Gamma World Report

I ran a short session of Gamma World for the first time last night with Josh and Liz. Josh rolled a speedster/seismic that he called Rockslide, while Liz played a felinoid/hypercog that she simply named Jingle. Following some advice from the book, I placed the adventure in my local area seen through the shattered lens of apocalypse-vision. The skeleton adventure I wrote up had them going to a shanty town built atop the nearby Beaverton Transit Center before hitting up the ruins of Fred Meyer’s looking for power cells to help repair a MAX train so that they could quickly (and relatively safely) get to downtown Portland.

Since Gamma World is purportedly much deadlier than Dungeons & Dragons, I decided to pit the pair against a quartet of porkers perched on an old bridge, which a rampart of cars for added defense. Basically, twice as many monsters as I really should have, with the terrain advantage. Oh, and I gave one of the porkers a shotgun.

Things didn’t go well.

For me.

I learned something from this first encounter, the least of which is that Gamma World characters are really fucking bad ass. As a “future cat”, Liz’s character has an initiative bonus of +13, so she basically always goes first. She’s also insanely fast, and on the first round easily made it up to the bridge and hid behind a car, making her already high Armor Class even higher. Josh, though a bit more cumbersome, also closed most of the distance and also hid. On their turn, the porkers waddled over to the mess of cards and readied actions to hit them with chains, since it was the best I could do.

Well, Jingles leapt over the cars, dodging a chain, and tore the shit out of one porker, bloodying it with one attack. Rockslide just charged the whole mob, shrugging off the blows, and with his stomp attack spattered the wounded one and knocked the others down (except for Mr. Shotgun). I took a gamble with the shotgun, hitting Jingle and another porker with the blast, and had the last porker pathetically–and vainly–flail on Rockslide. Things didn’t last much longer, even with minor action belching and bellybucking, it was pigs to the slaughter. It lasted all of three rounds, and that’s only because they took a bit running up there.

The safely made it to Beaver Town and picked up a quest from Mayor Theo (a beaver mutant) to clean out some more porkers camping out by an Ancient hydroponics facility attached to a ruined store (ie, Fred Meyers), as the townsfolk often made forays there to scavenge food. They had another shindig in the parking lot, but even robot minions didn’t amount to much as Jingle tore both them and the porker controlling them apart with her claws, while Rockslide stabbed the rest the rest with a combination of quills and a makeshift sword. Again, this was a quick fight, 2-3 rounds tops, and they rarely if ever used mutations (mostly because I think they kept forgetting about them).

Things got challenging when they found the hydroponics lab, underneath a massive tree. The place was flooded, with plant life growing rampantly throughout the complex. Inside they fought ambulatory fungi, spine-flinging cacti, and kai lins. Kai lins were a hassle up until Josh used a mutant power that rendered him invulnerable to physical damage, meaning that all I could do was hope he tried to run away from them and trigger their electricity attack. The most dangerous thing they encountered were the horl choos, since they had a nasty acidic spike they could fling that dealt ongoing 10 acid damage. That encounter was frantic because Rockslide actually crumbled under the onslaught of damage, but stabilized before dying.

By this point they’d gathered a healthy inventory of Omega tech, including fusion rifles, photonic spears, and jet packs, allowing them to weed out the rest of the flora without breaking a sweat. Horl choo? BLAM! 4d8 plus etcetera damage, thank you very much. Uh oh, Jingle is almost dead? Overcharge whatever-the-fuck power she had at the time, vanish for a round, and return fully healed. Anyway, the adventure ended once they battled their way to the basement and exterminated a few obbs (in like, two rounds), picked up some power cells from the nuclear-powered machinery–with some mutated fruit that was probably edible–and went back to Beaver Town.

A lot of the time I was able to bring them close to death, especially since most of the mosnters ganged up on Rockslide. His damage resistance helped a lot, while Jingle’s double-claw made short work of everyone. Liz felt like the striker, while Josh was clearly pulling the defender. Alpha mutations helped in some cases, but fucked them over in others. When Josh tried to overcharge his quills, he botched it and took ongoing damage himself. One of Liz’s mutations would have allowed her to blind a target for a longer duraiton, but light herself on fire if she messed up the overcharge, so she opted for the safe route.

We didn’t have as much fun as we could have, considering that I didn’t have a lot of time to sufficiently plan an adventure, there were only two players, and it was a new genre for all of us. The game’s got a lot of promise, and I think that as we play more, I’ll get a better handle on planning adventures suited for post-apocalyptic wasteland-romps. For now, it’s back to the drawing board so I can prepare for a lengthy train tunnel throwdown. I’m thinking giant mutant cockroaches, or perhaps graboids?

The Shadows Over Greyshore, Part 3

I’m not sure if a bag of holding can support living creatures inside it, and frankly the rules appear to be silent as to the size limit–if any–of objects. Like, it can hold 20 cubic feet, but can you but a wagon inside, or does it have to be something that can fit into the opening? I recall in older editions people putting all sorts of shit into these things, from fellow characters to an umber hulk zombie, so I’m not sure. I let everyone pile in, momentarily forgetting about the weight cap (shit) so that Hawkeye could summon up a magical fish to carry them deep underwater into the hidden grotto of the Dagon cultists.

They surfaced a half minute after the air in the bag had run out, which caused Moxie to lose a healing surge, but nothing too terrible. The chamber was a vast cavern filled with water, veiled in utter darkness. Using their everburning torch they got their bearings before a school of archerfish attacked them. It was…interesting using the swim rules, if cumbersome since no one had a DMG on hand. On a few occasions we forgot about enforcing the swim speed, especially when it meant something awesome could happen, and after the party dispatched them Hawkeye made a Nature roll in order to store them for later. After smashing up several clusters of fish eggs they scaled a sheer wall out of the water and moved on.

They didn’t have any way of mapping and I wasn’t about to map for them, so most of the session was them picking from differing directions when they came across intersections and seeing where that lead them. All too often this was an ambush–the darkness made it easy for everything to see that they were coming–or a trap, which actually lead them to a treasure parcel that contained a +2 quenchgiver longbow (handy for all the underwater combat, yar). Most of the encounters consisted of crauds, though in one instance there was a hidden water elemental that was killed almost instantly by a lucky crit from Hawkeye. My favorite encounter was the one where they got pinned down in a narrow tunnel. That required a lot of tactical thinking since crauds can move for free when they miss with attacks.

I’m thinking they’ll wrap up this adventure next session. There’s a few sinister surprises in store for them, heh.

Keep on the Shadowfell w/ Essentials, Part 4

Picking up where we left off, the group took on the last cultist protected by a trio of ghostly warriors that drained healing surges and targeted Reflex (to the chagrin of Delinth’s 20 AC). Since they were insubstantial and Donner didn’t have a reliable way to inflict radiant damage, I reduced their hit points in order to help keep things moving. With the baddies out of the way, they investigated a large hole in the floor where all the blood was draining, and saw a larger chamber below where someone was chanting in a dark language, and an inky black portal rippled with each fell utterance.

They tried to descend on the chains dangling from the ceiling, but Riven slipped and fell into the pool of blood. This didn’t faze Kalarel, who simply turned around and watched as the rest climbed down. Once they’d reached the pool, he simply ordered his skeleton soldiers to kill them before returning to his regularly scheduled ritual. Well, skeletons and a shitload of zombie minions in the blood pool. Donner and Delinth managed to swing over to the ledge, but the skeletons swarmed Riven and tried to pull the others back in. Delinth’s cleaving stance allowed him to damage the skeletons as well as take down a minion each turn, and once the undead were bloodied Kalarel decided that this would require more hands on attention and unleashed a zone of grasping hands: hundreds of arms burst out of the ground, tearing and grabbing enemies, dealing damage and immobilizing until they save. From his vantage point, he was able to then safely follow up with an action point and pepper them with some generic dark energy bolts that, while not dealing a lot of damage, did weaken Delinth for a turn.

Things started to look bad, as the party hadn’t been able to fully recuperate from the last series of encounters, and both Riven and Sand were running low on healing surges and Riven was having a bitch of a time landing any actual hits. A lucky crit from Delinth knocked all the monsters down (thanks to his magical hammer), and cleared a path for Sand and Riven to get out of the zone and rush Kalarel. Riven used fountain of flame to burn the shit out of him, while Sand used one of his tricks to bundle of backstab and Sneak Attack for one nasty cut. Kalarel wasn’t down, but he was feeling it and retaliated with a wave of exhaustion, which polished off the last of their surges and slowed them. He hobbled away, taking another hit from Sand for good measure, but this meant that neither Riven nor Sand could use second wind and Donner had run out of healing words early on.

They did have action points however, and on the following rounds doubled up their attacks. Delinth had crushed the last of the undead, and had both hit points and healing surges to spare. Closing the gap with a run-and-charge, he walloped Kalarel with the power strike he’d been saving, Sand wedged another short sword between his ribs, and Riven pulled a Jon Woo with magic missile (though the “pew pew” sound effect somewhat diminished the scene). Kalarel fell, his soul got pulled through the dark portal, which collapsed in on itself. Sand found a poisoned dagger and a bunch of shinies before heading back to Winterhaven.

Tonight, it’s off to Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Changes

For sake of time, the previous session I condensed the whole Shadowfell Keep portion to the ruined foundation, and the poster map that came with the module that had the “evil temple” parts. I’d wanted to draw out a catacombs floor, something more logical than in the actual adventure, and I’d recommend doing something like that. Just populate it with undead, traps, and maybe some cultists. Just don’t do long hallways that twist about randomly before they terminate into torture chambers and bed rooms. Ugh.

Also, I halved Kalarel’s level, making him a level 4 elite controller. I changed up his spells a bit, and gave him two different things that he could do with his minor action; hose someone taking ongoing necrotic damage, or having an undead critter make a free basic melee attack. I felt this worked better than giving him a “double swat” attack, but it would only worked when something was close (and still there). The only other things in the encounter were a few skeleton warriors guarding Kalarel, and the blood pool had about 8 zombie rotters. Kalarel is a nasty contender here, so throwing in lots of crazy shit could easily result in a total party kill. Also, I only had four peeps.

The Shadows Over Greyshore, Part 2

After a week hiatus and a few minutes up recap, the party continued their quest to escape the second civilized location that they’d been to–in a row–where the locals were trying to kill them. Leaving the inn they heard a trilling drone that was difficult to describe as I’d probably heard it in the movie Cthulhu and otherwise referred to it as, “Dagon’s call”. They watched with a combination of confusion and temptation as the villagers walked towards the river, casting off clothes as they went, and briefly pondered the notion of robbing their homes since for better or worse they figured they weren’t coming back.

After Moxie pillaged a house for about 2 gp worth of shit she could sell, Hawkeye declared that it was a fucking waste of time.

Heading towards the only major structure, ironically a shattered tower on top of a hill, Beth’s character noticed that there was only one house with any light at all. Hawkeye posited that there might be a survivor, but that it was also probably a trap, and went there anyway. Remember kiddos, Good is dumb. The front porch was rigged with a simple spear trap, which Moxie disarmed easily. Inside the house was immaculately organized, and many furnishings were covered with dust that indicated prolonged disuse. Near the back they found a large metal door that was enchanted with a desiccating ward that, after disarming, revealed a shrine with numerous iconography, scriptures, steles, and so on depicting and/or related to Dagon.

Since a lot of it was gold, they decided to keep it after Randy’s character figured out that they weren’t tainted with the warping energy they’d found on the other golden relics back at Shardpit. There was a hidden passage behind a large statue, and with an hour or so of not getting ambushed by civilians their paranoia was reaching it’s peak. Descending warped, wooden stairs, they found a small chamber with a dark pool and tables covered in notes written in jagged script. Beth’s character recognized some of the diagrams as constellations, star charts, and planar orbits, and after decided to pocket it spawned a debate about how to best protect them from the elements. Something about mutant unicorn fish bladders which were coincidentally bags of holding. I dunno, I’m fuzzy on the details at this point. Hawkeye wrapped things up by freezing the pool with concentration Nature checks to channel his elemental spirits evocation, completing the task just in time to prevent something from surfacing.

That would have been all well and good, but they didn’t stop there. It’s wasn’t enough that they desecrated a shrine dedicated to a demon lord, or that they lifted everything made of gold (and in Moxie’s case, some nifty outfits), or that they reset the traps and changed the triggering mechanisms. Oh no, no no no. Beth’s character and Moxie, using a combination of insanely high Thievery and  Arcana checks, and Eberron dragonshards, added a Rick Roll into the mix. I’m all for slaughtering the indigenous dungeon life, even just to satisfy personal greed, but you have to draw a line somewhere. I’m considering shifting their alignments to Evil, or at the least reintroducing Chaotic Neutral.

Leaving the house they continued their trek towards the tower. Halfway up the steps Hawkeye spotted numerous crab-like creatures lurking about the buildings. They scrambled up the hill, momentairly crested with a barbican gate that due to a pair of extremely high rolls was subsequently relocated to the base of the hill where it can now be found cresting a foundation of battered crab meat. I’m not often a fan of allowing players to forestall or overcome a challenge with so few rolls, but these were minions anyway and it was a pretty badass idea.

Unfortunately, dropping a stone gate on a horde of monsters pretty much ruins your chance at surprise, and even through the rain, wind, and thunder the cultists holing up in the church were alerted. The party gathered up at the doors, booted them in, and started promptly kicking ass. One of the cultists, a wavecaller, summoned up a zone of water that trapped some of the characters, forcing them to use the swim rules which none of us had access to. Boo. Mostly I wanted to do this so that they could get to use their Aquatic trait, and it was a lot of fun doing 3D fighting with harpoons and scalding jets of steam. Things got a bit more hectic when a craud showed up, the highlight being when it smacked Randy’s character unconscious with a single hit, knocking him back into the water, but Beth’s character simply yanked him out with a majestic word. I try, I really do.

They explored the church and tower, finding a shit-encrusted grate that lead underwater that Hawkeye also froze up. He’s so damned paranoid. On the second floor they got ambushed by a very, very big crayfish that seemed dangerous but after being forced over a large hole and getting locked down with a few dailies, it was mostly an exercise in dice rolling as they filed off hit points. The critical hits helped, especially the one Randy hit it with since it was an aberrant and he’s got a byeshk scimitar. I really need to incorporate the dragon abilities from Essentials that automatically end daze and stun effects. Maybe I’d get to do something? Once they pushed it through the hole and splatted it on the ground below, they found a hefty treasure haul with a bow that Beth has been wanting for awhile, as well as a fishy figurine that will let them get into the grotto more easily during the next session.

Keep on the Shadowfell w/ Essentials, Part 3

Since Devin was jonesing for some more D&D–at midnight no less–so we decided to through a few encounters  in an effort to wrap up Keep on the Shadowfell. Having slain a dragon last session and returned to Winterhaven with word and proof of their deed, they ventured north towards the ruined keep in order to discover the source of the rampant arcane energies that Valthrun had sensed.

I’d drawn up a hasty foundation map with crumbling walls, shallow graves, and grim wards that would writhe and scream when closely approached. As the players investigated the ruins, ancient and armor clad skeletons rose from the ground and attacked under the direction of cultists. A few were dragonborn skeletons that could breath a life-sapping energy, stealing hit points and healing surges alike. After their destruction and a purifying prayer from Donner, they found a ragged suit of chain armor that protected the wearer from necromantic powers (subsequently donned by, well, Donner).

Within a ruined shrine dedicated to Erathis they, after much deliberation, descended into a dark hole with deposited them in a hellish catacomb wreathed in crimson light and glass pillars filled with screaming souls of the damned. Blood flowed from numerous alters, collecting in a deep bit that was guarded by more undead and cultists engaged in an unholy rite in the name of Orcus. Sand took the initiative (literally) by trying to backstab a skeleton, which didn’t work out as well as it could have. Skeletons clambered out of alcoves and frenzied cultists hedged the party in, capturing them in a pincer attack. Other, physically inept cultists hung back and withered away the party’s strength with magic.

This was a pretty grueling battle. Though I’d clustered the minions up nice and tight, Riven had a difficult time incinerating them. Donner’s armor didnt help much because Sand was at the forefront, and it made the most sense to hit him instead of going for targets that he was granting cover to. Many rounds, action points, and healing surges later, they prevailed. Fortunately neither Donner nor Riven used their daily spells, because the fight wasn’t over: the high priest was still waiting with a several tattered spirits at his beck and call. I called it for the night, since by then it was almost two in the morning.

I haven’t gamed that late since I was in high school.

Keep on the Shadowfell w/ Essentials, Part 2

Josh was able to make it this time around, rolling up a human warpriest of Kord, named Donner. While wandering around the forest aimlessly the party happened upon him and a considerable kobold warband. Aside from Delinth getting taken down by a critical ambush (I left some slyblades lurking in bushes), everyone was fine if a few healing surges worse for wear. After the mandatory talkery that always results in the player character joining the fray, they went through a few skill checks to see what happened en route to the kobold lair, and stumbled upon it without any additional random bullshit.

I’m sure I mentioned last time that I lost the map of the kobold lair, so we’d called it early, and since I couldn’t find it I just drew up a new map that I felt worked a lot better. The trees were a lot thicker, and some slingers and slyblades were hiding inside at certain points (the skill challenge was to determine if the kobolds noticed them or not), the river shore had some rocks that could be used for cover, the river was deeper and in a few spots, required Athletics checks to swim across, and the magic circle was a bit further away and added +2 cold damage to all of your attacks (since the wyrmpriest was using it to craft a cold-based magic item).

The party tried to have Sand Stealth his way up the line, hoping to spread themselves out, but one botched roll later had him knocking over a dead tree, alerting all the kobolds to his general area, and startling a bear that was busy foraging for food. Riven bolted from the trees, making herself the only visible (and thus viable) target, and after the subsequent initiative roll saw her reduced to five hit points from a hail of javelins and slinger-stones. Due to the distance the rest of the party had a difficult time getting to her aid before she was taken down by a dragonshield, which was swiftly remedied on the following round once Donner got into the thick of things, muttering healing prayers and clobbering kobolds with his mace.

Sand tried to pick off the slingers using the trees for cover, Delinth managed to keep most of the kobolds from fleeing, though Riven’s searing retaliation to the wyrmpriest’s dragon breath saw it running for the waterfall, though the retreat was cut a bit short when Donner leapt upon it, mace crackling with lightning. In the end only one slinger managed to flee, and only because it was so far away and under cover of the trees. Picking through the corpses, they found a master’s wand of scorching burst and skull that would let anyone wearing it like a hat use a cold-based dragon breath attack once per day. Basically, its the dragonborn’s racial, just keyed to Charisma instead of Constitution.

Donner had noticed that there was a cave behind the waterfall, and assuming that’s where the wyrmpriest was trying to flee, decided to explore it themselves. Having scrapped the original map, I went with something a bit more realistic in its layout. You know, varying height levels, winding tunnels, stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. There were three main encounters, with a few wandering kobolds that could detect them or assist in fights if things went way too smoothly. They couldn’t take an extended rest, and after each fight I rolled to see if their short rest was interrupted as well. Sand took point to scout the place out, finding kobolds to the north, and tried to distract them with a thrown rock. It worked enough for him to stick a dagger in a dragonshield, almost killing it instantly. Donner polished it off, but was lined up perfectly for all the minions and slingers to almost kill him in one round. Unfortunately (again), they were lined up for Riven’s scorching burst to almost kill them instantly. Fuck.

Wrapping things up, they noticed that one of two passages had light, while the other was cloaked in darkness. For some reason, they went with the darkness and strangely thought it was a bad idea only after discovering numerous humanoids entombed in ice along the walls. They still kept going, stopping only after running into a fledgling white dragon. Donner tried the route of Diplomacy, and considering that the dragon only demanded all their loot in exchange for letting them leave, I think it went well…that is, until someone decided to flaunt the skull they’d stolen. See, the dragon knew that it’s wyrmpriest was making it, and after getting a decidedly unsatisfactory answer as to the whereabouts of his servant, decided to up the ante and amend the terms of their release to include the sacrifice of a party member. They prayed that he did not alter it further.

Donner voted for himself, but Delinth being a stubborn bastard was having none of this and charged the dragon. This is where things went downhill. Fledgling white dragons have an Initiative modifier of zero, and after a spectacularly shitty roll of 2 it was determined that I went last. Donner went up and used whatever the fuck it is that grants allies a +2 to defenses for the encounter, Delinth charged with poised stance, dealing 20 or so damage with power strike, Riven used fountain of flame (which to her chagrin did not target allies), and Sand got it into well past bloodied with a high roll from a shortbow attack that was coupled with Sneak Attack and backstab. This triggered bloodied breath, which hit only two people for 11 damage.

My turn.

Failed to recharge breath weapon. Miss twice. Action point. Miss twice. Action point. Miss (with bite, so only one roll, here). Try to move away from the fountain of flame zone into the water, which would give everyone cold vulnerability and slow them, take more damage in the process.

Their turn.

Donner hucks a javelin, game over in less than two rounds. FML.

They look the dragon’s treasury for about a hundred gold, a gem or two, and a defensive hammer. I had them each roll on the level 1 table out of Rules Compendium, since I was changing everything on the fly anyway, so good for them. While trying to rest the last of the kobolds showed up, lead by Irontooth (a kobold that had eaten the heart of an iron dragon). They didn’t get a chance to fully rest, and the fight was pretty brutal in comparison to the dragon. Riven almost got taken down multiple times, Donner ran out of heals by the second round, and Delinth really couldn’t do any defender shit because most of the kobolds were on the other side of the freezing ass river throwing javelins and special stones. Josh played really smart, hucking javelins when melee was clearly a dumb avenue to pursue. He even had Delinth throwing them around, and I think with the lack of at-will exploits it was less of an issue since it in most cases meant a slight reduction in damage.

After slaying the last of the kobolds, they headed back to Winterhaven with more than enough proof of their deed (and hit level 2 in the process). The only other thing on their list is scoping out that ruined keep up north.

Keep on the Shadowfell w/ Essentials

I’m running Keep on the Shadowfell for the third time, for a third group. Fortunately, this time around I can take all the changes implemented from the second time (ie, the whole adventure) and better integrate them. It also helps that 75% of the party isn’t fucking drow, possibly due to the fact that I restricted the players to using Essentials (with a few exceptions). I did this partially because I wanted to see how it would work out in extended play, side by side with other content, but mostly because two of the three players are completely new to the game and I didn’t want to overwhelm them with hundreds of choices. If you’ve played Keep on the Shadowfell, there’re a lot of changes, so don’t be surprised.

So we got Delinth (dwarf knight), Sand (elf thief), and Riven (tiefling pyromancer, and this is where the exceptions come into play). Despite being new, all of the players rapidly came up with some character traits that I could readily use to drive the campaign in their direction. For example, Sand fled to Winterhaven to get away from the Fallcrest authorities, while Riven literally has a devil on her shoulders–which may or may not be a hallucination–that tempts her to burn things. Like both times, I started the characters out with the kobold ambush, using the stats from the Dungeon Master’s Book. Since there were only three players and no leader, I reduced the encounter two four minions, an artillery, and a lurker.

The encounter went smooth, all things considered. Since no one made their Perception checks, the ambush opened up with the slinger on the rock lobbing a stone at Delinth, which failed to hit his considerable AC of 20. I placed the other kobolds deep in the trees because Sand’s player kept going on about how he wanted to dive into the trees so that he could Stealth, and I wanted to give him something to knife. Unfortunately, he fucked up his Stealth and Perception, and stumbled upon two tunnelers lurking in there who promptly gave him two shovels in the face. Dillon, Delinth’s player, had a somewhat difficult time fiddling with defender’s aura and battle guardian, which is understandable since I’d also like to point out that they handwrote their sheets and power cards, and stood his ground after activating his aura, a stance, and readying an action to clobber the first kobold that got within a hammer’s swing. Riven? Well, even an attack bonus of +6 doesn’t help with nat one’s.

The slinger chucked another stone at Delinth, who easily side-stepped it (which sucks cause it would’ve immobilized him). The tunnelers continued to batter Sand into the ground, while another pair and slyblade rushed out of the southern tree line to gang up on Delinth. Sand managed to take down a tunneler, while Delinth’s cleaving stance allowed him to crush the tunnelers on his end. The round ended with Riven botching another scorching burst. Mebbe she needs glasses? Perhaps that imp on her shoulder is playing the backseat wizard?

For the third round, the slinger pegged Riven with a firepot, but since she’s a tiefling it didn’t amount to shit. She retaliated with infernal wrath, causing his skin to smoke and blister, while Sand gratefully took an opportunity attack to nat 1 the slinger. Fortunately, he remembered elven accuracy and turned it into a killing blow with a combination of Sneak Attack and backstab (4d6 + 6 damage for the win). The battle was basically won, though it took another round for the party to gang up on the slyblade. The killing shot went to Riven, who was tired of missing and did the job proper with magic missile. Automatic hits are pretty rad.

They arrived at Winterhaven without further incident. Riven split off to deliver the message to her mentor’s friend Valthrun, while Sand and Delinth scoped out the rest of the village and managed to pick up a quest to exterminate the kobolds plaguing the town from Padraig. This is one way that I diverge from the original adventure: the two primary plot points this time around are the kobold lair and keep (which is not fucking called Shadowfell Keep). Neither of the two have any connection with the exception that the Big Bad knows about the kobolds, but doesn’t give a damn because as far as he’s concerned that stretches out Winterhaven’s defenses and makes it less likely that they’ll figure anything out. If they do? Well, it’ll be all the more difficult for them to do something about it.

The dragon graveyard is something that they can learn about in passing from Valthrun (which Riven did), but is more of an “optional” location that can give them some extra XP and items. I seem to recall that someone had the Big Bad digging about the site for a rib or whatnot, but I’m going to say that the dude wants a skull, and since the kobolds look at it like a sacred site that it’s been difficult for his minions to procure one. If they get it, I’ll prolly make it a wondrous item that will help them out later…unless it gets stolen in which case it will make things a bit harder for them.

They decided to head out to the kobold lair, which is good because I want them to hit up the lair and graveyard first so that they can get a few magic items and more XP. They got to try out their first skill challenge, but relied almost entirely on Nature and Perception. That’s fine, since they’re new. Riven used History to recall some of the maps in Valthrun’s tower that provided a rough idea where the graveyard was, deducing that the kobolds would likely be close by. Unfortunately, neither Nature nor Perception are anyone’s strong suit, and they got ambushed by more kobolds and a guard drake. After trouncing them we called it because it was 2am and I didn’t have the kobold lair map on hand. I guess I’ll have to draw it next time we play.

Not surprisingly, everything played just like 4th Edition, except for class resources. The players controlling the knight and thief only had to worry about one encounter exploit, routingly making basic melee attacks each round, modified only by the stance or trick used. This kind of fucked Delinth, who spent the first round of combat “prepping” his aura and stance. Were he a fighter he could have moved and then charged a kobold, dealing some damage and auto-marking the target, but I’m sure thats part of the inherent balance.

At the Mines of Madness Finale

We wrapped up the last session of At the Mines of Madness last week, a session that I’ve forgotten much of the fine details. I do recall that in a fit of characteristic paranoia the party buried their treasure since they were afraid of it turning them into aberrant horrors, which to be fair was apt since the aberrant corruption caused Liz to grow a carapace over her arm, and Beth’s character to grow a gibbering mouth on her side (but since Liz wanted the mouth, they decided to trade). Picking up where we left off, the characters following a trail of dark green slime that lead into the mining quarry, deducing mine 13 to be the source of the problems due to a steady stream of water trickling forth. They figured there was a lot of bad shit inside, but unable to make any worthwhile preparations ventured forth and trounced my skill challenge to avoid getting lost from dimensional warping and psychic static fairly easily. It’s good when you have associated skills.


They located the shrine, which had a heavily damaged earth tumbler sitting just outside the entrance. The damage allowed an elemental to mostly free itself from its Khyber dragonshard prison, meaning that they had to fight it and try to rebind it to the shard so that it would stop escaping and harassing them. Despite only being a level 2 solo, its combined slams allowed it to immediately bloody Randy’s battlemind, to which he proclaimed that it was a good thing he would doing his job proper, as it could have outright dropped or possibly killed anyone else in the party. I wasn’t worried since Liz’s rogue is thoroughly optimized and Beth’s liberal use of Thunder keyword attacks kept it’s Defenses perpetually reduced to brute levels.


Repairing the earth tumbler cost them a Make Whole ritual scroll, but with the net gain of an elemental vehicle I think they’re more than willing to call it a wash. Inside the shrine they found more fell taints, some orc skeletons, and a pool containing some chuul nymphs that they sealed with stone sarcophagi because they were ridiculously paranoid at what might happen if they had to go into the water (and Josh failed numerous skill checks to try and freeze it). They did fish out a dead body before hand that had a time-warping wondrous item, so it wasnt all that bad. Their brief venture into the aberrant shrine ended once they’d found a reality tear, sealed it, and toppled an idol dedicated to Dagon.


On their way out of town, they decided to hit up the inn and discovered the last reality tear, so took precautions that involved burning the entire inn to the ground, detonating ale kegs in the cellar where it was located, and then burying the whole site (just to be sure). The only surviving creature was a lowly flumph that the two female players (Liz and Beth) immediately befriended…and queried as to whether it could wear a snazzy hat. The little guy proved useful when they made camp in town and were attacked by a leveled-up ethereal marauder…or rather he would have, had Liz been able to successfully pantomime to the party that there was a monster outside. Eh, it died quickly regardless of its Elite status, so whatever. Randy can drop it off at a Gatekeeper organization in Zarash’ak to up his reputation.


That was the last session in a nutshell, next Tuesday they’re off to Greyshore so that they can try and find a boat back to Zarash’ak so that they can report what happened. They do know that someone from Greyshore had stopped by Shardpit to try and buy all the golden relics that they buried, but they don’t know why. So…we’ll see what happens next week.

Ravenloft Play Report

Late last night we cracked open Ravenloft to give it a shot. By “we”, I mean two people that have played a lot of D&D (Liz and myself), and two people who either had a long time ago or only once. I decided to start us out with the scenario where we had to find and kill Gravestorm, a blue dragon dracolich. As the only person that read the Rulebook I had to explain how things worked to the players, which at first was confusing but after a few turns they started to pick up on the routine.

There was also some *ahem* issues at the start of the game as everyone frantically ran into differing edges in order to avoid drawing Encounter cards, which backfired when they invariably dropped tiles with black triangles in addition to when everyone was in a separate corner fighting off hordes of monsters on their own. By about the fourth or fifth turn we’d regrouped and started sucking up Encounter cards since we were more likely to survive taking a random point of damage or getting a random shot at free treasure than tackling a 2 hit  point wraith or blazing skeleton. In the end we succeeded against the dragon, partially because I kept forgetting to remind the players that it activated on everyone’s villain phase, but also because we unloaded dailies on it while Liz ran around and broke the phylactery.

Having finally played it I can say that I really, really like this game. It’s a lot like D&D if it were abstracted. Hit points are reduced to around 6-10 (most attacks deal like, 1 damage), the only defense value is Armor Class, and monsters don’t have speeds, instead moving in “tiles” in order to close the distance and fuck your shit up. In a similar vein, powers with ranges also work the same way, allowing you to target enemies on another tile, or sometimes two tiles away. Many effects get changed as well, such as healing strike actually healing damage, or healing word working only once. I think this will be our new game of choice when someone can’t show or no one wants to run, instead of doing a delve.

There aren’t a lot of character options, and as I said before I’m hoping that Wizards releases an expansion in order to broaden the scope in terms of scenarios, characters, monsters, etc. Failing that, it looks like it would be relatively simple to create your own monsters and character cards. Hell, if you’ve got a massive minis library (or tokens)  you can directly use them since the game uses D&D Minis anyway.

The monsters are all pretty diverse: some of them are more dangerous when they are far away, such as skeletons with their slice attack or burning skeletons with their ability to nail everyone on a tile. Wolves are also nasty if they get a running start. Gargoyles are brutal in close quarters, able to hit everyone on the tile. Actually aside from villains the only thing we didn’t get to fight was rat swarms and howling hags. I’m not fond of the kobolds at all. They seem very out of place and I’d have been happier with having vampire minions or even devoted cult fanatics. Hell, dire rats would have made more sense and been about as scary. They could have replaced the kobold sorcerer with a wererat of some kind and BAM, instant theme.

Liz absolutely hates the leveling mechanic. As I said in my review, you have to roll a natural 20 on an attack or trap disarm attempt and have 5 XP worth of monsters in the bank. I didn’t mind so much as three of us managed to level before the game was over (only Devin’s ranger didn’t make the flip) and it was a fucking life saver. When you level your hit points and defense goes up and you get another daily attack. Not only is that a very potent boost, but it seemed to happened when we needed it the most: Devin was getting fucked up by three monsters, and thanks to my level-up was able to use an attack that hit all the monsters, dealing damage on a miss. That basically took care of two automatically and since I hit the last one, I was able to clear out all the monsters and save his ass.

A lot of fun. I was surprised that we’d managed to succeed, especially since my past experience with coop games like this almost universally ended in disaster. It wasn’t easy (and might have gone differently if we’d had the dragon go every time it was supposed to, but hey, first time and all). We’re going to play again today with a new scenario, so we’ll see how we fare this time around (and I’ll try to get pics this time).

Songs of Erui Session 7, Part 1

Party (Level 3)
Grey; razorclaw shifter archery ranger
Grynn; gnoll artificer DEAD ^X_x^
Kegan; dwarf paladin (Strength primary)
Maev; elf druid
Sigis; goliath valorous bard
Zan; stormsoul genasi assault swordmage

The last session ended on a cliffhanger. They party had defeated a pair of bear-totem eladrin wardens, and were trying to open the door that someone had closed behind them before the fight ever started. After a bit of fumbling they managed to open it, and they heard something say, “Hello, Grynn.”

What they saw, I described as such: it was about three-feet tall. The head looked like a crude wooden mask, with one eye missing and the other constantly bleeding stuff that made it look like it might be crying blood. There was no actual mouth, but what might be considered a jagged smile was carved where the mouth could be. This “mask” was attached to a wolfen head, which in turn was stuck on top of an exposed spinal column that ran into a rounded, cracked, woody torso that was oozing blood and had fungus growing out of it.
It had two arms, one that looked like a hyena leg with a spidery, wooden hand stuck on the end. It was rotting, with exposed muscles. The other arm was entirely of wood, with circles and whorls running along its entire length. It looked slightly longer than the other.
Of the legs, the front two were wooden and looked like a cross between a crab and spider, with more fungus growing out of the joints. One of the hind legs was a hyena’s, while the other was a human arm (both also rotting, of course).

Before initiative was rolled, he commanded Grynn to step forward, which triggered Josh to immediately declare initiative time as Grey sprung into action….or would have if the creature hadnt rolled a 29. Its action was to simply touch Grynn, causing much of his skin to peel off (25 necrotic damage right up front).

After that Grey tried to pull Grynn to safety, and the rest of the party tried ineffectually to damage him. A new player arrived with Zan, a stormsoul genasi swordmage, managed to arrive just as combat started. He had been sent by an eladrin council to investigate who had violated one of their crypts, and took a round or two just assessing the situation (not sure who to attack).

The creature did get hit, turning invisible (this is when they realized that whatever it was, it had probably been a gnome). One its turn cycled back around, I had it teleport next to Grynn and finish him off. Since it was invisible, they just saw Grynn’s head jerk up, and a black aura surrounded him. All of his skin and organs melted off, and every part of his skeleton except his skull turned into dust before getting sucked into nothing. The creature then appear, holding Grynn’s skull, and attached it to a cord on its waist.

For visual effect, I had it wipe its hands as if it had just made a sandwich, and then burn an action point to summon a wall of zombies. Unfortunately, only it and Grey were on one side, and everyone else was on the other.

Grey started his turn grabbed by the zombies, and the rest of the party tried to chop their way through. This display of powerful necromancy caused Zan to declare the bizarre spider-gnome-undead-plant-thing as the greatest threat, and he ran in and started detonating zombies with his thunder attacks (showering the party with zombie guts in the process).

The creature was able to effortlessly clamber up to the top of the wall, and it blasted Kegan with a powerful necrotic bolt that also weakened him. Zan critted him with lightning lure, which accounted for one of two hits they were able to land the entire battle. The creature simply teleported away and used another wall of zombies to cut off everyone else except Maev from the exit.

With Maev by herself, she really didnt want to do anything to it. Almost no one was landing any actual hits on the thing. It walked over to the corpse of the tree god that they’d kill last session and animated it again, before booking it to the exit. Zan got crit in on the wall with an encounter power, blowing out about a quarter of it, allowing the party to usually wiggle to freedom if they didnt get grabbed. The zombified-tree-god, however, blocked the hallway leading to the exit portal, so Zan teleported through, then swapped places with Kegan. This allowed Kegan a clear shot at the creature, which he totally did not take.

Instead, they clustered around the zombie-god and beat it to death, and the creature got away.

And thats how the first encounter for the session went.

They took an extended rest and introduced themselves to Zan. He was an agent of the eladrin Winter Court, and after some…words, were traded, decided that they werent responsible for breaking into it and robbing everything. After their rest they checked out the rest of the room and found two more hidden passages. One contained six statues carved like owl totems, which Grey’s sword identified as “god-houses” that were used when a spirit wanted to sleep.

Then Kegan decided to smash one, which fell on another…and another, leaving three, three god-houses. Ah ah ah ah.

The spirits looked like flowing white tendrils with white masks, a theme that they’d seen quite a bit. They’d encountered the spirits before, but they didnt really do anything except scare them. Until now, that is.

The three spirits who were recently evicted from their homes were none to happy about the whole situation, and started attacking them from the walls. Sigis and Maev wanted no part of it, and just left, and eventually the rest of the party followed suit. Thinking that everything was okay, they went into the last hidden door, which contained a massive idol of a bear god.

…with six of those white spirits that they had just angered floating around it.

What followed was a lot of dialogue as Sigis traded her magical spear for knowledge of the “weapons” required to defeat the Sleeping God in her mountain. She learned that three songs are required, but that it didnt know what or where they were. The rest of the party, except for Zan, traded items in exchange for their lives (since they’d pissed off a lot of spirits and violated a lot of graves on the way down).

With that out of the way, they started back to Dorsen.

To be continued…dun dun duuuuun…