separated from the rest of the party, and wound up outside the fair. While outside, she saw a light off in the woods, and a friendly fox tried to get her to follow him. Dalia was afraid to stay too far from the rest of the party, so she paid to re-enter the fair.

It was now dark, and the fairgrounds started the fireworks show. Some of the party members started to see things differently. Everything around them was covered by an illusion, and the true fair had a much darker nature. The fireworks were really leeches falling from the sky, and the gnome employees were really goblins.

Still oblivious to the illusion, Dalia made her way back to the party. Along the way, she saw someone offering free sleigh rides to children. She finally met up with the party near the pie-eating tent, and everyone exchanged information. Things were getting worse - Starr's face was starting to resemble that of a kewpie doll. Immediately we started to get rid of our kewpie dolls. There was a furnace nearby at the tent, but as we tried to burn the dolls we were accosted by a large pig-man. We fought the pig-man (a fey creature called a Swineomancer) and some lumberjacks who now had pig faces (Craven).

We noticed that most of the crowds were not reacting to the fight. Nor did they notice the strange changes to the fair. After we beat the Swineomancer and burned the dolls, we also destroyed their meat-pie machine so they couldn't feed their evil food to any more carnival-goers. We headed back towards where Dalia had seen the sleigh. We saw more nightmarish imagery - the ticket booth had the faces of fair-goers nailed to it, the lollypops they were handing out were really eyeballs on a stick, the fair tickets were really skinned fingers and tongues, Teddi and Dalia started to develop a case of kewpie-face... and yet most fair-goers couldn't see the world for what it really was. Even we could see things either way depending on how we focused.

The sleigh pulled up again, and the driver called for more children to come aboard. We asked if we could ride. The driver resisted at first, saying it was just for children, but we talked him into it. He took us through the fair - we noticed a lot of cries of pain as we passed the mechanical trade show tent - and finally the sleigh left the carnival altogether and headed into the woods. When it finally stopped, we fought a gaggle of gnomes.

After the fight, we saw a light in the distance, like the one Dalia had seen earlier. When it got close, we saw that it was a naked elven woman, who identified herself as the Fey Queen. We asked if she was responsible for all the terrors we'd seen, but she denied it. She said that while our foes were fey, they had been corrupted. She wanted us to go back to the fair and defeat the source of the corruption. We were to look for a large armored man with a stag-horned helmet, riding a beast... really, we can't miss him.

We prepared to head back to the carnival, and our first destination was to be the mechanical trade show tent. That's where we ended the session.

Unlikely Heroes: Freaks & Geeks

2012-01-21T23:02:00.000-06:00

Game Date: 1/21/2012
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia Lockwood (Matt): Human Ardent
Derp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight
Starr (Star): Eladrin Paladin
Teddi (Ted): Dwarf Warlock

The Session:
Having left Teddi and Starr behind, the rest of us were on the road when we were stopped by three men riding dire wolves. The leader introduced himself as Silas Kreed, and told us we would have to pay him to continue on this road. Marrick responded with an offer that was part deal, part threat. "We'll give you 10 gold to stand aside, otherwise we will kill at least one of you. Even if the rest of you manage to defeat us, is it really worth one of you dying when you could get 10 gold instead?" The bandits replied that they liked their chances, and the battle began.

The bandits rolled badly for the first couple of rounds, so we got an early advantage. Nevertheless, it was a tough fight. We faced both mounts and riders, and our party was incomplete. The bandits turned out to be werewolves, and they were hard hitters. But we concentrated our fire on Silas until he was down, making the rest a little easier. We used up all our healing powers and a few Dailies, but we survived.

After this, we decided that splitting the party had been a bad idea. We turned around, picked up Teddi and Starr, and continued the trek. In the town of Olfden, we bought horses, making our trip to Falcon's Hollow a bit faster. Along the way, a few well-rolled heal checks cured Teddi and Dalia of the Moon Frenzy they'd picked up a couple of sessions ago.

Once we reached Falcon's Hollow, we caught up on local events. Construction had begun on our tower, but it was slow going due to unseasonably cold weather. We learned that our employee Ralla's former pimp had been harassing her. Derp met with the sheriff and asked him about Silas Kreed and his relationship to Thuldrin Kreed; it turns out there were rumors that Thuldrin had a brother. We learned that the mysterious murders (the ones that prompted us to get Jevra out of town) were still happening. Also, Marrick tried on his ancestral armor for the first time, and heard the voices of his ancestors whispering in his ear.

The next morning it was snowing. It was unusually early in the year for snowfall, but the town made the most of it and scheduled an ice carnival. It sounded like fun (or a plot hook), so we all bought tickets. We also paid the way in for some of the poor children who were begging nearby. Once we were inside, we split up. Dalia and Derp went to see the freakshow. Marrick and Keyanna headed for the ale tent. Teddi and Starr headed for what appeared to be a large windmill.

At the drinking tent, Marrick set out to sample every possible flavor of ale. He drank a huge amount of liquor, while Keyanna quaffed more conservatively. After a while, a drunk lumberjack bumped into Marrick and started insulting him. It looked like a fight was inevitable until Keyanna calmed them down.

The windmill turned out to be the site of a large spin-the-wheel game. The barker tried to get Teddi to play, telling him to "Come spin the wheel and prove your strength!" But Marrick wouldn't bite. Meanwhile, a man asked Starr to watch his son Justin, and show him a good time at the fair. Being new to the party, she didn't recognize the man as Thuldrin Kreed. However, Marrick could see them from the ale tent, and went over to let them know.

At the freakshow, Dalia and Derp saw a tap-dancing dog-faced girl. Then they saw a fetus-like creature floating in a jar of yellow liquid. The creature was alive and alert. They also saw the "Man of 1000 Stiches" (a guy with a lot of battle scars), and "The Human Fish" (a guy who could breathe underwater).

Teddi and Starr took Justin to the freakshow. When they saw the fetus creature, Teddi broke the jar and grabbed the creature. He tried to simply walk away, but he was blocked off in all directions. He headed backstage with his liberated friend. Starr, Derp, and Dalia followed.

Meanwhile, Marrick and Keyanna checked out a noisy tent that turned out to be the Lumber Consortium's technology trade show. They looked at a lot of mechanical devices used for cutting lumber. As a Dwarf, Marrick was impressed by the craftsmanship. While there, he saw a little girl get her dress caught in a machine. He pulled her free, breaking the machine in the process. The employees started to protest, but Marrick aced his Diplomacy roll and ended up having a friendly conversation with them. He continued to talk shop with them while Keyanna took some of the beggar kids ice skating.

Back at the freakshow, Quinn (the carnival owner) demanded an explanation. We offered to buy the creature's freedom, and with a high diplomacy roll we ended up paying 100 gold. The freakshow resumed, and the next act was a musical number featuring two Grimlock Pinheads. Derp pulled out his instrument and accompanied them. We then saw a lady sword swallower, followed by a guy who got into a glass box filled with snakes and spiders. The final act was a hunchbacked giant holding a large sack. He kept asking audience members to look in his sack. Teddi stuck stuck his hand in, and was bitten by something. It turned out to be the giant's (really an Ettin) other head.

We started to walk around the carnival a little more and look at the other games, and decided it was a good time to end the session.

Being A Little Too Elf Conscious

2012-01-18T23:10:00.000-06:00

Other people will have heated debates about healing surges and defender auras, but I'll probably enjoy the game regardless of the mechanics. It's the odd little fluffy things that get me into a tizzy. For example: In 3rd Edition D&D, Elves had a life span of "over 700 years". In 4th Edition, their life span was shortened to "well over 200 years". Okay, arguably, 700 years is "well over 200 years", but I don't think that's what they had in mind. I'm guessing a 300 year old Elf would be considered venerable by 4e standards.

I'm sure they felt they had some valid reasons for lowering Elven life spans. For one thing, it takes some of the mystique out of entering a 500-year-old crypt if one of the party members can say, "Yeah, I was here when it was built. It was nice!" But what really bugs me is that they don't call attention to it anywhere, at least not that I've found. I haven't came across an in-universe explanation for why the life spans shortened, it was just, "Here's the new rules. Elves live to be about 200." It's almost Orwellian, like they're saying, "Elves have always lived to be 200."

The 4e Forgotten Realms setting takes place about 100 years after 3rd Edition. So at some point during the last 100 years, something happened (probably Spellplague-related) that cut Elf life spans by more than half. Exactly how did this play out? Since Elves used to live 700 years, I'm going to assume the Elf population had an average age of 350 at any given time. That means well over half the world's Elf population suddenly dropped dead at one point, when their maximum life spans shortened to "over 200". This is not the sort of event that would have gone by unnoticed. This pointy-eared holocaust would should made the cover of every history scroll. But it's not mentioned in the "10 Important Facts about the past 100 Years" section of the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide.

Of course, the life span of my own character isn't a big deal to me. I've yet to be in a campaign that lasted long enough for aging to be a factor. But it does matter during character creation. In 3rd, they said that Elves mature very slowly, and that an Elf doesn't reach adulthood until about 100. So whenever I would roll up an Elf character, I would generally make them 90-110 years old, just as my Human characters usually start at around 18-22. But the 4e book says they mature at about the same rate as humans. I refuse to believe that when the lifespans suddenly changed, that they also suddenly started maturing that much faster. Reaching adulthood has great significance for people, with rites of passage and other cultural ramifications. It's hard for me to imagine the Elves just suddenly rewrote that much of their cultural guidebooks when the change happened. Of course, I'm sure a lot of younger Elves were delighted to learn they can drink vodka now.

And what if I'm playing in a setting that takes place between 3e and 4e? We don't know what year this big change took place. Was it a sudden change, or gradual? Not that you can "gradually" reduce a race's life span by 500 years, within a 100 year time span. That doesn't even make sense. When I'm creating my character's personality, I generally have an emotional age in mind, but I really want to know that race's equivalent before I write the number down on my character sheet. So if I make an Elf in a campaign that takes place 50 years before 4e, what age do I pick for a young adult?

Anyway, that's the kind of thing that gets under my skin. Welcome to my psychotic little world.

Unlikely Heroes: Getting Wood at the Inn

2012-01-14T17:39:00.000-06:00

Game Date: 1/14/2012
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia Lockwood (Matt): Human Ardent
Derp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight
Starr (Star): Eladrin Paladin
Teddi of the Sculpy People (Ted): Dwarf Warlock

The Session:
First off, check out Ted's homemade mini. Sweet!

So, last session left off with us finding the second of five Druid items. We thought about hanging around where we found the most recent artifact, in hopes of ambushing the rival adventuring party. But with time being an issue and all, we decided to just start looking for the next item. We followed the clues and wound up at a pond surrounded by high reeds. We heard a rustling and started to check it out. A hidden Wizard fired some spells at us. Luckily he was alone, and the battle lasted less than a round.

After the fight, we heard a voice coming from the water. The voice identified herself as "Nixanna". We asked her if she'd seen our rivals. She said that another group had arrived at the pond recently, but she'd scared them off. The Wizard we fought was one of them, but Nixanna had bewitched him to be her guardian. We asked her if she had the next item we were looking for, a vial of Royal Water. She did, but she wasn't going to give it up for free. She offered to trade for it, if we had any items that used water-related magic. It turned out that a ring we'd found last session fit the bill, and we made the trade. Nixanna then kissed Derp, granting him a boon.

We also asked if she knew where to find the Druid Willowroot, the owner of the items we've been looking for. She told us about an inn nearby where he sometimes hangs out. We headed there next. The "Spirit of the Wood Inn" looked abandoned, and was overgrown with rich plant life. We began searching inside, where it looked like there had been a large scuffle. While examining a pile of debris, we were attacked by a Wood Beast.

Meanwhile, Marrick and Keyanna were still outside the inn, where they were attacked by the rival party. It was a Goblin, a Ranger, and a Cleric. Marrick nearly killed the Goblin in the first round, while ordering Keyanna to warn the rest of the party inside. But of course Starr, Derp, Teddi, and Dalia had their own problems with the Wood Beast.

Merrick was overwhelmed, and was quickly brought down by his three opponents. The indoor fighters weren't doing much better against the Wood Beast. It was a heavy hitter with high defenses, and it took a lot of work to wear him down. The fight inside gradually shifted towards the front doors. While still outside, the rival Ranger started shooting at the Wood Beast as soon as he could see it. He ordered the Cleric to assist him, but she was too angry at our party. Still, it was nice to know that not all our enemies were on the same side.

Eventually the battle completely moved outside. As soon as Dalia saw that Marrick was down, she healed him so he could rejoin the fray. After the Wood Beast finally went down, the two parties continued to fight each other. The Ranger was the last one standing. We gave him a half-hearted chance to surrender, knowing he wouldn't take it, and we finished him off a few turns later.

From the Goblin's corpse we found a magic wand, one of the Druid items. Then we searched the inn a bit more. Teddi found a skeleton with a staff. He used a "Speak With Dead" scroll to talk to the skeleton, and found out that it was Willowroot. The staff was the final item we sought. After an extended rest, we headed back for the small town where the Historian had sent us on this quest.

The Historian was delighted to see us (and our quest items), and he had the Sheriff clear our charges. The Historian told us that he would need to study the items for about 6 or 7 weeks, and asked us if we would return the items to Willowroot when he was done. We didn't bother telling him that Willowroot was dead... why make him worry? Well, that and we plan to keep the items for ourselves.

Not wanting to stick around in this crappy town for six weeks, we planned to head back home to check up on things. We left Teddi and Starr behind, so they could stay close to the Historian. The rest of us began the long walk back to Falcon's Hollow. On the way, we were stopped by three men riding Dire Wolves. The leader introduced himself as Silas Kreed. He told us that the road ahead was closed, but he would open it for us if the price was right. We ended the session on this cliffhanger.

If I Designed an RPG

2012-01-13T20:44:00.000-06:00

Wizards of the Coast recently announced that they're going to start working on the next edition of D&D. Already my head is buzzing with things I'd like to see. I started writing this blog as a list of things I want out of 5e, but my mind sort of wandered off in another direction. About a year ago I posted a blog on what I would consider "The Perfect Game", though some of my opinions have changed since then. I thought I'd follow up on that post, and babble about the directions I would take if I were to design an RPG of my own.

Disclaimers: Few of the ideas in this blog are really original; I steal a little bit from here and a little bit from there. With my limited experience with RPGs, even the ideas I think are original are probably old hat by now. I'm not an expert on the math that goes into RPGs, so some of this might sound like a seven-year-old explaining how we could fix the economy by printing more money. I'm usually more into story than fighting, so balance isn't going to be my priority. While this is all stuff I'd like to see in an RPG, it's not necessarily stuff I actually want to see in Dungeons & Dragons. Some of my ideas might contradict each other. This is not a game I'm actually going to create, as I really don't have the time or talent to design an RPG from scratch. Caution, this post may contain traces of nuts. Do not taunt Happy Fun Blog.

Well, anyway, that's enough caveat. On with the brainstorming!

Classes
By my count, D&D 4e currently has 26 classes, with 115 builds for those classes. I think this is totally unnecessary. Instead of creating 115 builds for us, they should just give us the instructions for creating unlimited builds ourselves. But of course, that would mean selling fewer books.

For my game, I don't think I'd actually name the classes, but instead have "packages" based on the combat roles: Defender, Striker, Controller, Leader. I might break it up a little further, such as dividing "Leader" into "Buffer" and "Healer", or "Striker" into "Ranged Striker" and "Melee Striker". I'd also have a "Versatile" package for those jack-of-all-trades types. But I wouldn't give the classes actual names. Let the players decide how to define themselves.

I don't want to make things so complicated as to require build points, but I would like at least some versatility in character creation. Everyone picks a major package and a minor package at first level. The major packages will define your combat role, contribute to your hit points, determine Weapon/Armor proficiencies, and grant class features. The minor packages would give additional bonuses or features that either compliment the major package, or give the character unrelated skills to make him more versatile. So the major package might include Sneak Attack or the ability to cast Arcane Spells, while the minor package might include First Strike or Ritual Casting.

Races
My RPG would be all about the races. Borrowing a core mechanic from Gamma World, all my races would be "half" races. This means everyone would pick two races for their character. Now, this does not mean everyone would be half-breeds. Most characters would still end up being full-blooded, but from a mechanical standpoint a full-blood Dwarf would actually be "Half Dwarf, half Dwarf."

It would work a bit like D&D 4e's hybrid classes, in that you would pick some stuff from each race. Each race would have two stat bonuses to chose from, two skill bonuses to choose from, two special abilities to choose from, two encounter powers to choose from, and so on. For example:

Lets say you want to make a half Elf, half Dragonborn. Suppose the elf gets a bonus to DEX or WIS, and the Dragonborn gets a bonus to STR or CHA. You choose the Elf's DEX and the Dragonborn's CHA. We'll say the Elf has a bonus to Stealth or Arcana, and the Dragonborn has a bonus to Athletics or Intimidate. You pick the Elf's bonus to Stealth and the Dragonborn's bonus to Athletics. Maybe you'll take the Elf's ability to shift in rough terrain, but not the Elf's ability to meditate instead of sleep. Perhaps you take the Dragonborn's breath weapon, but not his Dragonfear power.

But if instead you decide to just make a full-blown Elf, then you don't have to make the tough choices. Take both stat bonuses, both skill bonuses, both abilities, both encounter powers, and so on. And that's what most people would do, if only to fit the fluff. While any combination of races would be mechanically possible, the cross-breeding restrictions would come from the campaign settings. Each setting guide would include a list of which races are most common, and which combinations are possible in that universe. Even in homebrew settings, if a DM doesn't like the idea of a half-Goliath/half-Halfing, then he can provide a list of allowed combinations. LFR would have a list of allowed race combinations for tournament play. Even if your home game made you roll your race randomly, the list would still be something like 1-19 = full races, 20 = mixed race (roll again twice on chart).

So no, I'm not actually trying to encourage a lot of weird half-races. I just want them to be easier to create when they're needed. The point is that instructions for crossing every race would be mechanically possible right from the core rulebook, so you don't have to dig out a lot of splatbooks when the party's Gnome impregnates a Human NPC. And if you want a really wacky one-shot, have everybody roll both halves randomly.

But I'd go even further. All sentient humanoid races in the game would be playable, right out of the Monster Manual. So you wouldn't be limited to Halfling/Humans or Gnome/Elves; you could also play a Lizardfolk/Orc or a Goblin/Kobold, assuming your DM and the campaign setting allow it. Granted, a lot of creatures in the monster manual aren't balanced for PC play, but I'd design the base "playable race" stats first, and then add "monster packages" to them to make them usable as enemies. Kind of like how D&D 4e gives you instructions for designing your own monsters, but the Monster Manual is basically a collection of creatures made using those rules.

Anyway, I really want race to be an important part of defining your character. Too many RPGs seem to focus on Class, as if someone's occupation defines everything they do in life. I swear, most of my friends have no idea what I do for a living. They don't call me "Matt the Banker", and I don't want my character to be simply known as "Dalia the Ardent". Meanwhile, there's a lot of interesting fluff in each race's cultural background, stuff that seems to get forgotten once the dice start rolling. So with that in mind, in my RPG I'd like as many features to come from race as they do from class. It starts with each character having two encounter powers (one from each race if a mixed), but I'd like them to continue getting more features at future levels. For example, at odd-numbered levels they'd get something from their race, and at even levels they'd get something from their class.

Hit Points and Healing
This is a rough one for me. I hate slow healing, so I can't go with the older versions of D&D. Whether your campaign's about combat or exploration, I think it's important that characters be able to get back to it as soon as possible. The idea of roleplaying six weeks of bed rest while your broken arm heals just isn't exciting to me.

On the other hand, healing shouldn't be too easy, either. Gamma World allows you to get all your hit points back after a short rest, which fits the light-hearted, whimsical nature of the Gamma World universe. But D&D is generally a more serious game, and players shouldn't have unrestricted access to free healing.

D&D 4e seems like a good compromise. You can heal during short rests, but not forever. Still, the "healing surge" system has always felt a little clunky to me. The idea that healing spells and potions won't work at all if you're out of surges kind of irked me. I understand why the system was necessary - if you can heal by resting, there needs to be some way to restrict you from having unlimited healing - but I'm still not a fan.

Dragon Age has an interesting solution. It lets you regain some hit points from a short rest, but only once after each combat, so you can't just keep taking short rests until full. You can also make heal checks on each other for a few hit points, after which the recipient can't benefit from heal checks again until after the next time he takes damage. So it's got the easy healing, with restrictions, without having a complicated "surges" system. But it's still not what I'd do.

Also, the (pre-Saga) Star Wars d20 RPG has a neat system involving Vitality/Wounds. It's not exactly what I'm looking for, but I like the concept enough to steal from it a little.

Personally, I think I would separate hit points into two nearly equal numbers: Stamina and Health. So if a character would normally 40 hit points, in my system she might have 18 Stamina and 22 Health. Much like temporary hit points, damage would come off of Stamina first. These are the hits that you manage to deflect, punches you just shrug off, scrapes that cause temporary pain but no damage, and blows that knock the wind out of you without actually harming you. Once your Stamina is gone, that represents you having a harder time deflecting hits. When you take the first hit that actually damages your Health, that's when you're considered Bloodied. These are the attacks that actually break the skin: the cuts, bruises, burns, sprains, and sometimes even mental scars.

After battle, our hero takes a short rest, and gets all her Stamina back. She does not, however, get any Health back. She can get small amount of health back through an extended rest (say, 1 point per level plus her CON mod, but never less than 1 per night even if CON is her dump stat). A successful heal check (once per day) can increase that number a little bit. And of course there's always magical healing. But even if she can't get healed, as long as she has at least one Health point, she can keep adventuring on Stamina alone. Maybe it's not realistic for this fighter with broken bones and major lacerations to be battling on pep alone, but realism's relative in D&D.

So if you're good, you'll get through most fights without actually losing much Health. Sure, you'll lose all your Stamina, but just a couple of Health points, and next battle you'll have all your Stamina back. After about three battles, your Health might be low enough to actually cause you concern, and that's when you start thinking about finding a place to camp.

Now, an obvious problem: if magic still works the way it does in 4e, it's too easy to get Health back. The party Cleric will just use both his Healing Words, rest 10 minutes to get them back, wash, rinse, repeat until the party is healed. So if I used Encounter Powers in my game, I'd have to nix any that involve healing. Instead, most Encounter Powers would just restore Stamina to keep characters standing during battle, but actual Health-restoring powers would be more along the lines of "x times per day". I'd also have to keep Health potions on the rare side, with most stores selling Stamina potions instead.

Your maximum hit points would come from both race and class. I'm thinking your race would give you Health (since it's innate durability), and your class would give you Stamina (since it gives you the training to avoid injury).

Magic
Maybe I play too many video games, but I like "magic points" (or mana) better than encounter powers or "x spells per level per day" systems. But I also don't want characters to ever completely run out of spells. So every magic user would have one basic "Magic Missile" type spell that requires no mana. Or maybe it only costs 1 mana point, and magic users would regenerate 1 mana per round. In any event, they'd never have to buy a crossbow like they did in older editions.

Of course, to be compatible with my Hit Point system (above), there would still be some spells that only work a certain number of times per day. Perhaps Wizard-types would use a mana system, while Cleric-types would be on a "spells per day" system.

Rather than bog down the book with 1000 spells, I think I'd just list a few, along with instructions for designing your own. For example, in a normal RPG book, the Druid and the Wizard might have a similar "burst 1 in 10" spell. Why list it twice? Sure, the Wizard's might have ongoing fire damage, and the the Druid's might create a zone of vines that hold you in place, but you could could choose the after-effect yourself while designing the spell. Different after-effects would affect how much mana it costs to cast, and whether the spell is even castable at your level. Same goes for damage dice, range, burst size, whether it affects all creatures or enemies-only, and so on. You would design these spells each level as you learn them, and you would supply your own fluff. Later I would release a splat book full of nothing but pre-designed spells, but it wouldn't be required reading.

Stats
I'm really undecided on this one. I prefer fluff to crunch, and I favor simplicity. I want someone to be able to roll up a character in five minutes, even if they've never played before. So I don't really need the whole 10=0, 12=1, 14=2 thing. I know existing players have been used to the system for years, but whenever I try explaining it to new players, their eyes glaze right over. Some people get confused on when to use their full stat, and when to just use the mod. Several 4e newbies have reported using their CON mod instead of their full CON when figuring up their starting hit points, with disastrous results. Are both really necessary? If I'm generally only going to use the Stat Modifier, then I'm happy just letting that be the stat. So instead of having stats like 14, 17, 20, etc, my stats would be more like 2, 3, 5. I think.

On the other hand, I like how some of D&D's stats are so easy to quantify. Multiply your STR by 10, and you have the maximum pounds your character can lift. Multiply your INT stat by 10, and it's roughly equivalent to real life IQ points (100 being average, most PCs being well above average). And as I understand it, for games that use a d20, having most of the numbers in the game start at 10 helps with the math. But do I even want to use a d20? If I'm really going for simplicity, I might want to use a d6 system - everybody's got d6's in the house somewhere. No, forget that, I really like 20-sided dice.

And on yet another hand, I'm not sure I even want body-related stats like that. I wouldn't be totally against combining all your stats, skills, defenses, etc into one basic list. So instead of STR, CON, etc, you'd have "Melee Fighting", "Magic Defense", and so on mixed in with skills like Athletics and Bluff. ...nah, that's too messy.

And how do I want to arrive at these stats? I'm rather partial to the Gamma World method - just assigning 18 to your primary stat, 16 to your secondary (20 if both are the same), and rolling the rest. But I'd have to think on that for how to translate that into my system. Note that rest of this blog post pretty much assumes I'm going with standard D&D stats. But I'm not set on it.

Weapons
I'd go the Gamma World route: Instead of listing 1000 weapons, I'd just have a few weapon templates. If you want to call your sword a katana or a club or even a stop sign, that's up to you. But we only need one or two listings for each weapon die. But once again, I'm probably losing money on potential book sales.

Feats
I like the feat system they used in some of the Star Wars games. Rather than feats having other feats as prerequisites, each feat just has three levels. So instead of having "Ambidexterity", "Two Weapon Fighting", and "Improved Two Weapon Fighting", you'd just have "Two Weapon Fighting" I, II, and III.

Powers / Special Attacks
While I appreciate the way D&D 4e finally gave fighters more things to do besides basic attacks, I really don't think each class needs 20 pages of powers. Instead, I'd make a generic list of things all characters can do as they attack, such as push someone 1 square or knock them prone. But some characters would be better at performing these than others (in other words, some will be DEX-based, others will be STR-based, etc).

Skills
If I did decide to go with a traditional skill list, I don't think I'd need a super-large list of specific skills on the character sheet. I'd probably just give you bonuses based on your related stats, and a few blanks where you can write in specific talents. I'd like the player to have some amount of leeway to come up with their own skill names, based on previous occupations or hobbies. So what if the Player's Handbook doesn't list shoe repair as a skill?

Death and Dying
I'm not big on death in RPGs, but I know I'm in the minority there, so I'd have a couple of optional methods. Personally I like the way they do it in the Final Fantasy video games - if a hero falls in battle, they are K.O.'d. As long as one character outlives the final monster, then everyone else is brought up to 1 hit point after the fight. They only die if the entire party is defeated. And even then, only if the villain wants them dead. Capturing them might take the plot in new interesting directions.

When I DM, and one of the characters dies, I typically ask the player, "Do you want him to be dead, and roll up a new character? Or do you want me to find a way for him to live?" I'm creative, so I can find ways for them to live, maybe even ways that will make them wish they had died. A lot of times the player will actually pick death because it's more dramatic, and because they want to try a different class. To me it's more about trying to make the most interesting story, than it is about trying to get the best die rolls. If you want to make it more limited, you could reward players with "Get Out Of Death Free" cards for good roleplay. Or you could offer to bring a character back if the player will write a short story about their experience in the afterlife, and why their god allowed them to return. Because, you know, people love homework.

Anyway, since most people prefer a more hardcore game, I'm forced to consider more popular death systems. I don't like 4e's "3 saving throw" system, it just leaves too much to random fate. It means that no matter how tough you are, everyone will die within (on average) six rounds of hitting 0. I think I'd prefer a bleeding system, where you lose some hit points per round until you die at negative bloodied value. That way people with more hit points take longer to die, which makes sense to me. Though I might not mind the "3 saving throw" idea if you get a bonus to that throw equal to your CON mod; that way people with higher CON are still harder to kill.

Pets, Familiars, and Mounts
4e has several independent systems for how to deal with animal companions, and not a one of them makes a damn bit of sense. Depending on whether your animal is a Beast Companion, or a summon, or a familiar, or whatever, the animal has a different set of rules for its actions. For example, a summoned Golden Lion allows has you spend your Minor actions to order it to use its Standard/Move/Minor actions. A Beast Ranger's companion shares his Move actions, but not his Standard, and they can only attack simultaneously if a power allows them to do so.

In my RPG, if you have an animal companion, then you run it as a second character. I know it's not fair that some people to get to run two characters. I know it takes more time to go around the table. But you know what else takes a lot of time? Re-explaining 4e's animal companion system every frikkin time it's the Beast Ranger's turn (believe me, I've been there). Sometimes it's better just to have simpler rules, even if they aren't 100% balanced.

Time Resources
I like 4e's Standard/Move/Minor. One thing I would change, though: In my RPG, drinking a potion is a minor action, period. No "1 minor to draw, 1 minor to quaff." No "I'll draw a potion on this turn, so I can drink it on my next turn." I don't care if you keep it in your backpack, your boot, or your underwear. When you say, "I drink a potion", then that's a minor. If that's too much for your suspension of disbelief (and yet you have no problem believing in trolls), then we'll re-fluff it so they aren't in your backpack. Maybe in my universe, potions are made in pill form, which people attach to their wristbands for easy popping. But however the fluff describes it, it's a single minor action.

Micro-Managing
I'm not a fan. The options for micro-management will be there for the groups that want it, but there will lots of "outs" for those who don't like that sort of thing.

In my system, money is weightless and denomination doesn't matter. Coins are made out of some extremely light metal, and merchants have no qualms about making change for people. Or maybe everybody is just issued a magic debit card at birth. Maybe it's not even a "card" so much as your account is tied to a magical tattoo, so the DMs aren't tempted to target the party's treasure. (No offense, DMs, and I know getting robbed is valid drama... but if you didn't want the party to have so much gold, maybe you shouldn't have placed that big treasure chest in that last dungeon.)

All characters will be issued a solar-rechargeable magic sunrod. It is a minor action to activate, and clips to your clothing so you don't have to hold it. As long as you keep it clipped to the outside of your clothing for a couple of hours each day, it will shine for 8 continuous hours in the dark. However, some dungeons might be filled with magical darkness, limiting the sunrod's functionality.

If you have the skill to use a bow, then you have the skill to retrieve and repair your arrows after battle. Ditto for bolts and sling bullets. You also have the skill to make your own ammo from materials found in the forest. This process does not need to be roleplayed or even mentioned, since it is an assumed hobby your character does during his downtime. Any ranged weapon +1 or higher has unlimited magical ammo.

It is assumed that characters do odd jobs between actual quests, earning them enough money to break even on rent, food, and other necessities of life. It is also assumed that all characters know how to live in the world they were born in. That means they know how to find food when they can't buy it, either through hunting or foraging. My campaign settings will be full of fruit-bearing trees and edible lichens. Unless you're specifically in a storyline where starvation is supposed to be risk, eating simply doesn't need to be mentioned.

Miniatures
I love miniatures, and I always want to use them. But I don't want the game to require them. So all the bursts and blasts and other effects are going to have to be a little less complicated than they are in 4e. But I have played 4e without miniatures, and while the action felt a little less precise, it still worked. Granted, it was a low-combat campaign and we were playing simple classes. My goal would be to make my RPG just simple enough to work well without minis, but most people would still use them.

Balance and Errata
A lot of RPGs use the "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" method: Magic users suck at low levels, and rock at high levels. Meanwhile, Fighters just progress steadily, and gradually become less interesting as time goes on. D&D 4e made every possible effort to balance all the classes, attempting to make all of them equally useful (some critics say equally boring) at all levels. They went on to release errata every five minutes, nerfing any possible advantage one class might have as soon as said advantage was discovered.

I'm all for some balance. I don't want anyone to feel useless or fragile at any level. But I don't want to obsess about it either. If someone discovers a trick that makes their Striker do more damage, I'm going to accept the fact that "doing more damage" is a Striker's frikkin' job, and get on with my life. (Unless, of course, the trick is so unbalancing that the game is no longer challenging... but that hasn't been the case for most of 4e's errata.) Some people play for the story. Balance and errata aren't an issue for them. Other people pick a system apart looking for advantageous builds. They're going to find a way to build nuclear characters no matter how much errata you release. I say, let the min/maxers have their fun. Once they crack the system, they'll move on to something else, leaving this game for those who enjoy it for less munchkiny reasons.

Character Builder
There would definitely be a character builder. This builder would be a available for multiple platforms, including phone apps. The builder would not be free, as it would make buying the books obsolete. However, you would get a download code for the builder when you buy the Player's Handbook. When you buy other future splatbooks, you would get more download codes that update the builder with the content from that book.

Character Sheets
I want the character sheets to be relatively short. My biggest problem with 4e's character sheets is that you have to keep going back and forth to different pages. All your important stats are on the front page, but to use your powers (which you will, every turn) you have flip until you find the right power card page. Plus, they waste some room by showing their math. By this, I mean instead of just saying "AC: 20", it also shows the numbers that add up to AC (10+1/2 Level+Armor+Ability+Class+Feat+Enhancement+Misc). It's good to have those numbers on hand in case there's a dispute, and it helps someone figure out the numbers initially, but there's no reason it needs to be hogging up space on the front page.

When I play 4e, I tend to make my own character "cheat sheets" on a spreadsheet. These sheets have all my character's most important information on them: stats, skills, hit points, power summaries, and so on. But not the math that got me there. I still keep the full character sheet handy in case I need to see how I arrived at these numbers, but I rarely have to look at anything besides my one-page spreadsheet. It's not easy to fit everything on one page, especially if the character has a lot of complicated spells. And it gets harder and harder as the character gains levels.

Sample 4e Cheat Sheet (click to enlarge)

So one reason I would want my RPG to be as simple as possible, is so that everything can be summarized on one page. Remember, this is the 21st century - these sheets have to look good on an iPhone.

Conclusion
That's about all I can come up with for now. I don't think this would be the perfect RPG by any means, and I don't think it would have universal appeal. It's just a lot of ideas for a game I would be interested in playing. While it's fun to speculate about what the next D&D will be like, the game described above probably ain't it.

Unlikely Heroes: Curing Lycanthropy the Easy Way

2012-01-07T17:33:00.000-06:00

Game Date: 1/7/2012
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia Lockwood (Matt): Human Ardent
Durp the Oblivious (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight
Starr (Star): Eladrin Paladin
Teddi the StirgeSlayer (Ted): Dwarf Warlock

The Session:
Last session got interrupted mid-battle, so today we started right in the middle of the action. We still faced one stirge (attached to Teddi's face), some vines (we thought we could just get away from them and be okay, but they turned out to be ambulatory), and Jevra (our teenage ward turned werewolf). Things looked pretty bleak for a while, but we finally turned it around. Teddi got sick of his face hugging foe, so he pulverized the stirge with a Daily power. Then we concentrated on Jevra, and continued hacking away at her even after she was down, just to make sure she didn't regenerate. Once we were all free to concentrate on the vines, it didn't take long to finish them off.

This would be a good time to say some kind words in memory of Jevra... but most of our party didn't really know her that well. The characters who knew her best are all gone now, with Durp being the only long-term party member. Being a bard, perhaps he could write a touching eulogy once we get back to town. But for now, we're in a race to find some Druid artifacts before a rival party gets them.

Now that we weren't in danger, we could look around the area more thoroughly. Last session Marrick found a breastplate. A closer examination revealed it to be Astral Fire Armor, one of the five Druid items we were sent to find. That still leaves us a wand, a vial, a staff, and a codex. We did find a ring, and finally got to study the inscriptions on the stone monoliths. The writings gave us clues as to where to look for the other artifacts.

After looking at the inscriptions, we decided to head East. We considered taking an extended rest before setting out, because we'd used a lot of Dailies, and some of our party members were low on surges. But time was also an issue here, so we put it off for one more fight. We marched East for a while, eventually picking up some tracks that might have been our rivals. The tracks ended in some foliage near the mouth of a cave. We entered the cave.

The cave split off in a couple of different directions. As we began to discuss which way to explore first, Teddi wandered off. Not the slightest bit concerned about his lack of a light source, our mad priest just felt his way along the walls until he entered a large, pitch black chamber. There he was attacked by a mutant bear and three large bats. The rest of the party heard the ruckus and came to his aid.

After the battle, we found a chest. Inside was a wand-shaped depression. Could it be the wand on our Druid list? If so, where is it? Did the rival party get here first and take it? We took an extended rest in the cave, then headed back to the grove. Following the clue from another inscription, we headed Southeast.

As we neared our destination, we heard a thumping sound. Then we reached a large hollow tree. High up on the tree, there was rod-like object attached to the tree by a rope. The thumping sound came from the rod hitting the tree as it swayed in the breeze. Teddie managed to break the rope with an Eldritch blast, but this attracted some enemies. We now faced three stirges and a large beetle.

The beetle came from inside the tree, and Marrick made sure to keep him there. Soon our party was split in two: Our three melee fighters fought the beetle inside the tree, while our three ranged characters fought the stirges outside. Once the fight was over, we investigated the object Teddi had knocked off the tree. It was a large leg bone. Inside the bone was a scroll containing three rituals. This was the codex on our list. Two down, three to go.

And that's where we ended the session.

Update: Race/Class Build List

2011-12-29T09:46:00.001-06:00

I've finally updated my Race/Class Build List to include races/builds from Heroes of the Feywild. It's basically a list of all the races and class builds in D&D 4e, and which race/build combinations have the best stat synergy. Wow, 4e has 26 classes now, and 115 builds for those classes. It also has 32 PC races, plus 11 monster races, making 43 playable races.

Please let me know if you see any mistakes on the list.

Click to Download

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-24T22:41:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas... now roll initiative.

Seasons greetings to my gaming group, my gamer friends, my blog readers, and anyone else who happens to stumble across this page. Have a wonderful holiday!

Unlikely Heroes: Game, Interrupted

2011-12-11T08:37:00.002-06:00

Game Date: 12/10/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia (Matt): Human Ardent
Durp the Oblivious (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight
Teddi (Ted): Dwarf Warlock

Last Session:
I missed the 12/3/2011 session, and had to have the other players fill me in. Here is a quick recap of what I missed, courtesy of the other players:

We left town to search for some Druids to cure Jevra. On our way through the woods, we saw a pack of wolves feeding on a corpse. We chose not to fight them, and just skirted their way around the pack. Derp found a magic dagger. The party then came across another town, and went to the inn. While there, a ranger accosted Derp, claiming that the dagger belonged to him. This resulted in a bar fight with the ranger's party. The brawl went on for a while until the sheriff arrived and broke it up.

During the fight, a valuable shroud was burned. The shroud belonged to a professor, and the sheriff held both parties responsible. Also, during the night, the dagger was stolen from the sheriff and our party was not allowed to leave town until we found it. We eventually found it in a stable, having been stolen by a gnome's familiar.

Since the shroud was priceless, the professor came up with a task for us instead of paying for it. He wants our party to find some druids and ask them a favor. He wants to borrow some artifacts from them for scientific purposes. Since we were looking for druids anyway, it seemed like a fair punishment. Plus we now have a map, so we're not wandering around the forest aimlessly. Our party also hopes to track down the ranger's party and get a little payback. Gee, I hope these woods are safe...

Today's Session:
As we were getting to leave the inn, we discovered that we couldn't find Glynnyn. She appeared to have left town, and we wondered if she left with the ranger's party. We entered the woods and began tracking the other party's footprints. After a bit of hiking, we triggered a trap. Merrick and Keyanna quickly found themselves hanging upside down from a rope. We then heard some rustling in the woods, and were attacked by a werewolf and four wolves.

The wolves were easy enough, but the werewolf meant business. It had a nasty burst attack that hurt us a lot. It took Keyanna a few rounds to get herself free of the trap, and Marrick spent even longer as a Dwarf piñata. Eventually the werewolf tried to flee, but we managed to overtake it and finish it off. Teddi was bitten during the fight, and has contracted Moon Frenzy.

After the battle, Teddi found a scroll of "Speak with Dead". We continued to follow our map until we reached a clearing. We saw a circle of stones, with a mass of moving vines in the middle. A wolf was being engulfed by the writhing vines. We considered trying to help the wolf, but having already been attacked by wolves today, we just watched it for a while. Finally Teddi ran up to help it, got grabbed by the vines, and teleported back to freedom.

There was Elvish writing carved in the stones. Keyanna translated one passage as: "Two miles towards the Sun's first fire, the Earth's embrace will steal its ire." She wanted to read the other side of the stones, but couldn't see enough from her position. So she climbed a nearby tree and tried to climb out over the stone circle on one of the branches. It didn't work out like she'd hoped. On top of one of the monoliths was a suit of plate armor and a panther. And it turned out the tree was full of stirges.

We were attacked by one large stirge, four stirge suckerlings, the panther, and of course the vines. Early in the battle, Merrick climbed up onto the monolith to fight the panther. The vines kept grabbing him and trying to pull him off, but being a dwarf he was able to resist their pulling. While he faced the panther, the rest of us picked off the suckerling minions. The big stirge attached itself to Teddi, and he'd already used up his one teleport power. Jevra ran off and hid between some trees, but then transformed into a werewolf herself. She came back out and attacked the party in her wolfy form. Merrick finally killed the panther, but was unable to rejoin the party because the vines still held him in place.

We had to end our session early due to some real-life concerns.

Reminders:
Due to the holiday season, we might not play again for a few weeks, so we'll want to keep a good record of where we left off.

We're still in battle, and the battle isn't going very well. We've used up a lot of our Encounter powers and Dailies, and most of us are low on hit points. There are three enemies left: the vines, the large stirge, and Jevra. None of them are bloodied yet. The vines aren't much a problem, if Merrick can just get away from them. The stirge is still stuck to Teddi's face, and is hard to hit because it gets an AC bonus when grabbing something. Jevra might be our biggest concern. She hits hard - she hit Dalia twice in one round, taking two-thirds of Dalia's hit points. Since we've used up most of our healing options, we can't afford to take many more hits from her. Also, Dalia may have contracted Moon Frenzy.

Initiative Order (As best we remember it):
Marrick
Stirge
Teddi
Vines
Dalia
Jevra
Durp
Keyanna

Unlikely Heroes: Magic Carpet Ride

2011-11-27T00:23:00.003-06:00

Game Date: 11/26/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia (Matt): Human Ardent
Durp the Oblivious (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Glynnyn (Tamara): Elf Druid
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight

The Session:
Last session we barely survived an epic battle with a Beholder and a gaggle of Wights. This left us in a poor state, and our plan to take an extended rest was foiled by the arrival of several more undead. We huddled in a side room, while our only escape was blocked by a large number of Kobold Zombies. We hadn't even managed to get a short rest in, and our party was desperately low on healing surges. Things looked pretty grim.

Only 16 of 'em? Bring it on!

Fortunately, they were all minions. Keyanna took out a good number of them with her blast attacks, and none of us took much damage during the fight. After our victory, we finally took our well-deserved extended rest in the side crypt, while Payday and his lumberjack cronies guarded the door. Once we were rested, Marrick climbed up the walls of the Beholder's chamber, through the magical fog, but didn't find anything of interest.

The next room was full of rubble from old statues, making the entire room difficult terrain. Marrick and Dalia were the first to enter, and were quickly hit by crossbow bolts. We suddenly faced a pair of Undead Kobold Marauders, four Zombies, and their leader: the newly-reanimated Kobold King Merlokrep, whom we had defeated a few sessions ago. It wasn't easy, but we came out on top.

The final room contained a large sarcophagus made of carved coral, and four bound lumberjack prisoners. Inside the sarcophagus we found a Mercurial Rod, and a stone tablet inscribed with a strange language. Inside the Kobold King's skull we found an amber gemstone with floating runes inside. While holding the gemstone (a "Polyglot Gem"), Keyanna found she was able to read the text on the stone tablet. It read "Zelfin Cova" in the Azlanti language.

When we got back to town, Kreed finally unlocked our tower for us. We reunited with Durp in town, even though he was supposed to be out of town with Ranell for a couple of weeks. (Derp: "I forgot my lute.") The next morning, we discovered that we'd all contracted Mummy Rot. On our way to the church to get treated, we heard that several of the lumberjacks from our party had died overnight, including the four we'd rescued. Apparently we'd brought back a plague, and the Rot was spreading through town.

The cleric at the church was working on a cure, but it would take a few days and require some materials that weren't found in town. Kreed came to see us again and asked us to go to the town of Olfden for supplies to fight the plague. (Aren't his own employees good for anything besides cutting down trees?) Marrick volunteered first, but Kreed hasn't really trusted him since the dwarf threw a hammer at him last session. Instead, Durp made the trip solo, using a magic carpet borrowed from Kreed. (Everybody now, "I can show you the world...")

He was gone four days, during which the rest of us had to make heal/endurance checks to stay ahead of the disease. He did a little shopping while he was there, and traded a Sacrificial Longsword we'd found for a more useful Songblade. By the time he got back to Falcon's Hollow, the rest of our party had been cured through die rolls. But the supplies were still needed by the town, so it wasn't a wasted trip.

We then learned about some murders in town. Three people had died by the docks, and had wounds that might have been made by an animal. We headed straight for the church, to see if our favorite Teen Wolf Jevra had been involved. The priestess didn't seem to think Jevra had been getting out, but she did say that Jevra had been a discipline problem ever since she learned about the deaths of Vex and Davor.

We decided we needed to get Jevra out of town fast. We didn't want to chance the townsfolk pointing fingers at her, and we weren't so sure we trusted her ourselves. We'd been planning on taking her to the local Druids soon when we had the time, to see if they could cure her lycanthopy. Off we go! Wait, not yet. We had to postpone our trip for legal reasons.

We'd been waiting for a certain lawyer to come to town, so that we could finalize the legality of our adventuring company. We didn't want to have to rewrite our tower's lease every time our group's membership changed, so we legally established a name for ourselves. No longer are we just unlikely heroes, from now on we're officially known as...

(We briefly considered the name "Durp's Bitches".)

We also signed a three year lease on the tower. We have a remodeling contract for the tower for 10,000 gold (we already have 4 thousand towards that from our dealings with Kreed). It should take about 8 months for the work on the tower to be completed. We also decided to go ahead and employ a couple of hirelings to stay in the tower for upkeep and security purposes. For this, we sought out some of the kids we'd worked with on our previous adventures.

We knew that Hollin's sister Ralla was working as a prostitute, and figured it might not be the best job for a girl her age, so we looked for her first. We arrived at the brothel, the Rouge Lady, but it wasn't open yet. Nevertheless, Durp knocked repeatedly on the door.

*knock knock knock* "Hookers." *knock knock knock* "Hookers." *knock knock knock* "Hookers."

A window opened up above us, and a couple of annoyed guys dumped a chamber pot on Keyanna's head. She wasn't thrilled. Merrick and Durp kept knocking, and one of the men upstairs aimed a crossbow at them. Durp shot him with his own crossbow, and Merrick broke into the brothel through a window. After Merrick let the rest of the party in, a noseless Half-Orc angrily entered the room and asked us what the hell we were doing here. It was Kabran Bloodeye, head of thieves guild.

We asked to buy Ralla's contract, which he agreed to do for 300 gold. Afterwards, we found Ralla and Hollin, and put them to work in the tower. Now that we'd tied up a bunch of loose ends, we got ready for our trip to find the Druids. And we'll pick up from there next week.

Unlikely Heroes: I Only Have Eyes For You... And You... And You...

2011-11-20T01:17:00.004-06:00

Game Date: 11/19/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia (Matt): Human Ardent
Glynnyn (Tamara): Elf Druid
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight

The Session:
Last session we fought a small kobold army in a lumberjack camp, resulting in the deaths of three party members. As long as the party was going through drastic changes, we decided to switch systems, abandoning Pathfinder and returning to D&D 4e. We're also trying out the "inherent bonus" system (DMG2 p.138), and keeping magic items to a minimum.

The surviving party members headed back home, devastated by their recent loss. Upon reaching the city, their first order of business was to take care of their dead. Since their players were absent, Durp and Ranell volunteered to deliver Davor's body back to his family. This left Keyanna and Glynnyn to plan the burials of Vex and Adrilar. They headed for the church to make arrangements.

Meanwhile, Dalia Lockwood arrived in town. She is a member of the Eagle Knights, on an undercover mission to learn more about Kreed. Her organization has been suspicious of him for a while, but they haven't successfully gathered any evidence of his misdeeds. Lately there have been rumors about a group of adventurers who refused to join Kreed's payroll. Dalia hopes to speak to these heroes and see if they've seen anything that might help her. Her first few attempts to learn of their whereabouts were fruitless, but eventually she spoke to the right people and learned where to find the party.

A thick-skinned dwarf named Marrick came to town as well. He is looking for information about the Dwarven Monastery, and has been searching for his lost uncle Glintaxe. After asking around a bit, he was pointed in the right direction.

At the church, Keyanna had the sad duty of informing Jevra (our young lycanthropic ward) about the deaths of her adoptive parents. Jevra didn't take it well, but Keyanna promised her that the rest of the party would still take care of her.

Soon, Marrick entered the church and introduced himself. Keyanna told him what she knew of Glintaxe and the monastery, and Marrick joined the party. Shortly afterward, Dalia also arrived and introduced herself. While the adventurers couldn't provide her with any additional evidence against Kreed, they were exactly the kind of group Dalia was looking to join: people who have done jobs for Kreed without actually aligning themselves with him. Dalia plans to stay with the group for a while, so that she can collect the information she needs.

The party attempted to return to the tower, but found that they were now locked out. Apparently our contract was in the names of Davor and Snidely, both now deceased. We spoke to Kreed about the issue, but the meeting did not get off to a good start. Marrick lost his temper quickly, and tried to attack Kreed. Keyanna quickly stepped in and prevented the fight from going further. Once things calmed down, Kreed offered us a deal. Fulfill our obligations with him - that is, make up for the mission we just botched - and he would alter the contract to cover all the members of our ever-evolving group. We're not allowed to enter the tower again until the mission is complete.

Reports say zombies have taken some human prisoners at a place called "Cold Marsh". We left town right away, accompanied by Payday and more of Kreed's men. We reached our destination, a gargantuan burial mound. As we started down the stairs into the crypt, we were attacked from behind by a pair of Shadows. Dalia never managed to hit once this encounter; not a good start to my character. We continued down the stairs and found a room full of fountains, where we defeated three Lesser Water Elementals.

The next room was a large open area with what appeared to be clouds up above us, obscuring the ceiling. There was a smaller room to our left from which we heard moaning, and we could hear laughter coming from the hallway on the far end of the room. Marrick was a few steps into the room when a blast hit him from above. A Beholder floated down out of the clouds.

The Beholder hovered above us, forty feet in the air, which was frustrating since most of us don't have ranged attacks. Since she couldn't hit the enemy, Glynnyn decided to explore the adjoining room, which was full of sarcophagi. She found a magic sword (that's good!), but she also woke the dead (that's bad).

The Beholder finally came down, and we hacked at it with all our might. As it got closer to death, the battle was joined by a Wraith, three Wights, and two Deathlock Wights. It was a difficult battle, and we lost a lot of surges. By the end of the battle, Glynnyn was completely out of surges and low on hit points.

After the fight, our immediate plan was to hole up in the smaller crypt room, and take turns guarding the door so we could take an extended rest. However, as we moved towards the crypt, we heard some noises approaching from down the hall. We ended the session on that unsettling note.

Character - Dalia

2011-11-20T00:12:00.000-06:00

This is my new character in the "Unlikely Heroes of Darkmoon Vale" campaign.

Full Name:
Dalia Lockwood

Class:
Ardent

Race:
Human

Gender:
Female

Alignment:
Good

Deity:
Sarenrae

Background:
As a teen, Dalia lived a charmed life. She wasn't from a wealthy or prestigious family, but somehow she was unusually popular with her peers. Doors were always opened for her, both literally and figuratively. She never thought much about why, she just figured she deserved it for being pretty. The idea that she might have some latent mental powers, and that she might be subconsciously influencing people with her mind... well, her thoughts just didn't run that deep.

When she was twenty, she met a soldier named Duncan Cwyburn. He was an officer of the Eagle Knights, a militia devoted to justice. She was surprised to find that he was immune to her charms. What's more, he recognized her psionic abilities for what they were, and convinced her that she could be more than just a pretty face. She joined the Knights, where she learned to control her psionic abilities, for battle and for defense. More importantly, they taught her to be a responsible person, instead of a petty socialite.

Dalia has always had a knack for the healing arts, so her primary training is in the field of combat medicine. Two years have passed since Dalia began her training, and her superiors have decided it's time for her to get some field experience. Recently stories have begun to spread about a group of busy adventurers in Falcon's Hollow, and their refusal to cooperate with the unscrupulous aristocrat Thuldrin Kreed. The Knights have been eying Kreed's suspicious dealings for a while, but have neither the evidence nor the legal power to take any action against him. Perhaps these new adventurers might know something? Dalia has been sent to check it out.

Personality, Mannerisms, and Appearance:
Dalia has red hair and attractive features. As a representative of the Eagle Knights, she is the epitome of courtesy and chivalry. Her psionic-enhanced empathy, combined with her social training, sometimes allows her to gain control of conversations in order to get what she wants. When insulted, she keeps her temper in check, and responds with the civility one would expect from a knight. In short, she's nice... until it's time to not be nice. Once things turn physical, she has no qualms about smashing faces and severing limbs.

Creating this character:
This character came together pretty much by itself. I rolled her race and class randomly to get Human Ardent. Our party has been greatly lacking a healer, so I mostly took healing options when building her. I picked the "Knight Hospitaler" theme and the "Surgeon" background, after which her combat medic background practically wrote itself. Going through my miniatures, I only found one that really fit the build, so I based the character's appearance on the mini.

Her name also sort of evolved by itself. I wasn't really thinking about names while building her, so I kept calling her "Ardent" in my head. Subconsciously this evolved into "Dale", probably because of Flash Gordon's "Dale Arden". But I didn't really like the name Dale, so I morphed it into Dalia.

Unlikely Heroes: Kobold Katastrophe

2011-11-12T17:03:00.004-06:00

Game Date: 11/12/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Adrilar (Greg): Elf Sorcerer
Davor (Ted): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Glynnyn (Tamara): Elf Druid
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Dragonblood Sorcerer
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk
Ranell (Michael): Halfling Barbarian

The Session:
Last session left off with us checking out a lumber camp. When we got there, we were ambushed by a bunch of kobolds. Adrilar went down, others were wounded, and things looked grim. We ended the session on that cliffhanger.

So, after dreading this potential TPK for over a month, we started right where we left off. We faced a large number of enemies, mostly kobolds and kobold zombies. Ranell briefly considered shooting Vex in the leg and fleeing into the forest.

Adrilar was the first to go. He got swarmed by kobold zombies, who continued to attack him after he went down. They didn't leave him alone until they'd eaten his brain. I'd make a joke about how it must have been a small meal, but I'll refrain out of respect for the dead.

(But I'm still thinking it.)

When the battle first began, Davor had been poking around in a small, two-room shack. He heard some noises from the shack's other room, so he blocked the door by pushing a desk in front of it. He then left the shack, and investigated a large shed. In the shed he encountered a giant beetle, which very quickly killed him.

I think this picture speaks for itself.

Once we killed all the outdoor enemies, we had a brief respite. We looted Adrilar's healing items and used them to get ourselves back up to full. The survivors - Glyynyn, Keyanna, Vex, and Ranell - started looking for Davor. None of us had seen him run into the shed, so we didn't even know he was dead yet. Ranell and Vex went into the small shack, pushed the desk aside, and fought a few more kobolds and a swarm of bugs. We'd had bad luck with swarms before, so after a couple of rounds we sealed the room again and went back outside.

Once outside, the giant beetle came scuttling out of the shed. It was very hard to hit and did copious amounts of damage, but we stood our ground (for some reason). Keyanna tried to cast Sleep on it, and rolled a crit on her attack roll. Unfortunately, it turns out there is no attack roll for Sleep in Pathfinder, and Sleep only affects creatures of lower level than the beetle anyway.

The beetle knocked Ranell out and buried him in the ground. Keyanna spent her next turn pulling Ranell out of the ground so he wouldn't suffocate. Vex was messily killed by the massive insect. It was Glynnyn who finally delivered the killing blow against the beetle.

The final survivors were Glynnyn, Keyanna, Ranell, and of course Durp (because his player was absent, Durp stayed on the sidelines). They found a cart and loaded it up with the bodies of their friends. They decided to head back to town, and ended the session there.

Afterthoughts:
In an earlier blog I compared the pros and cons of Pathfinder and D&D 4e. One of the bigger issues was combat length. Part of the reason we switched to Pathfinder was that we were tired of 4e's incredibly long encounters. Well, this entire session was a single encounter. To be fair, we started a little late and ended a little early, but it was still a pretty long battle for Pathfinder. I wonder how it would have played out in 4e.

Reminders:
Our party has just changed so drastically, and some of the players have been getting a little annoyed with Pathfinder. We've decided to switch back to D&D 4e next session. We're going to continue with the same storyline, and the surviving party members will be converting their characters to 4e versions. I rolled my race and class randomly, and I will be playing a Human Ardent.

Also:
For those party members still alive to enjoy it, we now have blueprints for our tower. It's probably going to cost a good deal more than we have right now, but it's a long-term project. Pix below:

Miniatures: Exotic Mounts

2011-11-05T10:11:00.000-06:00

A while back I posted about some Horse Mount Miniatures from StufferShack.com. It's a great idea: these horse miniatures are offset on their base, giving you room to set your rider mini on the same base. But why stop at mundane horses? More recently they've added some Exotic Mounts. Your minis can now ride panthers, drakes, unicorns, griffons, and more. So far I've only ordered one of them, the Tourqen Panther. I plan to order a few more of them when I have some extra money. These cost a little bit more that the horses, but they probably use harder-to-find minis. They do have a buy-4-get-1-free deal, so you can save a little money there.

Here's some pics of my panther (click to view larger):

The Tourqen Panther

Panther with Rider

Mounted Party

Module: Death By Chocolate

2011-10-15T14:14:00.001-05:00

Overview:
This is a just-for-fun one-shot Halloween/Easter module that doesn't take place in any particular universe or time period. This module's major gimmick is that it uses various types of candy instead of miniatures, and players get to eat what they kill. It is not designed for any particular setting, though it does mention magic, Half-Orcs, Gnomes, and Half-Elves. Even so, the story could easily be converted to most settings.

Preparation:
For starters, you'll need to buy some candy. What kind is up to you, though you do want pieces that can fit in 1x1 squares, as well as a few 2x2 sized candies. A variety would would be good, to represent the different kinds of monsters in the module. You might want to check with your players first to see if they have any special likes/dislikes or dietary restrictions. For sanitary reasons, I would use wrapped candies. Good choices would be Hershey's Kisses, Starburst, Reese's Minis, and Rolos.

My suggested grocery list:
Hershey's Kisses (10) [Chocolate Zombies]
Reese's Miniatures (4) [Lesser Choclan]
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (2) [Choclan]
Reese's Big Cup (1) [Greater Choclan]
Rolos (4) [Carm Hounds]
Starburst (5 total; 4 must be different flavors) [Fruit Imps]
Chocolate Bunny or other 2x2 chocolate character [Boss]
Ring Pops or Chocolate Coins [Treasure]

The Module:
"For whatever reason, your party has been traveling together for a few months now. You're on the road one night, and it's starting to get late. You're thinking about finding a good place to set up camp, when you see a side road. The road leads downhill into a valley, where you see a tiny town surrounded by farmland. The town wasn't on your map, probably because it's so small. But it looks like a good place to spend the night; better than sleeping in the woods, anyway."

"As you walk down the hill, you pass a sign that says 'Welcome to Hushley. Home of the World Famous Hushley Chocolate Factory.' Anybody want to give me a History check?" (Medium DC) Success: "You actually remember Hushley chocolates from when you were a kid. But you haven't seen them in years; you thought they'd stopped making them." Failure: "You've never heard of Hushley chocolates."

"The road leads straight into downtown, which is basically a single street lined with houses on both sides. Some of the houses double as businesses, with small signs that say things like 'Barber' or 'Blacksmith'. A few have candles flickering in the windows, but the only building that actually looks lively is the inn. The inn is about three houses down on the left. As you look farther down the street, you see that eventually the houses end, and the road starts to go back uphill. Farther up the hill, the road ends at a large mansion. There are no lights on in the mansion, and it looks to be in a state of disrepair. Most of the windows are broken, the shutters have fallen off, and a new paint job couldn't hurt."

Hopefully the PCs will stop at the Inn before checking out the mansion. However, if they head straight for the mansion, have someone stop them. Make up an NPC, possibly one of the patrons from the Inn below. "Hey, you! What are you doing? Don't go in there!" When the PCs ask about the mansion, have the NPC offer to tell them all about it, if they'll come to the inn first. Or just have the NPC tell them the whole story right here.

The Inn:
"All eyes are on you as you enter the inn. You see a bartender, a waitress, and eight patrons, all of whom stop their conversations as you walk through the door. They don't look angry or suspicious, just curious. This town probably doesn't get a lot of visitors."

The Bartender is friendly and offers the PCs a cheap room. The other patrons are eager to meet the out-of-towners, and some offer their various services to try to earn a little money. Eventually the PCs will probably ask about the mansion or the Chocolate Factory. It doesn't matter much who the PCs talk to, they all know the history of the town, and they all love to retell the story. As one patron relates the story, other patrons constantly interrupt with the parts they want to tell. If you want to expand this roleplay portion of the adventure, give each of them unique personalities and their own insights into the events.

The Inn Staff and Patrons:
William Leaubrau (Bartender) Human, Male. Very friendly and likes to tell stories.
Veruca Leaubrau (Waitress) Human, Female. Daughter of William. A bit lazy and distracted; tends to get drink orders wrong.
Augustus Durtham (Farmer) Human, Male. Doesn't say much, mostly grunts and nods. His sheep have been getting slaughtered lately.
Josephine Fitchpork (Farmer) Human, Female. Factory widow. Since her husband died, has been seeing her farmhand Gene.
Gene Strong (Farm Hand) Half-Orc, Male. Works for Josephine. Big and strong. Not very bright, but good heart.
Violet Lawton (Sheriff) Human, Female. Factory widow. Promoted from deputy after Sheriff Marlow died investigating the factory.
Michael Lennon (Clothier) Human, Male. Factory widower. Very manly (overcompensating), likes to show off his muscles.
Georgina Honeycutt (Barber) Human, Female. Factory widow. Always commenting on other people's hairstyles.
Charles Cook (Chef) Half-Elf, Male. Used to work at Chocolate Factory, had the day off when accident occurred. Always snacking.
Dodo Hushley (Undertaker) Gnome, Female. Niece of Reese Hushley. A bit nuts, but honest.

The History:
"The mansion once belonged to an old Gnome named Reese Hushley the Third. He was born rich, a bit on the eccentric side, and was something of a dabbler. His favorite hobbies were magic, alchemy, and cooking. He was a master dessert chef, who was always inventing new types of candies and chocolate confections. He found ways of using magic to invent new flavors, which were unlike anything anyone had tasted before. He liked to call himself a 'Choclomancer'. He built a factory in his basement, and he became hugely successful. He employed more than half the town, and his chocolate creations were exported to cities all over this continent."

The Disaster:
"But one day he made a mistake. We're still not exactly sure what happened. He had been talking all week about some new flavor he'd discovered, and how it was going to be he greatest creation. He called it 'Planar Chocolate' and said that some of the ingredients were from another dimension. It's all he would talk about."

"Then the day finally came to start producing it. Nobody knows what went on inside the factory, but just a few seconds after the morning whistle blew, there was a 'BOOM' that shook the whole town. The windows blew out of the mansion, and brown smoke filled the air. A single worker staggered out of the mansion with burns all over his body, but he only could only say a few words before he fell over dead. His last words were, 'Don't go in there, it's loose.' Half the town's population died that day. The sheriff went to check out the wreckage, but something killed him. When we found his body, it was covered with large bite marks... and chocolate."

"That was ten years ago. A few months later, we hired a Wizard to place a binding spell on the grounds, to keep whatever is in there from escaping. In the years since then, a few people have gone into the mansion. Most never returned. The few that made it back told wild stories about monsters in the dark. These days we try not to think about it. Every few months some foolish treasure hunters will pass through town and have a look for themselves, never to be seen again. But now we think the Wizard's barrier is starting to wear off, as we've seen some strange shapes lurking in the darkness lately. Some of the farmers have reported their livestock getting killed. We're starting to fear for our safety."

Tips For Other Settings:
If you run this in a less magical setting (such as Gamma World), change all references to magic into technology. The binding spell becomes a force field, the Wizard is a scientist, and the magic rings (mentioned under "Possible Questions", below) could be "Personal Disruption Units" or something similar.

The Treasure:
"There's rumors of a big treasure down there. A few years before the disaster, Mr. Hushley had been talking a lot about alchemy. He claimed to have invented a method of turning sugar into gemstones. He said he owned the world's largest ruby, but he refused to show it to anyone. He said he didn't want his method to get out, because it would ruin the world's economy. Legend has it that Hushley's Ruby still sits in the safe in his office, deep below the mansion."

Possible Questions:
Where is the Wizard who sealed the grounds? "We hired him from out of town, so who knows where he is now."
What was the Wizard's name? "Oh... I think his name was Cadbury."
What have you seen in the dark? "We haven't gotten a good look, but we get the impression of large, dark people, with claws."
Where did you see them? "Usually near the mansion, but some of the farmers say they saw them in their pastures."
Is there a reward for stopping this evil? "This is a poor town, but we'll see what we can get together. And of course you can have whatever treasures you find there."
Once we get into the mansion, how do we find the factory? "There's a service entrance around the back of the mansion."
How will we get past the Wizard's ward? "It's only designed to keep things in, not out."
How will we get back out? "Well, like I said, the spell seems to be weakening, so it shouldn't be a problem. However, the Wizard did give us some rings that allow the wearer to step through the barrier. I'll go find some." Have the Sheriff return to her office to get a ring for each PC. If the players don't bother to ask, then don't worry about it.

Setting Out:
Once the players decide to go into the factory, they head towards the mansion. It's late by now, unless they spend the night and try the mansion in the morning. At night there is a full moon, causing a low-light environment. It is still low-light in parts of the mansion, from the moonlight coming in the windows. The underground factory will be pitch black no matter what time of day. The descriptions below assume the PCs have some sort of light source.

"At the end of the street, the road goes uphill a bit until it gets to a metal gate. On the other side of the fence, the grass is much higher, since no one has tended to the grounds in years. The fence itself glows slightly from the Wizard's warding spell." (Open gate) "The gate is unlocked, and creaks loudly when you open it. You think you see what used to be a path leading up to the front door. The remnants of a side path go around the back of the house."

If they go through the front door: "The door is unlocked, in fact the door is hanging from one hinge." (Enter) "The place is a mess. There are pieces of charred furniture everywhere. The walls are grey with soot. There is black dust on every surface. You see the remains of a grand staircase in the main hall, but it has collapsed." If they explore the first floor of the mansion, or climb up to the second story, they don't find much of value. Everything was destroyed by the initial blast ten years ago, and has just been rotting since. If they find the bedroom on the second floor, they might uncover a locked fireproof safe containing a small amount of gold. If they explore the kitchen area on the first floor: "This looks like it used to be the kitchen area. You also find a staircase leading down. On the wall next to the stairs, there is a metal sign that reads 'To Factory'."

If they go around back to the service entrance: "You push your way through the tall grass and make your way around the back of the mansion. Eventually you find a door with a sign that reads 'Service Entrance'." (Open it) "The door is unlocked and opens easily. It looks like you are in what was once the kitchen. There are pieces of charred furniture everywhere. The walls are grey with soot. There is black dust on every surface. You see two doorways leading to other rooms of the mansion, and a staircase leading down. On the wall next to the stairs, there is a metal sign that reads 'To Factory'."

Once they go down the stairs to the Factory: "The stairs go down a very long way into the darkness. As you get close to the bottom of the stairs, you hears some noises coming from the room below." (Listen) "You hear some shuffling, some movement. Occasionally you hear a low moan." (Go down stairs) "This appears to be the factory floor. It is a very large room with a high ceiling. To your right you see the remains of several large machines. To your left you see some giant vats, with words like 'chocolate' or 'molasses' painted on them. You see some broken tables in front of you, and at the far end of the room you see a doorway. Suddenly there's a movement to your right."

"You see a slow-moving creature shamble out from behind a candy press. It looks like a walking corpse, still wearing a factory worker uniform. However, this zombie appears to be covered from head to toe in some brown substance. As the zombie turns toward you, you become aware of more moving shapes all around the room. You quickly realize that this room is infested with the creatures."

Encounter 1: Factory Floor
10 Chocolate Zombies (Hershey's Kisses)
1 Choclan (Reese's Peanut Butter Cup)

Don't place the Choclan on the board yet. Roll initiative for all creatures. During the Choclan's first turn, read the following: "Suddenly you hear a loud pounding sound from one of the vats. As you look in that direction, you see one side of the vat deform as something pounds it from the inside. With one final crash, one side of the vat is ripped open. You see a large brown shape standing in the opening. It is large humanoid, probably 13 feet tall. It looks like a statue carved out of chocolate."

As soon as it can, the Choclan will charge the nearest PC. The first time a player does damage to the Choclan, make a point of mentioning that its insides look like peanut butter. "As your weapon penetrates the creature's brown outer shell, a lighter brown substance spews from its wounds. You think you smell peanuts."

After the battle, if they decide to search the bodies, they find a few gold coins in the pockets of the factory workers. You might want to hand out chocolate coins to represent the gold.

On the North wall next to the door, the PCs will see a map of the factory. There is a hallway to the North which leads past the break room, and into the packaging/shipping department. From the packaging room there is another hallway which leads to Hushley's office.

If the PCs search the bodies of the zombies, they find a few gold pieces (consider passing out some chocolate coins to the players as rewards). The Choclan has no treasure.

Encounter 2: Employee Break Room
4 Fruit Imps (Starburst, different colors)

"You're now in a 10 foot wide hallway. To your left you see a door to the break room. You see another door to the break room further down the hallway, also on the left. At the end of the hall, you see a door marked 'Shipping'."

If they decide to peek into the break room door: "You see four small winged creatures sitting around chattering to each other. They look like some type of imp, but each one is a different bright color."

If they decide to burst into the break room: "As you enter the room, four brightly-colored imps fly into the air and prepare to attack. Roll initiative."

If they decide to walk past the break room, have the party make a medium DC stealth check. If they make the check, they pass by both doors without incident. If any of them fail the stealth check:
"You walk pass the first break room door. Suddenly, the second one bursts open and a brightly-colored imp flies out. Another imp then flies out the first door behind you. You see two other imps hovering in the doorways."

Encounter 3: Packaging Department
1 Choclan (Reese's Cups)
1 Greater Choclan (Reese's Big Cup)
2 Carm Hounds (Rolos)
1 Fruit Imp (Starburst)

This isn't a very important encounter, so if you are running short on time, skip to Encounter 4. However, you still might want to have the PCs pass through this room so they have the opportunity to go through the crates and find some candy. Or hide the candy in the break room instead.

"This room is full of broken crates, and the floor is covered with debris. There is another exit on the right wall. In the center of the room, you see two large brown creatures pacing around and talking to each other in a strange language. They look like the monster that came out of the vat earlier, but one of these is much larger than the other." (If the Choclans see the PCs) "Both of them turn their heads and gesture threateningly. The smaller one makes a loud call, and soon more creatures come running through the other door."

After the encounter, if the PCs examine the crates, they will find some snacks. "The crates are full of chocolate bars and other assorted candies. Most of it has been destroyed, and a lot of the candy has melted. But you do manage to find a few pieces of edible candy." These things have a shelf life of 30 years, so they are still edible. Different items will give the PCs different effects. Possible items:

Hushley's Chocolate Bar - Gives 6 temp hp.
SillyDillyicious Bar - Until the end of the encounter, your speed increases by 2.
GummiGooey Gumdrops - Burst 1 in 10, creates zone of rough terrain that lasts until end of encounter. Creatures that start their turn in the zone are slowed (save ends).
SugarDumbos - You may take one additional Standard action this turn.

Encounter 4: Hushley's Office

1 Caxaodemon (Bunny)
2 Carm Hounds (Rollos)
4 Lesser Choclans (Reese's Minis)

"You enter a small waiting room. There are doors to the right and left marked 'Restrooms', and Hushley's office is straight ahead. Standing in front of the office door you see three chocolate beings. They look like the ones you fought earlier, but smaller." If they stealthily opened the door: "They don't see you yet, but one of them will probably look in your direction soon." If they just opened the door normally: "All eyes turned towards you as you entered, and the room's occupants prepare to attack. Roll initiative."

This fight may or may not make enough noise to attract the creatures in the office. This could end up being one large encounter or two smaller ones.

Whenever they enter the office: "It appears to be a nice large office. There is a desk in the center of the room, with a bearskin rug in front of it. In the far back corners, there are two large bookshelves. The one on the left seems to be sticking out from the wall slightly, and you can see a bit of light coming from behind it."

After the battle they might search the room and check out the bookshelves. The left set of bookshelves has a secret passage behind it. Since it is partially open, there is no search DC to notice it. If they go through the secret passage, they find a room containing a large machine with lots of levers, all different colors. Next to the machine is what appears to be a magic portal. There are two more doors on the back wall. One of the doors leads to Hushley's private restroom, and the other door leads to a closet. In the closet they will find the body of Hushley.

The machine has 10 levers, each a different color: Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Purple, Orange, Pink, Black, White, and Brown. If players start pulling them randomly, the first lever always does nothing, the second lever zaps them with electricity.

Example: "I'm going to pull the black lever." "You pull the black lever to the 'down' position. Nothing happens." "Now I'm going to pull the blue lever." "You pull the blue lever to the 'down' position. A bolt of lightning shoots at you from the portal." (10 vs Reflex, 1d10 Lightning Damage) "Both levers go back up to the 'up' position."

If they try to touch the magic portal without deactivating it, they will get shocked. 1d10 Lightning damage (no attack roll; they touched it), and they are pushed back 1 square. It's a one-way portal, so there's no way for the PCs to use it to get to the other dimension.

If they don't open the closet door right away, mention that they see some blood seeping out from under the door. When they open the closet door, they find the body of Hushley. In his pockets they will find a key, a small amount of gold coins, and a journal full of notes.

"Looking through Hushley's notes, you find out a little more background, and you're able to fill in the gaps yourself. Hushley discovered a way to access a dimension where the most common elements are sugar and chocolate. What he did not realize is that these elements are also the building blocks of life in that dimension. Hushley's machines were designed to open up small portals and pull ingredients directly from the other dimension. When he started up the factory on the day of the disaster, too much matter came through at once, causing the explosion. This left some portals stuck open, and candy monsters have been coming through ever since. Additionally, some of the extraplanar living chocolate has inhabited the bodies of the factory workers, reanimating them into chocolate zombies."

"His final entry states: 'I've figured out how to reverse the portals! All I have to do is pull the red lever, followed by the green. Unfortunately, I can't make it to the machine. I fear that if I try to leave this closet, they will rip me to shreds. Perhaps if I just wait long enough, I can make a break for it, but some of these creatures don't even sleep. If you find this note, please do not judge me too harshly. All I wanted was to make the world a sweeter place.'"

If the players do a thorough search of the office, they might eventually stumble across a trap door under the bearskin rug. This leads down some stairs to Hushley's most private vault. "At the bottom of the stairs, you find yourself in a small empty room. On the far wall of the room is a large metal door." If the players didn't find the key on Hushley's body, they will need a moderate Thievery check to pick the lock, or a very high Athletics check to break down the door. Once the door is open, they find a room with metal walls. There are a few shelves full of various gems, with a total value of about 1200 gp. There is also one particularly large ruby that is worth another 1500 by itself. (Hand out Ring Pops and/or chocolate coins to represent the treasure.)

Beastiary:
The Choclanic Plane is a very harsh environment, and survival is difficult. The most common form of life is a living chocolate-like substance called caxao. Caxao symbiotically bonds with other creatures by covering their entire bodies for life. This gives the caxao the mobility it needs to find food, and gives the host creature a tough outer shell required for protection. Here's a list of the Choclanic creatures used in the module. In parentheses I put what candies I used in the pictures above, but of course you can use whatever you like.

Stat the monsters however you like, based on the level you want the module to be. The Caxao Corpses should obviously be based on Zombies. The Choclans are brutes, so base them on big strong things like Orcs, Dwarves, or Golems. The Carm Hounds are basically Wolves or other animals. The Sucrademons are Imps, but give each color a different type of magical attack - for example, cherry could be fire, grape could be darkness, etc. The final Caxaodemon can be pretty much any "boss" creature. My attempt to stat the encounters is in this file, based on a level 1 Gamma World party.

Caxao Corpse, aka "Chocolate Zombie" (Hershey's Kisses): These are the bodies of the Hushley factory workers, reanimated after being covered by caxao from the Choclanic Plane.

Choclan (Reese's Peanut Butter Cups): These are humanoid creatures from the Choclanic plane. They are sapient, but easily confused and quick to anger. They come in a wide range of sizes, but even the smaller ones are incredibly strong. Their natural form is a soft peanut-butter-like matter, but their outer shell of caxao is very tough.

Carm Hounds (Rolos): These dog-like creatures are made of a gooey caramel-like substance, held together by a thick outer shell of caxao. They are often kept as pets by Choclans. Carmhounds are vicious hunters, and are very loyal to their masters.

Sucrademon, aka "Fruit Imp" (Starburst): These are small demons from the Choclanic Plane. They rarely bond with caxao, as the bond would limit some of their arcane abilities. Instead they have developed other defenses which allow them to survive. These Imps don't usually get along with Choclans, unless they have a common enemy.

Caxaodemon (Chocolate Bunny): While most Choclanic demons avoid bonding with caxao, occasionally a very powerful demon will find away to do so without sacrificing their magic potency. These rare unions result in very strong beings with a great mastery of spells.

Unlikely Heroes: I'm A Lumberjack And I'm Okay

2011-09-25T10:10:00.000-05:00

Game Date: 9/24/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Adrilar (Greg): Elf Sorcerer
Davor (Ted): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Durp "Fisto" DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Glynnyn (Tamara): Elf Druid
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Dragonblood Sorcerer
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk
Ranell (Michael): Halfling Barbarian

The Session:
Last session ended with us preparing to tackle a room full of kobolds. We began today's session facing the Kobold King, along with a pair of his finest guards. The King was sitting on a giant dead centipede, wearing a stone crown. He offered to give us the honor of being his sacrifices, but for some reason we turned him down and attacked instead.

The King cast a sleep spell which knocked out several members of our party. On Keyanna's turn, she figured turnabout was fair play, and cast the same spell. Her spell incapacitated the King and one of the guards, after which the battle ended pretty quickly.

Ranell put on a lot of the King's best equipment, and we proceeded down a side hall. We found the King's consort, but she surrendered and we decided not to kill her (yet). Down another hallway we found a sacrifice being performed. A kobold shaman, guarded by two warriors, was ritualistically killing a couple of prisoners. He tore the heart out of a sorceress, and was about to kill a young boy when we attacked. After the battle, we looted the area, and found that we'd searched everywhere we knew to look. Still no Jevra.

Ranell then slit the throat of the kobold consort before anyone could object, and we headed back to the upper levels. We had a bit of trouble climbing back up the well, but eventually we made it (thankfully without disturbing that Forge Spurned creature). As we entered the courtyard, Jevra came running up to us. While we were thankful for her return, we had a bit of trouble believing her story.

Jevra had been showing off, and took the kids to see the ruins of the old orphanage. But that area had proven too dangerous, so the kids went to the monastery instead, where they were captured by kobolds and separated. That much of the story we already knew from the other children. Jevra went on to tell us that she'd managed to survive by killing two kobolds and hiding. Granted, kobolds aren't the scariest entries in the monster manual, but it still seemed an unlikely accomplishment by someone as young as Jevra.

We pressured her on it, and finally got her to admit there was something she hadn't been telling us. As it turns out, her parents had been killed by werewolves, and Jevra herself had been bitten during the attack. So she might be turning into a werewolf herself. Ranell wanted to kill her right there, but we've decided to do whatever we can for her. We knew that the local druids have been known to work with the werewolves, and we wondered if they might be able to help us. They might not have an actual cure for lycanthropy, but at least they might know a way to help Jevra control it.

As we searched through the woods, hoping Glynnyn could find signs of druidic activity, we saw a hill giant. We tried to hide, but several of the party members failed miserably, so we decided to try diplomacy instead. The giant staggered as he walked, and we noticed he was crying. We greeted him and asked him what was wrong. The giant said that he'd been out drinking with some ogres, and had taken off his wedding ring so he could hit on some hot ogresses. After that he must have had a lot to drink, because now he couldn't even remember where this drinking had taken place. He was afraid to go home and face his wife without his wedding ring.

We offered to find the ring. It wasn't difficult to track his path, and soon we found some smashed kegs and dead ogres. His ring was easy to find, and we returned it to the giant. He thanked us, then promptly regurgitated on Ranell and Keyanna. He told us his name was Kardoblog, and he said that he'd remember us. We won't hold our breath, but you never know. Sometimes these "thorn in the paw" encounters pay off. On our way back to town, we noticed some unusually large crows in the distance.

We reached town just as they were getting ready to lock the gates for the night. Once inside, we split up and started working on different tasks. Orders of the day included baths for the puked upon, bartering for the loot-laden, inquiries of druidic activity, and lycanthropic security. We took Jevra to the church and reported Jevra's problem. The priestess first offered to kill Jevra with fire, but we talked her into just chaining Jevra up at night.

Over the course of the next few days, we got a few things done. Jevra's friends gave us a tip about druids in the forest south of town. Durp got his stone hand uncursed. And we finally got to see the inside of the tower we're planning to rent. It's three stories tall. The first floor is made of stone, and the higher floors are made of wood. There's also a basement. The place hasn't been lived in for a while, so it's in a bad state of disrepair. While exploring one crawlspace, we discovered the tower's trash/sewage system - several holes that drop into the lair of an Otyugh (a waste-eating monster). The party is currently looking into hiring people to fix up the tower. We're drawing up a floor plan that will hopefully give everyone enough room, so we can have a decent base of operations.

One morning there was a knock at our doors. Kreed, the town's most influential citizen, wanted to see us. We were rude to him as usual, because we don't want to end up as his lackeys. Kreed told us that one of his lumber camps had been attacked, and many lumberjacks had been slaughtered. While we detest being in Kreed's employ, we accepted the job due to the nobility of the mission... and the money was just too good.

Kreed sent a small army of lumberjacks with us, which we immediately deemed to be cannon fodder. (Lumberjacks wear red shirts, right?) He also sent his right-hand man, Payday. Along the way, we came across a flock of large crows feeding on a dead horse. Keyanna cast sleep on a few of them, causing the rest to fly off and start making lots of noise. We didn't stick around.

After several hours we came across the lumber camp. Some of the buildings were on fire. While we stood around debating on where to look first, some of our group was struck by lightning. We quickly ran behind some of the buildings. It soon became apparent what had attacked the camp, as we were ambushed by kobolds. Adrilar, already injured by the lightning, was reduced to 0 by the first kobold attack. It seemed like a good enough cliffhanger, so we ended the session there.

Reminders:
Next week is WingFest, and the week after that is Nashville Zombie Walk, so there's no game until October 15th.

Unlikely Heroes: Girl Power

2011-09-17T16:21:00.004-05:00

Game Date: 9/17/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Adrilar (Greg): Elf Sorcerer
Davor (Rusty): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Durp DuDerp (Rusty): Half-Elf Bard
Glynnyn (Tamara): Elf Druid
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Dragonblood Sorcerer
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk
Ranell (Michael): Halfling Barbarian
...and Jerry Mathers as "The Beaver"

The Session:
We're still exploring the cavernous sublevel of the Dwarven Monastery. The session began with us exploring a room full of stalactites. Or possibly stalagmites. Or stalagsprites. I vote for stalagFreds. Anyway, shortly after entering the room, a dark form swooped down from the ceiling. It was a Dire Bat, who was quickly joined by two Shadows.

This encounter lasted longer than it should have, due to a lot of bad die rolls. Adrilar went down early in the encounter, but he survived. The Shadows could only be harmed by magic weapons, which few of us possessed. So once the Bat was dead, those of us who couldn't assist retreated back into the hallway so the magic users/wielders could be in front.

For the record, Glynnyn killed the Dire Bat, Davor killed one Shadow, and Keyanna killed the other Shadow. Due to the badassery shown by Glynnyn and Keyanna, we declared it to be our "Girl Power" session. (Sorry Davor, I guess you're a girl this week. That's what happens when you miss a session.)

We took a long rest in the stalac-whatever-filled room, and proceeded to search the rest of the level. We found one hallway that led to a caved-in dead end. There were a couple of dead kobolds near the cave-in, and the following was inscribed on the wall in Draconic: “Darky-dark below, and whispers soft and low. Evil lurks, its lipless mouth smirks. Do not go! Only death below!”

We left this alone for now, and searched until we found last unexplored section of this level. We were about to enter the room shown below (and Rusty was already starting to root through the Kobold minis) when something came up and we had to end the session early.

Afterthoughts:
This was a short session. One player was out, another arrived too late to play, and the game was cut short due to real life issues. But after a couple of weeks without a game, it was still nice to get a gaming fix. And it's really better this way, as the absent player won't have missed as much.

I hate to say this so early in the campaign, but I'm starting to get a little bored with Pathfinder. This isn't anyone's fault; the campaign itself is great, the story is great, the DM is great, and the players are great. It's just that I went into this wanting to try something new, and well, Pathfinder is just D&D 3.5 in a new hat. There's nothing wrong with that, and I respect Pathfinder for keeping one of the best versions of D&D alive, and even improving it. But it's nothing I haven't played before. I am having fun, and I do plan to stick out the campaign. But I hope our next campaign is something very different.

Dragon Age: Tabletop RPG

2011-09-11T09:07:00.001-05:00

I've been rambling a lot lately about finding the perfect RPG for me (here), and comparing the ones I've played most so far (here). A while back I was at The Great Escape and saw a good price on the Dragon Age roleplaying game. I only picked it up because it was cheap, and I was looking for something to read on my trip to Dragon*Con. I'm funny that way, when I can't get in the mood to read an actual novel, I like to read gaming books.

Reading through the Player's Guide, here's some of the things that jumped out at me:

Simplicity - The player's handbook is only 64 pages, and from what I've read it looks pretty easy to learn. Unfortunately a few of the most important rules were found in strange places (IMO), and were hard for me to find by just flipping through. It wasn't until I actually sat down and read it straight through that I managed to catch up on some of the basic fundamentals. So for me, anyway, the book almost has to be read in order.

Races/Classes - There's only three races and classes in the basic set. First you also have to pick a background, which effects which races/classes are available to you. Players of the video game should be familiar with the selections, and already know about the limitations of the universe (for example, Dwarves can't be mages). I'm not sure if more races or classes are available in the other books. Of course, each class is somewhat customizable, so your warrior might not play anything like your friend's warrior.

Stats/Skills - There are eight stats: Communication, Constitution, Cunning, Dexterity, Magic, Perception, Strength, and Willpower. Instead of full stats and stat bonuses, you just have lower stats. So instead of stats ranging from 8 to 20 (with bonuses of -2 to 5), your starting stats generally range range from -2 to 4 (with the occasional 5 if the conditions are right). Your skill checks are generally done using the governing stat, but you have Focuses that give you an additional +2 to specific skills like Leadership (Communication) and Stealth (Dexterity). The game does ask you to roll your stats randomly, in order, so you may not end up with decent numbers for the class you wanted to play. But you are allowed to swap one pair of stats once you're done rolling, so you at least have some level of control.

Feats - Talents are pretty much feats. Some let you wear better armor, some improve your skills, and some improve your ability to use specific weapons. Each class starts with one or more Talents, and you gain an additional Talent at odd-numbered levels. Each Talent has two levels, so instead of taking a new Talent you might choose to upgrade an existing Talent from Novice to Journeyman. For example, if you take the "Horsemanship" Talent, at first you're a Novice, and the Talent just allows you to mount a steed as a free action. If you later upgrade Horsemanship to Journeyman, it also gives you a +2 bonus to speed when riding.

Dice - Each player needs three six-sided dice, where one is a different color than the other two. These are the only dice used in the entire game. The odd-colored die is called the "Dragon Die", and is used for special circumstances, such as Stunts.

Stunts - When you roll doubles on your attack rolls, you get stunt points which you can immediately spend to add a little extra oomph to your attack. Depending on how high you rolled on the Dragon Die, you can do things like hit a second target, shift, knock your target prone, disarm, change your position in the initiative order, etc. For spells, the stunt points can be spent to do things like reduce the mana cost, increase the damage, and so on.

Armor - You have both a Defense score and an Armor score. Defense works like AC - you have to beat that number to hit the target. Armor works like damage reduction - you subtract your armor score from whatever damage you take.

Healing - The healing system seems to be a good compromise between hardcore and video gamey. In addition to the mage's heal spell, all players can attempt to heal other players for a few hit points (standard action, must pass ability test, heals 1d6+Cunning). However, this heal skill can only be used once until the victim takes more damage. You can recover a few more hit points during a 5 minute rest (5+CON+Level), but you can only do that once after every combat. So you can't just keep taking 5 minute rests until you're full. You can recover even more hit points with a full night's rest (10+CON+Level), which I think is a pretty good average between D&D 4e's cheese (recover everything) and Pathfinder's stinginess (1 or 2 hp per night).

Magic - Funny, I was just saying how I'd like to try a PnP RPG that worked this way. Dragon Age uses mana points, just like most video games. Different spells cost different amounts of points to cast, and you keep track of how many points you have left just like your hit points. You get some mana back during a short rest, and all of it back with a long rest. Additionally, mages also have one basic ranged spell (Arcane Lance) which uses no mana, so they're never completely without magic.

Distance - The game measures everything in yards rather than feet. If you use miniatures, it suggests letting each square or hex represent two yards. This could get confusing at first, but I think I'd get used to it.

Death - There is no such thing as negative hit points. If you hit zero, you stay at zero and are considered dying. If no one heals you within a certain number of rounds (2+CON), you die. I haven't come across anything about resurrection; so far it looks like death is permanent. The good news is that everyone has the ability to heal, so if you just stay near each other, somebody should be able to heal you.

I have read a few reviews, but they vary a lot. Most were positive. Of the bad reviews, some complained it was too much like the video game, while others complained that it wasn't enough like the video game. The reviews that weighed the game on its own merits (as opposed to comparing it to other formats) were generally the most positive.

Since I've yet to actually play the game, I can't say whether or not I recommend it yet. I wasn't expecting much when I picked it up - it is based on a video game, after all - but now I'm actually looking forward to trying it sometime. While there are some things in there that wouldn't be my preference, it still looks like an interesting game that should be a lot of fun to play.

Dragon*Con 2011

2011-09-04T19:58:00.001-05:00

So, this was our second time attending Dragon*Con. The first time was in 2008. All we really did that time was walk around and take pictures. We only did a couple of things that actually required our badge, and in the end decided we'd wasted our money. Not that it wasn't worth it, it's just that our favorite parts of the trip were free, such as the parade. (2008 Facebook Pictures: Here. Parade Video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Come to think of it, this is actually the fifth con we've been to, if you count Star Wars Celebrations. We went to SW Celebration 2 in 2002, SWC 3 in 2005, GenCon Indianapolis 2007, and of course Dragon*Cons 2008 and 2011.

But Dragon*Con is our favorite. Every year when it looms closer, we consider the following options:
1. Nope.
2. Be complete cheapskates. Either get a cheap hotel Friday night, or just drive down very early Saturday morning. Don't buy tickets. Just watch the parade, walk around the hotel lobbies taking more pictures, then drive back up Saturday evening.
3. Pay, but make it worth it. We still wouldn't pay for all three days, but whichever day we do pay for, make sure we actually attend some of the symposiums we paid for. Come back with a couple of souvenirs.
4. Go whole hog. Get a room in one of the actual hosting hotels, and pay for the entire weekend.

Maybe someday we'll do #4, but that plan might involve winning the lottery. But this year we at least managed to scrape together enough for #3.

After poring over the event schedule, we decided to attend the con itself on Friday. We attended two symposiums. The first was Star Trek related, and was hosted by Garrett Wang (Voyager). The second was a discussion of Doctor Who continuity. We also bought some souvenirs at the vendor hall, walked around an art gallery, and took lots and lots of pictures (here). On Saturday we returned to the con to watch the parade (pictures here).

It wasn't all about the con, though. We got to visit with my cousin, and we went to the Atlanta Zoo (pics here). We had a great time, and we're thoroughly exhausted.

D&D 4e vs Pathfinder... in a Steel Cage!

2011-09-01T08:17:00.000-05:00

My week off continues, and so do my ramblings.

So, I've been playing Pathfinder lately, and while I've been jotting down a few of my thoughts after each session's blog, I thought I'd take some time to make some more in-depth comparisons between it and D&D 4e. These are just my opinions; I know darn well that a lot of people prefer a more hardcore simulationist game than what I enjoy.

Realism
Winner: Pathfinder
From what I've seen so far, I would definitely say Pathfinder is more realistic than 4e. However, realism is not always my first goal in an RPG. I live a fairly humdrum life, and I like my fantasy to be, well, fantastic. Realism already goes out the window the first time somebody casts a fireball. Most of the time I don't want to roll to see if I successfully do the laundry, but sometimes that level of compulsiveness helps me get into my character. Pathfinder doesn't quite go as far as that, but compared to 4e's heroism (see below), Pathfinder is much more down-to-earth.

Heroism
Winner: 4e
In my opinion, D&D 4e is practically a super hero game with a medieval setting. Sometimes I think they should have marketed it that way in the first place. They should have kept 3.5 going, and made 4e a spin-off called "D&D Heroes" or something. So while I don't think 4e should have been WOTC's flagship product, I am glad it exists, and I do enjoy playing a heroic character.

Healing Surges vs Slow Healing
Winner: 4e
It's no secret that I dislike slow healing. Since I believe hit points represent stamina, not wounds, it just makes sense you could recover them by resting. D&D 4e's healing surge system is great at getting you back into the game so you aren't constantly heading back to town. The system is still a little clunky, IMO, but it's better than Pathfinder's "1 hit point per night" healing.

NADs vs Saving Throws
Winner: Tie
So the DM rolls a die against the player's Reflex, rather than the player rolling a save against the attacking spell's DC... I think 4e's method is slightly simpler, and simple is generally better. But overall I'd say it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Negative Effects
Winner: 4e
In older editions, there's several spells and effects that cause you to lose a level, or make one of your stats go down for a while. When this happens, there's a lot of re-mathing your character sheet, figuring out how that stat is going to affect your attack rolls, AC, saving throws, hit points, etc. 4e has a lot less of that nonsense. When we reach the point where every gamer at the table is using electronic interactive character sheets on their netbooks/smartphones, automatically adjusting all their numbers instantly when they're hit by such a spell, then I'll be okay with it. Until then, I prefer the simplicity of 4e.

Stat Advancement
Winner: 4e
I like how all the stats go up a notch, twice in your career. I've never bought into the idea that just because your character concentrates on STR and CON, you never get any smarter.

Skills Advancement
Winner: Pathfinder
I liked assigning my skill points manually each level. It bugs me that my 30th level 4e Lawful Good Paladin, who never lies, still has more than 15 points in Bluff. It also bugs me that my high-level 4e Fighter doesn't have more points in Intimidate.

Skill Selection
Winner: Pathfinder
I've stood up for 4e on this one in the past, but I have to admit I missed options like Crafting.

Diagonal Movement
Winner: 4e
So what if a square is slightly longer diagonally than lengthwise. When it comes to measuring distance for tactical combat, there's a lot of bad, complicated systems out there. 4e is probably the least realistic, but you know my feelings on realism. 4e wins for now, but I still haven't played a game that uses hexes.

Powers vs Basic Attacks
Winner: 4e Essentials
4e's way of giving Fighters more to do was nice. But Fighters already could do more than just attack if they really wanted to. Any time you roll a d20, you can flavor that attack as anything you want. If it's the same damage, then nothing needs to be changed. Instead of just saying "I hit him with my sword", feel free describe it as a backhand swing or a sudden forward thrust as you roll your d20. If it's something that actually affects the outcome (i.e. "I'm aiming for his left elbow so he'll drop the idol"), the DM can ask you to subtract a couple of points from your attack roll to simulate difficulty. The ability was always there, 4e just added more mechanical rules for it. And by doing so, they seemed to have shorted out some players' creativity, because those players don't seem to understand that the effects of Reaping Strike don't have to be described exactly like it says on the power card. I think Essentials represents a decent compromise between 4e powers and the basic attacks of previous editions.

Combat Length
Winner: Pathfinder, by a mile
This is the chief reason I've been enjoying Pathfinder lately. It is such a joy to get through an entire dungeon level in a single night. Sometimes when I was playing 4e, I would look up at the clock and just roll my eyes. "Has it really been 3 hours since we entered this room? Seriously?" There are ways to streamline 4e combat, but they take work, and some people just find it easier to switch to another game system. I don't blame them.

Magic System
Winner: 4e
I haven't actually played a Pathfinder Wizard yet. But I've looked through the Player's Handbook, and I've played a lot of computer games based on D&D 3.5, and I honestly think preparing spells is for the birds. The whole "you can cast three 1st-level spells, two 2nd-level spells..." system is just more complicated than it needs to be. Give me At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies any day. Someday I'd like to play a PnP RPG that uses a mana system like you see in a lot of video games. Just another number like your hit points, which will go up as you level. Different spells would cost different amounts of mana to cast, and your mana replenishes when you rest. Simple.

Roleplay vs Rollplay
Winner: Tie
Others disagree, but I really don't think the system matters much when it comes to the quality of roleplay. One of the chief criticisms of D&D 4e is the focus on combat, and lack of roleplay rules. But frankly, I'm not even sure what a "roleplay rule" is. Heck, roleplay probably works best when there aren't a lot of rules. Still, 4e's tactical combat probably attracts more action-loving players, which could have a detrimental effect on roleplay. On the other hand, I have seen roleplay done really well in 4e.

Character Customization
Winner: Pathfinder
I have a friend who loves to play 2-weapon rogues. In 3.5, that was no problem. Pretty much any class could take the two-weapon feats, and get an extra attack per round. So when he tried to build one in 4e, he was disappointed. Oh, sure, anybody can wield two weapons in 4e, but you can't use both in a round, so what's the point? Only a couple of builds feature true two-weapon effectiveness. D&D 4e has a lot of classes to choose from, and those classes have a lot of builds. All told, there's over 100 builds now. And yet, it still feels like each build is just a predesigned character built by someone else.

Multiclassing
Winner: Pathfinder
D&D 4e Multiclassing is a joke. The Hybrids are an even bigger joke. 'nuff said.

Balance
Winner: 4e... if you're into that.
4e was built on balance. One could argue that it was the primary focus of the system. If any class is discovered to have an overly desirable power, WOTC's errata police sniff it out and blandify it immediately. This can be a good thing; spellcasters in older editions were downright frustrating at early levels. But people who managed to keep their mages alive earned bragging rights. Meanwhile, most 4e classes have similar difficulty, which probably contributes to the common complaint that the classes are too much alike (see below).

Class Uniqueness
Winner: Pathfinder
In older editions, your first character was a fighter. Once you got the hang of that, you had to relearn the game a little bit the first time you tried a spellcaster. But with 4e's powers system, all the classes pretty much play the same. The ranges and effects might be different, but a fighter's Encounter Powers follow the same rules as a wizard's. It's hard to say whether this is good or bad. It does make the game easier to learn, and balances the classes. But it also makes you wonder why we need so many classes and builds, when so many of them are similar. Essentials throws a few wildcards into the mix, but it still doesn't beat Pathfinder.

Death and Dying
Winner: 4e
4e wins because it's harder to die. I am not a hardcore player. I like it when I can play the same character long enough to really know them. I get sick of old school grognards who whine that "Death used to mean something in this game!" I'm sorry, but I disagree. When you die all the time, death becomes meaningless. When your first 20th-level character is killed in an epic battle with a dragon, death means something. When your twentieth 1st-level character is killed by an orc, death becomes cheap. Once I've actually had a few 20th-level characters, I might change my mind on this. But right now, the more I die, the more these characters just seem like scribbles on paper.

Money
Winner: Tie
In both editions, 100 copper pieces equals 10 silver equals one gold. So it's pennies, dimes, dollars. Simple! However, a 4e platinum piece equals 100 gp, while a Pathfinder platinum is only worth 10 gold pieces. Neither is better than the other, but I do wish game designers would keep it a little more universal. It's not like they're even the worst offenders; for example the Dragon Age RPG has a system where 1 GP = 100 SP = 10,000 CP. People who go back and forth playing different game systems are liable to get confused.

Overall Winner
Undecided.
To be honest, I think "Edition Wars" in general are a bit dumb. Do apples taste better than oranges? Is hang gliding more fun than water skiing? Is Star Wars more entertaining than Star Trek? It's okay to like Pepsi more than Coca-Cola, and it's even okay to wear Pepsi T-shirts and to post on your blog why Pepsi rocks. But when you get into internet debates arguing why Coca-Cola sucks, you've probably gone too far. People need to learn the difference between "better" and "more enjoyable to me".

That said, I prefer Pathfinder's character creation and quick combats, but 4e's fast healing and simplified rules. I really wish I could play a 4e campaign, but with shorter combats, and with Pathfinder characters. Essentials goes a long way towards granting the last part of that wish, with older-style characters that are fully compatible with the 4e system. I really like Essentials, something I'm reluctant to admit on a public blog. There are places on the internet where I'd rather admit to being a transsexual than to tell them I like Essentials. Heck, just saying you like 4e at all is like telling people you enjoyed the Star Wars prequels. Showing support for Essentials is like saying your favorite Star Wars character is Jar Jar Binks.

There are a lot of things that annoy me about Pathfinder. But despite Pathfinder's flaws (and really, they're not flaws so much as things I don't prefer), I'm really enjoying the campaign. Bottom line is, I don't need to know that I'm playing the "best" system out there. It don't eat my favorite food for every meal, I don't go to my favorite city every vacation, and I don't wear my favorite outfit every day.

I'm fond of saying that the system doesn't matter if the story's good. That's not entirely true; I'm sure there's some systems out there that I'd hate if I actually got around to playing them. And a good story could easily be killed by an incompetent DM or bad players; but I've been pretty lucky so far where that's concerned. I've been blessed with a wonderful DM who makes things interesting no matter what we're playing. (But he does read these blogs, so lest he think I'm sucking up I should probably say something negative soon. Perhaps I'll make fun of the way he pronounces "archetypes".)

It's "ahr-ki-tahyps", not "Archie types."

In any event, 4e and Pathfinder appeal to different parts of my brain. 4e is like a board game where I can empathize with the pieces. Pathfinder is like a storytelling game with a bit of gambling thrown in. Sometimes I'm more in the mood for one than the other, but I think I'll always enjoy both.

ToEE: Afterthoughts

2011-08-31T08:19:00.000-05:00

Another unnecessary rambling encouraged by my having a week off.

So, our 4e Temple of Elemental Evil campaign is officially over, even though we didn't quite make it to the end. We finally called it quits after too many cancelled sessions, combined with some of the group's dissatisfaction with 4e. I also finished the computer game and the novel a while back. Just for closure reasons, I thought I'd post a few afterthoughts on all three.

The tabletop campaign:
It's probably our fault, but I was expecting more plot. Based on my meta-knowledge of the campaign, we missed a lot of opportunities to interact with the villains, and instead opted to systematically take out each room one by one. The difference between being in town and being in the Temple itself was like playing two different RPGs; you could almost hear the *click* as the players switched from roleplay mode to fight mode.

Still, I had fun. It was a little off-putting at first, but once I realized how it was going to be, I embraced it whole hog. I even switched to a more front line character so I could get the most out of the action. But it also made me realize that I needed to try a few other gaming systems.

The novel:
The book was nothing to write home about, it's just your typical cheap paperback. It had the usual assortment of party member stereotypes, but few characters I actually cared about. It didn't always follow the same path as the module or computer game, but it was always neat when it would describe a familiar-sounding room and I'd think, "Uh oh, watch out for the skeletal gnolls!" It was brief, but fun to read, and I will probably read more module-based novels if I find them. But it didn't have any particular writing style, and it's the kind of book you immediately forget about once you finish it.

The computer game:
The ToEE computer game is a bit dated by today's standards... Okay, fine, it was pretty ugly five years ago. It's easy to see how rushed it was - it was released in 2003, a full year after the much superior Neverwinter Nights. While NWN features 3D environments, for some reason ToEE uses pre-rendered static backgrounds and feels like a throwback to older computer games like Baldur's Gate. Sometimes I don't realize how spoiled I am until I get frustrated over my inability to rotate the camera to see behind the house.

I really wanted to take my time with this one, talk to every NPC, find all the subquests, and pick up all the plot we skipped with the tabletop version. But that got boring after a while, and I kept screwing things up and/or running into quest-breaking bugs. For example, I might attempt to join one of the temples and do some jobs for them, but sooner or later a faction script would mess up and the wrong NPC would attack me. This would either break the quest sequence entirely, or cause the entire temple to go aggro. So eventually I just decided to kill everything and make my way to the end.

Towards the climax of the game things got really frustrating. The visits to the elemental planes used SFX that would frequently lock up the computer, so I had to save often. Keep in mind, my computer is several years newer than the game, and way more powerful than ToEE should require. Even so, I had to turn down a lot of the graphical settings just to complete those areas. Also near the end I discovered a Good Bad Bug that I couldn't resist. Basically, each of the four elemental bosses drops one of the four gems you need to get to the final boss. Those gems can also be used to summon monsters to help you... but some of those summoned monsters drop additional gems if they get killed. So you can end up with multiple copies of each of the elemental gems, allowing you to summon lots of crap and cast several of additional spells during the final battles.

But other than a little Save Scumming and Level Grinding, that was the only time I really cheated my first time through. I beat the final boss, watched the underwhelming ending, and reloaded to try some different options. There's some choices you can make towards the end that change the ending slightly, but all the endings are equally boring.

Now that I'd played it through semi-legitimately, I decided to go back through and smash the world to bits. I built a party of five destructive cheaters. I named them War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Cindy. I used some cheat codes to raise all their levels to 10, set all their stats to 50, unlocked all the spells for the casters, and made them rich. I used the crafting skill to make some ungodly powerful items, weapons which would often cause instant death, wielded by characters who attack several times a round. I had them make some uber armor as well, but I quickly discovered that even the best armor couldn't come close to their DEX bonus, so my evil party rampaged au naturale.

I made it my goal to kill every single NPC in the game. Making sure I first spoke to enough people to unlock all the locations I'd need later, my five horsewomen of the apocalypse left a bloody trail of naked horror all across the kingdom. I actually managed to kill everyone in Nulb, and I probably got about halfway through Hommlet before I got bored (that's a lot of ground to cover).

Yes, I have issues, why do you ask?

Essentials, Edition Wars and Whiny People

2011-08-30T12:25:00.001-05:00

Note, I'm off work this week, so I'm trying to clean out some of my half-written blogs. I actually wrote most of this a while back, when Essentials was first released. I didn't post it because I wanted to see how long the Essentials uproar took to die down. It mostly has, though I do still see the occasional post complaining about it. So if it seems like I'm getting annoyed by stuff that happened six months ago, that's why.

If there's one group of people who like to complain, it's gamers. They are the epitome of the "Unpleasable Fanbase" trope. If you release a new edition, people will complain. If you make a feat overpowered, people will complain. If you fix that feat through errata, people will complain. If you make any changes at all... or fail to make changes, or release too many books, or don't produce enough books, or even breathe the wrong way... people will complain. If WOTC announced tomorrow that they were going to start mailing out $100 bills to all their customers, people would still complain.

So it's no surprise that Essentials has such a bad rap. With all the errata and splat books that have been released for 4e, Essentials represents the most drastic change. Except, it's not really a change at all, since it's entirely optional. The Essentials line basically contains simplified versions of existing classes. But - and this is the important part - it doesn't replace anything. There is absolutely no reason your Essentials Knight can't fight right alongside a normal 4e Great Weapon Fighter.

Now, it is true that when Essentials came out, a lot of errata was released with it. WOTC wanted to get as much errata out of the way as they could, so that the rules would be as final as possible when the Rules Compendium was released. This makes a lot of people blame Essentials for the updates, even though those updates would have happened anyway. Another sticking point with some people is that the Compendium - the most up-to-date printed version of the D&D rules - is technically an Essentials product, which makes some people think Essentials is non-optional.

Whiners had been wanting to declare the game 4.5 for a long time. Long before Essentials, I'd see message board posts that said, "There's so much errata out there, it's 4.5 by now!" So Essentials finally gave them something definitive, in their minds. Personally, I'll call it 4.5 if and when WOTC calls it 4.5, and even then it's just a number. I realize there's something of a stigma there (when 3.5 was released it caused an uproar), but to me it's just a way to let you know you're buying the newest version of the book.

The complainers would only need to flip through the Compendium a little to realize that the core game hasn't really changed. Other than the corrections and balance fixes that would have happened anyway, the game itself is still the same. All that's different is the addition of some new classes which play a bit different from the original 4e classes. Essentials, in my opinion, feels like you're using a 3.5 (or earlier) character in 4e. This is how WOTC tries to please everyone - by letting the 4e-hating grognards play classic characters alongside normal 4e characters (sometimes referred to as "AEDU" characters). Of course, when you try to please everyone, all you really do make both sides mad at you.

But they did manage to please me. I've only played a couple of Essentials characters so far, but I've looked over most of the classes and I like what I see. They're not always going to be my first choice; in fact, I'm probably going to alternate between Essentials and normal characters in campaigns that allow it.

Generally speaking, Essentials characters focus less on the 4e "powers" mechanic, and replace it with other bonuses at each level. But each class handles this differently. Fighters use basic attacks combined with stances. Rogues use basic attacks but have At-Will movement powers. Spellcasters are the most similar to normal 4e characters. This variety gives it the classic flavor. In the past, some have criticized that all 4e classes are alike, but Essentials classes break that cycle.

Despite the new classes being optional, some people complain that Essentials is turning 4e into 3.5. Am I the only person in the universe who likes both 3.5 and 4e? Is one edition better than the other? Is basketball "better" than football? Why can't people enjoy both, for different reasons? Every edition has highlights and flaws, and different people enjoy different things about the game. Personally I think 3.5 is better for roleplaying and simulationism, while 4e has a more interesting combat system. But I'd be more than willing to play either edition, regardless of whether it's a roleplay campaign or a hardcore combat game. (I won't go much earlier than 3e, though, for risk of running into my dreaded arch-nemesis THACO. Or that STR 18/99 thing. If your Strength is 18, it's 18. Period. I don't know what that /99 means, but if you write it on my character sheet, I'll stab you in the eye with your pencil. But I'm getting off the subject here.)

By all rights, everyone should be happy now. If you never liked 4e, then try playing an Essentials character. You might find it fixes some of the stuff you hated (unless your complaints are about something 4e-centric like Healing Surges, in which case you're a douche and your opinion doesn't matter anyway). If you liked 4e just fine the way it was, then keep playing with the old classes; they haven't changed. The bottom line is, you can like Essentials or simply don't use it. But. Please. Stop. WHINING!

I Need A Hero

2011-08-29T17:41:00.006-05:00

One of the many complaints against D&D 4e is that the characters start out practically superhuman. Well, super whatever-race-you-pick, anyway. From what I've witnessed, our DM tends to favor the "start out as average nobodies, and gradually become heroes" style. I can certainly see the appeal. I enjoyed that "Dungeon Crawl Classics" game we played a while back. However, I play these games to get a break from normal life. It's great to be able to sit down and live another life for a while. I already emulate an average person 6 days a week.

Of course, you could argue that it's still a change of pace. You're not just a normal person, you're a normal person in a medieval setting. Great... so now I'm a normal person who doesn't even have indoor plumbing. Yay.

I don't claim to be typical, though. I know people have different reasons for playing. Some players like the stories, some like the combat. Some like collecting XP, gold, and other virtual treasures. Some like how it feels like gambling. For some, gaming is just a way to socialize, no different than having a weekly poker game or book club. Some use gaming to escape real life, to fill a different set of shoes for a few hours, like virtual cross dressing. For most players, it's probably a combination of several of these. For me, it's all of the above.

I've heard people claim that powerful characters kill roleplay. I can see why they'd think that, but I still disagree. Optimization doesn't kill roleplay, optimizers do. It's more about group dynamics than the system itself. If the DM and all the players are roleplayers, then the DM can throw easy encounters at the group, but still make them scary through theatrics and plot twists. But if you have even one optimizer in the group, then you have to make the encounters harder, lest his character rip the enemies to ribbons and take all the drama out of every fight. And if you make the monsters tougher, then all the other players have to optimize their characters to compensate, or they'll have to cower behind the optimizer every time a fight starts. One bad apple ruins the bunch. While you can roleplay in any edition, 4e seems to attract a lot of combat lovers.

I think people should have a lot of freedom when building their characters. But I also wish more players would use this freedom to do interesting things, rather than just squeeze out every possible point of damage. I'd love to see more characters built around an unusual weapon, even if it's not a very damaging one. Heck, I would have built more interesting characters for myself in the ToEE campaign, but I was afraid the optimizer in the group would yell, "She doesn't do enough damage, I don't want her in our party!"

I am having fun with our current Pathfinder game, where we randomly rolled our classes. It's kind of cool not knowing what your character is going to be. We're seeing some players run classes they wouldn't usually play, and building combinations we wouldn't normally try. There's nothing we're doing that we couldn't do if we'd picked our own classes... but would we? It's basically like saying, "You wouldn't normally build a Half-Orc Sorcerer, so I'm forcing you to, because it's interesting."

I like to think I actually would choose an unusual race/class combination without being forced to. But only if I knew it was going to be the kind of group where creativity is encouraged more than combat prowess, and only if I knew the campaign was going to be survivable without optimized characters. And that's the logical fallacy of the hardcore DM: he discourages optimization, but you won't survive his sessions without it. In a plot-heavy campaign, I'll be glad to wear a tutu and wield a large rubber fish if it makes sense for my character. But when I see teammate after teammate fall in battle, I'm more likely to spend my feats on crunch than fluff.

This is also why I don't like rolling stats. For example, if my Pathfinder monk had decent stats, I could take more personality-related options instead of using every feat to make up for her lack of hit points and AC. So while some say optimization killed roleplaying; I say optimization had the potential to enhance it if it hadn't also attracted too many optimizers.

This argument came up a lot back when I played NeverWinter Nights. I was on a persistent server called the Silver Marches, which focused heavily on roleplay. They were very picky about how people acted while playing on their server, to the point where eventually it felt like a police state. Anyway, one of their complaints was people building very specific characters in order to get certain benefits. For example, taking only one level of ShadowDancer just to get Hide in Plain Sight. In that particular case I somewhat agree, but they tended to criticize a lot of people for more benign leveling choices as well. Basically, they didn't want you to plan your character's path ahead of time, as that would be out of character. But some of the prestige classes had prerequisites that were so specific, that you couldn't qualify unless you'd planned ahead.

Personally, I planned out my characters ahead of time anyway. I'd generally level up in the middle of a dungeon somewhere, and I didn't want to have to spend much time thinking about what to pick before returning to battle. Of course, the server mods would have preferred we head back to town before clicking "Level Up" anyway, to represent the training we do to get our new feats... but clearly these people were nuts. Besides, is it really better roleplay to assume your character has no life plans? In real life, some people know what college they want to attend before they even enter high school. By the time they graduate high school, they sometimes know everything they plan to study in the next four years, right down to the electives. So is it really bad roleplay to assume my character knows in advance that he's going to practice certain fighting moves someday?

I'm actually not very good at RPGs, whether on the computer or at the table. If I built characters completely based on their personalities, I'd spend all my time in-game yelling "Save me!" to my teammates. This would be allowing my out-of-character incompetence to influence the in-character actions of my toon. So I usually try to build hardy characters in order to help me stay in-character.

That's why I tend to like my RPGs a little on the easy side. I'm more interested in the story than the combat, so I don't want the story bogged down by having to roll up new characters all the time, or spending three sessions in a near-coma while my companions take a sidequest to cure my Filth Fever. I'm not a teenager; I'm not out to prove that I'm the baddest by building an awesome megacharacter or by rolling higher than the DM. All I want is to build a character around their personality, taking roleplay feats like "Linguist" if I want to, without being splattered into paste next combat for my lack of optimization. I'm simply not hardcore.

Fourth edition lets you build tough characters. It gives you higher starting hit points, At-Will powers that are better than basic attacks, more healing options, and so on. Even the weakest classes are tougher than they ever were in previous editions. But with tougher players, you have to have tougher monsters, otherwise combat-lovers will complain there's no challenge. And when you have tougher PCs facing tougher monsters, you have longer combats. Which attracts combat-loving players, which lowers the quality of the roleplay... so I can't win. I'd love to roleplay in 4e, but I think I'm better off with Pathfinder.

That said, I have seen 4e roleplay done really well. My first 4e campaign, Tantris, was heavy on the roleplay. We generally only had about one combat per session, and those combats tended to take about 5-10 minutes. The DM didn't try to build a balanced encounter that challenged our resources, instead he built plot-specific encounters filled with realistic enemies. Most of the fights would be considered too easy by some standards, but we were all new to the game so none of us had optimized characters. The harder battles usually had other plot-related ways out. Heck, the DM even told us up front that he wasn't going to kill our characters. That was the only campaign I've played where I didn't feel the need to play a hero; I would have been just as happy playing a non-classed NPC. I know a lot of this would turn some players off, but I have yet to see better roleplay in an RPG, and I applaud the DM for making it work.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a Bonnie Tyler song that I must purge from my brain.

Unlikely Heroes: You Can't Make A Kobold Omelette...

2011-08-21T08:38:00.000-05:00

Game Date: 8/20/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Adrilar (Greg): Elf Sorcerer
Davor (Ted): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Durp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Glynnyn (Tamara): Elf Druid
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Dragonblood Sorcerer
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk
Ranell (Michael): Halfling Barbarian

The Session:
Last session left off with a bit of party in-fighting, culminating in the deaths of Moxie and Snidely. We began the session in mourning, as we said our final goodbyes to our brave companion (and Snidely). Davor took it the hardest, as he has lost a brother.

On the bright side, this is no longer incestuous.

But people need us, so we had to carry on. We rested a bit at the forge where we fought the Forge Spurned, but we had to leave when we discovered he was reforming. We fled the forge, then started to look for areas we had yet to explore.

One room featured a prominent fountain, and we encountered a pair of lizards. We tried to walk around them, in the hopes that they weren't hostile. Yeah, right, in this universe? Fortunately, we rolled well, and two crits later they were both dead.

Next we came to a room full of statues. It was a wide room, with three statues on each side, with weapons drawn in ominous poses. Being the genre-savvy players we are, we did not go barging into the room without a plan. First we decided to toss one of the lizard bodies into the room, to see if it set off any traps. Unfortunately, in stepping into the room to throw it, Davor and Vex fell victim to the very trap we were trying to expose. (Note, whether we actually stepped into the room was a potential point of contention between the players and the DM, but we chose to pick our battles this time.)

The entire room turned sideways, spilling Davor and Vex to one side, where we impaled ourselves on the statues' weapons. Meanwhile, the statues from the other side of the room rushed downwards towards us, but we managed to get out of the way in time. We walked along the wall-turned-floor, and climbed up the other side towards the room's other exit door. Once the room righted itself, we started experimenting to see what sets off the trap. During the course of getting the rest of the party across the room, we learned that walking around the edges of the room is a lot safer than walking through the middle.

We ended up in a small room that looked like a dead end, until we found a trigger that opened a secret door. The next room had a trumpet-like tube sticking out from one wall. Listening through it, we heard some kobolds in another room, arguing in Draconic. There were also some other holes in the walls that could be used with the trumpet-tube, but we didn't hear anything through them. We found another secret door and proceeded down the next hallway.

Soon we found someone's personal quarters. It had a rather uncomfortable-looking stone bed (though Vex probably felt right at home), a desk, and an anvil upon which rested a Dwarf skeleton. The skeleton wore a couple of magic items, but as we approached, an imp appeared and warned us to stay away from his master. We asked the imp a few questions, wondering why the Dwarf's death didn't release the imp from his servitude. We also learned that the Dwarf's name was Gristogar Ashbreath (though in grade school I bet the other kids called him "Assbreath"; no wonder he joined a monastery).

Seeing no way to free the imp, we started to mosey out of the room when the imp attacked Durp. The bard managed to kill the creature solo, and therefore treated himself to the skeleton's belongings. From the skeleton Durp took a magic gauntlet and a pair of slippers. Upon donning the gauntlet, Durp's hand and forearm became solid stone. Durp tried to remove the gauntlet, but we couldn't find a way to reverse the effect. This has since become the source of many jokes, most involving self-gratification. The slippers were more favorable, granting Durp the ability to walk on walls.

Up another hallway and around a bend, we found a room with two kobolds, the same ones we'd overheard from the trumpet. Easy kill. Back down the hallway and through another door, we found a room with a large obelisk. As Davor approached the obelisk, he was hit with a bolt of electricity. The exit doors closed, trapping Davor and Vex in the room. Two more doors opened, revealing a pair of Vargouilles. Though I'd never fought one before, OOC I remembered them from one well-known list of stupid D&D monsters, where the Vargouille comes in at #2 out of the top 5. (Maybe next session we can fight a duckbunny.)

Davor tried to cast a spell, but he fumbled, injuring himself, and dropping him. Vex did her best to hold her own, but it was two against one. Keyanna finally managed to get the doors open by turning her hands into dragon claws (bet that freaked the kids out), and we soon won the fight. Now we faced another dilemma. We had explored every room we could find on this level, and we still hadn't found Jevra.

However, we did remember seeing a well in one room, and even saw a kobold use it to escape. We headed straight there. The well held a large cauldron suspended by a heavy chain. The cauldron was large enough to hold four people. So naturally, we put our four best people in it - Davor, Durp, Keyanna, and Vex. The rest of the party (mostly the children we were escorting) stayed around the well. An important note to all reading this - just because the DM says something is big enough to hold four people, does not mean it's a good idea. The chain broke, and we fell to the bottom with a painful crash. This took Vex and Davor into the negatives, leaving Durp and Keyanna to check out this large room.

Moments later, a pair of kobolds came charging down a tunnel, riding on on the backs of Slurks (saber-toothed frog mounts, which somehow did not make it onto the aforementioned list). Durp fumbled on his first attack, but they still managed to survive the encounter, thanks to Keyanna's cunning use of Sleep (quickly becoming her favorite spell). Durp and Keyanna turned the cauldron over on top of their fallen comrades for safety, then explored the next room. There they found a poisoned Choker, and healed it. They tried to ask the Choker some questions about the area, but the creature couldn't speak, so they didn't learn much.

They dragged Vex and Davor into the room, blocked the door as best they could, and we all rested. Later, Durp called up the well to make sure the children were okay, but he got no answer. Hmmm... that's troubling. Come to think of it, the well was only a couple of rooms away from the Forge Spurned. Somewhat concerned, Durp used his new slippers to climb back up to the top, but the children were no longer there. He finally found a message scratched into one wall, explaining that they'd gone back to town. Durp descended once more and we got a bit more rest.

Later, Kimi (one of the kids) showed up with some new friends. She had taken the others back to town, where she met a few new adventurers to bring back to the monastery. This finally added Adrilar, Glynnyn, and Ranell to the party. Now that we had the safety in numbers thing going for us, we began exploring a few tunnels. In one tight passage we were attacked by javelins, being thrown at us from over the walls. With no way to fight back, we just quickly moved through the area.

Next we fought several more kobolds in a cramped set of tunnels. This fight was especially difficult simply because there were so many of us, keeping us from getting at our enemies. Some of the kobolds attacked us from ledges, forcing us to either climb up or use ranged attacks. The final showdown between Glynnyn and a kobold took a while, but Glynnyn was determined to finish him off despite his offers to surrender.

At one end of the passage we found an egg chamber. A female kobold asked us to please not harm the eggs. Our group consists of several personality types, both IC and OOC, so we had a bit of a discussion about whether to kill the female and/or destroy the eggs. It was suggested that she might starve to death anyway with all the other kobolds dead, to which, um, someone replied, "Nah, she's got eggs if she's hungry."

Down another passage, up some stairs, and we saw two more Slurks with riders. One rider was dead, but the other one fled down another tunnel. We followed, until we reached a large room with another bunch of kobolds. Davor and Ranell rushed into the large room, and each was soon surrounded by enemies. The rest of us got stuck in the entrance for a few rounds. Keyanna took a few out with another use of sleep, and eventually we managed to clear the room. We broke there for the day.

Afterthoughts:
I get the impression that we didn't go quite the way Rusty expected us to. Last session, Tamara spent the entire game waiting for us to meet her character, but we never did. Today, Tamara, Michael, and Greg spent half the session watching from the sidelines.

OOC, we knew that Adrilar and Ranell were back in town, and that we would probably meet them when we returned to rest up. And as hurt as our party was at the beginning of today's session, it would have been perfectly forgivable for us to go that route. But we're also playing our personalities (even if it kills us), and it would take a lot for Vex and Davor to give up the search for Jevra.

Sometimes it's hard to get things back on track when the players raid your dungeon in the wrong order. I'd like to think that if I'd been the DM, I would have found ways to introduce the new characters a bit sooner. I don't like making players sit around and watch longer than they have to. On the other hand, a while back I wrote a blog about my own failings when I run games, not the least of which is my inability to think on my feet. So it's just as possible I would have waited too. There's only so much you can plan ahead of time, and sometimes it's hard to recover when your players throw you for a loop.

Unlikely Heroes: PvP Zone

2011-08-14T20:10:00.000-05:00

Game Date: 8/14/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Davor (Ted): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Durp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Dragonblood Sorcerer
Moxie (Michael a.k.a. "Stud Duck"): Half-Orc Fighter
Snidely (Greg): Halfling Rogue
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk

The Session:
Last session, we explored some of the lower level of the Dwarven Monastery to find several missing children. We ended the session after rescuing a couple of the kids from kobolds. Today we continued our search for the rest of the missing children.

First we found a room full of rows of cells. Each cell contained a skeleton. Whenever someone would try to walk past the cells, the skeletons inside would either try to grab them, or would throw their heads at the PC. Davor was nearly killed by some of these attacks. Once a few of the party members made it through the gauntlet, they heard a meowing from behind an anvil. It turned out to be one of the missing kids - Savram - who was holding a cat (actually a familiar).

In another room we encountered four ghouls eating a kobold. During the course of this battle, Vex was paralyzed, and Durp and Davor went down. Moxie finally finished off the rest of the ghouls, and we managed to get Durp & Davor back on their feet.

In yet another room, we found five kobolds, one of which had wings (Dark Talon). As in the previous session, some of the kobolds kept shouting "Glintaxe!" when they saw Moxie. One kobold critted Vex, causing her ongoing damage, and she spent most of the battle unconscious. Actually, a lot of the party spent a good deal of this session lying on the ground.

As the battle neared its end, Snidely was attacked by a Forge Spurned (Chain Demon). It was a tough creature, but we survived. Once it was dead, a few of us explored the smoky tunnels it had come from. They found a forge, and another one of the missing children. This left us with two more to find.

Next room, we fought several more kobolds led by a mystic. They hit Davor and Moxie hard, and they went down early in the fight. The kobolds closed the doors to the room, sealing themselves in with the downed Half-Orcs. Sensing a losing battle, Snidely fled down another hallway. Worried for their safety, Vex ordered the children to follow Snidely.

Vex was still at -2 hp from the previous battle. She was able to stand, but any strenuous activity required her to make a saving throw or else collapse from exhaustion. Nevertheless, she pushed open the door and finished off one of the kobolds. This still left four kobolds, and it looked like a losing battle until Keyanna cast a Sleep spell. This turned the tide, though one kobold did manage to escape out the side door.

After the battle, we got our fallen back on their feet, and Snidely and the children returned. Durp made sure to inform Moxie of Snidely's cowardice. This led to a fight between Snidely and Moxie, the Rogue taking advantage of the Fighter's rare moment of weakness. Although Vex and the children pleaded for them to stop, they couldn't prevent Snidely from killing Moxie. On Vex's next turn, she took the Halfling down with a well-rolled Flurry of Blows, and Durp finished off the dying Rogue.

With two party members dead, it seemed like as good a time as any to end the session.

Reminders:
We still have two children to find, including our ward Jevra. Those of us still alive are low on hit points. Vex is still at -2. Next session we will introduce two new characters to replace Moxie and Snidely. Michael will be playing a Halfling Barbarian, and Greg will be playing an Elf Sorcerer.

Afterthoughts:
In-party conflict can be an awesome thing, provided that all members of the group are okay with it. The Tantris campaign I was in had a ton of it, and we all had a great time. We were very good at keeping our IC and OOC knowledge & feelings separate. My character was a goody-goody naive Cleric who'd had a sheltered youth, and was the type to see an advancing orc and say something like, "Sure, it's a big axe-wielding snarling brute... but maybe it's a big axe-wielding snarling brute in need of our help." Some of the other party members were low-life scoundrels, who were constantly doing shady things behind my character's back. Quite often I'd find myself saying things like, "It's okay if you do that, but please make sure my character doesn't find out about it." It was actually a lot of fun keeping track of who knew how much about what and when.

But in the Artifact Hunters campaign, we saw the flip side to in-party conflict. We had one player who despised all types of mounts and companions. He was constantly letting his OOC feelings on the subject influence his IC play. Things came to a head in one session when he tried to kill another player's giant slug mount. His character had no IC reason to do such a thing, and he did it while the rest of us were in battle, taking advantage of the owner's distraction when he should have been helping us fight. Now, I like it when people play their character's personality. Even playing a jerk can be entertaining as long as it's done just right, and as long as everyone in the group agrees it's okay. But in that case it was clearly the player's own prejudices influencing his character's actions.

Today's conflict was pretty good. Both players stuck to their character's personalities, they didn't appear to bring any personal grudges into the game, and they both left in a good mood. This is a fight that had been building for a while, and if it hadn't happened today, it probably would have happened eventually. And I have to admit, while IC Vex probably considered it a necessary evil, OOC it felt pretty good pounding Snidely's face.

Worldwide Gameday: Neverwinter Campaign Setting

2011-08-06T19:01:00.001-05:00

8/6/11 - Next Level Games

DM: Rusty

The Party:
Belgos (Matt) - Drow Hunter
Brandis (Cliff) - Human Cavalier
E.J. (Andrew) - Warpriest
Fargrim (Rick) - Dwarf Slayer
Gorak (Bryan) - Half-Orc Slayer
Nameless One (Michael) - Elf Hunter
Shecky Greenbaum (Greg) - Elf Thief
Zandara (Chere) - Human Mage

Today's Gameday was based on the new Neverwinter Campaign Setting for D&D 4e. As you can see, we had a rather large party, but that doesn't mean it was easy. Several times we came close to losing party members. This was my first time playing the Hunter class.

Our characters were hired to be bodyguards, on a sea voyage from Waterdeep to NeverWinter. The voyage itself went without incident, but when we arrived at the dock, we were attacked before we could even get off the ship. A large number of aquatic zombies crawled out of the water and climbed aboard the ship, and we found ourselves surrounded. This was especially difficult for ranged characters like mine, because there wasn't a whole lot of maneuvering room.

The second and final combat had us fighting a Necromancer in a graveyard. At first the boss was only accompanied by a pair of gravehounds, but he soon summoned a bunch of zombies to surround our party. Once again, my character started the battle in a difficult position. However, once I was able to get away from the enemies, the Hunter turned out to be a really interesting class.

Early in the battle, the boss teleported into the middle of our party, in order to effectively use his aura power. It was an Aura 2 which did 5 damage each turn, so we all did our best to keep our distance. Additionally, the boss had the ability to steal energy from fallen PCs, and could even recover from death itself. But again, we had eight party members, so we managed to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. A couple of our party came close to death, but we were all on our feet at the end.

This wasn't a particularly long session. We only fought two combats, though I'm told we avoided at least one more potential battle. It was a fun module, if a bit forgettable.

I have, however, reached my personal limit on Essentials-only events. It's not actually so, but it just feels like this is the 14th time in a row I've been in an event/campaign/whatever where someone said, "Hey, you know what would be a neat change of pace? Let's all play Essentials characters!" Don't get me wrong, I actually like Essentials. In some ways, I prefer it. However, as of 8/6/2011, the concept of the Essentials-only event has officially been done to death. It is no longer creative or different, it's just restrictive. By my count, Fourth Edition has 26 classes, over 100 builds for those classes, only 11 of which are Essentials builds. Asking us to only consider 10 percent of 4e's wonderful content is like giving us wings and then throwing a net over us. In recent months I've found that one of my favorite things about Essentials characters is how well they integrate with "classic" 4e builds. At this point, Thief is just another build, and can be played right along next to the original PHB's Fighter and Wizard. So come on, DMs and event organizers, it's time to showcase that ease of integration, and let players have their freedom back.

Part-Time Players

2011-08-03T09:13:00.000-05:00

Poor DM. All he wants is to run a coherent storyline with a consistent cast. And yet, real life keeps getting in the way. If one player's not going to a beer convention, another player is having a baby or catching a cold or getting kidnapped by aliens. What happened to the days when everyone respected the game? Well, we're no longer teenagers, that's what. Adults have different priorities and less free time. The unfortunate result is that you just can't find six people who have the freedom to commit to every single week.

The DM books always have a few tips for what to do when a player can't make it. Things like have their character fade into the background, or have someone else run the character, or just have the character split from the party temporarily. These are all acceptable methods, but what do you do if you know from the beginning that a player is only going to be able to make every other session?

Of course, some DMs don't mind just hand waving their absence, concentrating on the story more than the actual characters present. But other DMs really want to account for every character's location at all times. If it were me, I'd want to use it. Why just apply duct tape to the problem, when the problem itself is a potential plot hook? There are several good ways to integrate sporadic absenteeism into the story. For example:

Shared Character
Early in the ToEE campaign, we had two players who were only planning to make alternate sessions. The DM's solution? Make a character they both like, and have them share. Unfortunately it didn't work out as well as it looked on paper (one of the players didn't like the character, and the other player never joined the campaign), but it was still a good idea. Still, let's spice it up a bit. This game takes place in a world where magic is common; why let it go to waste? And why try so hard to make a character that both players like? Here's some of my alternatives:

Peppy the Halfling Rogue and Bjertha the Dwarf Cleric are a pair of treasure hunters. One day they happened upon a witch's treasure. The witch caught them and demanded they remain as her slaves. Peppy, being a smooth talker, persuaded her into just taking one of them. But which one? Finally they decided to split the punishment, so the witch placed an unusual binding spell on them. The result is that one character is always tending to the witch's needs, while the other is out questing with the party. At certain points in time, they magically switch places. Perhaps there could even be times at which she temporarily lets them both free, for the rare occasions when both players show up. It could even be part of the campaign's story arc to free them from the witch's control.

Or how about this one? Doctor Jackel is a Human Mage who was experimenting with a new spell, when it backfired and cursed him. Now, at random times, he is transformed into the monstrous Mister Clyde, a Half-Orc Barbarian. When one player makes the game, he's the good doctor. When the other player makes the game, he's the brutish Clyde. And then there's the Ladyhawke method - Gelf is a Wizard with a hawk familiar. The hawk sometimes changes into Zia, a Beastmaster Ranger. Zia's pet wolf is really Gelf... but they're never both humanoid at the same time.

Of course, the above ideas only work if you're in a very specific situation, where you know two players are going to alternate their attendance (or you have someone always ready to sub for the one who misses a lot). If you just have one problem player, here's a few more ideas.

Glorified NPC
This is what we're doing in our current Pathfinder campaign. We have a couple of players who aren't really into gaming just yet, so we're letting them contribute as much or as little as the feel like at the time. Our party has a couple of guides, who double as MacGuffins when the plot demands it. Our situation isn't quite the same as the focus of this blog, but it's not a terrible solution for players who miss a lot. Just have the DM run the character as an NPC when the player isn't there. The downside: If it's just a torchbearer, then the player can't really build a kick-ass character. Also, you'd want a way to explain the character's personality changes... why does he join the fight some weeks, and just stand back other times? Eh, we can get a little more creative than that. How about...

Were-Creatures
Rexx is the victim of a werewolf's curse. But rather than changing with the moon, he changes randomly. He's human when the player is there. When the player is absent, the wolfman runs off into the woods (or the DM runs him as an NPC when plot-appropriate). Of course, this also gives many opportunities for side quests as the character tries to break the curse. It also adds a lot of potential conflict as the rest of the party deals with the hostile wolfman and keeps him from attacking other NPCs.

Malfunctioning Warforged
The party finds an old automaton - it could be a rock golem, or an enchanted suit of armor, or even a gnomish clockwork man. It still works, but only sporadically. Sometimes (when player isn't there) all it does is follow the party around, maybe holding a lantern. Other times, it is a mighty war machine. Maybe one member of the party takes responsibility for it, and is constantly polishing the mechanoid and tinkering with its settings.

Animal Companion
If the oft-absent player doesn't mind playing an animal, perhaps he could actually be another player's pet or familiar. For whatever reason, this particular animal can only be summoned at random times, to coincide with the player's attendance. Fluffy is a large talking mastiff, who wanders away to hunt at random times, tracking and rejoining the party whenever Fluffy's player attends a session. Shelly is a sapient armadillo who has to spend a certain number of hours a day rolled up into a ball, carried around by another character when the player isn't there. Perhaps they work more like Drizzt's kitty, being summoned from a small statue or magic gem. Maybe they even spring from a Pokeball-like device.

Object Curse
After a nasty encounter with an evil Wizard, Rocky was transformed into a small stone. His friends managed to work out a counterspell, but it only works for random amounts of time. Whenever he's a stone, another party member carries him around in their pocket. Or perhaps he's trapped in the reflection of a pocket mirror, or contained in a magical amulet, or even lives in a magic lamp.

Prisoner
River is a convict who lives in a magical prison. She has found several ways to escape, using a magic portal which always transports her back to her party. But her captors are able to track her, and usually manage to catch up to her after a few hours. Then they teleport her back to her cell, increase her sentence, and fruitlessly hope she won't escape again.

Ghost
Viva was killed by a mystical trap, but her will was too strong to be completely pulled into the other side. She now lives a part-time life, phasing in and out of existence. Sometimes she is a normal human, and just as solid and vulnerable as any other party member. Other times she is in a ghost form, invisible and intangible, and can do nothing but follow her friends around and watch.

These are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's many more ways to explain a character's absence. You might even come up with an explanation for every member of your party, just in case they miss. If you have any favorite methods of your own, please post them below!

Unlikely Heroes: Jello Shots

2011-07-24T11:46:00.002-05:00

Game Date: 7/23/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Davor (Ted): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Durp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Moxie (Michael): Half-Orc Fighter
Snidely (Greg): Halfling Rogue
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk

The Session:
Last session ended with us setting up camp on the outskirts of the orphanage ruins. During the night, Snidely noticed a halfling-sized creature crawling towards the camp. He started to check it out. After losing sight of it, he was suddenly grabbed by a young human girl, who yelled, "Save me!" The girl's name was Jevra, and in the month since the orphanage had burned down, she had been surviving on her own in these werewolf-infested woods.

Though some of us were a little suspicious about this girl being able to survive for so long by herself, we took her with us back to town anyway. Our first stop was Laurel the herbalist, who was very happy to see us and our mushrooms. Laurel immediately got to work mixing up a cure for the town's plague. Moxie and Derp stayed with her to help with crowd control.

Vex and Davor took Jevra to the local church. We were told that with the orphanage gone, there wasn't much they could do for her. We decided to try to keep her. Once we get a stable base of operations, she can be our assistant and apprentice. We later headed for the town hall to see about adopting her. Vex and Davor were mistaken for a couple, and we were told that the paperwork might take a while. They also told us that the final decisions for this kind of thing were always up to Kreed. That name kept popping up a lot, actually. We found out that Kreed basically runs the town.

Snidely ran off to the thieves guild to see if he could pick up any jobs. They told him to come back after dark. So Snidely decided to kill some time picking pockets. He badly failed a thievery roll, and found himself on the run from some lumberjacks. He managed to get away by throwing some money up in the air, which attracted a crowd that slowed his pursuers.

Later the party met up at the pub. Derp attempted to entertain the crowd, but rolled badly and broke a lute string. After a while, Kreed came through the doors and walked straight up to our party. He congratulated us for our work so far, and told us he might have more jobs for us in the future. He had his henchman ("Payday") give us a reward. We turned it down, resenting his implication that he owns us. So instead, Kreed gave us a beautiful axe, promising that there were no strings attached. Our party doesn't particularly trust Kreed, so we just had the axe put in storage.

We got rooms at the Jak'a'napes Inn. After we settled in, Snidely left again for the thieves guild. As soon as he approached the place, he was grabbed and put in a cell. Snidely was accused of being sloppy, and was given 20 lashes for being stupid. Unfortunately Snidely has very low INT and WIS stats, so it's unlikely the whiplashes are going to do much to cure that.

It wasn't a wasted trip, though. In the first session (which I did not attend), Snidely acquired a shrunken head from a witch's hut. He has been wearing it ever since, and it has occasionally spoken. The thieves guild was finally able to identify the item for him.

Later that night, Davor was woken up by someone going through his backpack. Davor quickly cast Daze on the intruder, who turned out to be Snidely. Our lovable rogue was trying to sneak a wand into Davor's backpack. He kept claiming, "It's a gift!" but Davor wasn't really fond of people going through his things. Having been woken by the commotion, Davor's brother Moxie grabbed Snidely. Snidely tried to stab him, but missed. Things looked like they were about to escalate but Davor smoothed things over and accepted the Halfling's apology.
Vex spent the next day in bed, recovering more of the stats she lost last session. Laurel the herbalist visited her to help with the healing. Kimi also stopped by with some of her friends, and asked if Jevra could come hang out with them. Vex allowed it, figuring the poor orphan was in need of a little fun.

Davor went to go see a retired mage named Vade, to ask about renting his tower to be our base of operations. They agreed on a price, but they still had to go to the magistrate for the legal paperwork. Once again, the party was told that these things take a while, and that the ultimate decider is Kreed. However, the magistrate did ask us to introduce him to our rogue... apparently he thinks Snidely is cute.

Later that evening, we couldn't find Jevra. We asked around, and found out the kids had headed to the orphanage for some reason. We immediately set out to find them. At the orphanage, we found some signs of struggle. Snidely looked around and found some of their tracks. It was very late by then, so we set up camp. The next morning we followed the tracks all the way to the river. The raft we'd used last time was gone, so we had to build another. It was a hastily-made deathtrap, but it was buoyant enough to get us across. On the other side, we searched a bit until we found our old raft, then continued following the tracks from there.

They led back to that Dwarven monastery. We poked around the top level for a bit, but found nothing. So we headed down the stairs we didn't have time to explore last time. In the main hall, there was a broken obelisk. Five kobolds were dragging part of it away. Vex charged one and killed it in one hit - not a huge feat, of course, but after being weak for so long it felt really good. We killed two of the others, but the final two (the weakest-looking ones) fled down the West hall.

But for some reason, Davor decided to explore the East hall instead. Not wanting to split the party, we followed. The East room had a large round pit of molten slag in the center, and more doors to the North. As Davor explored the room, he was attacked by a Grick. The Grick has some damage reduction that ignored all but our best hits, and sapped a lot of our hit points with its multiple attacks.

As we were finishing off the Grick, we heard some odd noises from the hall where we'd come from. We saw a floating suit of Dwarven armor coming through the room's entrance. Vex realized it was actually floating in a gelatinous cube.

Since the West exit was blocked, Moxie, Davor, and Snidely fled through the North doors. They immediately faced three dire rats. (Naturally, this repeated triggering of more encounters also triggered a few "Leeroy Jenkins" jokes.) As the cube got closer, they closed the door behind them, so they wouldn't be sandwiched between the rats and the cube.

Now separated from the rest of the party, Vex and Derp kept moving to the opposite side of the pit from the cube, hitting it with ranged attacks. It was slow going, but the cube had low AC so at least we managed to hit it. Once the rats were dead, the party managed to surround the cube and start doing some real damage. Snidely got sucked in, but we killed the cube one round later, so our rogue survived.

Inside the cube we found a magical axe labeled "Glintaxe", and a suit of Mithral armor. These items were still coated in the cube's acidic slime, so we had to clean it using the well upstairs. On another corpse we found some boots that helped with sneaking, which the party gave to Vex.

We went upstairs to the chapel where we'd fought the darkmantles last session. We considered sleeping because we were so hurt, but we also knew that time was of the essence here. While we were debating, we noticed a slot designed to fit a gem. We remembered a magic gem we'd found last session, and tried fitting it into the slot. This healed all of us for a few hit points, so we skipped our nap and headed back downstairs.

This time we took the West hallway, where those two kobolds had fled. We found a room full of bunk beds. The two kobolds were there, being sucked dry by three stirges. During this encounter, Vex had the unfortunate tendency to keep rolling only 4 damage to creatures that only had 5 hit points. Nevertheless, we still managed to kill the stirges pretty quickly, before they could do us much harm.

A bit farther North, we encountered a room full of kobolds. We could see Kimi and a Halfling being held captive. The Halfling helped us a bit during battle by throwing rocks at the kobolds. During the fight, the kobolds seemed to think that Moxie was a legendary Dwarven warrior called "Glintaxe", due to the equipment he had gotten from the gelatinous cube. Vex rolled a crit on the final kobold, pounding it into hamburger.

After the battle, we asked Kimi to fill us in. Apparently Jevra had dared the other kids to spend the night at the orphanage. But the orphanage was just a little bit too scary, what with all the spiders and all, so they went to the monastery instead. They were captured by kobolds and separated. We asked her where Jevra was, but Kimi didn't know. I hope she's okay, but when we do find her, she is sooooooo grounded.

We ended the session there.

Afterthoughts:
The differences between Pathfinder and D&D 4e didn't come up as much this time. The first half of this session was mostly roleplay, which was a nice change of pace. Generally speaking, the system doesn't matter if the story is good.

When Vex's stats first went down, I was afraid I was going to spend the next few sessions standing at the back of the party, slinging stones (and usually missing), and basically being the party torchbearer. But with all the roleplaying and the extra day in bed, she was back up to full stats before our first actual fight this session. And even if we had fought some during that time, so what? We all rolled our stats, so none of us are all that optimized.

Still, nothing is perfect. This session we had issues identifying magic items. First one must be able to detect that the item is magical, then they can try to identify the type of magic using the Spellcraft skill. Well, our party's Sorcerer has Spellcraft, but only the Bard has Detect Magic, and apparently both are required by the same character to identify an item. Does this not seem anal to anyone else? Can't they at least sit down and work together to identify it?

Here's one that's not unique to Pathfinder - I know it's in D&D 4e and other systems as well - but I have never bought the idea that gelatinous cubes are invisible. Yes, they are clear. Yes, light does pass through them. But if you make a 10'x10'x10' cube of clear Jello, I promise you you're still going to be able to see it quite easily, even in dim light. (If you actually try this, invite me over.) Arguably, flickering torchlight actually makes it easier to see, what with all the moving reflections and refractions. Not to mention that the artwork for both the Pathfinder Bestiary and the D&D Monster Manual show it as a highly visible greenish-blue.


Left: D&D 4e Monster Manual. Right: Pathfinder Bestiary. Yeah, that's invisible.

I know, I know, I have no problem with a Half-Orc who can throw bolts of electricity, but for some reason I can't suspend my disbelief for invisible gelatin. As I've said before, everybody has their own reality threshold.

Character - Vex

2011-07-19T17:03:00.001-05:00

This is my new character in the Pathfinder "Unlikely Heroes of Darkmoon Vale" campaign.

Full Name:
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman

Class:
Monk

Race:
Half-Elf

Gender:
Female

Alignment:
Lawful Good

Deity:
Irori

Background:
Vex has no memory of her parents, having been given over to the monastary as an infant. The monastary itself knows few details, and has told her even less. All Vex knows is that she's the child of a human soldier and an elf maiden.

Vex sometimes wonders why her parents left her. Was theirs a forbidden love, an illicit affair that had to be kept hidden? Were her parents killed, just barely getting Vex to safety before succumbing to their wounds? Was her father part of an evil invading army, who took her mother's innocence as part of the spoils of war? Or perhaps her mother was the aggressor, tempting Vex's father away from his family like a libinious nymph, and later abandoning her offspring to free her for more conquests. Maybe they were royalty, and Vex was kidnapped as part of a ransom scheme that went ended badly. Or perhaps they simply felt their relationship was a mistake, and simply didn't want the hassle of raising a mixed-breed child.

Whenever Vex finds herself wondering about her origins, she always comes to the same final conclusion: "Stop letting you mind wander, you nitwit!" Because if her monastic upbringing has taught her anything, it's that idle speculation benefits no one.

Vex has spent the majority of her life at the monastery. There she has learned to focus her strength to a degree that others often find surprising. But while she is one of the stronger members of her order, she's had difficulty cultivating the wisdom she needs to temper that strength. Try as she might, she has never been able to focus her mental energies as easily as she commands her fists. Also, her masters are bothered by the amount of pride Vex seems to have in her power, and would like to see her learn a bit of humility. For this reason, she has been asked to leave the monastery for a while, on a quest for self-improvement. They hope that the difficulties she faces out in the world will cause her to develop her skills out of necessity.

Just a few months into this journey of enlightenment, she was exploring a Dwarven monastery with some other adventurers, when she was bitten by a large spider. This spider's venom sapped a lot of her strength. While Vex is distressed at losing her greatest asset, and hopes to recover as quickly as possible, she also sees this as a humbling experience that could be good for her. It could be an opportunity for her to rely on her other attributes, instead of solving all her problems with her fists. After all, one must often suffer in order to learn.

Personality, Mannerisms, and Appearance:
Vex believes in staying focused on the task at hand, and dislikes chatter. She feels that her time is not to be wasted, and all waking moments should be spent bettering herself. While her companions might stop to talk about the weather or to compliment each other's choice of clothing, Vex spends her free time meditating or practicing her combat skills. Her goal is total perfection in mind and body.

While Vex generally feels that hobbies are a pointless distraction, she does collect religious artifacts. She is often curt and to-the-point when talking to other adults, but she has a soft spot for children.
Vex gets her dark skin and hair from her father, and she has her mother's green eyes. She has a tattoo of a crane - the symbol of her order - on her left forearm.

Creating this character:
Vex was a character I played briefly in NeverWinter Nights. That version was an Elven Monk who couldn't speak due to damaged vocal chords. I am halfway considering having this version of the character eventually take a vow of silence.

Unfortunately I rolled badly for Wisdom, a key stat for Monks, but I'm trying to make up for it as best as I can. I briefly considered making her a Dwarf for the stat bonuses, but one of the reasons I'm in this campaign is to get away from 4e's insistence on min-maxing.

I couldn't find a mini I really liked. The closest I could find is the Whirling Steel Monk. As usual I let my mini choice influence my character's appearance. Due to the mini's skin tone, I've decided her father's bloodline comes from the Pathfinder equivalent of Asia or Kara-Tur.

Unlikely Heroes: Mushroom Quest

2011-07-17T08:45:00.001-05:00

Game Date: 7/16/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Davor (Ted): Half-Orc Sorcerer
Durp DuDerp (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Moxie (Michael): Half-Orc Fighter
Snidely (Greg): Halfling Rogue
Nishallivexiania "Vex" Corman (Matt): Half-Elf Monk
Kimi & Savram (Tam & Sheree): Child Lookouts

The Session:
I joined this Pathfinder campaign already in progress. The existing party had taken on the task of finding some mushrooms in an old Dwarven monastery. These shrooms are a key ingredient for a medicine that will hopefully cure the plague infesting a nearby town. Meanwhile, Vex had hired Kimi and Savram, a couple of children from town, to guide her to the same monastery in search of religious artifacts. As the existing party was making camp, one of them heard Vex's group and went to make sure they weren't enemies. Once Vex heard about their quest to cure a plague, she agreed to help. The group headed for the monastery together.

We entered the courtyard of the monastery and started looking around. In one tower, we encountered a large spider. During the fight, it bit Vex, causing her to lose 2 points of STR. After a failed fort save, she lost 2 more... then 2 more... then 2 more. She finally made her save, but she was down 8 STR (her only decent stat) for the rest of the session.

In the another room, we found a secret door leading to some open prison cells. The cells contained three skeletons, which attacked us. During the battle, another door opened down the hall, and two wolves joined the battle. But our biggest opponent this fight was a lot of extraordinarily bad die rolls. The two kids actually did the most damage in this battle.

Next we checked out the room the wolves had come from, and found ourselves face-to-face with a large Worg. He asked, "Who dares disturb my lair?" Of course we didn't trust him, but in hopes of avoiding a fight, we told him about our quest. He told us where we could find some mushrooms, but warned us that the room was home to a pair of darkmantles. We decided to check out that room last.

We explored a couple of small rooms, and found a few minor items. While examining some fungus, Vex triggered a spore cloud, which gave her -2 CON. Not a good day for Vex. In another room, Davor and Moxie were attacked by a bed. Well, actually it was a kobold hiding under a bed, who kept attacking them by stabbing through the mattress from underneath. During the battle, Vex was still standing in the hallway, and kept seeing shadows moving on the walls. She used her sling to "attack the darkness", but nothing happened. She was left wondering if she really saw it, or if it was just aftereffects from the spores.

Finally we entered the room with the darkmantles. Our light could not penetrate the magical darkness in the room. A few party members cautiously entered the room, but kept tripping over furniture. The first darkmantle dropped on one of us, and we fought it as best we could without being able to see anything. Once it was dead, the darkness dissipated for just a moment before the other monster cast darkness again. Once we finally killed it, we searched the room.

No mushrooms, but we'd figured the Worg was playing us. He probably just wanted us to take care of the darkmantles for him, or hoped the darkmantles would kill us. We headed straight back to the Worg's lair to lodge a formal complaint. The Worg got the drop on us, pouncing from a hidden area up above, but we soon had him surrounded. Moxie rolled one particularly nice crit that nearly killed the Worg instantly. Once the Worg was dead, we searched his lair thoroughly, and found a few more mushrooms.

There were some stairs going down, but our quest had a time limit. If the townsfolk didn't get their cure soon, people would start dying. And besides, we were low on hit points. We didn't think we could make it back to town before dark, so we headed towards the ruins of an old orphanage we thought we might be able to use for shelter. We had to build a raft to get across a river, and eventually we reached the orphanage.

While most of the place was burned out and falling apart, we found one door that led down to a cellar that looked promising. We found a body down there, and were attacked by a large spider and a swarm of smaller spiders. We looked up Pathfinder's rules on swarms, and discovered that none of us really had anything that could damage one. So we fled. We closed the door behind us and moved far away before finally setting up camp. We ended the session there.

Reminders:
Assuming we successfully camp the night, Vex will regain 1 point each of her lost stats, bringing her up to -7 STR and -1 CON.

Afterthoughts:
This was my first time playing Pathfinder. I haven't decided if I like it yet, but I also haven't seen enough to judge it fairly. With Vex suffering stat loss in her first round of battle, I didn't get to do a whole lot. Since I was already at a penalty to hit, I generally just kept using my basic attack all session, since it seemed most likely to hit. Pathfinder does have an interesting set of combat maneuvers, which includes Bull Rush, Disarm, Grapple, Overrun, Sunder, and Trip. I didn't try any of these because the time never seemed right. I just don't see Vex tripping a spider or disarming a worg. So maybe I'll warm up to the system once I've had a chance to do something besides punching someone.

I like the nostalgic 3.5 feelings it gives me, and I was extremely happy that the battles were quick. I've been playing 4e, which is basically combat porn - you get a few minutes of poorly-acted dialogue bridging the gaps between long scenes of hot action. Sure, I enjoy the fighting, but when you look at the clock and realize you're entering hour three of the same combat - which in-game is only supposed to represent a few minutes - sometimes you have to say "Enough already!" There's something wrong with the system when you're actively disemboweling someone and still feeling bored.

So Pathfinder was a huge improvement there. But I also keep coming across problems that 4e has effectively fixed. So in that respect, it feels like I'm taking a step backwards. The risk of hitting an ally when firing into melee was a bit disappointing. I understand the reasoning for the rule; it's that "realism" thing that stupid people babble about just before doing something totally realistic like casting Magic Missile. Rules like this severely limit a balanced party, where the tanks surround the monster while the strikers shoot at it. Sure, there's a feat to fix the problem, but who wants to waste a feat to fix anal game design? Besides, I'm not saying you're such an expert that you can fire through your teammate's legs. It's more like you yell, "Bob! Duck!" as you let loose your arrow. Bob, not being an idiot, ducks.

The slow health recovery is also annoying. Of course, I know a lot of people complained that it was too easy to heal in 4e, but you know my feelings on that. I know this sounds a bit like "my character got hurt so I hate this game", but that's seriously not it. I hated slow recovery systems long before I was hurt by one. Which is more fun to roleplay, taking a week of bed rest, or getting up and facing the next challenge? Sidestepping challenges because you're down to 1 hit point is boring. This is a game, something people do for fun. Sitting around waiting for bones to knit is boring. Games. Should. Not. Be. Boring. It's such a simple and obvious rule, and yet I spend so much time resisting the urge to tattoo it on people's foreheads. Again, the Rule of Fun should always be the #1 rule of every system.

But some of this might just be a problem with early levels, and again, I don't feel like I've seen enough to fairly judge. I still enjoyed the session, and I'm looking forward to next time. Only time will tell if I fall in love with the system.

ToEE: Hot Enough For Ya?

2011-07-10T09:04:00.001-05:00

Game Date: 7/9/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Artimus a.k.a. "Artie" (Nick): Revenant Hexblade
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Ember (Leigha): Tiefling Wizard
Eve (Jesse): Eladrin "Lazy" Warlord
Jerry (Nick): Human Cleric
Joanna Winters (also Jesse): Human Archer Ranger
Kossack (Cliff): Minotaur Fighter

The Session:
Short a few players last session, we were forced to surrender to the Air Temple, and agreed to help them assassinate Fire Priest Alrrem. Calla, Artimus, Ember, and Eve teamed up with Air Temple Priest Kelno, and two of his Gnoll archers. We ended the session just after killing Alrrem (A). Today we started right where we left off, with Jerry, Joanna, and Kossack still MIA.

The four of us searched the nearby rooms. Ember found a book about Fire Elementals (B). We started to explore the East hallway (C), but Kelno was impatient. He ordered us to head straight for the Fire Temple (D). Once we arrived in the Fire Temple, Kelno asked us to dismantle a large bell that was hanging from the ceiling. As we approached the bell, we saw an altar on which many tiny Salamanders were moving about.

As we discussed our next course of action, our three missing party members finally caught up to us. Jerry, Joanna, and Kossack entered the Fire Temple from the North door, and were quite surprised to see us in the company of the Gnolls.

Kossack and Jerry recognized the Gnolls as some of the same ones that mugged us back at the moathouse. Artimus and Calla started to tell them the Gnolls were on our side now, but Kossack would have none of it. He immediately charged the nearest Gnoll with a bull's temper. It took a couple of rounds to decide who was on who's side. Of course Calla and Artimus wanted to be loyal to their friends, but Eve had never seen Jerry and the others before. As far as she knew, they were enemies. Jerry was even wearing Fire Temple robes he'd picked up a while back ("because they looked nice"). Eve used some of her Warlord powers to compel Calla and Artie to attack Jerry's group. Meanwhile, Ember stayed out of it, and just kept watching the Salamanders.

Whenever Calla or Artimus had a turn, they would attempt to calm things down, using Diplomacy checks on different people to explain the situation. But it just wasn't meant to be, so they allied with Jerry's group against Kelno and the Gnolls. After the battle, we kept Kelno alive, removing his equipment and tying him up. Kossack very nearly attacked Eve, but instead he just spit on her and threatened to kill her if she ever attacked him again.

Even though we no longer worked for the Air Temple, we still wanted to desecrate the Fire Temple. So Joanna and Kossack worked together to get the bell down from the ceiling. Then Jerry desecrated the altar. Against (in character) objections from most of the group, Artimus sacrificed Kelno on the Fire Altar. As soon as he did so, a bunch of the Salamanders jumped off the altar and started dancing around the room. They kept getting larger and larger. Not liking where this was going, we started heading for the West door.

After a couple of rounds, the Salamanders started combining with each other, until we faced four large Salamanders. Then the fight began. The Salamanders had a fire aura, but Calla and Kossack were both resistant to it due to their equipment. Once all the Salamanders were dead, Jerry started digging through a fire pit until he found a huge box. Ember used a cold spell to cool the box down enough for us to open. Inside, we found a few potions and a Frostfury Battleaxe. Kossack used the axe to smash the Fire Altar to pieces.

Next we went West, then North, until we found ourselves in a large octagonal room (E). There we were attacked by a creature called "Agera of the Shadow Face". This shadow creature was just full of surprises. It could attack three times per round, or hit all of us with one big blast attack. Its attacks had all sorts of nasty effects, like slowing us, giving us ongoing damage, pushing us, and making us attack each other.

Early in the battle, Artimus drew a crit card which basically marked the enemy, causing it to only be able to attack him. This isn't the best thing for a striker, and he barely survived the battle. But eventually we wore the thing down and killed it. After the battle, we searched the room and found three secret doors. We ended the session there.

ToEE: All About Eve

2011-07-03T18:48:00.000-05:00

Game Date: 7/3/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Artimus a.k.a. "Artie" (Nick): Revenant Hexblade
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Ember (Leigha): Tiefling Wizard
Eve (Jesse): Eladrin "Lazy" Warlord

Notes:
With a small party and no healer at the table today, Jesse decided to try a Warlord build. He used what is known as the "lazy" style Warlord, where all of the powers involve making other characters hit things. Eve doesn't even wield a weapon she can actually use. During the session, she performed rather well, getting the most out of the party's strongest attacks. We kind of hand-waved how she entered the party, and we've made no mention so far of where Joanna, Jerry, and Kossack were this week. My theory is that after the abrupt ending of the 6/11 session, we got split up, and we'll rejoin them later.

Click to see larger version

The Session:
Last session ended after we fought a bunch of bandits (A). One got away, fleeing into another room (C), but we didn't want to chase him without resting first. We rested in the room with the Minotaur statue (B). After the short rest, we followed the bandit, but he the room he had fled into was empty (C). We explored a bit further, finding a very large hallway (D), where we were attacked by a bunch of goblins, bugbears, and bandits (one of which was the bandit that escaped earlier). This battle started out pretty badly, and things were beginning to look bleak until Ember pulled off one of her brilliant nova rounds. After she was done throwing lots of fire around, there were only a couple of enemies left to finish off.

After the battle, we found a kitchen (E), then continued South, then West, until we found another room full of enemies (F). Here we fought several bugbears, and things didn't look so bad until a nearby room (G) opened up and the battle was joined by more bugbears, gnolls, and their Eladrin leader. We fought valiantly, but there were just too many of them. With his hit points nearly gone, and all his companions on the ground making death saves, Artimus decided to surrender.

We were all captured, tied up, and allowed to take an extended rest under guard. The Eladrin leader, who identified himself as Kelno of the Air Temple, questioned us. We admitted that we were the ones who destroyed the Earth Temple, but this didn't seem to bother him. When we revealed that we had no love for the Fire Temple either, he was quite pleased. He asked us to join his cause, to help him eliminate Alrrem, one of the Fire Temple bigwigs. The alternative being death, of course we agreed.

Kelno gave us some Air Temple robes to wear. We asked if we could have some extra for our missing party members, but he said that's up to them, if they decide to join the Air Temple later. Kelno seemed to be attracted to Eve, so hopefully we can use that to our advantage at some point. Kelno then led us down the hall, along with a pair of Gnoll archers. As he led us through the great hall, he pointed out some locations, and we were able to fill out some more of our map. He led us down another large hallway (H), down a side corridor, until we reached a curtained-off room belonging to the Fire Temple (I).

They didn't know what hit them. Eve pulled aside the curtain, and used one of her abilities to make Calla charge the room's leader. Calla rolled a crit, and the resulting damage killed the leader instantly. This left three Bugbears, one of which fled to the next room (J). With the help of Kelno and his archers, we quickly killed off the other two Bugbears and continued to the next room. We soon faced a Half-Orc, a flaming Half-Elf, more Bugbears, and a Dragonborn Fire Champion (Alrrem).

We managed to create a bottleneck between the two rooms (I & J), with our most durable combatants blocking the breezeway while our ranged characters fired over our shoulders. I can't say whether we actually needed it, but Kelno's aid made the battle a lot shorter than it could have been. NPCs or not, it was nice to have a full party again. Once the battle was over, Alrrem was dead, and our mission was accomplished, we ended the session. We're still in that room (J), and we haven't explored the three doors to the North yet.

Afterthoughts:
Whether Jesse decides to stick with Eve or change back to Joanna remains to be seen. I think it would be neat if he brought both character sheets to the table, and let the plot decide... Maybe Eve could stay with Kelno, and be our own double agent for the Air Temple while Joanna explores with the rest of us to clear out everything else. If Joanna dies, we go pick up Eve. Or once we clear out everything Fire and Water related, Eve helps us make the first major blow against Air by assassinating Kelno in his sleep. Just food for thought.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

2011-06-14T08:35:00.000-05:00

Game Date: 6/11/2011
DM: Rusty
Party: Cliff, Jesse, Matt, & Nick (3 characters each)

The Game:
Instead of jumping right into our normal campaign, we agreed to devote part of our session to Dungeon Crawl Classics. This is an old-school style RPG, currently in open beta. DCC uses rules similar to D&D 3.5, but a lot of the rules are an intentional throwback to the earliest days of D&D. Instead of planning a character, you start out as a level 0 nobody, and everything about you is rolled randomly. Which stats you excel at will help you decide what class to choose later, when you reach level 1.

This is a bare-bones system, and that's considered a feature, not a bug. It only takes a few minutes to generate your character, and combat is also very quick. There are no feats and no skills. For skill challenges, you just roll using the appropriate ability modifier, with a possible bonus if you can justify it as relating to your occupation.

You start with very few hit points, and the game is quite deadly. The idea is that you roll up and run multiple characters simultaneously, and the ones that survive a few levels are the ones that actually become heroes. Currently the system only goes up to level 5, but it's still early in the game's development.

The Session:
We played a module called "Legends Are Made, Not Born." We started out in the small town of Dundraville, which was living under the thumb of a local Ogre. The townsfolk had previously been tolerating the Ogre's small demands, which was usually just supplies or ale. But recently the Ogre started demanding bigger things, like gold and captives. After the Ogre kidnapped a few of Dundraville's citizens, the town held a meeting to discuss the problem. Our characters were the last ones to arrive at the meeting, and found that we'd been elected to go negotiate with the Ogre. So the moral is, always be punctual.

Along the way, we met a Hobgoblin sheep herder, who worked for the Ogre. He seemed somewhat ambivalent about our mission; he seemed to enjoy his work, but recognized the Ogre wasn't always such a nice guy. His life's dream was to be a mushroom farmer.

We watched the Ogre's den until nightfall, when the Ogre rolled a large stone in front of the entrance. We pushed the stone aside and began exploring the lair. The rest of the adventure took place...

We soon encountered the Ogre's pet wolf, who we killed, concerned that the sounds of battle would alert the Ogre. We needn't have worried. When we found the Ogre, he was fast asleep at the dinner table. We tried to quietly steal his club so he would be unarmed when we fought him. We managed to get the club, but we made enough noise to wake him.

On my turn, one of my characters (Paul), poured some oil onto the Ogre. Another of my characters (Mary) hit the Ogre with a torch, causing him to catch fire for some ongoing damage. While Mary had the lowest strength score in the group (5), she actually proved to be a bit of a bad ass several times during the session. After a few more rounds, the Ogre went down.

We kept exploring the lair, and found some secret doors and other cave passages. We fought a few fire beetles, and were later attacked by some centipedes while looting an old corpse. In one room we saw a dire skunk, but we backed off before it got agitated.

In another cave passage, we found some rooms that appeared to be part of a Wizard's lair. We were attacked by a magic broom, which we deactivated and kept. In the Wizard's personal chambers, we fought some animated books. We opened one treasure chest to find that the loot was being guarded by a viper. Who uses a viper to guard their valuables, really?

Down another corridor, we opened a portcullis and found a couple of missing townsfolk. There was also a Dwarf building more cages. When we ordered him to stop, he charged at one of Jesse's characters. Jesse managed to hit the Dwarf first, rolling a crit which killed the Dwarf in one hit.

Down another hallway we set off an alarm in the form of a Shrieker (screaming mushroom). While Jesse's solder (Sven) stabbed at the mushroom, one of Cliff's characters tried a ranged attack. In this edition, firing into melee gives you a chance of hitting your ally, which he did. Sven, probably the most powerful character in our group, went down from friendly fire.

In the next room, we fought the evil Wizard who owned the place. One of my characters (Peter) rolled a fumble, and as a result, killed another of my characters (Paul).

But after a few rounds we did kill the Wizard, with 7 characters left from the original 12. We gathered up our loot and headed back to town, where we all leveled up. Mary has decided to become a Cleric, and Peter will become a Wizard.

Surviving characters: Chappy, Gizmo (Cliff); Achmend, Slappy (Nick); Mac (Jesse); Peter, Mary (Matt). That's actually more than survivors than I was expecting, since we started with such low hit points. But of course we greatly outnumbered our enemies. Even the really hard monsters could only kill one of us per round, while we were making 7-12 attack rolls per round. And two of our five deaths came at the hands of our own teammates.

Afterthoughts:
I don't hate it, and I would definitely play it again. However, it would not be my first choice for a long-term campaign. This system is designed to appeal to nostalgia. I wasn't playing D&D during the early years (though I would have liked to), so the sentimental angle is lost on me. Nevertheless, I did find the concept entertaining. I think it's neat how character creation is like part of the game itself, with everything being so random. It's fun starting out at level 0, with an occupation instead of a class. It reminds me of the computer game Dungeon Siege, where you start out as a farmer and develop your combat specialty as you play. I'd love to take that concept, simplify it even further, and turn it into a board game like Wrath of Ashardalon. I'd increase the XP rate if I did so, so that you'd go from 0 to retirement every time you play - first player to hit level 5 wins. But I think that goes to show that I don't take this game very seriously.

I also like how the combat doesn't take very long, though I would still prefer to use miniatures. I don't care if the combat is simple enough not to need them. I don't even care if the minis are placed on an actual combat grid. I just like having something to represent where the characters are standing. I have trouble following combat in my head, and minis help me remember details like how many enemies are still alive, how far away they are, and so on.

The game is highly unbalanced, but again, that's considered a feature. Early editions of D&D weren't exactly fair, either. Some classes were easier than others. Since you don't get to pick your stats in DCC, you might not get much of a choice when choosing your class. Again, I wouldn't mind seeing that in a board game, many of which revolve around pure chance (there's not much real strategy in "Sorry!"). But for an RPG, generally I like to know my role before I sit down. D&D is practically a different game for the different classes (especially in pre-4e editions). Some people might not enjoy playing certain classes, and it's unfair to expect them to show up every week to play something they hate, just because they rolled badly during character creation.

One of my more anal nitpicks is the use of so many uncommon dice. The luck chart has 30 items, the equipment chart has 24, and the fumble chart has 16. So if you don't have a d30, d24, or d16, you have to do clever things with your other dice. I actually collect strange dice, and even I don't have a d16 (yet). What, they couldn't think of 4 more types of fumbles to round out a 20-entry fumble chart? When I was DMing, I made up a 100-point fumble chart for my group, and I'm not even a professional game designer. Personally, I think if you truly can't think of four more simple ways of dropping a sword, then you're an uncreative hack who's in the wrong business. Little blemishes like that make me look down on the rest of the entire game, because I know if they fail there, then I'm going to run into bigger problems down the road.

But overall, I think this is shaping up to be a pretty decent game... just not necessarily one that's right for me.

ToEE: Lots of Running

2011-06-12T08:24:00.005-05:00

Game Date: 6/11/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Ember (Leigha): Tiefling Wizard
Joanna Winters (Jesse): Human Archer Ranger
Jerry (Nick): Human Cleric

The Session:
We started the day by playing Dungeon Crawl Classics for a couple of hours. This RPG is a work-in-progress that currently has open playtests. I will blog it separately when I have more time. One player left after the DCC game, leaving us with a smaller-than-usual party and a late start for the regular game, so we didn't uncover too many rooms this session.

Last session, Joanna came into possession of a cursed stone which kept her slowed. The rest of us have since been wondering why she moves so slowly. Joanna wasn't very forthcoming in explaining her problem. That's part of the curse: wanting to keep the stone, not wanting others to see it, and thinking everything is perfectly normal. Joanna didn't even notice she was slowed. But with a high insight check, Jerry understood the problem and sought help.

We took her to the Druid in Hommlet, who did a fancy ritual for us. He told us the magic was too powerful for his skills, and suggested we take her to Mother Screng. Once in Nulb, Screng had a much easier time lifting the curse, and Joanna is now free. He headed on to the Temple.

When we reached the Temple, we saw more of those annoying birds on the wall. We considered fighting, but decided to run instead. We fled through the tall grass, toward the one door we knew to be unlocked. A few birds swooped down and did a small amount of damage, but we made it without any actual fighting. Calla was the first to open the door, triggering an explosive trap. Ouch!

Inside the Temple, we saw a couple of Ghouls on the top floor. They didn't see us yet, so we hid behind some columns and attacked. We did really well against the first two, but four more came charging down the hall to join the battle. Still, it wasn't that bad a fight; nothing we haven't handled before. We didn't even bother to use minis.

Towards the end of the encounter, one of the Ghouls started calling for reinforcements. Once they were all dead, we heard more noises that might have been approaching backup, so we fled once again down the stairs to Level 1. We took refuge in the Southwest armory, for a short rest. Then we headed North. About halfway up the length of the level, we encountered a Gelatinous Cube. It was difficult to fight, since most of us couldn't even see it. Joanna got sucked in, but managed to fight her way out. We finally got far enough away from it that it couldn't keep up with us, and we fled yet again. With all the fleeing this session, it's a good thing Kossack wasn't here. He's trying to impress his sentient armor, which punishes him if he flees too often.

We took a different route through the hallways, making our way towards the spiral staircase in the Northwest. We headed down the stairs, and set foot on Level 2 for the first time.

From the stairs (A), we took the Southwest hallway and found a rectangular room (B). There was a statue of an evil Minotaur king standing in a dry fountain. We noticed a secret door to the East, and heard some murmuring from the other side. We burst through the door and attacked the guards on the other side. We fought several guards and bandits (C). One fled into room D, so we finished off the rest of the room before following him. After the battle, we opened the door (D), and saw another door on the opposite side. We would have opened the other door and kept following, but we were running out of session time. Experience has taught us that these bandit rooms just keep going on and on with more doors full of more bandits, and we didn't want to start that just yet.

As we finished up, we were deciding whether we're going to take a short rest in room B, or just keep following the bandit when the next session starts.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

2011-06-10T09:08:00.005-05:00

So, playing the PnP version of the The Temple of Elemental Evil put me in the mood for other media. I've started reading the novel, and I've reinstalled the old PC game. It's not that I'm going nuts over the story or anything, it's just that I figure I'm going to read/play them eventually, so now it's the perfect time. When we're playing the PnP module, it helps me see everything more vividly after playing the PC game. It also helps me remember the names of the NPCs when I've learned more about them in the book.

I was a little concerned about the possibility of spoilers, and the temptation of metagaming. But I've always been very good about not acting on out-of-character knowledge. Besides, at the rate I'm going, I doubt I'll pass our PnP game in either format. I only get to read for about an hour each week, and I'm taking my time in the computer game as well.

By the way, is it just me, or does Burne look like Nathan Fillion?

Playing the PC game, which is based on D&D 3.5, one thing that's struck me is how much I appreciate 4e. I've played this game before (though I didn't get very far the first time), and I also put many hours into NeverWinter Nights (which is also based on 3rd edition). I liked them a lot at the time. Heck, I still enjoy them now. But it amazes me how much crap gamers put up with before Fourth Edition.

I've got a wizard in my party, and I can't stand how few spells she can cast per day. I'm sorry, if you can only cast a few magic missiles a day, you're not really a wizard. You're just a weak crossbow enthusiast who dabbles a little in magic. Heck, I didn't even understand it at the time, and I do remember ranting about this well before 4e came out. If so many pre-4e wizards end up carrying a crossbow, which does 1d6 damage, why not just give them an unlimited-use "magic bolt" spell which does the same damage? Just work it out so the math is the same (maybe even make it a full-round action to make up for the reloading), and let them have the flavor. It's much more exciting, and the game loses nothing.

So, I'm adjacent to three enemies, I switch targets, and... I provoke an OA? What's that about? I'm required to attack the same enemy each round, even if others are adjacent to me? Were the designers of 3e actively trying to discourage combat strategy? It's like that annoying rule in checkers that says you have to jump someone if you can. I despise rules like that, because it encourages people to think less. When you limit the number of things someone can do on their turn, it's like you're designing a game that plays itself. If you're really so keen on not making decisions during battle, then stop playing games and watch a movie instead. It's obviously what you were really in the mood for.

I might be wrong on some of this - I don't remember all of 3e's rules that well, and I might be misinterpreting what I'm seeing in the game. But it seems like there's an insane number of things that provoke OAs. Standing up from prone, reloading crossbows, drinking a healing potion, sometimes even just running straight up to an enemy to attack them. And of course the normal stuff that still provokes in 4e - moving away from an enemy, using a ranged attack or spell next to an enemy, etc. Even some spells that are designed for close range seem to provoke attacks - specifically Burning Hands, which is a blast attack so it ought to be safe. Oddly, switching out weapons does not provoke (but it does use up your movement).

And movement gets used up pretty quickly. There never seems to be enough time in a round. I don't feel like pulling out the 3e books again to confirm it, but instead of standard/move/minor, it seems more like standard/move (with minors taking up movement time). Personally, I think I ought to be able to move, reload my crossbow, and fire it in one turn. I don't care if it's unrealistic; it's heroic.

I've found that some undead can't be damaged unless you have at least a +1 magic weapon, and those magic weapons are pretty rare (at least early on). So what happens if my level 1 party gets surrounded by undead? Well, we pretty much have to flee. Or keep taking our lumps until the one party member who can actually damage them has had enough turns to kill them all. Yay, that's so exciting. *yawn*

And healing. NeverWinter Nights did a smart thing by realizing it was a video game, and letting you heal by resting for about 10 seconds. But the ToEE game goes a bit more by-the-book. You can still heal by resting at the Inn, but it often takes a week or more to get you back to full hit points. This would make sense if hit points represented actual injuries, but - and I hate to repeat myself here - hit points should represent stamina more than damage. While movie characters often shrug off shots to the shoulder, in real life any significant injury tends to end the battle. If that first hit doesn't kill you, it at least makes it easier to land the rest of the hits.

Instead, I usually envision you blocking the first few hits, which uses up your stamina. When you get bloodied, that's the first hit that actually broke the skin. When you hit 0, that's the hit you were too tired to block, the one that lays you flat. Again, 4e has spoiled me here, but I have a hard time respecting any system where hit points are supposed to represent lacerations and broken bones. Unless there's a plot reason to give me a broken leg, I'd like to be able to fight again after a few minutes rest.

Maybe part of that spoilage is that I always expect to start each battle with max hit points. To me, it's common sense: max hp means "ready for action". I suppose in the old days being down a few points is the 4e equivalent of being down a few surges - you keep exploring until they're almost gone.

No matter what you do, some people are going to complain that it isn't realistic. I'm not a huge fan of realism, as reality has little use in a game where people throw fireballs at bugbears. Like most people with double standards, I only use the phrase "it's more realistic" when it helps me win the argument. A lot of the time, people complaining about realism have no idea what realism actually means. The fact is, everyone has a different reality threshold. Some people want to describe every meal their character eats, but skip things like bathing or using the chamber pot. Some gamers like to count their arrows, and even roleplay collecting arrows after each battle and fixing them up. Hey, if that's what you find fun, more power to you. But other players consider that a waste of time that could have been spent killing things.

In our current campaign, when the time came to start making a map of our environment, everyone around the table suddenly shouted, "Not it!" When you have a game element that is so universally avoided, this should be a clue - to players and game designers alike - that something about this game isn't fun.

Note, I'm not saying this to complain about my role as mapper. While there have been some communication issues over the length of some hallways, overall I don't mind drawing the maps. And I definitely think I'm the logical choice, since I tend to repost our progress on the blog. But it can be frustrating and time consuming. My ideas for improving our mapping system:

1. Have the DM do it. I don't like giving the DM extra work, but he's got the map right there. If we used some semi-transparent graph paper for our map, the DM could just grab it and trace the next room real quick whenever we look around the corner. It might make it easier for him as well, because he wouldn't have to spend as much time telling us the boring directional details of the hallway, when he would rather be describing the aesthetics of the masonry and architecture. He would spend less time saying "no, turn it the other way" when we're laying down tiles, too.

2. Just give us the damn map. Maybe early on, our party could find a parchment map of the Temple. The map wouldn't contain any actual info, just the layout of the hallways and rooms, with some letters or numbers here and there. Then we could just tell him, "We're going down hallway H, and peeking into room J." Then he could tell us what we see. Obviously hidden doors and secret rooms wouldn't be on the map. As we clear out the rooms, we'd put X's or other notes in the rooms we've visited. I understand this can be a little spoilerific, since it shows us the size of the Temple. But most of us already have a pretty good idea of the Temple's size.

Some purists might consider mapping to be part of the challenge, but if it's a challenge nobody wants, why is it in the game? I look at it this way: my character would be much better at map-making than I am. For one thing, they're actually there, seeing it with their own eyes, while I'm just having the room described to me. Also, my character does this kind of thing for a living. In real life, I'd get lost in downtown Nashville (a city where I've spent most of my life) with a map and a GPS. So having a simpler, more accurate way of generating our map would actually be more in-character.

Okay, once again I may have wandered away from my point, if I ever had one to begin with. (Point? What's that? Must be something they do on other blogs.) Oh, yeah, games should be fun.

One problem I have with serious, hardcore roleplayers is this concept of, "It's not supposed to be fun, it's a game!" Okay, nobody actually uses those exact words, but I have run into a lot of gamers who seem to follow the philosophy. For example, I used to play on a NeverWinter Nights server called "The Silver Marches". It was a fun module, with a lot of interesting areas to explore, and it had a large player base consisting of many exceptional roleplayers. The problem was that the owner was a bit anal about realism and Forgotten Realms lore, resulting in a lot of strict roleplay/gameplay rules. I won't go into detail, but these rules made the server a lot more realistic and a lot less fun. If they'd spent a bit of time studying the concept of Acceptable Breaks from Reality, they might have kept more players.

I don't spend $100 on a game and all its expansion packs if I'm not going to have fun. Nor do I give up my Saturdays to drive across town to play D&D if I'm not going having a good time. The #1 rule for all game designers (whether video game or PnP RPG) should be the Rule of Fun. For every element of gameplay, from character creation to boss fights, the designers should test it out and ask themselves, "Am I having fun?" Okay, so some people have different ideas of what's fun, but they should at least try to weed out the stuff that they know everybody hates. For example, it's been universally understood for years that everybody hates escort missions in video games, so I'm absolutely floored when I still see them in new games. I can't tell you how many time I'll get past a certain point in a video game, save my game, and think, "I'm so glad I'll never have to do that level again." Games are for fun; you should never have thoughts like that about any level.

While writing this blog, checked the "Rule of Fun" link above, I was very pleased to find that D&D 4e was listed as an example. To quote, for those who don't follow links (or those who are afraid of being sucked into the TVTropes vortex):

The goal in overhauling the rules for the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons was to strip out the tedious elements and focus on the fun simplifying character builds and fight mechanic while retaining options and even expanding tactical opportunities. The debate comes from stripping out mechanics that supported non combat/adventure situations and limiting certain character build decisions. Roleplayers argue that this either removes support for anything aside from combat or frees them from the constraints of things like mechanics based parley.

Basically, if you're a gamist, 4th edition is probably a move in the right direction, if you're a simulationist, you're less likely to be happy.

So apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Confession time: This actually started out as two separate blogs. One was going to be about playing the computer game, the other was going to be about mapping the Temple. I think the "fun" thing tied them together pretty well, but it occurs to me that I don't really know how to end the thing. So I was thinking, maybe - What the hell is that behind you! *hides*

ToEE: Raging Bull

2011-06-05T11:45:00.000-05:00

Game Date: 6/4/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Artimus (Rick): Revenant Hexblade
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Ember (Leigha): Tiefling Wizard
Joanna Winters (Jesse): Human Archer Ranger
Jerry (Nick): Human Cleric
Kossack (Cliff): Minotaur Fighter

1 square = 10 feet (click to see larger)

The Session:
When we left off, we had just found a major haul of treasure while digging through the Earth Temple pyramid. Among other fine items, we found the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd, which we gave to Kossack. This is a very nice piece of armor with a lot of great abilities. However, the armor has a will of its own, and it wants to belong to a hero. In order to keep the armor happy, Kossack must be a valiant warrior. So now we're seeing him take a lot of risks in order to be a hero.

Our party (mostly Jesse) was determined to finish this floor of the Temple tonight. We started by checking out a room to the North (A), where Joanna triggered a tilting floor trap. It flung her into a pit full of rats swarms. Artimus and Kossack pulled her back out with a rope, and Ember stepped up to the front. Swarms are her specialty. She killed the entire room on her turn, with a Burning Hands, Action Point, and Fire Sphere.

We then explored another NW hallway (B), which ended in a spiral staircase going down. We now know of three sets of stairs leading down to level 2, so we'll have a tough decision to make in the future.

Next we explored an East hallway (C). We found some pretty messy rooms at point D (one of which had a rather ominous eye on the ceiling), then went on to E, where we found a magically sealed door. Artimus and Ember both rolled poorly on their Arcana rolls, so we couldn't undo the magical trap. We knew it was risky, but Kossack volunteered to take the damage and bash the door down. The door let out an arcane blast that hit most of us, critting on two of its rolls. Artimus and Ember were both paralyzed. Ember made a saving throw, but Artie ended up turning into a statue made of ice.

Joanna used thievery to open the door, and we found a crypt full of sarcophagi (F). Grave robbers that we are, we found some amulets to sell later, and a magic cloak. Joanna played with the door until she was sure nobody was going to lock us in, and we took an extended rest. During the rest, Artimus turned back to normal. Kossack, Joanna, and Ember contracted mummy rot, but luckily Jerry had a lotion for that.

Next we went down a diagonal and found a round starlit room (G), like a planetarium. In the next room (H), had an evil altar. Jerry sensed some sort of power, so he started asking the room questions. "Who is M?" Answer: "Shun secret artifacts." We wondered what artifacts it might be referring to, and all eyes turned to Kossack and his new armor. (Though in retrospect, it also might have been referring to a cursed stone we found later.) Jerry asked again, "Who is M?" and got the answer, "Oppose the Mystic Being." Finally Jerry asked, "Are you evil?" and heard, "Possibly."

Through a secret door to the South, we found an Octagonal room full of stirges (I). There were 2 large stirges, and about 14 small ones. We debated for a while about whether to fight them or just go around. But Jerry, or wonderful cleric, wanted the XP. Joanna started off by using one of her powers that hits multiple targets. One of her rolls fumbled. Her fumble card had her hitting Kossack instead, and critting. Matt: "Did you add your extra die for magic weapon?" Cliff: "Shut up!" The attack did a ton of damage, probably the highest single-hit damage Joanna's done in her career so far, and it dropped Kossack. Which is not good for keeping his armor happy. (It's even funnier because we use those crit cards, so we don't max our damage when we crit. But Jesse still rolled the max damage on all his weapon dice.)

After a few turns four ghouls came running up the opposite hallway to join the battle. Ember took out several stirges with her burning hands, but caught Joanna in the blast, dropping her (karma, thou art a harsh mistress). There were a lot of crits and fumbles in this battle.

After the battle, we connected a few points on the map, found an empty library (J), and went back to the Earth Temple to check out the doors we hadn't opened. The big door was sealed by a powerful magic, and gave us a sense of foreboding. We decided to come back to that sometime in the future. We opened one of the small doors (K) and found a small room full of stones. Artimus picked up a magic rock, and suddenly decided he had to keep it. We asked to see it, and he said "No! Mine!" and stuck it in his pocket. Joanna picked his pocket, and now she won't surrender the stone either. This cursed lodestone gives Joanna a penalty to her movement speed.

On the back of the door to that room, there was a note written to "Romag", reminding him to pay fealty to the Water Temple. Or maybe just reminding him to pay his water bill, I don't remember. We then tried the other small door (L), and found some cloaks.

We walked around a bit more to fill out the map, and finally went to point M to try the one door we hadn't yet tried. We opened the door, and saw four guards. We made short work of them, but the rooms behind it had sixteen more bandits, some hiding behind a shield barrier (N). As the battle wore on, more doors opened, and more enemies joined: a Lieutenant (berserker), a female Commander, Romag, and Hartch.

Joanna managed to shoot some of the enemies through the arrow slots on the shield, Ember did a lot of damage with her blasts, and Kossack fought as bravely as he could to impress his clothing. When there were just a few left, Hartch, Romag, and two bandits started to flee towards a curtain at the back of the room (O).

Meanwhile, Artimus was down to 1 hit point, flanking the Commander with Calla. He sustained a Daily power he'd used earlier, damaging the Commander. Artimus knew this was a risk, because this Commander had a tendency to attack whoever was making her the most angry despite Calla's defender aura. On the Commander's turn, she critted Artie, which would have killed him due to massive damage. But not so fast! Calla's OA is an interrupt, and luckily it was just enough to finish off the Commander before her crit actually connected with Artimus.

We all started to follow the fleeing enemies. Kossack managed to catch up with Hartch and kill him. The bandits made it through the curtain and we haven't seen them since. They probably fled down to level 2, to warn them of our party. This could complicate things. Meanwhile, Romag made for the Earth Temple, where he climbed to the top of the pyramid, weeping. He prepared to kill himself, and we ended the session.

Level one is officially mapped out. Now we have to decide which of the three sets of stairs to take down to level 2. We also might consider heading back to Hommlet to do a bit of buying/selling, so we're as fresh as possible for level 2. We plan to work out the rest of the details by e-mail.

ToEE: Pyramid of Earth

2011-05-29T11:44:00.002-05:00

Game Date: 5/28/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Artimus (Rick): Revenant Hexblade
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Ember (Leigha): Tiefling Wizard
Joanna Winters (Jesse): Human Archer Ranger
Jerry (Nick): Human Cleric
Kossack (Cliff): Minotaur Fighter
Malagar (Bryan): Drow Thief

1 square = 10 feet (click to see larger)

The Session:
Last session, we left off taking a short rest in a rather unhygienic kitchen area. We proceeded to room A, where we found a torture room. Malagar sneaked ahead, peeking around the corner to see a torturer and a bugbear administering pain to someone chained to a rack. Also in the room were two cells. One held a few human prisoners, the other contained a couple of orcs. Malagar shot the torturer in the back, and the rest of us joined the battle.

The torturer went down pretty quickly, but the bugbear hid behind the torture rack, and actually turned out to be a pretty good sneak for such a large creature. Unable to see the bugbear on his turn, Malagar unlocked the orc cell while the rest of us finished off the enemy. Unfortunately for the orc prisoners, Joanna didn't trust them so she executed them. But we did free the human prisoners and the torture victim. The guy on the rack turned out to be Rick's new character, a Revenant Hexblade named Artimus (who we like to call "Artie"). We found his gear nearby, and he joined the party. The human prisoners agreed to follow while we explored a bit more, and we promised to escort them back to town on our next trip.

Next we looked at corridor B, but didn't follow it all the way to the end. We were more interested in hallway C, which was full of prison cells. The three cells on the East wall contained huddling people, but they turned out to be fiendish undead. We killed the ones in the Southernmost cell (like shooting fish in a barrel), but left the rest alone. In one of the Western cells, we saw a sack with something moving in it. Due to our justifiable paranoia, we had Ember use Mage Hand to open the sack from a distance. It held a Gnome named Wonnilon. He claimed to be a fighter, so we put him in charge of protecting the humans we'd rescued.

We found Wonnilon's gear behind a curtain in corridor D, and then we found a secret door at point E. In room F we fought three Bugbears. Artimus won initiative, and with Rick's first attack roll for his new character, he rolled a crit on an Encounter power. Let's hope that's a good omen.

During the battle, Jerry fumbled twice in the same round. Then a bugbear grabbed him and used him as a human shield. Calla rather stupidly attacked the bugbear and ended up dropping Jerry to 0 with her hit. A few turns later, Ember used a power that would have hit two bugbears, and fumbled both. Despite all the bad die rolls, we won the battle and revived Jerry.

We found a big hallway at point G, but we were getting antsy so we decided to head back to town. We took hallway H to see if it connected to some of the hallways we already knew, which it did. Once we were out of the temple we found that our cart and horses were no longer where we left them. We let Joanna, our expert tracker, lead us to the culprits. We found Mother Screng, the herbalist hag from Nulb, tending to our horses and cart. She claimed to have defeated some bandits who had tried to steal it. We believed her, and Jerry even apologized for being a jerk to her earlier. Screng gave Jerry a coin to give to the church of Hommlet.

We headed back to Hommlet, where we heard some details about gnoll attacks to the South. Joanna got more info from the village druid, while Jerry took the coin to the church and learned more information about the Temple of Elemental Evil. We headed back to the temple, and went straight to the big hallway at point G. There we fought five gnolls (2 War Fangs, 3 Deathpledged). Afterwards we went to the North end of the hallway, and found a big curtain leading to room I. In the center of this huge room was pyramid made of dirt, which appeared to be some sort of altar. Four Earth Elementals rose from the ground, but did not immediately attack us. Kossack poured some flammable oil on the head of one.

When they finally started to move, we attacked the nearest two. They had a high AC and did some powerful attacks, and we knew we couldn't defeat all four at once. But during the battle, we noticed something strange. The two we weren't fighting didn't join the battle, they just kept walking in a pattern. So, once we killed the two we'd already engaged, we were able to fight the final two one at a time. It still wasn't easy, but we managed it. After the battle we opened a chest at the base of the pyramid. It was full of weapons and other items, all made of bronze. Then we started digging in the pyramid, and found a lot of loot. The haul included a major artifact, the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd.

We ended the session in that room.

ToEE: Pit Fighters

2011-05-22T14:13:00.003-05:00

Game Date: 5/21/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Calla Noble (Matt): Human Knight
Ember (Leigha): Tiefling Wizard
Joanna Winters (Jesse): Human Archer Ranger
Jerry (Nick): Human Cleric
Kossack (Cliff): Minotaur Fighter

The Session:
There's not too much to report; most of this session was simply clearing out more rooms in the temple. First we heard noises from room A, so we burst open the door and surprised six Ghouls. The final one opened a door to room B, where two Ghasts joined the party. Calla came very close to death in this fight. After the battle we found a treasure chest, which we dragged back to room C (where we had found some prisoners in an earlier session). We took an extended rest in the cell, and decided to explore the Westernmost hallway. We saw some bandits coming around the corner at point D, and made short work of them.

Then we went down corridor E, and fought two more Ghasts in room F. Then we decided to go up hallway G. Right before the door to room H, we discovered (the hard way) a pit trap. The pit began filling up with water, as a cover closed over it, sealing a couple of party members inside. We hacked open a hole in the cover, but that didn't mean our pit problems were over. Then the door to room H opened, and some bandits started shooting at us.

Ember killed most of the minions with a fire spell, and Calla tried jumping over the pit to finish off the rest. Unfortunately she fell into the pit, but Kossack helped her out a round later. Then ten more bandits joined the battle from behind us. Jerry and Ember went down, while Kossack and Joanna were trying to get out of the trap, and Calla was stuck on the wrong side of the pit with no useful ranged attacks. For a few rounds things looked pretty grim. But Kossack finally got out of the pit, threw a healing potion down Jerry's throat, so Jerry could turn around and heal Ember. The battle didn't last much longer after that.

In room H we found the controls to the pit, as well as to another pit to the South of the room. We continued to explore, going through corridor I, discovering a secret door (S) that led back to corridor G, and finding a very securely locked door at point J. We'll have to remember to check that out when we have a thief in the party again. Finally we checked out room K, where we fought two more Ghouls and a Viper. After that, we called it a night.

Rewards (As compiled by Nick):

+610xp each

(5/21) Monetary Totals:

PP: 16

GP: 196

SP: 860

(5/21) Monetary share, split between those present this session:

PP: 4

GP: 49

SP: 215

(5/7; Calla, Jerry, Joanna, Ember, Phredd, Inphy, Krusk, Malagar, and Kossack) Party Sack:

SP: 4

CP: 7

Old Cloak

Boots of Striding (On the corpse of Krusk, next recipient TBD)

Ivory Statue 85 gp

(5/21; Calla, Jerry, Joanna, Ember, and Kossack) Party Sack:

Bronze Medallion 20 gp

Brooch (Coat of Arms) 750 gp

Silver Scroll Case 10 gp

Bloodstone 50 gp

Gold chain w/ 3 rubies 10,000 gp

Dirty Ring ??? gp

Magical Large Shield (Fire) ??? gp Went to Calla

Undead Ward (Ritual Scroll)130 gp Went to Ember